 Some of these are tragic figures, such as Fedina de Rodas, who readers see tortured and then sold to a brothel while she still clutches her dead baby in her arms.Others, however, provide comic relief.Sometimes they have colorful or playful names or nicknames, such as "Flatfoot" (a beggar), the "Talking Cow" (a woman who delivers a speech of praise to the President), or Doña Benjamin VenJamón, who, with her husband the puppet-master Don Benjamin, closes the novel with a lament for the demise of the Cathedral Porch.