For years, Ernesto traveled from one village to another with his father, a penniless lawyer. Having outgrown childhood, he finally arrives at a Catholic boarding school in the provincial capital of Abancay, high in the Andes. There is Añuco, the son of a destitute landowner, who, along with the muscular Lleras, bullies the younger students; Palacitos, a shy Indian who barely speaks Spanish; Gerardo, the son of the military commander; and Ántero, who enchants Ernesto with the magic of a spinning top, whose spherical sound fills the schoolyard and momentarily deceives him into a carefree childhood. For at night, the same schoolyard transforms into a dark, eerie place where the dimwitted kitchen maid submits to the older students. Arguedas portrays her as a harbinger of the catastrophe that is about to descend upon Abancay and the boarding school.