A child of eight could have drawn his own conclusions, because it couldn’t happen again. The dog couldn’t die twice. My sister, who was a year older than me but maturing as fast as a papaya, took me into a corner and said:
‘Look at Dad’s face: he looks like he’s the one whose guts they’re going to cut open.’
My father was the colour of the sheets on my bed, which although old and worn were pretty white still, thanks to the gallons of bleach my mother used. The butcher asked if my father was going to faint, if he was scared of blood. It was a very warm summer evening and it would be wise to hurry up, before the dog began to stink. With the regal sangfroid typical of her whenever she was settling a family dispute, my mother replied:
‘You may proceed.’
The butcher made a cut from chin to belly. The blood ran out onto a photo of President Ávila Camacho, his hands raised as if being attacked, although presumably he was actually being applauded. Mum bent down to peer into the dog’s entrails, like some Etruscan mystic trying to see the future – and she did see it, quite literally, because the future is always a fateful consequence of the past. An endless nylon stocking had coiled itself along the entire length of the dog’s intestines. It was like what Schoenberg said, but backwards, which meant the same in the end: my mother had found her explanation. Dad protested, claiming the dog had been sniffing around downtown, near Alameda Central park. My parents’ house was also in a neighbourhood in the centre.
‘The doghouse is too good for you,’ said my mother.
I laughed and my father gave me a slap. My sister laughed and my mother pinched her arm. We both began to cry. By dinner time, Dad could take it no longer: with no excuse to go out, he simply left and never came home again. The butcher had taken the dog’s corpse away and promised to bury it. My sister had followed him and told me she’d seen him cutting a deal with the taco vendor on the corner. She also told me not to tell our mother, because she’d been very fond of the dog. This is what she spent her life doing, growing fond of dogs.
The next day, Mum was so upset she didn’t feel like making dinner. To conceal this from us, she took us out for tacos. She said it was the start of a new life. My sister said that if that was the case then she’d rather have pozole for dinner. I fancied enchiladas. It was impossible to change her mind – tacos were the cheapest option. When the taco seller saw us heading for his stand he shook his head like we were depraved. It wasn’t as if it was unheard of. Weren’t there people who grew fond of their chickens and then cooked them in mole sauce, and on their birthday of all things?
Several theories about the origins of my novel had occurred to me. What I mean is, about how Francesca had got it into her head that I was writing a novel. The most logical thing would be to blame it all on how ridiculously thin the walls in the building were, practically imaginary, which led to the immense popularity of espionage as a recreational activity. But she must also enjoy telling tales and be harbouring some kind of hidden agenda. Otherwise what was the point of going around telling everyone I was writing a novel if I wasn’t writing one?
I had a few notebooks I used to scribble in, that at least was true, especially late at night, as I let the last beer of the day slide down my throat, a beer which sometimes became the second-to-last. Or the third-to-last. I would draw and write down things that occurred to me. I drew and wrote and gradually nodded off, until the pen slipped from my hand and I slipped over towards my bed. But between this and writing a novel there was a huge stretch, an abyss that could only be crossed with a great deal of will power and naivety. Where had Francesca got the idea that what I was writing in my notebook was a novel?
What really intrigued me was how the woman had managed to find out the contents of my notebook, because her knowledge of what was in it was eerily detailed, and she would recount it to everyone who attended her salon as if it was the new chapter in a long-running serial. I played up to this and began sending her messages. Beneath a drawing of a male dog mounting a little female, I wrote in my shaky hand like a long-legged spider:
Francesca – I’ll wait for you tomorrow in my apartment, at 9 p.m. I’ll pop a pill at half past eight so we’ll have plenty of time to have a couple of beers and get to know each other. Let me know if you’d prefer something stronger. Tequila? Mezcal? Or would you rather a whisky? I’ve got a really good one from Tlalnepantla. Wear something pretty, a leather miniskirt or that red dress you were wearing when we went to see the courtyard at the Colegio de San Ildefonso.
The next morning, the entire salon was waiting for me down in the entrance hall spoiling for a fight. They began to lob rotten tomatoes at me from the greengrocer’s stand outside, clamouring:
‘That’s no way to write a novel!’
‘You dirty old man!’
‘That’s not a novel!’
And I replied:
‘I told you!’
The following day, just to drive them mad, I copied out whole paragraphs from Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory into my notebook:
The demand for complete responsibility on the part of artworks increases the burden of their guilt; therefore this demand is to be set in counterpoint with the antithetical demand for irresponsibility. The latter is reminiscent of the element of play, without which there is no more possibility of art than of theory… A solemn tone would condemn artworks to ridiculousness, just as would the gestures of grandeur and might… In the artwork the unconditional surrender of dignity can become an organon of its strength.
Troy burned: they bought two pounds of tomatoes each.
I had acquired the bad habit of trying to resolve all quarrels by reciting paragraphs from Aesthetic Theory. So far I’d dispatched more than one telemarketing agent, several street sellers, dozens of insurance salesmen and someone who wanted to sell me a plot for my own grave in six instalments. I’d found my edition in a library funded by the foundation of a bank four blocks from where I lived. I stuffed the book down my trousers and underneath my shirt, and arranged my face to look like I was wearing a colostomy bag. A thief robbing a thief. On the first page, a blank one, was a stamp from the faculty of philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. A thief robbing a thief robbing a thief. On page 22, without looking, I found the phrase of Schoenberg’s that reminded me of my mother: if you do not seek, you will not find. My Aesthetic Theory had been shoved in between the memoirs of the gay writer and intellectual Salvador Novo and Fray Servando, the priest. Schoenberg wouldn’t have liked this, nor would have Adorno, and nor would my mother: if you do not seek, you can find, too.
And on the third day, when expediency had tempered her disappointment, Francesca knocked at the door to my apartment. It was a very hot day and the neckline of her dress led me to cherish unwonted hopes, as if it were possible to win the Battle of Puebla without actually going to Puebla. She wore her hair down and around her neck hung a slender gold necklace from which, in turn, hung an equally slender ring, apparently an engagement ring.
‘May I come in?’ she asked.
I stepped aside to let her in and followed this with the mechanical courtesy of telling her to make herself at home. It occurred to me that I should have gone to the pharmacist. I made a mental note: go to pharmacist.
‘Would you like a beer?’ I asked.
‘I’d prefer something else,’ she replied. ‘An anisette. Or an almond liqueur.’
‘I’ve only got beer. Or water.’
‘Some water, then.’
‘Please, have a seat.’
I went over to get her some water while she sat down in the chair, my only chair, which I’d installed in front of the television. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw her inspect my apartment in detail, pausing when she came to the painting hanging on the opposite wall and the little shelf by the door where I’d piled up all my notebooks and a few other volumes, not a novel among them. There was little else to look at: the little dining table, two boxes I had yet to u
npack and – naturally – the cockroaches.
After I’d handed her the water I stood in front of her, leaning against the table because there was nowhere for me to sit, and watched as she took a microscopic sip. The truth was that, my intentions aside, the only place the two of us could have been comfortable was on the bed. I crossed my arms to let her know I was waiting. She waited for a few seconds before speaking, as if first she needed to make sure, in her mind, of the construction of the phrase she was about to enunciate. Finally she opened her mouth, and what she said was: ‘I’ve come to formally invite you to join the literary salon.’
The tune echoed around my head in the moment that followed, as Francesca took another tiny sip of her water: I’ve come to formally invite you to join the literary salon. This pause appeared to be studied so the phrase had time to take effect, so I would have time to come to the conclusion that this was an honour. An undeserved honour, naturally, and – were I to accept – the source of Francesca’s power over me from this moment onwards.
‘Thank you very much,’ I told her, ‘but I’m not interested. I don’t read novels.’
The glass in her right hand trembled; she’d drunk so little water that she almost spilled it down herself. She directed her gaze to the shelf by the door.
‘Those books aren’t novels,’ I added, to clear up any confusion seeing them from a distance might have occasioned her.
Francesca turned back to me and took another breath to resume her attack, this time employing an unusual strategy.
‘But you’re writing a novel, and if you want to write a novel the best thing to do is to read, to read a lot.’
‘What?!’ I said, a reply and a question.
‘Yes: you have to be very aware of literary tradition, otherwi—’
‘I am not writing a novel; where on earth did you get that idea from?’
‘Don’t lie, everyone knows everything in this building, we’re a very close-knit community.’
‘A very nosy one, you mean.’
She flinched in irritation and held out her glass for me to put it down on the table.
‘Have you forgiven me for being a taco seller yet?’ I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Do you think a taco seller is fit to write a novel?’
‘If you have a good ear, then yes, you must have heard lots of interesting conversations. But it’s a long way from listening to writing; if you like I can help, the salon could be very useful for you.’
‘That’s nice, but I don’t read or write novels.’
‘Everyone comes to the salon.’
‘Not me.’
‘The previous tenant did.’
‘And that’s how he died! You think I don’t know what happened to him?’
The previous occupant of my apartment had dropped dead, in the middle of reading Carlos Fuentes’ last novel, of a heart attack right out there in the lobby, where a wooden cross had been hung in his memory under the mailboxes, as if Fuentes himself had run him down in a sports car.
‘I know you and I have got off on the wrong foot,’ said Francesca, leaning forward so that the ring on her necklace dangled in the air and the neckline of her dress revealed another centimetre of cleavage. ‘The salon is a chance for us to fix this.’
It seemed to me that the ring on her necklace was spinning around and I was afraid she was trying to hypnotise me.
‘There’s nothing to fix,’ I replied, looking away towards a little patch of sky I could see outside the balcony. ‘We’re not broken.’
‘Excuse me?’
‘I mean I don’t hold grudges, so never mind.’
‘We’ll see you tomorrow, then? We start at ten. I’ve got a copy of the novel we’re reading all ready for you. We’re only on the second chapter, you’ll catch us up in no time. I can give you the previous tenant’s little reading light, if you’re not morbid about such things?’
‘Don’t insist, please – I’m not going to come.’
She stood up, brushing a heap of imaginary crumbs from her dress.
‘Which doesn’t mean that you and I can’t be friends,’ I continued. ‘Come and have a drink with me in the bar on the corner, and on the way I can buy some pills I need – what do you say?’
‘You can’t write a novel without reading novels!’ she declared.
‘Perfect! Two birds with one stone!’
She left without responding to my invitation. When I investigated the interest concealed behind her insistence, as well as her political strategies for controlling the building, I discovered a slightly more trivial yet undoubtedly more decisive motive: the bookshop where she ordered the novels gave her a special discount for buying a dozen copies.
Whenever there was an argument at home, my mother would win it by saying that Dad had an artistic temperament. Given the tone of voice she used and the context in which she said it, it sounded like a physical defect. In actual fact, it was slander that my father never quite learned how to refute: he tried to do so verbally, but his actions betrayed him, time and again, and the examples my mother stored up to confirm her diagnosis multiplied.
Months before he abandoned us, he had the idea of painting a rotting papaya. He had brought a small, slightly wrinkly one home from the market and had placed it, sliced in half and accompanied by a white carnation in a glass of water, on a table by his easel. He changed the position of the fruit and the angle of the flower several times and, when he was satisfied with the composition, he warned us:
‘No one is to touch anything. And don’t eat the papaya. My painting will be a study on death, decadence, decay and the finite nature of life.’
Of course, the next day, before the papaya went off and to prevent the proliferation of swarms of mosquitoes fascinated by the composition, my mother cut the papaya into cubes and fed it to me and my sister, while Dad was out. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the fruit, so I hid it and gave it to my father when he came back from work. When he reproached my mother for betraying him, she replied: ‘If you’re going to waste a papaya, you have to have enough money to buy two.’
This was before Dad got his job as a sales manager, where they even gave him a secretary, which turned out to be an advancement with unfortunate consequences for the family. My father held up the plate with the little cubes of papaya in the palm of his hand, surrounded by a halo of mosquitoes, and lamented: ‘The boy’s the only one who understands me.’
My mother replied: ‘You’re a terrible example to him. The last thing we need is for him to end up an artist too! Why don’t you draw the little cubes of papaya? You can make it a cubist painting. It’ll be a study of the incomplete, the fragmentary, the finite nature of the resources of a family whose sole breadwinner spends his time with his head in the clouds, revelling in the frustration caused by his artistic temperament.’
Dad gave the papaya back to me.
‘You can eat it now,’ he said.
But I still couldn’t eat it: I hid the plate under my bed and only threw it away when the flies tried to lay their eggs in my ears.
I escaped from the volley of tomatoes as best I could and headed straight for the greengrocer’s, where I was greeted with a hearty laugh:
‘Good and ripe, were they?’ she’d ask. ‘I saved the best ones for you, they’re from the Hyatt Hotel!’
‘You shouldn’t give that sanctimonious lot ammunition!’ I protested.
‘Everyone has the right to rebel, even them!’
The greengrocer had made rebellion her way of life and her principal source of income: I never saw her sell a single vegetable that was in the least bit edible. Instead, she acted as the official supplier to every riot. Her foul-smelling tomatoes were famous at all the well-known sites of demonstration: on Paseo de la Reforma, down in the Zócalo, on Avenida Bucareli; she even furnished the peasants of San Mateo Atenco with vegetables when they rose up to protest at their land being confiscated to build the airport.
The best th
ing about the greengrocer was that she was five years younger than Francesca and eleven years younger than me. At this stage in life the effect of age difference has to be multiplied by three, at least. One might say that Francesca was better preserved than the greengrocer, which was logical, considering the wear and tear of an intellectual life as opposed to one of action. But the state of preservation didn’t matter because we weren’t bottles of milk in the refrigerator, or wagons from the 1930s or ’40s. What really mattered were the desires and motives Francesca suspected the greengrocer of having, more intense than her own, and far more so in Francesca’s head than in reality. Since reality was another thing that didn’t matter and what Francesca thought actually did, I calculated that my flirting with the greengrocer could well end up increasing my chances with Francesca. And all this without even taking into account the ostentatious dimensions of the greengrocer’s chest! It was a psychological and sexual battle that would have made even Freud’s beard stand on end.
On the wall of the vegetable shop was a calendar showing special commemorative dates to observe and the vegetables that were in season on each one. March was the time of the renationalisation of oil reserves, the birth of Benito Juárez, courgettes and chayote. May was high season: Labour Day, the Day of the Holy Cross, the Battle of Puebla, Teachers Day, Students Day, chayote, lettuce and tomato. In September, Poblano chillies, the annual presidential speech, Boy Heroes Day and Independence Day. In October and November there were only a few dates, but more tomatoes than ever were sold: the Tlatelolco Massacre, the Day of the Hispanic Peoples and the Mexican Revolution.
The greengrocer would stretch out a chubby arm and hand me a roll of toilet paper with which to wipe the flecks of tomato from my face, hair, neck and arms, and give me a yellow T-shirt from the 2006 electoral campaign to change into. I would return the T-shirt to her later, only for her to lend it to me again after the next barrage of tomatoes. This happened so often that, in time, people in the street came to think I was a supporter of the Party of the Democratic Revolution. Then she would yell out an order for two big bottles of Superior from the shop on the corner, a girl would bring the beer, and the greengrocer would pour us each a glass and begin:
I'll Sell You a Dog Page 2