I'll Sell You a Dog

by Juan Pablo Villalobos

  ‘You’ve read Burroughs? I thought you didn’t read.’

  ‘An ex-girlfriend made me read it.’

  He took a pair of tweezers from his rucksack and used them to hold the tip of the joint to finish what was left.

  ‘So you’re not going to tell me?’ he asked.

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘Why you never married.’

  ‘I’ve already told you.’

  ‘Sure you’re not a poof?’

  ‘Yeah right, and now you’re properly pissed and stoned I’m going to rape you.’

  ‘So touchy. I’ll bet there’s a story behind it’.

  ‘Why does there have to be a story behind it? Why does there always have to be a story that explains things? Since when does life need a narrator to go around justifying people’s actions? I’m a person, not a character in a book, kiddo.’

  ‘If you don’t want to tell me don’t, just stop talking bullshit. I liked you better before, when you just used to read Adorno. All those books on literary theory are frying your brain.’

  ‘And I liked you better before too, when you used to walk like you were dancing to reggae; now you walk around jerking all over the place like a polka.’

  The joint disappeared, literally, between the tweezers, and Mao leaned back in his chair to exhale, in one long puff, the last toke he’d managed to extract from it.

  ‘How are the negotiations going, by the way?’ he asked.

  ‘We’re just arranging a time and a place for the first round,’ I replied.

  ‘Got you.’

  ‘Don’t you go losing my Lost Times, now.’

  ‘As if.’

  ‘What are you going to use them for?’

  ‘I can’t tell you anything, it would jeopardise the operation.’

  He drained the last of his beer, made a face, and got up. His Shining Path T-shirt looked even scruffier than usual, with thousands of stains of varying origins, an odd little hole near his belly button and the left sleeve unravelling, although it had perhaps been like this since day one and I was only noticing now because I was stoned.

  ‘You’re the least discreet Maoist I know,’ I said to him. ‘It’s almost as if you want to be caught – is that it? You want them to catch you so you’ve got something to moan about?’

  ‘Is it because of my T-shirt?’ he replied. ‘That’s just to put people off the scent.’

  ‘You mean you’re not a Maoist?’

  ‘Yeah right.’

  ‘So why did you tell me you were?’

  ‘I didn’t, you reached that conclusion all by yourself.’

  ‘Juliette told me.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘So you’re not a Maoist?’

  ‘Course I’m not.’

  ‘So what are you?’

  ‘That question doesn’t matter any more, Grandpa, times have changed. We live in a post-ideological era, in case you hadn’t noticed.’

  ‘Post-ideological? Aren’t you the one who keeps on going on about novels being a bourgeois invention?’

  ‘That’s not ideology, Grandpa, that’s history.’

  ‘So what’s your real name, Mao?’

  ‘That question doesn’t matter either. And anyway, you’re not really called Teo, either.’

  ‘So you’ve never been to Peru.’

  ‘The closest I’ve been to Peru is a restaurant in La Condesa where they do a mean ceviche. Speaking of which, has anyone ever told you you’ve got a nose like a potato?’

  ‘Watch it, “Mao”. And do you mind telling me, since I suppose you don’t speak Chinese either, how you figured out that the guys in the Chinese restaurant over the road are Korean? Or did you make that all up?’

  ‘I used the translator on my phone, Grandpa.’

  He picked up his backpack and slung it over his shoulder, putting an end to the conversation and getting ready to leave.

  ‘Now I’m hungry,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a good symptom,’ I told him.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘That you’re not going to die of a broken heart.’

  ‘Or that that was some good quality ganja.’

  ‘There’s a taco stand on the corner that opens late.’

  ‘Bleurgh, they look gross, they’re probably made of dog meat.’

  ‘No shit!’

  ‌

  The first round of negotiations took place one Saturday afternoon on neutral ground, chosen by Francesca: a Sanborns café opposite the Jardín de Epicuro. The mediation would be Juliet’s responsibility, as she claimed to be an expert in these sorts of conflict.

  ‘It won’t be the first or the last time I’ve done it,’ she had said, when she put herself forward as a candidate.

  When Francesca, jealous, tried to allege favouritism towards my cause due to our being friends, Juliet interrupted her and defended herself:

  ‘Madam,’ she said, ‘I take umbrage at the suggestion that I’ll replicate the vices of the corrupt State.’

  On the negotiating table there was a cup of tea, for Francesca, and two beers. First and foremost, I informed them that I wasn’t prepared to drag out the discussions for ages.

  ‘It’s best we get straight to the point,’ I said, ‘the beer here cost me thirty pesos.’

  ‘It’s quite a simple negotiation,’ Francesca replied. ‘We’ll be done in no time at all. You give us back the Lost Times and the reading lamps, and if you don’t, I’ll report you to the management committee.’

  ‘I’ve already told you twenty times,’ I replied, ‘that I don’t have the Lost Times. If you lost them, you need to look for them properly. You know what they say: he who doesn’t seek doesn’t find. Oh, and I don’t have the reading lamps, either.’

  ‘Well in that case I don’t know what we’re doing here,’ said Francesca, looking at Juliet.

  ‘Let me explain what the negotiation consists of,’ I said. ‘You give me back my Aesthetic Theory and I’ll make a certain compromising photograph of you disappear, or else—’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she interrupted.

  ‘The photo of that lad you so carelessly let into the building. I’d love to know what the management committee thinks of its dictator infringing her own rules. I’m debating whether to ask you to resign.’

  ‘I didn’t let anyone in!’

  ‘I don’t have your Lost Times!’

  ‘I don’t have your Aesthetic Theory!’

  ‘Now look here,’ Juliet intervened, ‘let’s just calm down. I suggest we put together a hypothetical scenario to start the dialogue off. It’s an imaginative exercise, all right, before you dismiss it out of hand.’

  Francesca nodded and I took a tiny sip of beer, just to moisten my mouth.

  ‘Let’s imagine,’ Juliet continued, ‘that this lady has in her possession the copy of Aesthetic Theory belonging to this gentleman.’

  ‘Even though I don’t,’ Francesca said.

  ‘I told you, this is hypothetical,’ Juliet said. ‘Let me finish. And let’s imagine also that the gentleman has the copies of Lost Time and the reading lamps that belong to the salon members. Better still: let’s imagine something else. Let’s imagine, instead, that you don’t have the books, as you both insist, but that you might be able to obtain them, you understand? You don’t have them, but, if a friendly agreement were reached, you could get hold of them. Based on this supposition, would you feel comfortable carrying out an exchange?’

  ‘I can’t give what I don’t have,’ I said.

  ‘Nor can I,’ Francesca said.

  ‘But what you might be able to do is each indicate to the other where they could find what they’re looking for. It would be an exchange of information.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what I can give to the gentleman,’ Francesca declared.

  She put her hand into her pocket and retrieved a folded piece of paper, which she handed to me.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked.

  ‘Read it,’ she replied.


  It was a photocopy of a medical report stating that I was not ‘legally competent’ and ‘not liable for prosecution’ because I suffered from alcoholism and senility.

  ‘This is a fake document!’ I cried.

  ‘It’s an official document,’ Francesca said. ‘The Society for the Protection of Animals requested it and thanks to this certificate you were let off a fine. Do you know what would happen if I handed it over to the management committee? You know the rules very well: I could send you to an old people’s home with this little piece of paper.’

  In my head I saw Papaya-Head’s papaya head and I imagined beating it to a pulp, or cutting it into little pieces with an enormous butcher’s knife.

  ‘This is an insult!’ I shouted. ‘I’m leaving the table. The negotiation’s off.’

  I left immediately, without waiting for an answer, mainly because I wasn’t prepared, on top of everything else, to pay the bill. The following day, as was to be expected, Papaya-Head didn’t show up to the literary workshop in the bar. On Monday, with the help of Juliet, who called Dorotea, I got hold of the man’s telephone number. After downing two tequilas, I rang him with rage coursing through my veins.

  ‘Traitor!’ I shouted as soon as he answered the phone.

  ‘Saboteur!’

  ‘How you could stoop so low?’

  ‘I could say exactly the same: all you ever wanted was to stop me writing my novel. You know that after just one session with Francesca I’ve already got the first chapter?’

  ‘You betrayed me for a novel!’

  ‘Go and find someone else to buy your drinks!’

  ‘You big fat papaya-head!’

  I heard him hang up and the mere prospect of ending up in an old people’s home made me drink that day until I lost consciousness.

  ‌

  ‘Will you let me draw you?’

  ‘Tomorrow.’

  ‘Can I hold your hand?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Weren’t you going to look for another job?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Can I kiss you?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Didn’t you say the taco stand was temporary? When are you going to stop selling tacos?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Will you marry me?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Why don’t you enrol at university to study something useful?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Will you let me come in and watch while you pose?’

  ‘Does it turn you on, Teo?’

  Wanks came and went, and thus, life went on.

  ‌

  Our bodies floated in a desert-like wilderness studded here and there with dead trees that looked as if they would come to life at any minute thanks to some wizardry; dead trees that, instead of growing green again, and covering themselves with leaves, threatened to pull their roots from the earth and start walking; dead trees with branches like arms, monsters from a child’s nightmare; trees like the living dead. On the horizon a few rocky hills were visible and, up in the sky, some strange clouds, clouds whose shapes not even a meteorologist or an art critic would be able to decipher.

  I squeezed my hands to calm Marilín down, because I sensed she was with me, but I wasn’t squeezing anything at all, Marilín wasn’t there. Instead, I could see the back of the Sorcerer, delicately moving his right arm, from which poured, in anguished brush strokes, the surrounding landscape. He finished painting a tree and floated over towards me holding his palette and his paintbrush. He started looking at the landscape as if looking at the landscape were an order: look at the landscape! he ordered me with his gaze, look at the landscape! I looked at the landscape and wished I wasn’t there, in this prehuman apocalypse, as if life on Earth had ended before it had begun, as if evolution had gone wrong and life were slowly dying out without having managed to produce even a tadpole, as if the world were going to end and the only vestiges would be these sorrowful trees.

  The Sorcerer breathed deeply, and I breathed deeply, and in that world there were no smells other than the greasy smell of oil paint.

  ‘Where’s Marilín?’ I asked.

  ‘Marilín, Marilín… ’ he replied.

  He stretched out his neck, his head passing through the physical bounds of the canvas, and when I imitated him I could see his bedroom. On the bed, tangled up in sweaty sheets, lay Marilín, her hands and feet tied, condemned by the tape over her mouth to an oppressed silence. On the walls were framed still lifes with fruit: peaches that were buttocks, watermelons and dragon fruit that were vaginas, and on the bedside table, a papaya cut in half obscenely displaying its gelatinous belly.

  I put my head back inside the painting, propelled by a dizzying rage my hoary old body couldn’t match. My fist waved slowly around in the static atmosphere of the apocalyptic landscape.

  ‘Calm down, compadre, don’t be like that,’ the Sorcerer said.

  ‘Let her go!’ I shouted.

  ‘That depends on you. If you fulfil your side of the bargain nothing will happen to her, I promise. I didn’t want to go to such extremes, but you don’t seem to understand.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘You still don’t get it?’

  ‘How can I if you haven’t asked me to do anything?’

  ‘Do I have to tell you? Are you going to waste the symbolic power of a dream and settle for literalism?’

  ‘Or we could play a guessing game.’

  ‘You’re a bit slow, aren’t you. Very slow, in fact.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what?’

  ‘What is it that you want?’

  ‘Do you really not understand? I want you to write a novel about me!’

  ‘I don’t write novels!’

  ‘There you go again!’

  ‘I wanted to be a painter, an artist; I was never interested in literature.’

  ‘You wanted to be a painter, you wanted to be an artist, but you weren’t.’

  ‘And I’m not a writer, either!’

  ‘But you’ve got an artistic temperament, which is what matters. When you have an artistic temperament you can use it equally for music or for painting or for literature. Let me show you something.’

  Then the Sorcerer left his palette and paintbrush on the branch of a tree, which took them as if it had fingers, and put his hands in his trouser pocket, from where he was going to take out a fortune cookie. Curiously, I knew that it was a fortune cookie without having seen it, as if it were in my own pocket, and I could feel the Sorcerer’s cadaverous fingers rummaging about near my groin, not his, and the shock and the tickly feeling made me wake up.

  I was so drunk, still, that I decided I’d better not get up, although this was what my head was demanding: that I go to the toilet, wash my face, fetch a glass of water. Instead I stayed lying down with my eyes open, watching the darkness spinning around, and at a certain point, before I fell asleep again, I clearly heard the door to my apartment opening stealthily, and closing again a moment later. I stuck my arm out from under the sheets and reached out to turn on the main light. I held my breath to try and detect any sound coming from the lounge: nothing, just the cockroaches bustling about as usual. In my dozy state, I bent down and picked up the box of fortune cookies, to complete the dream. I tore off a wrapper, broke the cookie in two and unrolled the little piece of paper: The future’s not what it used to be. I switched off the light and returned to my fitful sleep, the discomfort heightened by the cookie crumbs that had spread themselves all over the sheets.

  In the morning when I remembered the sound of the door opening I began to investigate, as much as my headache allowed me, to see if anything was missing from the apartment. I found nothing. I took my daily pills and left the apartment intending to sort out my thoughts – and my hangover – at the greengrocer’s.

  In the lobby there was a dismal atmosphere: the salon members were staring at their hands and discussing, between sighs, a few chapters from Lost Time that they’d particularly enjoyed.

  ‘So who died this time?’ I inquired.

  ‘Don’t f
orget,’ Francesca replied, ‘you’ve got twenty-four hours.’

  I went over to the greengrocer’s without managing to dodge the sun, which sent twinges of pain through my forehead that nearly made me vomit. I had never been so thankful for the gloom and the cool air of the shop’s back room. When she heard me stumbling in, Juliet looked up from her newspaper.

  ‘Did you see?’ she said, referring to what she’d been reading in the paper. ‘They’ve evacuated over a mile of land around the Monument; they’re saying the crack is spreading.’

  ‘Can you give me something to drink?’ I begged.

  ‘You look a right mess, Teo. I can smell you from here.’

  ‘Can I have a beer or not?’

  ‘All right, mister, calm down, you can have a beer, you know you can, but I think you need to eat something, too. Shall I get us a couple of tacos? My stomach’s rumbling now, too.’

  I agreed, gave her a twenty-peso note and collapsed onto a chair next to where Juliet had been sitting – she was now walking to the front of the shop to shout out our order for tacos and beer. She returned, spread the newspaper open on the table and sat back down.

  ‘I already feel like I’m in a bar with you just from breathing in.’

  ‘Francesca came into my apartment last night.’

  ‘Did she try and rape you?’

  ‘Hey, I’m being serious.’

  ‘What, your hangover’s so bad you can’t even clown around any more?’

  ‘I don’t feel like clowning around.’

  ‘Let me get you a painkiller.’

  ‘I’ve already taken something.’

  ‘How do you know Francesca tried to get in? Did you see her?’

  ‘I didn’t see her, but I heard the door opening and closing. I was half asleep, I couldn’t get up.’

  ‘Perhaps if you didn’t drink so much…’

  ‘If I didn’t drink so much Francesca wouldn’t have come into my apartment?’

  ‘If you didn’t drink so much you would have got up and caught her red-handed. Supposing she did come in, that is. You’re being paranoid, why would she want to come in?’

  ‘To look for the Lost Times.’

  ‘She could have done that before. She doesn’t need to now, she’s got you by the you-know-whats.’