Tears of the Trufflepig: A Novel

by Fernando A. Flores

  “Either way,” Paco Herbert said, “it’s sick. This is the part I’m least proud of, but I have no problem doing it. If it’s closer to putting an end to this culinary prehistoric chickenshit, or what have you, I’d pluck the bird and cook it myself.”

  EIGHT

  The weather turned cold, and it started to drizzle in South Texas. Deep in the plump darkness of Calantula County, Bellacosa wondered about the true fate of the Aranaña Indian farmer Tranquilino, as they passed the doghouse-sized mailbox in front of the land where his trailer no longer stood.

  “Here we go,” Paco Herbert said. “This is the password right here, but I don’t know how they’re going to ask for it.”

  On a white business card the words “pollo asado” were typed out.

  Bellacosa remembered the nauseating feeling from the day the deal for the 7900 Rig went bad, when he’d approached the same address and smelled the phantom, synthetic smell in the air. It had given him a sense of otherworldly doom that was making his stomach turn once again. He recalled the cuts and bruises along Tranquilino’s face, and in a flash saw the fate of his brother in the fate of that Aranaña Indian farmer. Bellacosa for the first time felt remorse over leaving Tranquilino to deal with his own problems, and wondered about his own complicity for doing business with Leone McMasters.

  It stopped drizzling when they turned into the narrow, unpaved road. About twenty feet from where the sealed gate was located there was a parked military vehicle with a grenade launcher and machine gun bolted on the rear bed, with one soldier wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet manning both. Two men out of uniform stood under a wide, anchored umbrella about five feet from the gate. One of them held a clipboard along with a small flashlight; the other had an automatic weapon and some kind of communication headgear with tiny flashing green lights that at a distance resembled fireflies.

  Out of nowhere, on Paco Herbert’s side, another armed man with headgear knocked rapidly on the window and in perfect English ordered for it to be lowered and the lights of the Jeep shut off. The man with the clipboard leaned down and, in the most polite way, as he flashed an unintrusive light on their faces, said, “Buenas noches, good evening. Do you gentlemen have a password written down?”

  There was silence as Paco Herbert held up the card with the password. The man took the card, read through his clipboard without the light, and checked the password from the list.

  “Enjoy, gentlemen. Just drive right in there until you reach the second gate, they’ll tell you where to park. And please keep your headlights off.”

  Bellacosa drove the old Jeep past the grim gate that was like an open mouth with jagged teeth, the driveway a gravel tongue carved on the South Texas soil leading them over a hill. A thick, jellylike shrubbery ran under the foliage of perching mesquite trees, where the light of the condor moon seeped through. If there were still coyotes certainly one would be howling, because their lover was once the South Texas moon, but they are doomed to be separated forever now; the fact that the coyotes were missing made their forbidden love all the more tragic.

  The ground leveled out upon approaching the second gate, where the men in the same firefly headgear had their weapons holstered and opened up the gate no questions asked. A faceless man waving neon batons instructed Bellacosa on where to park, and Bellacosa obeyed, following a row of five other vehicles of recent models, different makes.

  When Bellacosa and Paco Herbert stepped off and locked the old Jeep, a voice in the dark said, “Right over there, gentlemen.”

  They followed a strangely smooth granite walkway, and at a football field’s distance there was an oddly shaped Civil War–era house lit only from the front, its size indeterminable; green, but even the color seemed to shift in the darkness. Hidden in the dark space between the parking lot and the house were a few armed soldiers, all of them wearing the firefly headgear. The house had a second-story porch with unused chairs and tables. Christmas lights wrapped around lime trees on the lawn, where a woman in a silver dress stood drinking white wine. She greeted Bellacosa and Paco Herbert in a very welcoming, pleasant manner.

  They returned the formality. Bellacosa recognized a Mozart piano sonata piping from the house itself, when a young cocktail waitress carrying a tray with red and white wineglasses intercepted them. She said, “Welcome, gentlemen, bienvenidos. Do you prefer to be waited on in English or Spanish this evening?”

  Paco Herbert half shrugged his shoulders and turned to Bellacosa, then said, “Inglés is fine.”

  “Excellent. Please grab a glass, we have a 1978 Pinot Noir from the Menoculpta casks in Argentina, and a white Australian Zinfandel from the Jemima Ünger centenary batch.”

  They both chose the red.

  By the right rail of the wide yellow stairs leading up the front porch sat an old man wearing an epaulet jacket and a young woman wearing a pastel-colored dress poufed at the shoulders. Between them wiggled a hooved animal that perplexed Bellacosa and Paco Herbert. In the dim lighting it looked like a pig with tiny ears, but it acted very doglike, with its front legs erect. A slurping, salivating tongue hung out of its mouth, which was actually a beak, like a chicken’s or rooster’s. It had the dark green skin of a crocodile, with rivulets shining like a fine pair of boots, and somebody had tied a handkerchief with the border-disarmament symbol around its neck. The girl in the pastel dress was petting the animal slowly as the older man drank his Zinfandel.

  “Is the server still bringing her a carrot?” the girl asked the man in the epaulet jacket. She had an English accent.

  Just then the cocktail waitress swooped down and handed the girl a couple of carrots on a ceramic plate and a napkin. “Thank you so much,” the girl said.

  The creature got visibly excited, though it remained in its seated position. The girl dangled a carrot over its mouth and slowly lowered it as the piglike reptile delighted in the treat, breaking off chunks with its beak and eating gluttonously.

  Bellacosa and Paco Herbert watched her feed it another carrot, and afterward the girl told them, “Her name is Porgy.”

  “What do you call this kind of animal?” Bellacosa asked.

  “It’s a Trufflepig,” she said. “Is this your first time with one? Personally, it’s my favorite part of these outings. They love carrots. The server will bring you one if you ask, then you can feed it to her.”

  “So it’s a she?” Paco Herbert asked.

  The girl in the pastel dress laughed and, petting the Trufflepig, said, “No, I don’t believe they have a sex, actually. She just seems very girlish to me. Look at her. How happy she is. Such a sweetie.”

  “It’s surprising how still she is, and yet how excited,” Paco Herbert exclaimed.

  “Aw, well, that’s because she can’t walk. See.”

  She nudged the Trufflepig, and spun it around with her hands. Its hooves shifted to remain balanced as its stumpy tail wiggled, but other than this it didn’t seem to move, and was delighted in the way the girl played with it.

  More than any other time in recent memory, Bellacosa was at a loss for words. He leaned down and petted the creature hesitantly. Its skin was colder than the night and felt like expensive plastic.

  “Just don’t touch her around the beak, that’s how she breathes, see. I don’t think she’ll actually bite you, however.”

  Suddenly Porgy the Trufflepig made something like soft panting sounds and squeezed a stream of clear milk out of its eyes.

  “She likes you,” the girl said.

  Paco Herbert also petted it and the old man in the epaulet lifted his glass. “Cheers,” the old man said to those around him.

  Everybody including the girl toasted, although she didn’t have a drink.

  Bellacosa felt it would be a good idea to mingle elsewhere. Paco Herbert began conversing with a silver-haired man, already sharing big laughs. As Bellacosa moved away he looked down at the Trufflepig once again, the English girl in the pastel dress smiling right at him.

  Chuckling nervously, Bell
acosa and Paco Herbert stood side by side again, a bit removed from the other people in attendance; there were about eight, the girl in the pastel dress being the youngest. Everybody was making a pleasant evening of it, promenading on the lawn, sipping drinks at their own leisure.

  There was a red-faced man with graying hair and a mustache in a black suit and yellow tie by a short palm tree. Accompanying him was a blonde in her late twenties, wearing a tight evening gown that matched his hair. The man kept one arm around her waist, so there was no mistaking whom she was with to any admirer. He spoke to her in Spanish and she responded in English.

  Another couple was standing around one of the glowing lime trees. They were middle-aged, drinking red wine, cracking jokes to one another, and dressed as if they were audience members at an opera in a different time and place: she with an exotic fur draped around her sleeveless gown, he with a three-piece suit, bow tie, and pince-nez, which he constantly removed and put back on. One suspected they’d never spent a dull moment in their long lives together.

  A bald man who looked like a land baron with many serfs to his name sat at the far left end of the downstairs porch. He was the only person in attendance, besides the girl, who was not drinking. A young man, presumably his son, sat by a few exotic vermilion potted plants on the edge of the porch, laughing to himself and drinking a High Life tallboy.

  The girl in the pastel dress with the Trufflepig stood on the porch steps and began reciting:

  “Una giovane donna di Tolosa

  bell’ e gentil, d’onesta leggiadria,

  è tant’e dritta e simigliante cosa

  ne’ suoi dolci occhi, della donna mia,”

  while from the lake of darkness between the house and parking lot two men in their mid-thirties resembling grungy artists emerged. That’s also when Bellacosa spotted the bane of the past week of his life: the 7900 Rig, silhouetted at a quiet distance like a scarecrow against the bottle-glass, smoky night. It was by a couple of other machines that sat prostrate, like giant primates weary of worshipping the hills. Bellacosa made a move toward the machine, and sensing his sudden jolt in curiosity Paco Herbert gently grabbed his arm to stop him. Bellacosa shot him a wry smile, and sipped on his wine.

  “Good evening to everybody,” one of the grungy men said. He wore black skinny jeans with a leather jacket and carried a small umbrella. The other man was bearded and, unlike his friend, not wearing sunglasses.

  “Can I get everyone’s attention, please?”

  The commanding voice that said this belonged to a woman of indeterminable age. Her hair was auburn and she wore business attire, with black high-heeled shoes.

  The ten dinner guests, along with Paco Herbert and Bellacosa, directed their attention to this woman, who was standing on the middle of the porch stairs.

  “First of all,” she said with a smile, “I would like to welcome all of you on behalf of the partners and myself. My name for this meal is Josie, and I’m sure you’ve met Michaela, who will be your server tonight. Just a quick rundown for you about proper etiquette that is expected of our guests. Remember that it is courteous to talk and share, and it is encouraged. But personal information inquired about or disclosed will not be tolerated. This includes with our staff, who have been trained to refrain even from making eye contact with you. We ask that you be respectful and mind the manners of the old court at this house, which was built in Pennsylvania around 1857. Drinks are unlimited and we trust everyone here is mature enough to hold their alcohol. As you’ve noticed, we have a couple of Trufflepigs for your enjoyment, and we ask that you be gentle with them. Aside from these formalities, we are confident you will enjoy tonight’s one-of-a-kind dinner, which I am pleased to announce: Appetizers to the meal tonight will be lightly fried gizzards of Mare aux Songes dodo birds, partnered with our homemade aioli sauce. Our chef, originally from Seville, has specially prepared for you tonight Steak Charlemagne. Our culinary doctors have perfected the filtering of the lost bull species that roamed the green countryside of Italy and France in the days of Charlemagne. A bull revered during its time by both the French and the Romans, until a plague that was later traced to the tree nut the bulls were attracted to killed them off. It is served in sixteen-ounce portions, cooked in butter made from the fat of the Pampa blue-billed goose. Six hundred years after the Charlemagne bull died off, this goose from the same region followed suit. It will be served with Mayan scallops prepared in the traditional style, and green beans. Another staple of the night will be Galapagos stew, or Galapagos Gumbo, as it is widely known. It contains rainbow trout and Pieria gulf salmon. The chef promises a Cajun twist to this old favorite. Stay tuned for dessert. All the wines were handpicked by our chef and myself, and were imported for this specific meal. If anybody needs anything or has any comments I ask that you approach only me. Many thanks. And again, welcome.”

  A couple of stout, brown-skinned men wearing white suits went around carrying what appeared to be fried alligator, with a dipping sauce, on nicely arranged trays. Looking down at it, Bellacosa told himself that it must be the dodo bird. The word “dodo” suddenly reminded him of American children name-calling one another. When a tray floated by, Bellacosa and Paco Herbert each grabbed a strip and dipped it in the floral-patterned ramekin with aioli.

  They both ate like it was nothing.

  “Dodo gizzards, huh,” Bellacosa muttered. He wanted to laugh. They tasted like any old fried fish or chicken nugget. It occurred to Bellacosa that this whole dinner could be some kind of elaborate scam. That nothing they’d consume would actually come from extinct, filtered animals. They were working the placebo effect, and all these people who paid buena plata were fools.

  Murmurs of approval fluttered like polite bats among the dinner guests.

  Suddenly the grungy man wearing sunglasses said, loud enough for all to hear, “Charlemagne steak, huh? For a second I thought they were filtering the man himself back to life, and they’d be serving us his balls.”

  The old man wearing the epaulet was all good times, and was the only person to laugh a natural, effortless laugh, along with the grungy bearded man. The other guests fidgeted. Michaela the server pretended not to hear.

  Bellacosa spotted Josie greeting guests individually, and shaking everyone’s hand. When she got to Paco Herbert and Bellacosa she did the same and also thanked them. As Josie walked away both of them noticed the firefly headgear hidden in her hair, wrapped around her left ear.

  The twelve guests were asked kindly to shuffle inside the house, where they were assured that there was very comfortable seating available.

  The girl in the pastel dress carried in the Trufflepig and placed it on a small marble table by a bust of Pallas Athena in the vestibule. The guests moved toward the lounging area of the house, and the girl stood by the threshold petting the Trufflepig. Although she didn’t see him standing behind her, the girl felt Bellacosa’s presence as he stared at the Trufflepig in quiet amazement. Under the electric candlelight he clearly saw its beaded, jungle-green flesh, and its stumpy tail, which looked like a cigar someone had put out on its back. The Trufflepig made light panting sounds from its beak, and its pink, drooling tongue looked fake as it reflected off the shiny table. Once again Bellacosa mustered the courage to pet it. For a second he convinced himself this creature wasn’t real. But he kept his hand on it and felt its inner warmth, its breathing. The Trufflepig was definitely not an illusion nor a machine.

  “Hard to believe how obedient it is,” Bellacosa said quietly to the girl. “It doesn’t run around and bother anyone, getting in the way like a misbehaving animal.”

  “She would if she could, I’m sure. But she can’t. It’s the way her body is structured that prohibits any movement. Which is why they probably died off. But here she is, right? Alive again. It’s interesting, don’t you think? How the Trufflepig has reappeared. Even in this filtered way. After the Aranaña tribe came back.”

  “How do you mean?”

  The girl smiled at Bellacosa,
like it was he who was the younger, inexperienced one. She looked around to make sure they were alone, and eyed her old-man companion in the lounging room with the others. “What do you mean, how do I mean? You older generation are a weird bunch. I try to tell my father, but he’s of that old mentality and doesn’t understand, either. You know the Aranaña tribe, right?”

  “Yes. The Indians from down here, of course.”

  “Calling them that is insensitive. They’re a tribe. They are the original natives from these parts, but they were gone for a long time. Like over four hundred years. Nobody was ever really sure that they even existed. And a generation or two ago a lot of them came back. From the desert, they say. And their children and grandchildren are as much a part of our society now as any other race.”

  “Okay. Yes, that part I think is true.”

  “Well, don’t you think that’s super weird?”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with the Trufflepig.”

  The girl in the pastel dress seemed suddenly put off by their exchange. “I mean. You know the Trufflepig is the deity creature the Aranaña worshipped. What they called Huixtepeltinicopatl. It was written in old scrolls that were supposedly destroyed forever. I’m sure you’ve heard.”

  Bellacosa half shook his head and half nodded. He was about to say something, then the girl picked up the Trufflepig. “Excuse me,” she said, “I have to go now,” and joined the others.

  Bellacosa warily followed suit. The lounging area was very tastefully decorated, a lot of desert tones along the fine rugs and antebellum wooden walls, which seemed to expand then shrink like the house was breathing. The ceiling was high, with strong wooden beams running across the length of the house, and dim lamps were scattered throughout, keeping every corner well lit. There was a large dry aquarium with a fake island setting in the middle of the room, and inside were what appeared to be strangely shaped, blue-gray-feathered baby chicks, only they weren’t running around pecking each other, but instead were waddling, following an invisible trail of circles and loops, occasionally bumping into each other only to continue the opposite way like tiny bumper cars. They were baby dodo birds. Paco Herbert was leaning toward the aquarium, getting a good look at them.