I'll Sell You a Dog

by Juan Pablo Villalobos

  They crossed the threshold and as soon as Mao detected Willem’s presence he stepped back as if heading for the door again.

  ‘Is this an ambush?’ he asked.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. ‘Organised by Jesus Christ.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ Mao insisted: ‘Everyone knows the Mormons work for the CIA.’

  ‘Relax, Mao,’ I told him. ‘My friend Villem here says that spying’s a sin.’

  Mao looked at him as he whacked his Bible against the wall to squash a cockroach. A sarcastic expression appeared on his face, interpreting – erroneously – that using the word of God as a bug-killer was an act of heterodoxy that at least merited the benefit of the doubt.

  ‘Spyin’ is a sin,’ Willem confirmed, as he wiped the cover of his Bible off with a piece of toilet paper.

  ‘And it’s not a sin to use the Bible to squash cockroaches?’ Mao asked. ‘Isn’t it a sin to kill little animals?’

  ‘Cockroaches are the Devel’s beasts,’ said Willem. ‘The word of the Lard is very firm about the Devel.’

  Dorotea went over to Willem and held out her hand, unsure whether to greet him with a kiss or not. Willem’s hands were full and in his confusion he ended up stuffing the toilet paper containing the remains of the cockroach into his trouser pocket.

  ‘Hello, Willem, how are you doing?’ Dorotea said.

  ‘You know each other?’ Mao interrupted.

  ‘They met the other day,’ I put in, ‘when your girlfriend came to accuse me and my friend here used his visit to betray me.’

  What with Dorotea hesitating and Willem growing more awkward, instead of kissing hello they had ended up with their hands intertwined, gently moving them up and down.

  ‘Are you going to let go of her hand, buddy?’ Mao said, in English.

  ‘Calm down, comrade,’ I said. ‘So much revolution and clandestine activity and all to end up acting like a guy in a telenovela. What have you brought me? I warn you, Villem’s tried everything and just look around, the roaches are happy as Larry.’

  ‘This is foolproof, Grandpa.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Grandpa?’

  Mao took off his rucksack and Willem noticed the slogan on the other boy’s ever-present filthy T-shirt.

  ‘Is the Shining Path a religion?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s a sect,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you heard of the Illuminati?’

  ‘Where’s the CD player?’ Mao asked.

  He was wearing a compact disc on the index finger of his right hand.

  ‘What are you doing with that?’ I asked him. ‘I thought cockroaches were deaf?’

  ‘Students have known about this poison since the seventies,’ Mao announced. ‘They discovered it by accident; sit-ins aren’t the cleanest places in the world, as you can imagine, and it’s the only remedy proven to keep roaches at bay.’

  ‘But what is it? White noise?’

  ‘Something much worse. Cuban ballads.’

  He put the disc into the machine, turned the volume up as high as it would go and soon the chords of a guitar were joined by a tuneless voice singing: At the end of this journey in life our bodies will be swollen from going to death, to hatred, to the edge of the sea…

  ‘Well, of course this’ll work!’ I yelled, trying to make myself heard above the music. ‘I’ll kill myself and the cockroaches won’t bother me any more!’

  At the second verse, the cockroaches in the kitchen stuck their antennae out and started scuttling about, bumping into the walls. They were promptly joined by the creatures in the bedroom and the bathroom.

  ‘Open the door!’ Mao shouted to Dorotea, who was nearest to the exit.

  She did as she was told while the song continued with its torture: We are the prehistory of the future, we are the distant annals of man…

  Hundreds of roaches were emerging from every corner of the apartment, hissing as they went, crashing into our shoes and then surrounding us as they headed for the living room. Dorotea hopped up onto the Corona chair, her long mane of hair standing on end in disgust and at the chords pulsing from the CD player; Willem, paler than usual, began to pray with his eyes shut.

  ‘I told you!’ Mao crowed.

  ‘How does it work?’ I asked. ‘Is it something in the singer’s voice? Is there a background noise in the recording?’

  ‘Roaches are counter-revolutionaries!’ Mao replied. ‘Everyone knows they’re biological weapons of the CIA!’

  ‘And who does the CIA work for?’ I yelled. ‘God, or evolution?’

  ‘It’s true!’ he insisted. ‘They use them to spread epidemics!’

  The moment the song finished, the apartment was free of pests, Dorotea was able to get down from her chair and Willem was restored to sight once more.

  ‘Praise be to Gawd,’ he said.

  ‘That wasn’t God,’ Mao corrected him, ‘that was Silvio Rodríguez.’

  I went over to the stereo and pressed the stop button before the next song started up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mao cried. ‘Do you want the roaches to come back?’

  ‘Don’t tell me I’ve got to have this music on all the time to keep them away?’ I asked.

  ‘Cockroaches have no memory,’ he explained. ‘If you turn off the music they’ll come straight back.’

  ‘Do you think I’m going to leave this CD playing all day long at this volume? Where do you think we are, Guantanamo?’

  ‘In Guantanamo they play death metal, Grandpa. Leave it on for a while, just play a bit every day.’

  I pressed play, the sound of the guitar and the voice returned and we started shouting again.

  ‘I’m going to need something stronger in that case!’ I yelled. ‘What’ll you have?’

  ‘I should go!’ Willem bellowed.

  I was about to offer him a glass of water so he would stay, but Dorotea got there first and gave me another idea.

  ‘I’m going to go and say hello to my grandmother while I’m here!’ she said.

  As I stood in the doorway and said goodbye to them, I winked my left eye at Willem, who responded by painting his transparent larva face bright red.

  ‘I wanted to say sorry,’ added Dorotea. ‘I didn’t think things would get so complicated.’

  She smiled and I saw that her plump upper lip formed a crease beneath her nose: a second smile.

  ‘And there’s nothing you can do about it?’

  ‘I don’t work there any more, they fired me,’ she replied sadly.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it all under control.’

  ‘So they didn’t reopen the case?’

  ‘No, but I’ve got to compensate them instead.’

  ‘Community service?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Behind the couple, in the darkness of the corridor, the cockroaches crowded together in mounds in the corners.

  ‘Can I do anything for you?’ Dorotea asked.

  ‘Such as?’ I replied.

  ‘I don’t know, help you out with your shopping, take you to the doctor’s, whatever you need. Can’t I change this bulb for you? It’s dangerous having it so dark in here, you might trip over something.’

  I looked from the height of the crown of Dorotea’s head to the position of the light: not even by standing on one chair on top of another would the tiny young woman manage such a feat.

  ‘I’ve ahfered to do that far him severl times,’ Willem interjected, who just had to stretch out his arm in order to touch the ceiling, ‘but he doesn’t want me to.’

  ‘It’s the responsibility of the management of the building,’ I told them.

  This was true: just as true as the fact that they ignored Francesca and that, deep down, the unreplaced bulb didn’t really bother me, because darkness seemed to me a place conducive to mix-ups and offered me more possibilities of slinking away without being hassled by members of the literary salon.

  ‘You should probably all leave,’ I said. ‘You’re makin
g my cockroaches nervous.’

  ‘Anything you need, you let my grandmother know and I’ll be here,’ Dorotea insisted, before, protected by Willem, who was waving his Bible threateningly in his right hand, she turned to face the sea of cockroaches.

  I closed the door and turned back to Mao, who had settled himself into my little armchair, his dreadlocks pulsing to the rhythm of the guitar.

  ‘What’s your poison?’ I shouted.

  ‘I’ll have a beer!’ he replied.

  ‘By the way! Any news from Tlalnepantla?’

  ‘Not yet, but my comrades from the TAC are looking into it as we speak!’

  ‘The TAC? Terminal Anti-Christ Centre?’

  ‘The Tlalnepantla Anarchist Collective!’

  I opened a large bottle of supermarket own-brand beer, reserved for occasions such as this, and poured out a glass. I then took out my last bottle of whisky: of the five pints I’d acquired during my heroic excursion barely two remained, little more than a pint and a half, really. I held the glass out to Mao and when I was about to sit down in the Corona chair the intercom buzzed again. I looked around to see if Willem or Dorotea had left something behind. I couldn’t see anything. The song came to an end and in the few seconds before the next track began, I picked up the receiver to hear Francesca shouting: ‘Turn the volume down!’

  I hung up and walked over to the balcony. A hysterical Francesca had already stationed herself outside on the pavement.

  ‘We can’t concentrate with that racket! Turn it down!’

  ‘Give me my book back!’

  ‘Turn the volume down or I’ll report you to the building manager!’

  ‘Give me my book back or I’ll report you to the public prosecutor’s office!’

  At that moment, I saw Willem and Dorotea come out of the building, wait for a car to pass, cross the road and go into the Chinese restaurant together. I moved away from the balcony before Mao could come over. The intercom buzzed once, twice, an infinite number of times.

  ‘I like your remedy more and more!’ I told Mao.

  ‘What was that about a book? Did someone steal a book of yours?’ he asked.

  ‘I lost a small battle with the salon and they’re holding my copy of Aesthetic Theory hostage!’

  The music persisted, stubbornly cramming too many syllables into each line, and there wasn’t so much as a whisker of a cockroach in sight. Then I had an idea.

  ‘Fancy earning some hard cash, Mao?’

  ‘Want me to get you another copy of Aesthetic Theory? Go on, cheap as chips at twenty pesos.’

  ‘You’re pretty capitalist for a Maoist, aren’t you?’

  ‘You’ve got to put capital to work for the Revolution. I can get you a copy.’

  ‘No! Mine’s already underlined.’

  ‘So what, then?’

  ‘I’ve got a plan to get it back.’

  ‘Just say the word, Grandpa.’

  I started explaining the idea as it occurred to me, on the fly, and Mao perfected it, demonstrating some quite astonishing powers of military strategy. I offered him another beer, and another, and when the plan was fully fleshed out we agreed on a date and a fee, then I switched off the music to call the cockroaches back. Mao downed the rest of his beer and said he’d better go and look for Dorotea. On his way out, he saw the copy of Notes to Literature on the shelf by the door.

  ‘Weren’t you going to give that to someone?’ he asked.

  ‘There was a change of plan,’ I replied. ‘By the way, do you have access to the philosophy faculty library?’

  ‘Yep. What do you need?’

  ‘Bring me everything you can on literary theory.’

  ‘Structuralism, hermeneutics, semiotics, reception theory?’

  ‘Whatever, the more out-there the better.’

  Just then someone banged at the door, and I geared myself up to confront Francesca, but it was a kid who’d been mugged and was asking for money to cover the bus fare to Pachuca. At least that was what he said, that was his sales pitch. He’d slipped into the building while Francesca was shouting at me. It was pure gold: if Francesca was planning on calling an extraordinary general meeting to report me for playing my music too loud, then I would have a counter-accusation ready.

  ‘Does your mobile phone have a camera on it, Mao?’

  ‘All phones have cameras, Grandpa.’

  ‘Take a picture of my comrade here. Smile, kiddo.’

  ‌

  It wasn’t me who ended up proving that a man could get used to anything, even the ignominy of giving a literary workshop in some godforsaken bar. Sundays came and went, and I’d even managed to get Papaya-Head to pay the tab, which meant that, if I managed to keep the classes going indefinitely, I’d get fifty-two additional days of life for every year – a whole extra year if I extended the classes for seven years! You could call this literally living off literature.

  We began at around midday and ended, at the earliest, at half past five. Each week, I equipped myself with enough ammunition to start another argument and prolong the session for as long as I wanted, thus enjoying the resulting free drinks. The lack of civic-mindedness displayed by the students of the faculty of arts and humanities was of great help: every book was pertinently underlined. While Papaya-Head read the start of his novel aloud, in which he described, in maddening detail, the fur colour, the way of looking around, and the weight and the texture of the growls, among other trifles, of each and every one of the hundreds of dogs his protagonist hunted down, I flicked through the books on literary theory in search of some passage that would let me interrupt his reading and initiate a pointless discussion that would raise the tone and necessitate we move from beer to tequila.

  ‘Stop there,’ I would say, ‘your readers have already fallen asleep. Worse: your readers have already died, they died in the nineteenth century! And I’ve got bad news for you: dead people don’t buy books. Now pay attention.’ And I read:

  An analysis of literary history shows how empty spaces have moved from being elements of narrative economy or producers of tension and suspense – characterised by the figure of the ellipsis – to their central role in modern literature, with its fragmentary nature, in which, according to Wolfgang Iser, narrative forms of a segmented character allow for an increase in the number of empty spaces in such a way that the segments left blank become a permanent irritation in the reader’s constitutive activity.

  ‘You see?’ I asked him. ‘You don’t have to tell the readers everything, you can put lots of empty spaces in your novel.’

  ‘But I don’t want to irritate the reader!’ he complained.

  ‘Precisely! Put some empty spaces in! With any luck your novel will disappear completely!’

  One day, a single phrase from Notes to Literature was enough to last us until the bar closed: It is no longer possible to tell a story, but the form of the novel demands narration.

  ‘Well that’s obvious!’ objected Papaya-Head. ‘It’s not possible to do anything that way! If you’re trying to put me off, or make me give up writing this novel, the deal’s off. I’ll cancel the workshop, reactivate the report against you, and Bob’s your uncle.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ I replied. ‘What this sentence means is that you have to write even though it’s not possible any more, you see? What’s important is trying. It’s like sport: it’s not winning that matters, it’s how you play the game – get it? I’m going to need something stronger. Two mezcals!’ I shouted at the barman, who was bustling about behind the bar.

  As the afternoon went on, the regular customers would approach our table to amuse themselves with our discussions, which grew more antagonistic with each glass.

  ‘What you want is for me to fail!’ Papaya-Head said, accusingly. ‘This must be the worst literary workshop in history!’

  ‘I told you I didn’t know how to write a novel!’

  ‘So why did you agree to teach me?’

  ‘Because you threatened me!’
r />   ‘Saboteur!’

  ‘Blackmailer!’

  ‘Decrepit old sod!’

  ‘Big fat papaya-head!’

  Even so, the following Sunday we both turned up for the meeting: I, so he’d pay for my drinks; he, so that I’d read him some garbled theoretical passage that would keep his brain occupied during the week, and so gloss over his inability to write a novel.

  ‌

  He had appeared one night on the corner and stood there observing me for a while from the shadows, watching as I bustled about chopping the meat, warming up the tortillas, dishing up the food. Despite the state he was in, skinny as a skeleton, his eyes bulging, I had recognised him straight away. We’d spent many a night together, endless early mornings of excess and chaos. He looked like he was living on the streets, and he came surrounded by a sorry-looking pack of stray dogs. The dogs were malnourished, mangy, flea-ridden. They were dogs with parvovirus, with sores. Dogs that had lost all hope of being rescued, or had never had any. Dogs not even my mother, with her infinite affection for canines, would dare to bring back home. Looking at the group, it wasn’t clear who was in worse company, him or his mutts.

  I went over and held out a plate of tacos for him, before he could scare my customers away. I knew from the way he looked at me that he didn’t remember me. He wolfed down two tacos and shared the rest out between the dogs, causing a brief scuffle punctuated by growls. Then he came over with the plate in his hand. I thought he wanted more tacos; charity is a bottomless dish, as I’d learned very quickly.

  ‘I’ll sell you a dog,’ he said.

  The other diners at my stand stopped chewing for a minute and threw him a curious, disdainful glance. One of the regulars said: ‘What’s going on? Don’t tell me you’re dealing with suppliers at this time of night?’

  The others burst out laughing at the joke, and the dogs growled a reply. I gave the plate back to the Sorceror with more tacos on it, which he ignored.

  ‘I’ll sell you a dog,’ he repeated.

  ‘You’ve got the wrong stand, compadre,’ I said, cutting him short. ‘The guy with the pozole stand around the corner will buy it off you, for sure.’

  The audience laughed again at the joke, it was an easy crowd, and the Sorcerer retreated into the shadows, where he waited for a while until he grew bored and moved off. The scene began to be repeated almost daily, although he had a habit of disappearing periodically. If I didn’t have any customers I’d stand and talk to him, trying to grasp the thread of his ramblings. He spoke as if the Apocalypse had happened last week. He said he would have shown me his paintings but they’d been stolen. At other times he told me he’d had to pawn them then asked me for money to help get them back. I thought that in this state it was impossible he’d still be painting, that it was all part of his delirium, unless he’d stopped being a figurative painter and switched to abstractionism. He still didn’t remember me, no matter how much I persevered.