I'll Sell You a Dog

by Juan Pablo Villalobos

  ‘Don’t you remember? We met in La Esmeralda.’

  ‘I took three classes in La Esmeralda and they didn’t teach me anything,’ he replied.

  ‘We met outside, you don’t remember? On the corner where the whole gang would get together to go out drinking.’

  ‘What did you do at La Esmeralda?’ he asked.

  ‘I took classes.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘Life drawing.’

  ‘Impossible. No such thing as an artistic taco seller.’

  And over and over, he’d try again: ‘I’ll sell you a dog.’

  When we were alone, I explained: ‘These dogs are no good, my friend.’

  ‘Which ones?’ he asked.

  ‘These ones!’ I replied, indicating the sorry pack at his feet.

  ‘Are you mad? These are my friends. I’m selling you another dog.’

  ‘Another one? Which one?’

  ‘I’ll catch it, if you buy it. You can pay me in advance.’

  And this was what our encounters were like, as nights came and went, until one of my regular customers, who lived in the same street as my stand, cracked one last, sad gag: ‘What are you going to do now your best supplier’s kicked the bucket?’ he asked.

  ‘What?’ I asked, not understanding.

  ‘That crazy dude who kept trying to sell you a dog. Didn’t you hear? They found him a couple of blocks away, surrounded by dogs, face down in the street.’

  ‌

  The effects of the kidnap of my Aesthetic Theory were proving devastating: the telesales calls became tortuously protracted with no way of putting an end to them aside from hanging up, which only led to the phone ringing once more immediately and everything starting all over again. I had tried using the books on literary theory as a substitute, but they didn’t work. Not because of the content, which was equally impenetrable, but in all likelihood because, deep down, I didn’t trust them: a fetish allows no substitutes. The crisis reached such a peak I was even sent a loyalty card for a hardware shop and a box containing free samples of shampoo for taking part in a marketing survey. Juliet told me: ‘This happens because you’ve got a telephone – why on earth do you have a phone line? All it does is make the richest man in the world even richer!’

  ‘It’s for emergencies,’ I replied.

  ‘Emergencies my foot! At our age any emergency is fatal and as far as I know, dead people can’t use the telephone.’

  ‘Steady on, Juliette.’

  ‘I’m joking! You’re so touchy. Why don’t you leave the phone unplugged?’

  ‘What if someone calls demanding a ransom for my Aesthetic Theory?’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Teo; all that drinking’s drying up your brain.’

  ‘Are you going to start lecturing me too?’

  ‘Not likely. Want another beer?’

  I spent my days in a state of agitation that sent me completely round the bend: I lost count of the drinks I had; I started shouting for the slightest reason, playing at killing cockroaches by throwing objects at them from a distance, and coming and going from the building without rhyme or reason. Willem noticed the change in me and thought I was concealing a different kind of sin: ‘Are yuh takin’ drugs?’ he asked.

  I shot him a filthy look and he persevered.

  ‘If you’re takin’ drugs then you need help.’

  ‘You want to help me? Then get my Aesthetic Theory back!’

  ‘It’s only a book.’

  ‘You’re wrong, Villem, it’s much more than a book.’

  ‘The Lard punishes devotion to material things.’

  ‘Oh really! What if material things aren’t material? Since when has a book been a material thing? What if it had been your Bible that had gone missing, you wouldn’t be so calm then, eh?’

  ‘If my Bible went missing it would be because it had to fawll into the hands of someone with more need of it. I would gert another Bible. Why don’t yuh buy another copy of the book?’

  ‘Because that would mean giving up, and I’m not going to do that. Francesca has to give me back my Aesthetic Theory.’

  ‘Why are you fighting?’

  ‘We’re not fighting.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What are you doing then?’

  ‘It’s a mating ritual.’

  Willem flushed.

  ‘Speaking of mating, Dorotea sends her regards.’

  ’You saw Darotea?’

  ‘No, but she left a message with Juliette and now here I am, acting as messenger between the two lovebirds.’

  He put the Bible in his rucksack as if it would get dirtied by his thinking about a woman while holding it in his hands. He looked at his wristwatch and the little badge with his name on, which he had pinned to his shirt pocket, at the level of his heart, trembled.

  ‘Have you been seeing her a lot?’ I asked.

  ‘A few times.’

  ‘In the Chinese restaurant? It’s a very romantic place.’

  ‘And near the university.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And what?’

  ‘What do you mean, “what”? Don’t tell me you trek all the way across the city to talk to her about the word of God.’

  ‘We talk about lats of things, we have a lat in common.’

  ‘Are you both as naive as each other?’

  ‘She’s a missionary too, in her own way.’

  ‘Well, at least you agree on coital positions.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing, forget it. Watch out for that boyfriend of hers, mind – he’s got guerrilla training.’

  Since something didn’t add up in this story, I went to see Juliet in the shop and together we analysed the state of the romance.

  ‘I want you to promise me something, Juliette,’ I said.

  ‘That we can help plan the wedding?’ she asked.

  ‘That if you find out all of this is another one of Mao’s operations, you’ll tell me.’

  ‘How could it be an operation? My Dorotea’s not exactly Mata Hari.’

  ‘Mao’s got an endless supply of conspiracy theories. I only hope he hasn’t got it into his head to use Dorotea to infiltrate the Mormons.’

  ‘Why are you so worried? It’s almost as if Villem was your son.’

  ‘I like the boy, he just needs a bit of experience.’

  ‘Does it turn you on, Teo?’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Don’t play dumb with me. It turns you on to think of your little Mormon boy screwing my Dorotea. You’re a pervert.’

  ‌

  It was three in the afternoon already and all we’d been given to eat was peanuts, crisps and two miserable little fried tacos with beans. Papaya-Head was resolutely reading the opening to his novel and drinking oh-so-slowly, hindering the steady flow of bar snacks. I was starving, so the next time he took a breath to signal the full stop, new line and space between one paragraph and the next, I interrupted him.

  ‘Hurry up, the bar snacks are running out,’ I ordered him.

  ‘What?’ he asked.

  ‘Finish your beer and order another one so they’ll bring us some more food.’

  He downed what was left in his glass in one gulp and I ordered another large bottle, which came accompanied by two bowls of soup each the size of a ten-peso piece.

  ‘Is that all?’ I asked the waiter.

  ‘Do you want more?’ he replied. ‘You’re taking your time today.’

  Twenty minutes later, we were in the same place: I, starving; Papaya-Head, absorbed in the meanderings of his novel.

  ‘Hey, what did you have for breakfast?’ I interrupted him.

  ‘Sausages,’ said Papaya-Head.

  ‘Stands to reason.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘You’re trying to destroy me. Come on, drink up!’

  ‘Oh, I’m destroying you, am I? You’re not listening to me.’

  ‘Of course I am, I don’t have a choice.’

  ‘We
ll you’re not telling me how I can improve my novel.’

  ‘Because it’s all bad!’

  ‘All of it? Tell me one thing that’s bad, just one!’

  ‘Just look at the protagonist, look at the things you say about him to justify his dog-killing. You say he’s solitary, he’s an alcoholic and a drug addict, a womaniser, that he’s got a scar on his face and a toothpick in his mouth, like a ruffian from the movies. You paint such a bad picture of him it’s as if you’re trying to say that evil is a physical attribute.’

  ‘It’s based on a true story,’ he said, defensively. ‘It’s a portrait of the owner of the butcher’s shop who we caught selling dog meat. I’ve got the photos they took when they arrested him.’

  ‘And you think that explains his behaviour?’

  ‘His behaviour’s explained by the fact that he’s a frustrated guy who doesn’t even want to be a butcher.’

  ‘No shit! I’m going to let you in on a secret: no one wants to be a butcher, not even if they love it, except someone has to be a butcher, right? Otherwise the world would be full of poets, artists, actors and intrepid explorers, and the parks would be full of statues honouring them, but there’d be no one to make things work. Someone has to hunt the bison, sow the fields, turn the screws of the world. And in any case, you’re judging your character without considering one fundamental detail.’

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  ‘First finish your beer,’ I ordered him, and I leaned back so he’d understand I wasn’t going to continue until he did so.

  He obeyed, I shouted at the waiters to bring us another large bottle and finally they sent over two plates of pozole.

  ‘You’ve forgotten where your protagonist lives,’ I told him, ‘where he was born and grew up. Are you from Mexico City?’

  ‘No, I’m from a little town in the provinces’, he replied.

  ‘I knew it! You don’t understand this city. In your town they call a guy who kills a dog a dog-killer; here, they’d call him a survivor.’

  ‘Actually, in my village they’d call him a cynic.’

  ‘And here we call people like you provincial. Don’t you get it? Dogs don’t matter. It doesn’t matter that they’re dogs. They’re dogs just because they are, but they could be anything else that worked as a symbol of life’s cruelty. If they weren’t dogs they’d be rats, or rabbits.’

  ‘The dogs are dogs because this is what happened. The dogs matter because that’s reality.’

  ‘Reality doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Do you mind telling me what does matter, in that case?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’ll tell you one thing I know for sure doesn’t: the fact that you’re writing a novel.’

  ‘All you want to do is ruin me.’

  ‘All I want to do is eat pozole and it’s getting cold – do you mind?’

  He stood up, making a great show of pushing his chair back noisily.

  ‘On your own head be it,’ he warned me.

  And then something happened that really did matter: Papaya-Head walked across the bar, angry as a bullet, and left without paying.

  ‌

  The voice on the telephone, a female voice all fuzzy with static that had asked to speak to me, identified itself by saying it was calling from the public health clinic in Manzanillo. My father had just died of cancer and someone had to deal with the body. I bluffed as best I could and Mum didn’t ask any questions, even smiling at me, fancying that this mysterious phone call meant I was finally going to stop bumbling through life and start putting the story of my failed marriage to Marilín behind me, after all these years. When she went out to walk the dog, I told my sister what had happened.

  ‘I’m not going,’ she said.

  ‘We promised him,’ I replied.

  ‘You promised him – I’ve already buried him, in a graveyard in Manzanillo, just like we told Mum we did, like normal people do. Or had you forgotten?’

  I told my mother I was going away for a few days and she didn’t ask where or with whom, only smiled again, even more broadly this time. My sister and I had become adults, but Mum hadn’t stopped being Mum and she would only cease to be so if we made her a grandmother, something that would never happen.

  I got on a bus and, fourteen hours later, arrived in Manzanillo. My father was waiting for me at the station. For a dead man, he looked dreadful (they might have put some make-up on him). For a living one, he looked like a ghost. I hugged his puny bones to me and gave him a loud telling-off, right into his ear to make sure he would hear me: ‘You’ve got to stop doing this. What happens when you really die one day and I don’t believe you and you end up in an unmarked grave or in the university’s medical department?’

  ‘That’s what happens in children’s stories and you’re an adult now,’ he replied. ‘Where’s your sister?’

  ‘She wouldn’t come, she says she’s already buried you.’

  ‘She promised!’

  ‘I promised, and here I am. Don’t tell me you want me to cremate you alive!’

  He suggested we go and have lunch at a seafood shack by the sea, but I refused; I didn’t want this to become a family tradition. We ate in a restaurant in town, which was unbearably hot in spite of the ceiling fans spinning round as quickly and as noisily as they could. When my father saw me fanning myself with the menu, he said:

  ‘I told you: there’s not a breath of air in here. We didn’t have to suffer for nothing. You’re just like your mother.’

  ‘Didn’t you have cancer?’

  ‘I did, but I got better.’

  ‘You don’t say! So why did you make me come here, then?’

  ‘Not so fast, all in good time. How’s your wife? You got any kids?’

  ‘I’m not married.’

  ‘Weren’t you going to get married?’

  ‘Weren’t you going to die?’

  ‘So we’ve both been jilted. I hope your bride was prettier than mine – mine was frightful.’

  The most uncomfortable thing was not the heat but the fact I didn’t dare keep my gaze fixed on my father’s face. Not, at least, without having the slippery sensation that his eyes were going to pop out of their sockets at any moment. We ate our prawn cocktail and octopus in silence, and then I tried to draw the encounter to a close.

  ‘Why did you make me come?’

  ‘I changed my mind. Or rather, I didn’t change my mind, art changed its mind; art never stops. Painting is a thing of the past, I don’t want to be cremated any more or have my ashes mixed with pigment. I don’t want to go down in history as part of some anachronistic protest. I want my body to be used in a performance. Give it to Jodorowsky, let’s see what he comes up with.’

  ‘Jodorowsky doesn’t live in Mexico any more, he moved to Paris.’

  ‘Well give it to Felipe Ehrenberg, then.’

  ‘I don’t know him, I don’t know anyone from that world any more, Papá; you took a long time to die, or rather, you’re taking a long time.’

  ‘If not Felipe then give it to one of the groups doing performances, happenings, there’s loads of them, but look into it properly first, I don’t want to end up in some frivolous puff of smoke.’

  With his thin, skeletal fingers, he reached into his shirt pocket, took out a piece of paper folded in half and held it out to me. It was a letter of authorisation that declared he was ‘in full use of his mental faculties’ and wished to donate his body to art. It was a model letter: where it had said ‘science’ my father had crossed out the word and written ‘art’ over it. At the bottom, as well as his signature, were those of two witnesses and a notary’s seal.

  ‘When you come to collect my body,’ he said, ‘don’t forget to bring this letter.’

  ‌

  The action lasted less than ten minutes and was carried out so efficiently I actually admired Mao’s guerrilla training. Viva Peru! At the same time that Mao pressed the main doorbell and I pressed the intercom to buzz him in, I switched on the music on the
portable CD player that Mao had brought over the day before. The cockroaches made for the exit and I cast them out, like a Pied Piper in reverse, towards the lift, which I’d jammed open with the Corona chair. The insects piled up in the lift, all on top of each other, making a mound, while from the speakers of the CD player came the words:

  Yesterday I lost my blue unicorn,

  I left him grazing and he disappeared –

  Any information will be generously reimbursed.

  When the lift was completely full, I took the chair away and the doors slid closed: Mao had called it from downstairs. As soon as the lift completed its descent from the third floor, the wave of cockroaches spilled triumphantly out into the lobby. Terrified, the salon members fled as best they could out into the street. Mao pressed the lift button and it went back up to the third floor, carrying with it eleven little lights and eleven copies of In Search of Lost Time. We blocked the door open again with the folding chair and Mao lugged the Lost Times, three at a time, into my apartment.

  Eventually, when all the Lost Times were inside we let the lift go and went back into the apartment; Mao, sweating; I, whistling the ‘Ode to Joy’.

  ‘A great triumph for the Revolution!’ I exclaimed. ‘Fancy a beer?’

  ‘Sure, Grandpa – I haven’t carried such hefty things since the Ibero-American Summit when a fat comrade of ours was wounded and I had to drag him for nearly two miles so the police couldn’t catch him.’