Juan Pablo Villalobos - Quesadillas

My skill was not so great that I could escape the tangled sheets of poverty, but I didn’t go hungry. I ate every day, and occasionally I allowed myself a bath and a bed for the night in a hostel. I thought of Jarek every day; what would the poor little kid do in my situation? He wouldn’t even last three minutes in the dead-end alleys life sent me down. The teddy bears could do what they liked in their woodland fantasy, but the street belonged to men. Slowly, magnificently, my poor man’s pride was blossoming.

In most of the beings with whom I shared my condition — whether they were humans or dogs — the street had aroused a gregarious sentiment as a defensive formula for survival. They acted in groups, certain that in this way their chances would increase. However, the results always had to be divided and the equation wasn’t cost-effective: when the probability was multiplied by three, the results were divided by eight. I looked after myself, for mathematical reasons and above all because I was sick of taking part in cut-and-thrust negotiations. I could have stayed at home for that.

On my second day in each town, without fail, a ragged mob would confront me. They’d have been spying on me and in this they had an advantage: they knew all the streets and corners of the city by heart, so very quickly spotted any anomaly. The ringleader was always older, the street replicating the model of the family.

‘How do you do it?’

‘What?’

‘Fix the appliances.’

‘I know about electrical things.’

‘Teach us.’

‘No.’

‘Give us the money.’

‘I don’t have any. I work for food.’

‘Liar. We’ve seen you get money.’

‘It’s for parts.’

‘Give us some food.’

‘Why?’

‘Because.’

‘Oh.’

‘Don’t act dumb.’

‘No, I won’t.’

‘We’re gonna fuck you up.’

‘What?’

My attitude wasn’t bluster. In the food chain I might have been an amoeba, but they were plankton.

‘Stop acting dumb.’

‘Do you know what I fixed yesterday? The police radio.’

The implicit threat never failed. It wasn’t greed that put an end to my survival strategy — as they teach you in telenovelas , which love to warn the poor how damn risky it is to try to get rich. It was coincidence again, the same bitch who had given me everything. One morning I was carrying out a routine operation at a juice stand in Tonalá when a man in a tie started watching me.

‘You’re good, you son of a bitch.’

‘Thank you, sir. My dad taught me. He has a workshop in San Miguel.’

‘Don’t act dumb. You don’t know shit about wiring. I don’t know how you do it, but it’s a good trick.’

I suddenly grew nervous and began to violate my own rules, to do things I never did. I dismantled one of the components, removed a cable.

‘Calm down, relax, finish up, and when you’re done we’ll talk.’

I took as long as I could. It was ridiculous, as I was working on a fucking juicer. I had to apologise and promise the juice-seller I wouldn’t charge her. I thought the tie man would get tired of waiting for me, but he seemed to have all the time in the world. He acted so calm, it was as if his minutes had a hundred seconds. I’d made such a hell of a mess that the parts didn’t fit any more; now I was even trying to stick an antenna into the machine. In the end I gave up and had to pay for my stupidity. It’s the guarantee, I kept saying to the woman, as if I was a representative from General Electric. A back-to-front world; that’s what happens when you get tangled up with coincidence. I tried to run away, but the tie man lassoed me with the prestige of his neckwear and dragged me off with an invitation to have breakfast in the restaurant on the corner.

It was the kind of place I’d never have dared to set foot in, not because of the quality of their quesadillas but because of the sad practice of self-imposed socio-economic levelling. I mean, there were two televisions, and what’s more, there were waiters. The one spying on us from afar was wavering between taking our order and calling the police. The place was full to bursting with men in ties and secretaries, so that it was impossible not to imagine the parallel phenomenon: empty reception desks and offices and large numbers of people forming long lines of pent-up exasperation. Queues are where resignation meets its match.

‘What do you want?’

‘Quesadillas.’

‘What kind?’

‘Cheese.’

‘Seriously?’

The tie man scanned the menu looking for culinary arguments to mock me with.

‘They have quesadillas with courgette flowers, with chicharrón , with chilli and onion, or with huitlacoche .’

‘ Chicharrón .’

‘How many?’

‘Five.’

‘Three.’

‘Four.’

‘Three.’

He called the waiter over with an imperceptible telepathic nod, to which the other man replied by gracing us with his presence, his head adorned with a little black bun pressed against the collar of his filthy white shirt. He adopted a diligent pose, shaking his notebook and pen so as to enact the urgency of the moment, as if we were going to dictate the next winning lottery number to him. But let’s not kid ourselves: his tip was at stake. It seemed everyone was constantly overacting, reading from a script full of clichés, which was understandable given the system of wealth distribution the country adhered to.

‘Two quesadillas with chicharrón , some chicken chilaquiles and two orange juices.’

‘We don’t have orange juice.’

‘So get some from the juice stand next door.’

A fast-paced battle broke out between the tie man and the little bun, which reached its climax when the tie man conjectured that if the waiter were living in the United States he would die in poverty, and was settled when the man agreed to walk fifty metres in exchange for resale rights. After agreeing on the percentage of the surcharge the waiter made off, promising to be quick, efficient and eternally loyal.

‘You’re even good when you fuck it up. What’s the trick?’

‘There is no trick.’

‘And I’m a fucking idiot. Make no mistake, I’m not like those fools you scam. Can’t you see who you’re talking to, you idiot?’

He seemed to be trying to tell me that there were two types of people in the world: those who wore ties and the idiots. Regardless of how smart the tie was, it shone with the lustre conferred only by regular use. The worn-out fabric was compensated for by the quality of the wearer’s performance, that of a man destined for intrigue, for the world of the abstract.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Oreo.’

‘Like the biscuits?’

‘No, my name’s Orestes, but they call me Oreo.’

‘No shit. Are you Greek?’

‘No, I’m from Los Altos. My dad has a thing about the Greeks.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Thirteen or fourteen?’

‘Fifteen.’

‘Thirteen or fourteen?’

‘Fourteen.’

‘Are you sure? When were you born?’

‘In ’73.’

‘And how would that make you sixteen? Were you going to move time forward by two years?’

‘Eh?’

‘How long have you been on the street?’

‘Six months.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘San Miguel.’

‘Yeah, I saw your teeth. Why did you run away from home?’

‘I didn’t run away, I got lost.’

‘No one gets lost if they don’t want to. Did your dad get drunk? Mess around with you?’

‘No, no. I got lost, honest, and I didn’t want to go back.’

‘Where did you get lost?’

‘In the ISSSTE shop.’

‘You’re kidding.’