Juan Pablo Villalobos - Quesadillas

It was Electra who suddenly asked, ‘What’s that?’

‘What?’ we said, not looking where she was pointing, concerned only with savouring the taste of the watermelon.

‘That! That! That! That!’

And then we looked.

‘It’s Castor!’ cried Callimachus.

‘And Pollux!’ completed my mother, as if the phrase, just like the pretend twins, could not be pronounced separately.

Castor was riding a horse and spinning circles around his head with a lasso. Had he become a charro ? Just what we needed.

‘What’s that?’ my father asked before going to greet the twins.

‘Your sons, it’s your sons!’ replied my mother.

‘No, behind them, behind them!’

‘Cows, they’re cows,’ I had to intervene, being the only one specialised in this subject.

But the clarification lacked many scientific details that might explain the behaviour of these black and white beasts. This was an orgy of hysterical cows. They wouldn’t stay still for a moment but ran back and forth, chasing each other, rubbing themselves against each other, sniffing each other’s vaginas, mounting and being mounted. The intermingled moos produced a constant sound, a kind of audible signal. What were the cows trying to tell us? Whom or what were they summoning?

‘Don’t worry. They’re in heat. It’s normal,’ I said when I saw my father trying to hide the erotic spectacle from the women in the family.

‘Normal? Do you think it’s normal for there to be a thousand cows in heat on your grandfather’s land? Where have they escaped from?’ my father shot back, initiating a reactionary movement in defence of reality and the status quo.

‘Who wants normal quesadillas?’ offered my mother, inspired by the free association of ideas.

We all put our hands up.

‘Me!’

‘Me!’

‘Me!’

‘Me!’

Everyone wants normal quesadillas.

The cows’ clamour found an echo: a stampede of bulls prepared to satisfy the bovine demands. Standing before the animals, Castor made a visual selection of the candidates, eliminating any specimens who were not up to his standards by dealing out charro moves, manganas and piales . The bulls that passed the test pushed their way in among the flanks and without delay unsheathed their immense cocks. The mooing stopped and gave way to the sound of friction and frottage, the rhythm of the in and out.

‘Why can we see everything so clearly?’ asked Callimachus, who was ignorant of the mechanisms of pornography. ‘Wasn’t it night-time a minute ago?’

It was true, the clarity couldn’t be coming from the fire; someone had turned on a light in the sky. We all looked up to check the phenomenon: a massively powerful light was emerging from the arse of a giant interplanetary ship.

‘It can’t be true,’ my father said quickly, eager to dash our hopes.

And why not?

Why not, Dad?

Didn’t we live in the country we lived in?

Weren’t fantastic, wonderful things meant to happen to us all the time? Didn’t we speak to the dead? Wasn’t everyone always saying we were a surrealist country?

‘It can’t be true. It must be a hallucination, some sort of delirium. We’ve got dengue fever! It must be dengue fever!’

Shut up, Dad, shut up!

Didn’t we believe that the Virgin of San Juan had cured thousands of people without any knowledge of medicine? Hadn’t we put borders around a territory just to screw ourselves over? Didn’t we still hope that one day things would change?

It can’t be true, Dad? Are you sure?

A hatch opened in the ship and, phlegmatically, accentuating his customary air of smugness, Aristotle floated down out of it. His feet touched the ground in the middle of the circle we had formed to receive him.

‘What’s happened, arseholes?’

We embraced each other to prove we weren’t dreaming.

‘Castor! Pollux!’ my mother shouted, wanting to complete the embrace.

But the pretend twins were not ready for affection yet. Pollux raised his right arm, calling for silence, and only then did we realise he had become a boxer. His power of conviction was so great that the bulls stopped screwing the cows.

‘Achaean forces! Prepare arms!’

Arms? What for?

Behind us advanced the enemy army: priests, anti-riot police and more officers headed up by Officer Mophead and Jaroslaw. Castor began dealing out manganas and piales left, right and centre. Pollux knocked out his opponents at the first right. Some of the satisfied, resentful bulls had fun goring the men in uniform. Protected by a contingent of soldiers, the tie man appeared with a megaphone.

‘No, Oreo, not like that! Didn’t I teach you anything? Not like that! That’s useless! It’s a load of crap!’

‘Look, Dad. That’s the tie man!’

‘That guy? It can’t be!’

‘He can’t be true either? Why not? It’s him! I’m sure!’

‘Because that’s Salinas!’

‘Salinas? Who’s Salinas?’

‘No, wait, it’s López Portillo! It’s Echeverría! It’s Díaz Ordaz!’

‘Who are they?’

‘Sons of bitches!’

‘So finish them off!’

Castor lassoed the tie man’s tie and tied it to the tail of the most insatiable of the bulls, who disappeared over the horizon of bovine backs at a frantic trot. Where were they taking him? To La Chingada!

In the heat of the battle, Jaroslaw and Officer Mophead came over to negotiate a ceasefire. The battle was also being fought on Officer Mophead’s head, where the curls were mercilessly torturing the straight hairs.

‘We have an eviction order.’

‘The land is my father’s, so talk to him. We have a right to be here,’ my father defended us, faithful to his reality in spite of appearances.

‘You’re just not getting it.’

‘So help me out.’

‘You have to leave this .’

‘ This , what is this ?’

‘ This! ’

‘It’s in contempt of reality.’

‘There is prison without bail.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Get out!’

But Pollux was already standing in front of the two men. He planted an uppercut on Officer Mophead’s jaw, while Jaroslaw got a jab on the temple. How he had managed to hit them in the face, given his small stature, was something that neither Officer Mophead nor Jaroslaw would have been able to explain. Their two bodies flew across the smallholding and were lost beyond the river.

‘Quickly!’ said my father, mobilising us. ‘Now’s our chance!’

‘For what?’

‘To build the house!’

We ran like maniacs across the land, falling over as we went, getting tangled up in the stumps of the watermelons. It would almost have been better to crawl along. When finally we reached the area we had cleared, my father began hurriedly to organise the construction.

‘One or two floors?’

‘Two!’

‘Two!’

‘OK. What shall we put on the first floor?’

‘The kitchen.’

‘The lounge.’

‘My room in the kitchen,’ demanded Electra, ‘to be near the quesadillas.’

‘And a bathroom in Electra’s room!’

‘And a room for watching TV in the bathroom!’

‘And a garden in the TV room!’

‘No, no, not like that!’

Why not, Dad, why not?

What’s the house made of?

Then I remembered that in my trouser pocket I still had the little device with the red button.

‘Wait!’ I ordered.

And I pressed it.

Two floors.

Click.

A lounge.

Click.

A kitchen.

Click.

Electra’s room.

Click.

A bathroom.

Click.

A TV room.

Click.

A garden with acacia trees! So we don’t forget where we’re from.