Juan Pablo Villalobos - I'll Sell You a Dog

She organised the meeting one afternoon in the shop, so she could explain the situation to him. The guy turned out to be a twenty-three-year-old kid who showed up wearing a filthy red Shining Path T-shirt. He had dreadlocks and his fingertips were stained with something that might have been ink, tobacco or gunpowder. Undercover meant that he had been living for four years in a makeshift camp run by the CAH in the faculty of philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. The CAH: the Alternative Strike Council. I’d come prepared, carrying my Aesthetic Theory , just in case, should things start to get ugly. His eyes went straight to the book.

‘Woah, Grandpa’s into the hard-core stuff,’ he said.

Once we’d given him the low-down on what I needed, we crossed the road and he went into the restaurant alone to talk to the Chinese. I stayed outside to wait for him. He’d said it was better that way: the Chinese love conspiracies. He came back out in less than two minutes, his face doing its best attempt (which was terrible) at imitating a patronising expression.

‘Impossible,’ he said. ‘These Chinese are Koreans.’

He tried to charge me 200 pesos and in the end I gave him twenty. He took another look at the Aesthetic Theory growling in my right hand.

‘If that’s the kind of stuff you’re into I can get more,’ he assured me. ‘There’s a bank around here that I supply, a bank library, you know it?’

‘You do business with a bank?’

‘It’s a postmodern form of extortion: what matters is putting capital to work in favour of the Revolution.’

‘By stealing from the university?’

‘The university’s budget comes from the government. It’s a morally right crime squared. Are you interested or not? Come on, twenty pesos a book, bargain basement!’

‘I get them for free, I nick them from the library.’

‘Woah! A thief stealing from a thief stealing from a thief stealing from a thief. You’ve earned infinite forgiveness. But in the library there is what there is, you can’t choose — I’m offering you a personal delivery service.’

‘Get me Notes to Literature .’

‘Shit, only snuff films are more hard-core than that.’

‘It’s a present.’

‘Man, well, if you put poison on the corners of the pages it’s the perfect gift. I’ll get it for you.’

He shook my hand in a strange fashion and our fingers got entangled. I asked him what his name was.

‘Mao,’ he replied.

‘Your real name.’

‘Mao is my real name. You know what they say, Grandpa, name is destiny.’

‘Don’t call me Grandpa. I’m not anybody’s grandpa, I don’t have grandchildren.’

‘Who said you have to have grandchildren to be a grandpa? You shouldn’t read so much Adorno, you’ll blow a fuse.’

It was that time of the evening when people were rushing to get to the shops before they closed and which in Calle Basilia Franco could be identified by the queue in the bakery and the sound of Hipólita’s pleas as she begged for crumbs among the customers. Mao had walked off nonchalantly, to the rhythm of an imaginary song, taking care to avoid the hurrying crowds. On the corner, Dorotea was waiting for him. I saw them share a long kiss and then, arm in arm, they went into the ice-cream parlour.

Willem brought me a DVD as a peace offering: a documentary about the life and work of Juan O’Gorman.

‘What are you apologising for?’ I asked him. ‘For having betrayed me or because your convictions are stronger than our friendship?’

He thought for a minute, confused.

‘You don’t have to apologise,’ I comforted him, ‘but I am grateful for the present. Where did you buy it?’

‘In the morket.’

‘They’re pirating documentaries on Juan O’Gorman? That really is a symbol of progress in this country. O’Gorman’s my favourite.’

‘I know.’

‘How do you know?’

‘By pay’n attention to what yuh say. To reach the Lard, yuh must learn to listen to your fellow man.’

I took the disc from its case and walked over to the machine on top of my TV.

‘Hey,’ I said, ‘the girl from the dog police asked me about you. Want me to set you up? I’ll lend you the apartment if you like, all you’d have to do is bring your own sheets.’

He flushed.

‘Sex befare marriage is a sin,’ he said.

‘You don’t say! Well, marry her then!’

On the TV screen a black-and-white photo appeared, frozen: Juan O’Gorman, his hands resting on the balustrade of a mezzanine in what appeared to be the Casa Azul. In his left hand he held a rolled-up architectural plan, in his right, a cigar. He wore a suede jacket and a pair of woollen trousers, his hair combed back and, behind his glasses, that tormented look that presaged the sadness that would befall him, if it hadn’t already. Willem sensed my fascination.

‘Why d’yuh like these programmes so much?’

‘I’ve told you before: I knew all these guys, well, most of them. Some better than others, but I knew them, I could have been one of them.’

‘And what happened?’

‘What do you think, Villem? Not everyone achieves posterity, the world’s memory wouldn’t be able to remember us all, there wouldn’t be enough streets to pay homage to us all, or parks to host our statues, or film-makers to make documentaries, or space for the tombs in the Rotunda of Illustrious Persons. Life has to make a selection. And it does it ruthlessly.’

‘Gawd disposes.’

The TV began talking about functionalist architecture.

‘God doesn’t exist, my boy, it’s something much more complicated, a mixture of circumstances, talent, chance, connections — genes, even! If you don’t have the winning combination you end up a taco seller. And I wasn’t the exception, by any means. I was the rule. How many of us who used to hang out at La Esmeralda became somebody? The minority!’

‘What’s La Esmeralda?’

‘It’s an art school. All Mexico’s artistic geniuses of the twentieth century passed through its doors, either as professors or students. And the rest of us passed through, too: the cannon fodder, the filler, the extras, the gatecrashers, the ones who didn’t have the combination that gives you a ticket to the history of art. We were there, the ones who one day had to renounce our aspirations, forced by circumstances or by accepting our own limitations. Then there were the ones who pressed on through mediocrity, made art their profession and condemned themselves to a life of ridicule. And on top of that were those who couldn’t do anything but keep on painting, no matter what, and who ended up mad or ill, or died when they were young, martyrs of art. I knew a handful of those ones, the city’s graveyards are full of them. There was one guy who had taken a few classes in La Esmeralda in the thirties and when I was studying there in 1953 he’d turn up at the gates sometimes looking for drinking buddies. I used to like the bohemian life too, so we ended up becoming friends, we were the terror of the bars in town. He showed me his paintings once, they were moving, heart-rending, brilliant. He had talent in spades, just as much as, more, even, than any of the ones who made it. Do you know what happened to him? He ended up destitute. I saw him again in 1960, at my taco stand in the Candelaria de los Patos, you know it? It’s down in the centre of town. He didn’t even recognise me, he was totally gone, he came to ask for some food and I gave him some tacos so he wouldn’t scare my customers off. One day they found him lying in the street where my stand was. He must have been around forty. He died in the street like a stray dog.’

‘What wus he called?’