Juan Pablo Villalobos - I'll Sell You a Dog

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.

‘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.’