Juan Pablo Villalobos - I'll Sell You a Dog

‘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.’

I went to the fridge and took out a big bottle of Victoria I’d saved for this moment. Mao flopped down onto the little chair and began flexing his arms like he was warming up at the gym.

‘What now?’ he asked.

‘Now we wait,’ I said. ‘Now the negotiations begin. Did they see you take the haul?’

‘No, they ran out into the street and the cockroaches went after them. Didn’t you see them from the balcony?’

‘Yeah, they turned down Avenida Teodoro Flores and headed for the Jardín de Epicuro.’

As I poured two glasses of beer, the roaches started coming in under the door, at first timidly, the vanguard made up of four or five creatures, and then, brazenly, came the rest, the sheep, the cockroach-sheep.

‘No way!’ said Mao. ‘Where are they coming from?’

‘Cockroaches,’ I told him, ‘are an army with infinite reserves, like an endless nation of robots.’

‘Shall we play them the music?’

‘No, leave them be.’

‘Hey, what are you going to do with those bricks?’ he asked, pointing at the tower of Lost Times.

‘I told you: negotiate the handover.’

‘I need to borrow them off you.’

‘So now you’ve got a literary salon. Didn’t you tell me the novel was a bourgeois invention?’

‘I don’t want to read them. I’ve just had an idea.’

‘Take them, I can’t risk having them here for long in any case.’

I handed him a glass of beer and raised my own:

‘To the Revolution!’

‘No, to Revolutionary Literature.’

‘Whatever.’

A long time had passed since Willem had buzzed at the main door and he still hadn’t managed to get to the door to my apartment. Doubly mystified, because it wasn’t even a Wednesday or a Saturday, I went out onto the balcony: nothing. I heard the intercom buzz again straight away.

‘What’s going on? Why don’t you come up?’ I asked.

‘We have him,’ said Francesca.

‘Eh?’

‘We have your little friend. We’re not going to let him go until you give us back our Lost Times .’

‘I don’t have your Lost Times .’

‘Don’t lie, I know you planned it all with the help of that ragamuffin.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘That kid who leaves our lobby stinking of sweaty feet.’

‘I don’t have your Lost Times , I’ve told you already.’

‘I heard you. Either you give them back or we won’t let your friend go.’

‘Are you sure? Do you know what kidnapping a gringo could cost you?’

The pause at the other end of the line confirmed my threat was having the desired effect.

‘I’m going to hang up, Frrrancesca , I have to make a call to the North American embassy.’

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

I put the phone down and went and stood by the door to wait for Willem. He took only the five obligatory minutes and then appeared in the doorway with the face of a martyr mid-torture.

‘My parents want me to come home,’ he said.

‘Come on in.’

He came in, his rucksack full of woe, or at least that’s what it looked like: a rucksack that pushed his shoulders downwards, emphasising his dejection.

‘A tequila, Villem?’

‘A glass of wahder, please.’

‘Did they scare you?’

‘What?’

‘They tried to kidnap you.’

‘Eh?’

‘What were you doing down there? Why did you take so long?’

‘They wanted me to talk to them about the word of the Lard. I was reading my Bible to them far a while.’

I held out his glass under the water dispenser and, as I filled it up, I saw that, uncharacteristically, Willem had left his rucksack by the door and had sat down in the little chair without his Bible.

‘What is it,’ I asked, ‘family problems?’

‘My parents are afraid,’ he replied. ‘They say there’s goin’ to be a big earthquake.’

‘How do they know? Did Jesus Christ tell them?’

‘They saw the news.’

‘What news?’

‘The crack that’s openin’ up in the ground. They say it’s a worning, that there’s goin’ to be a big earthquake any moment.’

I handed him a glass of water and pulled the Corona chair over to sit opposite him.

‘That’s got nothing to do with anything,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’ he asked.

‘You can’t predict earthquakes. And anyway, they already explained that crack, didn’t you hear? The revolutionaries’ moustaches?’