Juan Pablo Villalobos - I'll Sell You a Dog

After I’d handed her the water I stood in front of her, leaning against the table because there was nowhere for me to sit, and watched as she took a microscopic sip. The truth was that, my intentions aside, the only place the two of us could have been comfortable was on the bed. I crossed my arms to let her know I was waiting. She waited for a few seconds before speaking, as if first she needed to make sure, in her mind, of the construction of the phrase she was about to enunciate. Finally she opened her mouth, and what she said was: ‘I’ve come to formally invite you to join the literary salon.’

The tune echoed around my head in the moment that followed, as Francesca took another tiny sip of her water: I’ve come to for mally in vite you to join the lit erary sa lon. This pause appeared to be studied so the phrase had time to take effect, so I would have time to come to the conclusion that this was an honour. An undeserved honour, naturally, and — were I to accept — the source of Francesca’s power over me from this moment onwards.

‘Thank you very much,’ I told her, ‘but I’m not interested. I don’t read novels.’

The glass in her right hand trembled; she’d drunk so little water that she almost spilled it down herself. She directed her gaze to the shelf by the door.

‘Those books aren’t novels,’ I added, to clear up any confusion seeing them from a distance might have occasioned her.

Francesca turned back to me and took another breath to resume her attack, this time employing an unusual strategy.

‘But you’re writing a novel, and if you want to write a novel the best thing to do is to read, to read a lot.’

‘What?!’ I said, a reply and a question.

‘Yes: you have to be very aware of literary tradition, otherwi—’

‘I am not writing a novel; where on earth did you get that idea from?’

‘Don’t lie, everyone knows everything in this building, we’re a very close-knit community.’

‘A very nosy one, you mean.’

She flinched in irritation and held out her glass for me to put it down on the table.

‘Have you forgiven me for being a taco seller yet?’ I said, my voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Do you think a taco seller is fit to write a novel?’

‘If you have a good ear, then yes, you must have heard lots of interesting conversations. But it’s a long way from listening to writing; if you like I can help, the salon could be very useful for you.’

‘That’s nice, but I don’t read or write novels.’

‘Everyone comes to the salon.’

‘Not me.’

‘The previous tenant did.’

‘And that’s how he died! You think I don’t know what happened to him?’

The previous occupant of my apartment had dropped dead, in the middle of reading Carlos Fuentes’ last novel, of a heart attack right out there in the lobby, where a wooden cross had been hung in his memory under the mailboxes, as if Fuentes himself had run him down in a sports car.

‘I know you and I have got off on the wrong foot,’ said Francesca, leaning forward so that the ring on her necklace dangled in the air and the neckline of her dress revealed another centimetre of cleavage. ‘The salon is a chance for us to fix this.’

It seemed to me that the ring on her necklace was spinning around and I was afraid she was trying to hypnotise me.

‘There’s nothing to fix,’ I replied, looking away towards a little patch of sky I could see outside the balcony. ‘We’re not broken.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘I mean I don’t hold grudges, so never mind.’

‘We’ll see you tomorrow, then? We start at ten. I’ve got a copy of the novel we’re reading all ready for you. We’re only on the second chapter, you’ll catch us up in no time. I can give you the previous tenant’s little reading light, if you’re not morbid about such things?’

‘Don’t insist, please — I’m not going to come.’

She stood up, brushing a heap of imaginary crumbs from her dress.

‘Which doesn’t mean that you and I can’t be friends,’ I continued. ‘Come and have a drink with me in the bar on the corner, and on the way I can buy some pills I need — what do you say?’

‘You can’t write a novel without reading novels!’ she declared.

‘Perfect! Two birds with one stone!’

She left without responding to my invitation. When I investigated the interest concealed behind her insistence, as well as her political strategies for controlling the building, I discovered a slightly more trivial yet undoubtedly more decisive motive: the bookshop where she ordered the novels gave her a special discount for buying a dozen copies.

Whenever there was an argument at home, my mother would win it by saying that Dad had an artistic temperament . Given the tone of voice she used and the context in which she said it, it sounded like a physical defect. In actual fact, it was slander that my father never quite learned how to refute: he tried to do so verbally, but his actions betrayed him, time and again, and the examples my mother stored up to confirm her diagnosis multiplied.

Months before he abandoned us, he had the idea of painting a rotting papaya. He had brought a small, slightly wrinkly one home from the market and had placed it, sliced in half and accompanied by a white carnation in a glass of water, on a table by his easel. He changed the position of the fruit and the angle of the flower several times and, when he was satisfied with the composition, he warned us:

‘No one is to touch anything. And don’t eat the papaya. My painting will be a study on death, decadence, decay and the finite nature of life.’

Of course, the next day, before the papaya went off and to prevent the proliferation of swarms of mosquitoes fascinated by the composition, my mother cut the papaya into cubes and fed it to me and my sister, while Dad was out. I couldn’t bring myself to eat the fruit, so I hid it and gave it to my father when he came back from work. When he reproached my mother for betraying him, she replied: ‘If you’re going to waste a papaya, you have to have enough money to buy two.’

This was before Dad got his job as a sales manager, where they even gave him a secretary, which turned out to be an advancement with unfortunate consequences for the family. My father held up the plate with the little cubes of papaya in the palm of his hand, surrounded by a halo of mosquitoes, and lamented: ‘The boy’s the only one who understands me.’

My mother replied: ‘You’re a terrible example to him. The last thing we need is for him to end up an artist too! Why don’t you draw the little cubes of papaya? You can make it a cubist painting. It’ll be a study of the incomplete, the fragmentary, the finite nature of the resources of a family whose sole breadwinner spends his time with his head in the clouds, revelling in the frustration caused by his artistic temperament .’

Dad gave the papaya back to me.

‘You can eat it now,’ he said.

But I still couldn’t eat it: I hid the plate under my bed and only threw it away when the flies tried to lay their eggs in my ears.

I escaped from the volley of tomatoes as best I could and headed straight for the greengrocer’s, where I was greeted with a hearty laugh:

‘Good and ripe, were they?’ she’d ask. ‘I saved the best ones for you, they’re from the Hyatt Hotel!’

‘You shouldn’t give that sanctimonious lot ammunition!’ I protested.

‘Everyone has the right to rebel, even them!’

The greengrocer had made rebellion her way of life and her principal source of income: I never saw her sell a single vegetable that was in the least bit edible. Instead, she acted as the official supplier to every riot. Her foul-smelling tomatoes were famous at all the well-known sites of demonstration: on Paseo de la Reforma, down in the Zócalo, on Avenida Bucareli; she even furnished the peasants of San Mateo Atenco with vegetables when they rose up to protest at their land being confiscated to build the airport.