Augusto Monterroso - Complete Works and Other Stories

Well, you can imagine the next few minutes. When his tail stopped moving, when my father was convinced that he was good and dead, he simply stood up, took his hat, and left. We never saw him again.

Perhaps my husband was not really so bad. I’m inclined to think he was sick, but not all that sick, as he himself would say. His confinement in the sanatorium where I found him, after endless searching, is one small proof among many for saying what I say.

Today he is like a stubborn child, believing that his father torments him because of some imaginary sin committed by his mother before he was born. When this idea disappears from his mind, he’ll be cured.

As for me, I say this: One is never free of malicious gossip. And it comes when you least expect it, even from your own children. I hope nobody believes (there are people ready to believe anything, even the most blatant lie) this whole insane story invented with only one evil purpose — to harm me. It’s easy to see — and it would be insulting to think no one noticed — that my son begins his lies at the very beginning when he describes himself, knowing very well that he’s lying, as a victim of an “imperceptible, hardly bothersome cranial deformation.” The truth is that his head is monstrous. It’s not my fault. He was born that way. We knew it from the start, when his birth was so difficult.

It is absolutely false that he attended school. He learned to read and write at home.

I am a traveling salesman. The firm of Rosenbaum & Co. can attest to that, and I can show beautiful letters of recommendation, which they were kind enough to write for me, unworthy as I am of their kindness.

My wife died long ago. My son never knew her. He was raised by my mother.

And as far as dogs are concerned, I am sure, I can swear to the fact, that I never killed a single one except for Diogenes. I had to do it. No dog is safe from rabies. Why would he be the exception? At any moment he could have contracted the disease, which, as everyone knows, spreads so rapidly in a geometrical progression that it can quickly kill off entire populations.

If he had been infected by this deadly disease one day, I can’t even begin to imagine what would have happened to us all. The consequences would have been unthinkable.

Note

1 Diogenes

When he awoke, the dinosaur was still there.

Proudly, almost arrogantly, Leopoldo Ralón pushed the revolving door and once again entered the library in triumph. He looked over the tables with a bold yet weary gaze, searching for a comfortable, quiet place; he greeted two or three acquaintances with his customary resigned gesture that meant “Well, here I am again, back at work,” and walked slowly, confidently, making his way with a repeated “Excuse me, excuse me” that his lips did not pronounce but which was easy to discern in his kind and conciliatory expression. He had the good luck to find his favorite spot. He liked to sit facing the street door; it allowed him to rest from his exhausting research each time someone came in. When that person was of the feminine gender, Leopoldo left his book for a moment and looked her over with his usual penetration, with the smoldering look that an alert intelligence can give. Leopoldo liked well-formed bodies, but this was not the principal motive for his observations. He was moved by literary reasons. It’s fine to read a lot and study with dedication, he often told himself, but watching people is worth more to a writer than reading the best books. The author who forgets this is lost. Bars, streets, public offices are overflowing with literary stimulation. You could, for example, write a story about the way some people walk into a library, or how they ask for a book, or the way some women sit down. He was convinced you could write a story about anything. He had discovered (and made telling notes on the subject) that the best stories, even the best novels, are based on trivial events, on ordinary occurrences of no apparent importance. The work was superior to the material. Undoubtedly the best writer was the one who created a masterpiece, an object of enduring art, out of a trivial theme. “The writer,” he said one afternoon in the café, “who most resembles God, the greatest creator, is the nineteenth-century Spanish realist Don Juan Valera. He says absolutely nothing. Out of that nothing he has created a dozen books.” He had made the remark in passing, almost without noticing it. But that statement made his friends laugh and confirmed his reputation as a wit. For his part, Leopoldo made note of those memorable words and waited for the chance to use them in a story.

Once he was certain that no one would dare usurp his claim, he left his papers on the table, stood up, and walked toward the librarian. He took a call card, elegantly removed his trusty pen from his pocket, and in his best hand, carefully and slowly, wrote: E-42-326. Katz, David. Animals and Men. Leopoldo Ralón. Student. 32 years old.

For the past eight years he had been subtracting two. For the past eight years he had not been a student.

A short while later Leopoldo was seated again, the book opened at the table of contents as he searched for the chapter that dealt with dogs. Several sheets of white paper and his pen waited impatiently on the table for the moment when they could make a note on some interesting fact.

Leopoldo was a meticulous writer who showed himself no mercy. From the age of seventeen he had devoted all his time to literature. His thoughts were fixed on literature the entire day. His mind worked with intensity, and he never allowed himself to succumb to sleep before ten thirty at night. Leopoldo, however, suffered from one defect: He did not like to write. He read, took notes, made observations, attended conferences, criticized bitterly the deplorable Spanish in the newspapers, solved difficult crossword puzzles as a mental exercise (or for relaxation); his only friends were writers, he thought, spoke, ate and slept as a writer, but he was seized by deep terror when the time came to pick up his pen. Although his constant dream was to become a famous writer, he delayed the moment of realization with the classic excuses: you have to live first, first you have to read everything, Cervantes wrote Don Quixote at an advanced age, without experience there can be no art — and other similar arguments. Until the age of seventeen, it had not occurred to him to be an artist. His calling came to him from the outside. He was forced into it by circumstances. Leopoldo remembered how it had all started and thought he could even write a story about it. For a few moments his mind wandered from Katz’s book.

He was living in a pensión, a high school student in love with the movies and his landlady’s daughter. They called her husband “the lawyer” because he had once studied for six months at the Law School. This reason, powerful enough on its own, together with the fact that the other boarders were a doctor, an engineer, a law student, and a gentleman who was always reading poetry, made Leopoldo feel from the very beginning that he was in a particularly intellectual environment.

Leopoldo could not help smiling at this point. He was thinking of a story about his first impulse to become a writer (he would try it for the second time), but his memory of the doctor distracted him. Certainly another good subject.

“R. F., the doctor, had completed his studies nine years earlier but continued as a boarder, undoubtedly because when he became a professional he decided that there were so many people in the building who were likely to fall sick that leaving to search for patients in the street would have been out-and-out folly. Therefore, despite the friendship he claimed to feel for everyone, he never treated anyone free of charge. Consequently, showing a loss of appetite and finding yourself purged were never apart for long; complaining of fatigue and having an ear at your lungs were as close as brothers; displaying signs of fatigue and receiving an injection were one and the same thing. And the good part was that not complaining at all was useless since his motto was that total health does not exist, that feeling absolutely well is worse than having a disease that is known and therefore controllable, and finally, that the cemetery is filled with the overconfident.”