I'll Sell You a Dog Read online

  I tried to put my hand over my crotch so she couldn’t see what was going on underneath it, and she thumped me on the back with a petulant smile and said: ‘Pervert.’

  The days came and went, and I took advantage of the routine to carry out my own pursuit, armed with my sketchbook.

  ‘Will you let me draw you?’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘I want to make a portrait of you, I’m an artist.’

  ‘I know that, everyone knows that, they say your mum ended up with a right dud with you, that you’re a fat lot of good to her. I meant how do you want to draw me, how would you do it?’

  ‘A nice portrait, nothing avant-garde.’

  ‘Nude?’

  Beneath my fly I suddenly felt my erection, rising up and up, leaving me without an answer.

  ‘Does it turn you on, Teo?’

  I swallowed hard and started to imagine her long naked legs and everything else, which, truth be told, I didn’t even know how to imagine, so inexperienced was I.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she promised, ‘before my mum gets home.’

  ‘A portrait takes several days.’

  ‘I knew it! You’re a sleazebag.’

  The following day, I told her:

  ‘I’ve got a new sketchbook.’

  ‘And how are you going to draw me?’

  I was slowly growing less timid, emboldened by her provocations, and getting used to discussing these things with a great deal of blood in my groin and very little in my head.

  ‘First I’ve got to look at you for a long time to concentrate, I have to find a style, it’s not just about copying your figure.’

  ‘Look at me for ages, eh? With my legs open?’

  ‘Maybe,’ I replied, my trousers wet.

  ‘I knew it! You’re sick. I can’t do it today, my mother’s coming home early. Tomorrow.’

  The hours came and went, long as years, and eventually the next day arrived.

  ‘Have you got any ice?’

  ‘Ice? What for?’

  ‘No ice, no portrait.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘What do you mean, why? I need ice to put on my nipples so they stand up nice and stiff.’

  Under my fly, my erection howled.

  ‘Get some ice. Tomorrow.’

  Tomorrow, of course, never came; what did come was the day one of her pursuers emerged from anonymity. He wasn’t one of the usual ones, although he did seem vaguely familiar and I was sure I’d seen him before. We were at Hilaria’s front door when he called at us to wait for him. He was an older guy, fat, who wore his trousers pulled up to his chest. Literally: it looked like he needed to clamp his arms close to his body to keep the trousers in place. He took a while to reach us, panting, and he had a spot of paint on his left shoe. He bent down with great difficulty to pat Turnup, who seized his chance to steal and then eat a paintbrush out of the man’s overcoat pocket. When the man stood up, even though the dog’s lead led to my hand, he acted as if I didn’t exist.

  ‘What’s your name?’ he asked Hilaria.

  ‘Marilín,’ she replied, putting the accent on the last syllable.

  He asked if she lived there, pointing over to the entrance to our building with his chin. She said she did.

  ‘I’d like to speak to your mother,’ the man said.

  She said that her mother was working and would get home later.

  ‘How long will she be?’ he asked.

  ‘About an hour,’ she replied.

  The man looked around until he spotted a cheap little restaurant across the road. He said he’d go and have a coffee there, pointing with his chin again at the place, and that when her mother got home to tell her to go and find him there and not to forget. Then he added:

  ‘Tell your mother Diego Rivera wants a word with her.’

  ‌

  The people from the Society for the Protection of Animals came to the building and started going from door to door, downstairs then upstairs, left to right, until they got to mine, the last but one. Interrogations came and went, and by now I was the mastermind of a crime. There were two inspectors: a short young woman with hair down to her waist and a full bust, and her boss, who had a head shaped like a papaya. I didn’t make that up, Hipólita pointed it out a little later; she was from Veracruz and familiar with the fruit. She even specified that it looked like a Maradol papaya and Juliet, who was the nearest thing we had to a botanist, corroborated this: you simply had to place the fruit upright with the part that had been connected to the stalk pointing downwards, for the chin.

  I tried to defend myself, arguing that the dog’s death was related to the literary salon which I was not a member of – besides, I didn’t even read novels.

  ‘Don’t lie,’ Papaya-Head said. ‘I know you’re writing one as we speak.’

  ‘I am not writing a novel, who told you that?’

  ‘Everyone, from 1-A to 3-B. That’s how they refer to you, didn’t you know? They call you “the one who’s writing a novel”.’

  I was going to reflect that Francesca’s obsession had now turned into collective psychosis, but there was no time: Papaya-Head was set on reprimanding me. He claimed he had talked to the local butcher and that my appearance matched the description of an old man who had tried to sell him a dog. The same appearance, to make matters worse, as that described by the man who had filed the complaint, who purported to have seen an old man whistling the ‘Ode to Joy’ in a euphoric manner in the Jardín de Epicuro while he and his family wept over the death of their dog. He took a sheet of paper from a bulging file and announced: ‘Here is the report.’

  Then he read out: ‘Dark-skinned man over eighty years of age, mestizo, messy white hair, average height, tubercular nose, light brown eyes, rat-like ears, contemptuous, cynical expression, no identifying marks or scars.’

  He paused and uttered the last word emphatically, as if in the document it were underlined in red ink: ‘Drunk.’

  ‘I’m seventy-eight!’ I protested.

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ replied Papaya-Head. ‘People are terrible at calculating ages. And, no offence, but you do look pretty decrepit.’

  ‘And what’s all that about a “tubercular nose”?’ I asked.

  ‘Like a potato,’ Papaya-Head said.

  ‘It looks more like a turnip,’ the young woman said.

  ‘Tubercular comes from tuberculosis,’ I said, trying to correct them.

  ‘Well in this case it comes from tuber,’ Papaya-Head said.

  ‘Well that’s not right, how can you trust the description of someone who doesn’t even know how to use adjectives? And anyway, a turnip is not a tuber.’

  Papaya-Head turned to look at the young woman indulgently, excusing her mistake. It was clear he saw himself as her mentor, the one responsible for teaching her how to pester people.

  ‘Writers, eh?’ he said to her.

  ‘I’m not a writer!’ I complained.

  ‘So tell us what these notebooks are, then.’

  He pointed an accusing finger towards the shelf by the front door and continued: ‘If, as you say, you’re not writing a novel, you won’t mind if we analyse the contents of your notebooks, will you?’

  ‘Do you have a search warrant?’ I replied.

  ‘I knew it!’ he cried, clapping his hands together gleefully at the same time.

  ‘Do you mind telling me what I’m being accused of? Being a writer? I declare myself innocent!’

  Then he said he had a statement that incriminated me: Hipólita had cracked. He took another sheet of paper from his file and held it up next to his papaya head: ‘Hipólita, the lady from 2-C, has stated, and I quote: “The man who’s writing a novel recommended we give the dog a stocking to eat.” End of quote. The murder method matches the results of the autopsy carried out on the animal.’

  ‘It’s not me! How many times do I have to tell you I’m not writing a novel?’

  ‘Hipólita, the lady from 2-C, has stated, and again I quote:
“The man who’s writing a novel lives in 3-C.” End of quote.’

  I assumed it was revenge for not putting her in my supposed novel, or for writing about her moustache. Then I found out it was neither one nor the other: Hipólita had fractured her right wrist while turning over a page of the Proust and was on some painkillers that had loosened her tongue (and gave her hallucinations, like seeing papayas where there were heads).

  ‘Are you aware of Mexico City’s law against cruelty to animals?’ Papaya-Head said, threateningly.

  I didn’t reply either way; I assumed there was a law for the elderly that would save me from all this. If the city’s governors liked anything it was these very two things: animals and old people. I imagined that the second group still took precedence. At that moment, the doorbell went: it was Wednesday; it was Willem. I spoke into the intercom and told him to come on up, then announced: ‘I’d like to call a witness.’

  ‘This isn’t a trial,’ Papaya-Head said.

  ‘The witness will refute your accusation,’ I replied.

  We waited. Willem took ages, just for a change. A cockroach emerged from the kitchen; its antennae detected the tension of the moment and it quickly went back in. The young woman walked over to the painting hanging on the wall and stood looking at it for a long time, then said: ‘Did you paint this, sir?’

  ‘No, my father did.’

  ‘Is it your mother? Your father’s wife, I mean.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She must have been very pretty.’

  I looked at her closely, up and down and then down and up.

  ‘What did you say you were called?’ I asked her.

  ‘Dorotea.’

  The minute Papaya-Head was getting ready to upbraid the girl for her soft-hearted tactfulness, someone knocked at the door. I opened it. Willem crossed the threshold and Papaya-Head looked at me scornfully: ‘Is this a joke?’

  He was wearing his knackered old Mormon uniform, his black rucksack on his back, and in his right hand he held the ever-present Bible. Dorotea came over to read the little badge pinned to his shirt: she was so short, and Willem so tall, that her eyes only came up to the level of the boy’s heart.

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Willem,’ she said.

  ‘Are you Dutch?’ Papaya-Head asked.

  ‘I’m from Utah,’ Willem replied.

  ‘A gringo,’ Papaya-Head concluded.

  ‘Actually, my famly…’

  ‘Now’s not the time for genealogies, Villem,’ I interjected.

  I asked him to confirm that the day of the dog’s death he had been with me and that I hadn’t given any orders, or suggestions, to carry it out.

  ‘What day was it?’ he asked.

  The young woman told him the date: the day and the month.

  ‘No, sorry. I mean which day of the week was it?’ he said.

  The report didn’t say. We went to look at the calendar I had in the kitchen. The cockroach was amusing itself with a little granule of sugar. The calendar was from 2012, so we had to add a day. We looked: Monday – that is, it had happened on a Tuesday.

  ‘No,’ Willem said, ‘I only come on Waynesdays.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Are you really sure?’

  ‘And Saturdays,’ he concluded.

  Papaya-Head left the kitchen and headed for the front door, with a self-important air, as if this were a trial after all.

  ‘Wait!’ I shouted. ‘Wasn’t 2012 a leap year?’

  We went back to the calendar: February had twenty-nine days.

  This didn’t change the calculation in any way, but it did at least sow confusion. The girl took out her phone and was about to look up the date on it. I touched her arm with a shaky hand (I’m really good at that). She took pity on me and put the device away. Papaya-Head held out a copy of the report and a summons, two weeks away. He left, dragging Dorotea’s dismay along with him, the girl looking at me as if cruelty to animals were punishable with stoning, chemical castration and hanging, one after the other.

  ‘What the hell is wrong with you, Villem?’ I shouted as soon as the door had closed.

  ‘Lahying is aginst Gawd’s commandments,’ he said.

  ‘God doesn’t exist, kiddo, you haven’t got a clue.’

  I went over to the bookshelf and took down the Aesthetic Theory. I was on the verge of throwing it at his head, but what good would that do me? What I should have done was to ask to borrow a copy of In Search of Lost Time. The pasty little bastard would never have got out of that one alive.

  ‘I don’t want to see you again,’ I said, opening the door for him.

  He picked up his rucksack and began his pilgrimage towards the exit.

  ‘Hey, before you go, tell me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What’s my nose like?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard, what does it look like?’

  He stood and looked at my nose, not daring to open his mouth.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘A potato?’

  ‘Get out of here, go on, beat it!’ I ordered.

  He went without a fight: we both knew he’d be back on Saturday. I poured myself a beer and, when I’d calmed down, began to read the police report. And then I noticed the surname of the person who’d filed it. I shot off down the stairs like a ramshackle rocket to the greengrocer’s, knocking over the salon’s chairs as I went, shouting out as I got there:

  ‘You’ll never guess who wants to put me in the slammer!’

  Juliet interrupted what she was doing, which was talking to Dorotea.

  ‘Come in, Teo,’ said Juliet. ‘Let me introduce you to my granddaughter. This is Dorotea.’

  ‘I’ve already met her,’ I replied, ‘she works for the dog police. How did you end up with a counter-revolutionary granddaughter?’

  ‘There’s nothing counter-revolutionary about it, just the opposite,’ said Dorotea, defensively.

  ‘Yeah right! Are dogs going to start the Revolution?’

  ‘Hey, don’t laugh,’ said Juliet, ‘the mutts already run the street. Calm down Teo, Dorotea’s a good girl. She’s too idealistic, but there you go; she’s not her grandmother’s granddaughter for nothing.’

  ‘I should go, Abuela,’ said Dorotea. ‘I’ll come back another day.’

  ‘But you never come to see me!’

  ‘From now on I will, you’ll see.’

  She gave Juliet such a tender hug even I forgave her for coming after me.

  ‘And another thing, child,’ said Juliet, ‘stop sending your friends to my shop, they all owe me money.’

  ‘Collaborate with the cause, Abue!’

  ‘I don’t have enough tomatoes for so many causes. I have to charge people, otherwise how can I eat?’

  They finished their hug and, before she left, Dorotea asked me: ‘Is that boy a friend of yours?’

  ‘The Mormon?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘Do you like him? Want me to set you up on a date?’

  Her long hair stood on end.

  ‘No, no, I was just curious, missionaries have always intrigued me. And besides, I was surprised at his integrity.’

  ‘Integrity?’

  ‘He wasn’t prepared to lie to give you an alibi.’

  ‘Well you know what, now that I think about it you two would make a great couple, the traitor and the counter-revolutionary. I am going to set you up.’

  ‘I have a boyfriend.’

  ‘A boyfriend?’ Juliet interrupted. ‘Is this what we fought the Sexual Revolution for?’

  ‘I really am going now, Abue,’ said Dorotea.

  ‘Hey,’ I told her, ‘be nice to the kid. He’s ten years younger than he looks. Mentally, I mean.’

  She left the greengrocer’s and Juliet went into the back room, returning with two glasses of beer.

  ‘You’re still seeing the Mormon?’ she asked. ‘He’ll end up converting you before long.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ve been vaccinated.
’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’m the one who’s converting him. The kid lacks experience.’

  ‘Do you feel sorry for him?’

  ‘It’s not as if he’s a puppy.’

  We sipped our beer and, since it wasn’t very cold, the foam traced a fleeting moustache onto Juliet’s lip.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a granddaughter,’ I said.

  ‘You never asked me. We waste all our time clowning around. Have you got grandchildren?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Children?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell me you were a widower?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘So you were lying!’

  ‘What does that matter? The family is a bourgeois institution!’

  ‘Maybe you’re a poof?’

  ‘Yeah, right.’

  ‘There wouldn’t be anything wrong with that. In this greengrocer’s we respect all denominations, even Buggeration. Are you sleeping with the little Mormon?’

  ‘Don’t push it, Juliette.’

  ‘Well then?’

  ‘Well then what?’

  ‘Are you a fake widower?’

  ‘Hey, I didn’t come here to talk about this. You want me tell you what happened or not? You have no idea who’s going around accusing me!’

  ‌

  Another poet died and the entire literary salon crossed the city to go and bid farewell to him at a funeral parlour (this poet had failed to gain access to the Palacio de Bellas Artes). Everyone had gone except Hipólita, whom I found sitting in the lobby caressing with her left hand a worn-out copy of the poet’s poems that was lying in her lap. She had a cast on her right hand.

  ‘Now today I would have liked to trake the mip,’ she sighed. ‘He was from my tome hown.’

  As well as loosening her tongue, the painkillers got it in a twist, switching her letters around.

  ‘From Veracruz?’

  ‘Hm-mmm, from Córboda, like me.’

  Hipólita had three children who still lived in Veracruz, from where she had escaped after her husband died and bastards sprouted like mushrooms over his corpse. I went over and looked at the cover of the book, so slim it wouldn’t even have served to squash fleas: a drawing of three furious dogs, two of them fighting, rolling around on the ground, and the third, barking at a figurative horizon, which would be located on the spine of the book. Hipólita was stroking them as if trying to calm them down, as if this was what would ensure the poet’s soul rested in peace.