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.