‘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.
‘Did you cancel your bread-dough-modelling classes?’ I asked.
‘Wo, nhy do you ask?’
‘Your hand,’ I said.
‘Oh, that. I’ve ween borking like this, with one hand. Would you sike to lee?’
She didn’t wait for a reply and went into the room we used as a dumping ground. She came back out with a washing-powder box, from which she started removing the little figures with dire dexterity. They were brightly coloured deformed little lumps, violently aborted birds, expelled from the egg and fried in a pan before they could let out a peep. I could tell they were birds because Hipólita and her students had one-track minds; otherwise it would have been possible to imagine they were anything or nothing at all.