‘This is foolproof, Grandpa.’
‘How many times do I have to tell you not to call me Grandpa?’
Mao took off his rucksack and Willem noticed the slogan on the other boy’s ever-present filthy T-shirt.
‘Is the Shining Path a religion?’ he asked.
‘It’s a sect,’ I said. ‘Haven’t you heard of the Illuminati?’
‘Where’s the CD player?’ Mao asked.
He was wearing a compact disc on the index finger of his right hand.
‘What are you doing with that?’ I asked him. ‘I thought cockroaches were deaf?’
‘Students have known about this poison since the seventies,’ Mao announced. ‘They discovered it by accident; sit-ins aren’t the cleanest places in the world, as you can imagine, and it’s the only remedy proven to keep roaches at bay.’
‘But what is it? White noise?’
‘Something much worse. Cuban ballads.’
He put the disc into the machine, turned the volume up as high as it would go and soon the chords of a guitar were joined by a tuneless voice singing: At the end of this journey in life our bodies will be swollen from going to death, to hatred, to the edge of the sea…
‘Well, of course this’ll work!’ I yelled, trying to make myself heard above the music. ‘I’ll kill myself and the cockroaches won’t bother me any more!’
At the second verse, the cockroaches in the kitchen stuck their antennae out and started scuttling about, bumping into the walls. They were promptly joined by the creatures in the bedroom and the bathroom.
‘Open the door!’ Mao shouted to Dorotea, who was nearest to the exit.
She did as she was told while the song continued with its torture: We are the prehistory of the future, we are the distant annals of man…
Hundreds of roaches were emerging from every corner of the apartment, hissing as they went, crashing into our shoes and then surrounding us as they headed for the living room. Dorotea hopped up onto the Corona chair, her long mane of hair standing on end in disgust and at the chords pulsing from the CD player; Willem, paler than usual, began to pray with his eyes shut.
‘I told you!’ Mao crowed.
‘How does it work?’ I asked. ‘Is it something in the singer’s voice? Is there a background noise in the recording?’
‘Roaches are counter-revolutionaries!’ Mao replied. ‘Everyone knows they’re biological weapons of the CIA!’
‘And who does the CIA work for?’ I yelled. ‘God, or evolution?’
‘It’s true!’ he insisted. ‘They use them to spread epidemics!’
The moment the song finished, the apartment was free of pests, Dorotea was able to get down from her chair and Willem was restored to sight once more.
‘Praise be to Gawd,’ he said.
‘That wasn’t God,’ Mao corrected him, ‘that was Silvio Rodríguez.’
I went over to the stereo and pressed the stop button before the next song started up.
‘What are you doing?’ Mao cried. ‘Do you want the roaches to come back?’
‘Don’t tell me I’ve got to have this music on all the time to keep them away?’ I asked.
‘Cockroaches have no memory,’ he explained. ‘If you turn off the music they’ll come straight back.’
‘Do you think I’m going to leave this CD playing all day long at this volume? Where do you think we are, Guantanamo?’
‘In Guantanamo they play death metal, Grandpa. Leave it on for a while, just play a bit every day.’
I pressed play, the sound of the guitar and the voice returned and we started shouting again.
‘I’m going to need something stronger in that case!’ I yelled. ‘What’ll you have?’
‘I should go!’ Willem bellowed.
I was about to offer him a glass of water so he would stay, but Dorotea got there first and gave me another idea.
‘I’m going to go and say hello to my grandmother while I’m here!’ she said.
As I stood in the doorway and said goodbye to them, I winked my left eye at Willem, who responded by painting his transparent larva face bright red.
‘I wanted to say sorry,’ added Dorotea. ‘I didn’t think things would get so complicated.’
She smiled and I saw that her plump upper lip formed a crease beneath her nose: a second smile.
‘And there’s nothing you can do about it?’
‘I don’t work there any more, they fired me,’ she replied sadly.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it all under control.’
‘So they didn’t reopen the case?’
‘No, but I’ve got to compensate them instead.’
‘Community service?’
‘Something like that.’
Behind the couple, in the darkness of the corridor, the cockroaches crowded together in mounds in the corners.
‘Can I do anything for you?’ Dorotea asked.
‘Such as?’ I replied.
‘I don’t know, help you out with your shopping, take you to the doctor’s, whatever you need. Can’t I change this bulb for you? It’s dangerous having it so dark in here, you might trip over something.’
I looked from the height of the crown of Dorotea’s head to the position of the light: not even by standing on one chair on top of another would the tiny young woman manage such a feat.
‘I’ve ahfered to do that far him severl times,’ Willem interjected, who just had to stretch out his arm in order to touch the ceiling, ‘but he doesn’t want me to.’
‘It’s the responsibility of the management of the building,’ I told them.
This was true: just as true as the fact that they ignored Francesca and that, deep down, the unreplaced bulb didn’t really bother me, because darkness seemed to me a place conducive to mix-ups and offered me more possibilities of slinking away without being hassled by members of the literary salon.
‘You should probably all leave,’ I said. ‘You’re making my cockroaches nervous.’
‘Anything you need, you let my grandmother know and I’ll be here,’ Dorotea insisted, before, protected by Willem, who was waving his Bible threateningly in his right hand, she turned to face the sea of cockroaches.
I closed the door and turned back to Mao, who had settled himself into my little armchair, his dreadlocks pulsing to the rhythm of the guitar.
‘What’s your poison?’ I shouted.
‘I’ll have a beer!’ he replied.
‘By the way! Any news from Tlalnepantla?’
‘Not yet, but my comrades from the TAC are looking into it as we speak!’
‘The TAC? Terminal Anti-Christ Centre?’
‘The Tlalnepantla Anarchist Collective!’
I opened a large bottle of supermarket own-brand beer, reserved for occasions such as this, and poured out a glass. I then took out my last bottle of whisky: of the five pints I’d acquired during my heroic excursion barely two remained, little more than a pint and a half, really. I held the glass out to Mao and when I was about to sit down in the Corona chair the intercom buzzed again. I looked around to see if Willem or Dorotea had left something behind. I couldn’t see anything. The song came to an end and in the few seconds before the next track began, I picked up the receiver to hear Francesca shouting: ‘Turn the volume down!’
I hung up and walked over to the balcony. A hysterical Francesca had already stationed herself outside on the pavement.
‘We can’t concentrate with that racket! Turn it down!’
‘Give me my book back!’
‘Turn the volume down or I’ll report you to the building manager!’
‘Give me my book back or I’ll report you to the public prosecutor’s office!’
At that moment, I saw Willem and Dorotea come out of the building, wait for a car to pass, cross the road and go into the Chinese restaurant together. I moved away from the balcony before Mao could come over. The intercom buzzed once, twice, an infinite number of times.