‘I like your remedy more and more!’ I told Mao.
‘What was that about a book? Did someone steal a book of yours?’ he asked.
‘I lost a small battle with the salon and they’re holding my copy of Aesthetic Theory hostage!’
The music persisted, stubbornly cramming too many syllables into each line, and there wasn’t so much as a whisker of a cockroach in sight. Then I had an idea.
‘Fancy earning some hard cash, Mao?’
‘Want me to get you another copy of Aesthetic Theory? Go on, cheap as chips at twenty pesos.’
‘You’re pretty capitalist for a Maoist, aren’t you?’
‘You’ve got to put capital to work for the Revolution. I can get you a copy.’
‘No! Mine’s already underlined.’
‘So what, then?’
‘I’ve got a plan to get it back.’
‘Just say the word, Grandpa.’
I started explaining the idea as it occurred to me, on the fly, and Mao perfected it, demonstrating some quite astonishing powers of military strategy. I offered him another beer, and another, and when the plan was fully fleshed out we agreed on a date and a fee, then I switched off the music to call the cockroaches back. Mao downed the rest of his beer and said he’d better go and look for Dorotea. On his way out, he saw the copy of Notes to Literature on the shelf by the door.
‘Weren’t you going to give that to someone?’ he asked.
‘There was a change of plan,’ I replied. ‘By the way, do you have access to the philosophy faculty library?’
‘Yep. What do you need?’
‘Bring me everything you can on literary theory.’
‘Structuralism, hermeneutics, semiotics, reception theory?’
‘Whatever, the more out-there the better.’
Just then someone banged at the door, and I geared myself up to confront Francesca, but it was a kid who’d been mugged and was asking for money to cover the bus fare to Pachuca. At least that was what he said, that was his sales pitch. He’d slipped into the building while Francesca was shouting at me. It was pure gold: if Francesca was planning on calling an extraordinary general meeting to report me for playing my music too loud, then I would have a counter-accusation ready.
‘Does your mobile phone have a camera on it, Mao?’
‘All phones have cameras, Grandpa.’
‘Take a picture of my comrade here. Smile, kiddo.’
~ ~ ~
It wasn’t me who ended up proving that a man could get used to anything, even the ignominy of giving a literary workshop in some godforsaken bar. Sundays came and went, and I’d even managed to get Papaya-Head to pay the tab, which meant that, if I managed to keep the classes going indefinitely, I’d get fifty-two additional days of life for every year — a whole extra year if I extended the classes for seven years! You could call this literally living off literature.
We began at around midday and ended, at the earliest, at half past five. Each week, I equipped myself with enough ammunition to start another argument and prolong the session for as long as I wanted, thus enjoying the resulting free drinks. The lack of civic-mindedness displayed by the students of the faculty of arts and humanities was of great help: every book was pertinently underlined. While Papaya-Head read the start of his novel aloud, in which he described, in maddening detail, the fur colour, the way of looking around, and the weight and the texture of the growls, among other trifles, of each and every one of the hundreds of dogs his protagonist hunted down, I flicked through the books on literary theory in search of some passage that would let me interrupt his reading and initiate a pointless discussion that would raise the tone and necessitate we move from beer to tequila.
‘Stop there,’ I would say, ‘your readers have already fallen asleep. Worse: your readers have already died, they died in the nineteenth century! And I’ve got bad news for you: dead people don’t buy books. Now pay attention.’ And I read:
An analysis of literary history shows how empty spaces have moved from being elements of narrative economy or producers of tension and suspense — characterised by the figure of the ellipsis — to their central role in modern literature, with its fragmentary nature, in which, according to Wolfgang Iser, narrative forms of a segmented character allow for an increase in the number of empty spaces in such a way that the segments left blank become a permanent irritation in the reader’s constitutive activity.
‘You see?’ I asked him. ‘You don’t have to tell the readers everything, you can put lots of empty spaces in your novel.’
‘But I don’t want to irritate the reader!’ he complained.
‘Precisely! Put some empty spaces in! With any luck your novel will disappear completely!’
One day, a single phrase from Notes to Literature was enough to last us until the bar closed: It is no longer possible to tell a story, but the form of the novel demands narration.
‘Well that’s obvious!’ objected Papaya-Head. ‘It’s not possible to do anything that way! If you’re trying to put me off, or make me give up writing this novel, the deal’s off. I’ll cancel the workshop, reactivate the report against you, and Bob’s your uncle.’
‘You don’t understand,’ I replied. ‘What this sentence means is that you have to write even though it’s not possible any more, you see? What’s important is trying. It’s like sport: it’s not winning that matters, it’s how you play the game — get it? I’m going to need something stronger. Two mezcals!’ I shouted at the barman, who was bustling about behind the bar.
As the afternoon went on, the regular customers would approach our table to amuse themselves with our discussions, which grew more antagonistic with each glass.
‘What you want is for me to fail!’ Papaya-Head said, accusingly. ‘This must be the worst literary workshop in history!’
‘I told you I didn’t know how to write a novel!’
‘So why did you agree to teach me?’
‘Because you threatened me!’
‘Saboteur!’
‘Blackmailer!’
‘Decrepit old sod!’
‘Big fat papaya-head!’
Even so, the following Sunday we both turned up for the meeting: I, so he’d pay for my drinks; he, so that I’d read him some garbled theoretical passage that would keep his brain occupied during the week, and so gloss over his inability to write a novel.
~ ~ ~
He had appeared one night on the corner and stood there observing me for a while from the shadows, watching as I bustled about chopping the meat, warming up the tortillas, dishing up the food. Despite the state he was in, skinny as a skeleton, his eyes bulging, I had recognised him straight away. We’d spent many a night together, endless early mornings of excess and chaos. He looked like he was living on the streets, and he came surrounded by a sorry-looking pack of stray dogs. The dogs were malnourished, mangy, flea-ridden. They were dogs with parvovirus, with sores. Dogs that had lost all hope of being rescued, or had never had any. Dogs not even my mother, with her infinite affection for canines, would dare to bring back home. Looking at the group, it wasn’t clear who was in worse company, him or his mutts.
I went over and held out a plate of tacos for him, before he could scare my customers away. I knew from the way he looked at me that he didn’t remember me. He wolfed down two tacos and shared the rest out between the dogs, causing a brief scuffle punctuated by growls. Then he came over with the plate in his hand. I thought he wanted more tacos; charity is a bottomless dish, as I’d learned very quickly.