‘Is it really necessary?’ my father asked again.
‘I don’t want it to happen again and to stop it from happening again we have to know what happened,’ my mother explained.
A child of eight could have drawn his own conclusions, because it couldn’t happen again. The dog couldn’t die twice. My sister, who was a year older than me but maturing as fast as a papaya, took me into a corner and said:
‘Look at Dad’s face: he looks like he’s the one whose guts they’re going to cut open.’
My father was the colour of the sheets on my bed, which although old and worn were pretty white still, thanks to the gallons of bleach my mother used. The butcher asked if my father was going to faint, if he was scared of blood. It was a very warm summer evening and it would be wise to hurry up, before the dog began to stink. With the regal sangfroid typical of her whenever she was settling a family dispute, my mother replied:
‘You may proceed.’
The butcher made a cut from chin to belly. The blood ran out onto a photo of President Ávila Camacho, his hands raised as if being attacked, although presumably he was actually being applauded. Mum bent down to peer into the dog’s entrails, like some Etruscan mystic trying to see the future — and she did see it, quite literally, because the future is always a fateful consequence of the past. An endless nylon stocking had coiled itself along the entire length of the dog’s intestines. It was like what Schoenberg said, but backwards, which meant the same in the end: my mother had found her explanation. Dad protested, claiming the dog had been sniffing around downtown, near Alameda Central park. My parents’ house was also in a neighbourhood in the centre.
‘The doghouse is too good for you,’ said my mother.
I laughed and my father gave me a slap. My sister laughed and my mother pinched her arm. We both began to cry. By dinner time, Dad could take it no longer: with no excuse to go out, he simply left and never came home again. The butcher had taken the dog’s corpse away and promised to bury it. My sister had followed him and told me she’d seen him cutting a deal with the taco vendor on the corner. She also told me not to tell our mother, because she’d been very fond of the dog. This is what she spent her life doing, growing fond of dogs.
The next day, Mum was so upset she didn’t feel like making dinner. To conceal this from us, she took us out for tacos. She said it was the start of a new life. My sister said that if that was the case then she’d rather have pozole for dinner. I fancied enchiladas. It was impossible to change her mind — tacos were the cheapest option. When the taco seller saw us heading for his stand he shook his head like we were depraved. It wasn’t as if it was unheard of. Weren’t there people who grew fond of their chickens and then cooked them in mole sauce, and on their birthday of all things?
~ ~ ~
Several theories about the origins of my novel had occurred to me. What I mean is, about how Francesca had got it into her head that I was writing a novel. The most logical thing would be to blame it all on how ridiculously thin the walls in the building were, practically imaginary, which led to the immense popularity of espionage as a recreational activity. But she must also enjoy telling tales and be harbouring some kind of hidden agenda. Otherwise what was the point of going around telling everyone I was writing a novel if I wasn’t writing one?
I had a few notebooks I used to scribble in, that at least was true, especially late at night, as I let the last beer of the day slide down my throat, a beer which sometimes became the second-to-last. Or the third-to-last. I would draw and write down things that occurred to me. I drew and wrote and gradually nodded off, until the pen slipped from my hand and I slipped over towards my bed. But between this and writing a novel there was a huge stretch, an abyss that could only be crossed with a great deal of will power and naivety. Where had Francesca got the idea that what I was writing in my notebook was a novel?
What really intrigued me was how the woman had managed to find out the contents of my notebook, because her knowledge of what was in it was eerily detailed, and she would recount it to everyone who attended her salon as if it was the new chapter in a long-running serial. I played up to this and began sending her messages. Beneath a drawing of a male dog mounting a little female, I wrote in my shaky hand like a long-legged spider:
Francesca — I’ll wait for you tomorrow in my apartment, at 9 p.m. I’ll pop a pill at half past eight so we’ll have plenty of time to have a couple of beers and get to know each other. Let me know if you’d prefer something stronger. Tequila? Mezcal? Or would you rather a whisky? I’ve got a really good one from Tlalnepantla. Wear something pretty, a leather miniskirt or that red dress you were wearing when we went to see the courtyard at the Colegio de San Ildefonso.
The next morning, the entire salon was waiting for me down in the entrance hall spoiling for a fight. They began to lob rotten tomatoes at me from the greengrocer’s stand outside, clamouring:
‘That’s no way to write a novel!’
‘You dirty old man!’
‘That’s not a novel!’
And I replied:
‘I told you!’
The following day, just to drive them mad, I copied out whole paragraphs from Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory into my notebook:
The demand for complete responsibility on the part of artworks increases the burden of their guilt; therefore this demand is to be set in counterpoint with the antithetical demand for irresponsibility. The latter is reminiscent of the element of play, without which there is no more possibility of art than of theory… A solemn tone would condemn artworks to ridiculousness, just as would the gestures of grandeur and might… In the artwork the unconditional surrender of dignity can become an organon of its strength.
Troy burned: they bought two pounds of tomatoes each.
I had acquired the bad habit of trying to resolve all quarrels by reciting paragraphs from Aesthetic Theory. So far I’d dispatched more than one telemarketing agent, several street sellers, dozens of insurance salesmen and someone who wanted to sell me a plot for my own grave in six instalments. I’d found my edition in a library funded by the foundation of a bank four blocks from where I lived. I stuffed the book down my trousers and underneath my shirt, and arranged my face to look like I was wearing a colostomy bag. A thief robbing a thief. On the first page, a blank one, was a stamp from the faculty of philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. A thief robbing a thief robbing a thief. On page 22, without looking, I found the phrase of Schoenberg’s that reminded me of my mother: if you do not seek, you will not find. My Aesthetic Theory had been shoved in between the memoirs of the gay writer and intellectual Salvador Novo and Fray Servando, the priest. Schoenberg wouldn’t have liked this, nor would have Adorno, and nor would my mother: if you do not seek, you can find, too.
~ ~ ~
And on the third day, when expediency had tempered her disappointment, Francesca knocked at the door to my apartment. It was a very hot day and the neckline of her dress led me to cherish unwonted hopes, as if it were possible to win the Battle of Puebla without actually going to Puebla. She wore her hair down and around her neck hung a slender gold necklace from which, in turn, hung an equally slender ring, apparently an engagement ring.