‘My parents are afraid,’ he replied. ‘They say there’s goin’ to be a big earthquake.’
‘How do they know? Did Jesus Christ tell them?’
‘They saw the news.’
‘What news?’
‘The crack that’s openin’ up in the ground. They say it’s a worning, that there’s goin’ to be a big earthquake any moment.’
I handed him a glass of water and pulled the Corona chair over to sit opposite him.
‘That’s got nothing to do with anything,’ I said.
‘What do you mean?’ he asked.
‘You can’t predict earthquakes. And anyway, they already explained that crack, didn’t you hear? The revolutionaries’ moustaches?’
He took a few little sips of water and rested the glass on the seat, squeezing it between his legs so it didn’t spill.
‘That’s a dumb lie nobody believes,’ he said angrily, losing the peace of the Lord. ‘They say they got that stary from a book. And Darotea told me it’s not true.’
‘Dorotea is Mao’s girlfriend,’ I replied, ‘and he is the king of conspiracy theories. Don’t pay any attention. How long were you planning on staying?’
‘Two yeahs altogether.’
‘Well?’
‘Well what?’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t want to go.’
I waited for him to continue, keeping an eye on the glass he was balancing between his legs.
‘Darotea isn’t Mao’s girlfriend any more,’ he said.
‘Oh really! Let me guess… that’s why you don’t want to leave.’
He looked up and into my eyes and I felt almost proud he’d matured to the extent that he’d at least stopped blushing.
‘If you’re going to stay,’ I said, ‘let it be for the right reasons. Stay because you want to, don’t stay because of Dorotea.’
‘I do want to stay because I want to, and if I want to stay it’s because of Darotea.’
‘Have you slept with her yet?’
‘Sex before marr—’
‘Yeah, I know, I know,’ I interrupted him. ‘So are you going to stay to screw her or to marry her?’
He looked away and over towards the door, towards his rucksack, where his Bible lay, in which perhaps, I imagined he was thinking, on one of its hundreds of pages, was the answer.
‘I should go,’ he said.
He stood up resolutely and the water spilled all over his crotch. He caught the glass before it fell to the floor and began to brush at his trousers with his hand. I handed him a roll of toilet paper to dry himself with. The liquid spread a dark patch all across the fabric, now decorated with a pattern of little white spots, the remnants of the loo roll.
‘Wait,’ I said, and went to my room.
I knelt down to take out the box of Chinese fortune cookies and came back into the lounge. Willem had already slung his woe over his shoulder, and it looked even heavier now.
‘Pick one,’ I said.
He put his hand in doubtfully but without making a fuss, as he wasn’t programmed to disobey anyone in any circumstances. He fished out the little parcel, unwrapped it and split open the cookie.
‘And?’
‘The helping hand you need is at the end of your orm.’
‘Bingo!’
He put the scrap of paper in his shirt pocket, behind the badge with his name on, at the level of his heart.
‘If you do leave, come and say goodbye,’ I said.
‘I’m not goin’ to leave,’ he replied.
‘Good.’
I watched him go, weighed down with a determination that filled him with guilt. I shut the door and began imagining the scandal down in the lobby when they saw him walk past with his trousers in such a state.
~ ~ ~
No one gives out medals or erects statues to taco sellers, but a taco seller, especially a taco seller in the centre of Mexico City, can achieve recognition, too. I reached the height of fame in the eighties, when my taco stand in the Candelaria de los Patos was frequented by the cream of metropolitan society, not to mention the whey and the curds as well. One of my regular customers was the mayor: he came escorted by his minders, who also ate, taking turns so they never dropped their guard. Their most important job was stopping the other customers from coming over to the mayor with petitions that would end up giving him indigestion. Another customer who came at least once a week was El Negro Durazo, who back then was the chief of police in the capital, before we had a change of presidents and people realised, miraculously, that he was the Devil’s envoy to Mexico City. He was not a customer I was proud of, but he was one of the most loyal. He stopped coming only when they tried to put him in prison and he had to flee.
Once José Luis Cuevas came; by then already an acclaimed artist, he was trawling the centre with Fernando Gamboa trying to find a site to build his museum. I was too embarrassed to tell him we’d met before, to ask him if he remembered me. Another regular customer was Alberto Raurell, who was the director of the Museo Tamayo and had organised a Picasso exhibition. Even though he was half-gringo, or precisely because of this, he adored tacos. When he came to eat at my stand, I would pester him so much chatting to him that his tacos would grow cold and I’d have to keep serving him fresh ones. The coterie of daily diners — locals, office workers and night owls of all descriptions — would tease me: ‘The taco guy fancies himself an art critic!’
And Raurell, smiling but serious, always came to my defence: ‘This is what we need, taco sellers who are interested in art.’
I told him of my buried aspirations to be an artist, of my fleeting passage through La Esmeralda, said that I still went to museums, to galleries, but didn’t think there was anything interesting to look at any more, that the great art from the first half of the century completely eclipsed that of the second half, and nothing really new was being made. Raurell didn’t accept my views, he’d hold his taco with the fingers of his right hand intertwined, in that strange way of those who didn’t learn how to do it as children, and started giving me lessons in aesthetic theory between mouthfuls, very patiently.
‘Of course new art’s being made,’ he’d say again and again. ‘New art’s being made all the time. Do you know what a German theorrrist used to say? That the new is the desire for the new. You see? Imagine there’s a child in front of a piano looking for a new tune, one that’s never been played. This child is doomed to fail, to be frustrated, because this tune doesn’t exist, all possible melodies have already been considerrred on the keyboard, due to the simple fact that a keyboard exists with a determinate combination of keys. You see? But the new is what the child does, he wants to make something new. The new is the desire for the new. The new is the child’s stubbornness. This is the parrradox of art. You have to seek out the new. If you don’t seek, you don’t find.’
‘What’s his name?’ I asked.
‘Who?’
‘The German guy who said that.’
‘Theodor Adorno. Read Adorno, you’ll like him.’
Before the crowd started ridiculing me again I got myself off the hook: ‘When do you think I’ve got time to read, boss? I’ve got to work, you’ve no idea how lousy the life of a taco seller is.’
Raurell winked at me, raised his left hand, the right one busy trying to keep hold of the taco disintegrating between his fingers, and waved his index finger in the air as he spoke in a loud voice, so everyone could hear him: ‘I’ve had better conversation about art at this taco stand than in Harvard, I swear!’
Later on, Raurell was killed; he was eating in a restaurant in the centre of town, not far from my stand, when there was an armed robbery; he put up a fight and they shot him. It was in all the newspapers. He was thirty-four years old. In the Museo Tamayo there was an exhibition on Matisse that he had curated, so colourful and joyous it seemed like a macabre joke. The following year they captured El Negro Durazo. He was accused of extortion, possession of illegal weapons, smuggling and corruption, and was sent to rot in jail. He was one customer I wasn’t sad to lose.