~ ~ ~
The intercom buzzed as I laboured away at my notebook and drained the dregs of what until then I had thought would be the final beer of the day.
‘I’ve come from the BDD,’ said Mao’s voice on the phone.
‘Do you know what time it is?’ I asked.
‘It’s an emergency.’
‘Broken-hearted Drunks Delivery?’
‘How did you guess?’
‘The tone of your voice says it all. Did you get the whisky?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Have you got anything with you?’
‘A couple of beers and a packet of peanuts.’
‘Is that all?’
‘And a joint.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say so before? Come on up.’
He arrived after the obligatory five minutes the lift took to complete its ascent, which gave me time to put the Cuban torture into action.
‘The roaches will never leave at that volume,’ Mao said as he came in.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ I replied. ‘Francesca’s in her apartment now, supposedly sleeping, and I don’t want her to hear us.’
‘Aren’t you being a little over the top?’
‘Have you seen how thin these walls are?’
He handed me the two warm cans of beer to put in the fridge and took a little packet out of his pocket that contained, quite literally, three peanuts.
‘I got hungry on the way,’ he said apologetically.
‘And the joint?’ I asked.
He unzipped his rucksack then undid another zip inside the bag, and eventually extracted half a deformed, squashed little roll-up. As I took it from him I noticed it was warm.
‘Did you fancy a quick toke on the way too?’ I asked. ‘Have you got a lighter? I haven’t smoked for quite a while.’
‘Yeah, I figured.’
‘Really?’
‘Just the way you hold the spliff, I’ve only ever seen that in a film about The Doors.’
I took the lighter from him and walked over to the fridge. Behind me, Mao had discovered the sketchbook I’d left open, carelessly, on the armchair. Out of the corner of my eye I saw he had started to flick through it, pausing, it seemed to me, at the drawings.
‘Your pics are awesome,’ he said. ‘Do you only draw dogs and women? If you drew them together it’d be full-on perversion. You’d better watch out, you know, the last guy they caught with that fetish was accused of murdering Luis Donaldo Colosio. Remember the Eagle Knight? He had a sketchbook just like this.’
‘Did the Maoists teach you how to snoop as well or are you just rude?’
‘Hey, chill out, Grandpa, you’re so touchy. You’d better not go writing anything about me, now.’
‘As if — you’re not exactly very interesting.’
‘I’m serious, it’d put me in danger, and you too.’
From the depths of the fridge I rescued a can of Tecate beer I’d been saving since the day the lights went out for several hours. Then, from its hiding place, I took out the half-litre of whisky I had left.
‘So Dorotea’s left you, lover boy?’ I said, to change the subject.
As I expected, he lost interest in the sketchbook, putting it down on the table, and switched to concentrating on his woes.
‘You know about that?’ he asked. ‘Did the Mormon kid tell you?’
‘And there I was thinking you were trying to infiltrate the Mormons.’
‘Well, that was the idea.’
‘And it really backfired, didn’t it! You didn’t reckon with our good friend Villem’s charms, did you.’
‘I’m gonna punch his lights out, that little fucking gringo son of a bitch.’
‘Calm down, Mao, I thought you’d had a proper education.’
‘You’re offended by swear words, Grandpa? Well whaddya know.’
‘I’m talking about your sentimental education. I thought you were made of sterner stuff.’
I passed him a can of beer and flopped down on the armchair with a glass of whisky in one hand and the joint, now lit, in the other. I raised my glass to make a toast.
‘To mariachis everywhere,’ I said.
‘If you’re going to take the piss I’m leaving,’ he complained.
‘Seriously, relax kiddo, sit down. The world doesn’t end because of a woman, not even one like Dorotea. Didn’t the Maoists teach you anything about love? The next thing you know you’ll end up risking the Revolution for it.’
‘What the hell has love got to do with the Revolution?’ he asked, dragging the Corona chair over to sit down next to me.
‘It’s got everything to do with it. A true combatant shouldn’t have any ties. Have you ever, in the history of humanity, seen a real revolutionary with a wife and kids? Can you imagine a terrorist in love? Love makes you vulnerable, it makes you feel like you’ve got a lot to lose, it changes your priorities, takes away your freedom — want me to go on?’
He knocked back a long gulp of beer.
‘It’s flat.’
‘Oh is it now! Unlucky for you.’
‘And what was your Revolution? ’68, the Tlatelolco Massacre? You never had a family — or did you?’
‘In ’68 I was thirty-three, kiddo — the only revolution I fought was giving tacos away to the students who showed up at my stand.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Just for a few days. Then word got around and I had to stop. You know what they say: charity is a bottomless dish.’
‘So?’
‘So what?’
‘So why did you end up alone? There must have been a reason, no one ends up alone just because.’
‘Go and ask people why they got married, why they had kids. The world is full of people who get married just because, get divorced and remarry just because — what’s so strange about ending up alone just because?’
‘Pass it on, will you?’
I handed him the diminutive joint and, as I was out of the habit, I burned his fingers.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Kill that reefer, buddy.’
‘You sound like someone in a William Burroughs novel.’
‘You’ve read Burroughs? I thought you didn’t read.’
‘An ex-girlfriend made me read it.’
He took a pair of tweezers from his rucksack and used them to hold the tip of the joint to finish what was left.
‘So you’re not going to tell me?’ he asked.
‘Tell you what?’
‘Why you never married.’
‘I’ve already told you.’
‘Sure you’re not a poof?’
‘Yeah right, and now you’re properly pissed and stoned I’m going to rape you.’
‘So touchy. I’ll bet there’s a story behind it’.
‘Why does there have to be a story behind it? Why does there always have to be a story that explains things? Since when does life need a narrator to go around justifying people’s actions? I’m a person, not a character in a book, kiddo.’
‘If you don’t want to tell me don’t, just stop talking bullshit. I liked you better before, when you just used to read Adorno. All those books on literary theory are frying your brain.’
‘And I liked you better before too, when you used to walk like you were dancing to reggae; now you walk around jerking all over the place like a polka.’
The joint disappeared, literally, between the tweezers, and Mao leaned back in his chair to exhale, in one long puff, the last toke he’d managed to extract from it.