‘Oh dear, I was afraid of this.’
‘What?’
‘This is happening to all Moulinex blenders.’
My victim looked at the apparatus as if it was a sister-in-law who’d just stabbed her in the back.
‘So what now?’
‘I’ll have to change the diffuser.’
‘The diffuser?’ Sometimes it was the diffuser, sometimes the combi gauge, the check valve or the axis.
‘Yeah, don’t worry. I’ll get it cheap for you. There’s a place where they sell used ones.’
Until the day came when my fame was such the people started coming to me to fix devices that I hadn’t broken. What’s more, so many coincidences occasionally raised suspicions that began to acquire an air of menace. I decided it was time to hit the road. Jalos, San Miguel El Alto, Pegueros, Tepatitlán; in four months I was in Zapotlanejo, right on the doorstep of Guadalajara. I said goodbye to each town with a spectacular performance, an immensely complicated operation I was immersed in for hours and for which I charged the amount I needed for the bus ticket and expenses for the following few days, which I would spend exploring my new territory. I had a crisis in Pegueros, where the little device stopped working, but I quickly discovered that all I had to do was change the batteries. In Tepa a policeman interrogated me: where did I live, who were my parents; but there were so many kids on the street it soon became obvious how useless his humanitarian efforts were and he left me in peace.
It turned out that my dad was partly right: cities might be bigger or smaller, uglier or prettier, but they were all the same damn thing, at least in this part of the world. In any case, surviving was a hobby that left no spare time for ontological speculations. It was like at home, except the competition had multiplied exponentially. All over the world there were a fuckload of grabbing hands, millions of hands with their ten times millions of fingers, struggling to pilfer its fruits. At least the fruits were more varied. Instead of just a few measly quesadillas, there were gorditas and huaraches, tamales and tacos de canasta. Of course, I still preferred quesadillas, because I couldn’t afford a psychoanalyst, but from time to time I ventured into the uncharted territory of diversification. The world of nixtamal was broad and wide.
My skill was not so great that I could escape the tangled sheets of poverty, but I didn’t go hungry. I ate every day, and occasionally I allowed myself a bath and a bed for the night in a hostel. I thought of Jarek every day; what would the poor little kid do in my situation? He wouldn’t even last three minutes in the dead-end alleys life sent me down. The teddy bears could do what they liked in their woodland fantasy, but the street belonged to men. Slowly, magnificently, my poor man’s pride was blossoming.
In most of the beings with whom I shared my condition — whether they were humans or dogs — the street had aroused a gregarious sentiment as a defensive formula for survival. They acted in groups, certain that in this way their chances would increase. However, the results always had to be divided and the equation wasn’t cost-effective: when the probability was multiplied by three, the results were divided by eight. I looked after myself, for mathematical reasons and above all because I was sick of taking part in cut-and-thrust negotiations. I could have stayed at home for that.
On my second day in each town, without fail, a ragged mob would confront me. They’d have been spying on me and in this they had an advantage: they knew all the streets and corners of the city by heart, so very quickly spotted any anomaly. The ringleader was always older, the street replicating the model of the family.
‘How do you do it?’
‘What?’
‘Fix the appliances.’
‘I know about electrical things.’
‘Teach us.’
‘No.’
‘Give us the money.’
‘I don’t have any. I work for food.’
‘Liar. We’ve seen you get money.’
‘It’s for parts.’
‘Give us some food.’
‘Why?’
‘Because.’
‘Oh.’
‘Don’t act dumb.’
‘No, I won’t.’
‘We’re gonna fuck you up.’
‘What?’
My attitude wasn’t bluster. In the food chain I might have been an amoeba, but they were plankton.
‘Stop acting dumb.’
‘Do you know what I fixed yesterday? The police radio.’
The implicit threat never failed. It wasn’t greed that put an end to my survival strategy — as they teach you in telenovelas, which love to warn the poor how damn risky it is to try to get rich. It was coincidence again, the same bitch who had given me everything. One morning I was carrying out a routine operation at a juice stand in Tonalá when a man in a tie started watching me.
‘You’re good, you son of a bitch.’
‘Thank you, sir. My dad taught me. He has a workshop in San Miguel.’
‘Don’t act dumb. You don’t know shit about wiring. I don’t know how you do it, but it’s a good trick.’
I suddenly grew nervous and began to violate my own rules, to do things I never did. I dismantled one of the components, removed a cable.
‘Calm down, relax, finish up, and when you’re done we’ll talk.’
I took as long as I could. It was ridiculous, as I was working on a fucking juicer. I had to apologise and promise the juice-seller I wouldn’t charge her. I thought the tie man would get tired of waiting for me, but he seemed to have all the time in the world. He acted so calm, it was as if his minutes had a hundred seconds. I’d made such a hell of a mess that the parts didn’t fit any more; now I was even trying to stick an antenna into the machine. In the end I gave up and had to pay for my stupidity. It’s the guarantee, I kept saying to the woman, as if I was a representative from General Electric. A back-to-front world; that’s what happens when you get tangled up with coincidence. I tried to run away, but the tie man lassoed me with the prestige of his neckwear and dragged me off with an invitation to have breakfast in the restaurant on the corner.
It was the kind of place I’d never have dared to set foot in, not because of the quality of their quesadillas but because of the sad practice of self-imposed socio-economic levelling. I mean, there were two televisions, and what’s more, there were waiters. The one spying on us from afar was wavering between taking our order and calling the police. The place was full to bursting with men in ties and secretaries, so that it was impossible not to imagine the parallel phenomenon: empty reception desks and offices and large numbers of people forming long lines of pent-up exasperation. Queues are where resignation meets its match.
‘What do you want?’
‘Quesadillas.’
‘What kind?’
‘Cheese.’
‘Seriously?’
The tie man scanned the menu looking for culinary arguments to mock me with.
‘They have quesadillas with courgette flowers, with chicharrón, with chilli and onion, or with huitlacoche.’
‘Chicharrón.’
‘How many?’
‘Five.’
‘Three.’
‘Four.’
‘Three.’
He called the waiter over with an imperceptible telepathic nod, to which the other man replied by gracing us with his presence, his head adorned with a little black bun pressed against the collar of his filthy white shirt. He adopted a diligent pose, shaking his notebook and pen so as to enact the urgency of the moment, as if we were going to dictate the next winning lottery number to him. But let’s not kid ourselves: his tip was at stake. It seemed everyone was constantly overacting, reading from a script full of clichés, which was understandable given the system of wealth distribution the country adhered to.