The afternoon went by with Margo Glantz watching her son and Cockerspaniel sleep, noting how the animal’s small, furry body slid almost imperceptibly across the room as the sun sank in the sky and the parallelogram of light entering through the window and falling onto the floor moved toward the wall, indicating, in this way, the passage of the hours.
When the sun had finally set, and the patch of light had completely disappeared, Cockerspaniel opened his eyes. Margo Glantz was standing above him, holding a saucepan by the handle. Using the base of the pan, she hit him five times on the head. Once Cockerspaniel was dead, she carefully skinned the rabbit and cooked it in rosemary, bay leaf, and white wine. After she’d finished her dinner, she tenderly woke her son and opened the living room window wide, letting in the cool, damp night air.
ALLEGORIC LOT NO. 3: RAT AND MOUSE COSTUMES
Artist: Peter Sánchez Fischli
Listing: 3M
The young lady Valeria Luiselli, a mediocre high school student, stammered and overused the suffix — ly. As her parents, Mrs. Weiss and Mr. Fischli, wanted her to give a speech at her fifteenth birthday party, they sent her to singing, elocution, and public speaking classes. Her party was to be a very elegant celebration in the neighborhood dance hall, and the girl needed to prepare herself for the occasion.
For the elocution and public speaking classes, they hired the famous teacher Guillermo Sheridan. The first sentence that Professor Guillermo Sheridan taught Valeria Luiselli to say was: “Titus Livy had a conk like a coconut and Octavio Paz was a big head.” Despite the shortness and simplicity of the sentence, it took the young girl a lot of effort to pronounce it correctly. Every time she made a mistake, Professor Guillermo Sheridan would hit her on the palm of the hand with a cane. The girl had to repeat the same sentence 112 times before her teacher called an end to the first session.
That night, while they were eating a dinner of octopus a la gallega with white rice, the girl’s parents asked her how her first public speaking class had gone, and if she had learned anything useful that she would like to share with them. The young girl said:
Titus Livy was a cokehead.
What’s that, my girl? asked her father.
Titus Livy was a cokehead, repeated the adolescent.
Valeria Luiselli’s parents looked each other in the eyes and ate the rest of their octopus in silence.
That night, the young girl’s progenitors put on their plush rat and mouse costumes, and, instead of reading or watching television, as they did almost every other night, they committed an act of outlandish, noisy, uninterrupted coitus. When they had finished, still half-dressed in their costumes, the couple lay silently staring at the ceiling.
ALLEGORIC LOT NO. 4: SHIT MOUNTAIN
Artist: Damián Sánchez Ortega
Listing: 4M
Yuri Herrera, captain of the Alpha Patrol, was voted best traffic policewoman in 2011. One sleepless Sunday night, Captain Yuri Herrera memorized the whole of the famous speech from Macbeth that begins, “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. .” She recited it in front of the mirror one last time at 5:25 a.m. while arranging her hair into a bun, held in place by a number of bobby pins and barrettes. Then she put her whistle between her teeth and blew.
She went out into the street looking impeccable. As she was turning the corner of Amapola and Amapolas, she met her fellow policewoman, Vivian Abenshushan, the Omega Patrol’s hostage negotiator.
What’ve we got today, Abenshushan? she asked.
The 10–14 in Avenida Morelos in 11–27 toward Parque del Amor, partner. We’re just in time.
Captain Abenshushan was taller and stronger than Captain Herrera, but they were equally valiant.
At that moment, Terence Gower and Rubén Gallo, owners of the Couscous & Chopsticks public sauna, came by, mounted on identical bicycles, and waved to the two policewomen. The officers straightened their shoulders, smiled, and returned the greeting by blowing their whistles. At that moment, the 10–14 passed, wound down the window of his brown Nissan Tsuru, and threw an empty plastic bottle in their direction. The bottle fell at Captain Abenshushan’s feet, and, furious, she kicked it as hard as she could into the street. Thanks to the friendly cyclists, they had, once again, failed to apprehend the 10–14 who chucked an empty Coke bottle at them every morning.
My life is a mountain of shit, said Captain Abenshushan in a slightly theatrical voice. Captain Yuri Herrera, who, being older, was better prepared to resist the blows of another day, identical to the one before and the one to come and the one after that, recited to her partner, in the vehement, earnest tone only learned in the police academy, the Shakespearean monologue she’d memorized the night before.
Captain Abenshushan listened attentively, harboring the vague suspicion that her partner was beginning to go soft in the head. But she immediately repressed this thought deep within her and blew her whistle twice, in a demonstration of gratitude for Captain Herrera’s empathy. Feeling they deserved a break, Captains Herrera and Abenshushan decided to have breakfast at the gorditas stand owned by Toño Ortuño, Las Gorditas de Pancho Villa, on the corner of Isabel la Católica, in the hope that the morning would pass quickly.
ALLEGORIC LOT NO. 5: PROSTHETIC LEG
Artist: Abraham Cruzvillegas Sánchez
Listing: 6M
One day Unamuno went to the store to buy hens’ eggs. Unamuno didn’t eat eggs, but his wife, who had a wooden leg, wanted to make an omelet and asked Unamuno to go to Daniel Saldaña París’s store and buy eggs. She explicitly requested that they be white, not brown.
Unamuno came back from the store with a paper bag full of brown eggs. Looking into the bag and noting that the eggs were not the color she’d wanted, the woman shouted, Idiot! and made him go back to the store for white eggs.
Unamuno went back to the store, where, this time, he bought white eggs. When he returned home, he found his wife asleep on the bed. The woman had left her wooden leg leaning against the rolltop desk, as she always did when she took a midmorning nap.
Then, Unamuno placed the bag of eggs on the carpeted floor and, using the false leg, gave her six blows to wake her up.
ALLEGORIC LOT NO. 6: BAT
Artist: Miguel Sánchez Calderón
Listing: 6M
Guillermo Fadanelli was reading The Phenomenology of Spirit by a one-quarter namesake of his, Jorge Guillermo Federico Hegel, when suddenly a midget came into the Shanghai Star restaurant in which he was seated, pulled up a chair, and sat down opposite him. The man identified himself as Pushkin. They asked the waiter for a round of beers and Pushkin started to cry. The reason for his tears, he told Guillermo Fadanelli, was that his father was a rake. The word he used was донжуан, and it is not certain if the translation “rake” is correct.
Half an hour later, Pushkin took his leave. Immediately afterwards, another midget entered the restaurant and came to sit at the table. Guillermo Fadanelli invited him to have a drink. After taking a handkerchief from his pocket, wiping away the tears streaming down his face, and noisily blowing his nose, the midget said that his name was Gogol and that the reason for his unhappiness was that he’d learned that his father was a degenerate. In this case, the word he used was