Quesadillas (9 page)

Science had yet to develop reasonable bulls that would inform the cattle ranchers of exactly which were the specimens in heat. Explained thus, one might even think that the bulls were solely responsible for the torment they went through, because of being so impulsive. They couldn’t be trusted, so the farmer had to resort to surgical repression: either attaching the bull’s penis to its abdomen or diverting the course of its trajectory. In the first case, the bull mounted the female but was doomed to make do with frottage
–
which is exquisite, let’s not deny it, but when you’re so close … The second case was a bad joke in a bedroom farce: the bull tried and tried but never hit the target.

Just imagine the opinion modern cows must have of bulls.

There was a third, more disturbing possibility: androgynous cows. The procedure consisted of injecting the females with hormones to turn them into lesbians. Cows mounting cows: could there be anything more erotic?

Once oestrus had been detected, all that remained was the boring part: depositing semen of proven genetic quality inside the cows. This was Jaroslaw’s business: selling Canadian bull semen. The catalogues detailed the genealogy of each bull and his daughters’ vital statistics. The quality of their udders, hoofs, haunches, what their milk was like. Some bulls had produced over a million doses and had daughters in fifty countries. There was a film that Jaroslaw would show his clients,
Masters of Semen
. It was a eulogy to the three best specimens from the Canadian company: you saw them grazing in verdant fields, with snow-capped mountains in the background, and then you saw them furiously attacking artificial vaginas, receptacles designed to capture their precious semen.

We were in the realms of bovine melancholy: cows who had never been penetrated and studs amusing themselves with mechanical females.

On the occasions that Jaroslaw carried out the insemination, I performed a fundamental role: I took charge of the antisepsis. I had to put my hand into the cow’s anus, remove the excrement from the rectum and leave it all
–
anus, rectum, vulva, vaginal vestibule
–
squeaky clean. It sounds disgusting, but it was a comforting task. The heat inside the cow, her docility, the gentle trembling and moos she emitted and which I attributed to my explorations.

Only once did Jaroslaw allow me to climax: to insert the pistol into the cow’s vagina and deposit the semen. My gloved right hand entered the animal’s vagina, pointing in the indicated direction, under Jaroslaw’s attentive supervision.

‘That’s it, that’s it,’ he
said.

The sensation of heat around my hand made me feel at home, but not in my parents’ home, in
my home
, a place in the world that was mine and that gave me a sense of comfort only the abandonment of existence can produce. Jaroslaw held my wrist and confirmed the position of the pistol.

‘Now,’ he said, ‘now pull the trigger!’

I pulled
it.

I felt the pistol shudder.

And I had the first frottage-free orgasm of my
life.

‘I’ve got a surprise for
you.’

This is what my father said to me one evening when I got back from work. For the occasion he’d come up with a guilty smile that presaged a piece of bad news that, he had decided, would be wonderful. I walked over to him like an obedient chicken. Sure enough, he stroked my neck again, but he did it so vigorously it felt like he wanted to numb the
area.

A surprise?

It’ll be a guillotine, I thought. Well, almost: Aristotle had come home. My mother and siblings were sitting captivated at his feet, listening to his adventures, I suppose, when he saw me come in and decided to re-establish the order prior to our departure in one fell swoop.

‘What happened to your face, arsehole?’

Playing dumb is usually pretty convincing and it would be my word against his, his status as older brother versus the bad rep I’d garnered for myself with the hoax of the little red button. You can’t fight for the truth when your rival’s name is Aristotle. Names are destiny. My father seemed to remember this for a moment; his face clouded over at the possibility that I would act up to my own namesake and start brutally murdering everyone. But I wasn’t cut out to do something like that, not even to commit suicide. What’s more, my sister was too young to incite me to deal out cruel revenge.

I chose to remain quiet and withdrawn, an attitude consistent with the trauma of having lost my pre-eminent position in the family. The small pleasure hadn’t even lasted three months, and had achieved next to nothing, considering the number of affronts I had accrued. And now, watch out, because Archilochus was whispering his verses into Aristotle’s
ear.

We sat down to eat dinner. In order to have enough for Aristotle’s six quesadillas, my mother had to implement the rationing protocol. Each quesadilla lost around five grams. And there was fuck all we could do about it. As if that weren’t enough, my parents didn’t interrogate Aristotle, they didn’t demand he tell them the truth, or at least they preferred not to do so in front of the rest of us. What was Aristotle going to do? Tell us about his close encounters with the aliens? Instead of speculating, I decided to offer him up as a sacrifice in exchange for him telling us his version of events.

‘And the twins?’

‘They’re
ok.’

‘Where are they?’

‘With
them
.’

‘With them?’

‘Yes, with
them
.’

‘And how do you know they’re
ok?’

‘
They
told
me.’

‘They? You mean the twins, you saw them?’

‘Don’t be stupid,
them
, not them.’

Who were
they
? My parents weren’t interested in analysing the ambiguity of the phrase and steering it back towards literalness; they pretended to be absorbed in the TV and the griddle pan. It was one thing to contradict
me
, to call
me
a liar, and another, very different thing to do so with Aristotle: our broken family urgently needed a bit of structure. It wouldn’t be my parents, of all people, who demolished the pillar that had just returned to shore up our derelict house.

Jaroslaw must have thought something similar, and he wasn’t worried about Aristotle’s well-being or about controlling the risk he might pose to the happy state of affairs; he didn’t think my brother needed to go and learn his lesson in a police cell. I was determined to convince him otherwise, but the dish of revenge was so cold by now I would have to get a move on. Jaroslaw had to realise that the intellectual author of the burglary had really been Aristotle, that I had merely jumped over the wall and shown him where the supplies were, coerced by his promises. I took advantage of my jaw’s lengthy period of unemployment one breakfast time to update him, since inevitably I always finished the two quesadillas I was given before Jaroslaw had eaten his seven
gorditas
.

‘I wanted to say sorry.’

‘What for? What have you done?’

‘No, nothing, nothing new. For the burglary, I mean.’

‘That’s behind us now. Don’t worry about
it.’

‘But we didn’t really know each other before and now I want to say sorry again.’

‘All right, fine.’

‘But I wanted you to know that Aristotle was the one who planned it
all.’

‘It doesn’t matter. It’s over
now.’

‘It was his idea to go in and steal things, and he made me explain what the house was like and where all the stuff
was.’

‘I said don’t worry. Leave
it.’

‘Aren’t you going to put him in prison like you did to
me?’

‘No.’

‘Why
not?’

‘One of you was enough.’

Special offer: two-for-one justice
–
the only problem being my brother got it for free while I paid full price. And as for the education derived from my experience in jail, what was I supposed to do with it? Transmit to Aristotle the resentment it had caused me so that he would learn from it as
well?

‘Doesn’t he have to learn
too?’

‘What?’

‘You told me it was for my own good.’

‘That was your father’s idea.’

What was my father’s idea? That it was possible to become good through an empirical knowledge of trauma? That it’s valid to betray one’s son by organising a plot behind his back so that he learns a lesson? Or was he just the author of the phrase everyone had kept repeating to me that
day?

‘Did my dad ask you to report
me?’

‘I didn’t say that. What do you think?’

This is what I thought: that my dad and Jaroslaw were a couple of sons of bitches.

‘Your father is a good person.’

My plan had backfired. When we finished work I asked Jaroslaw to drop me off in town, with the excuse that I had to run some errands, when in actual fact I was just telling common-or-garden deceitful little tales.

I went to the police station to look for Officer Mophead. I found him engaged in the unnatural activity of reading a
file.

‘Is my uncle here?’

‘No, of course not. It’s not like he lives here.’

‘Did you hear that Aristotle came back?’

‘From the dead? No shit!’

‘My brother, my older brother.’

‘I know what you mean. It was a joke. Your dad really took the piss with those godawful names he gave
you.’

It could have been worse: having those names and Officer Mophead’s hair and his sense of humour. But you know what they say: God tightens the noose but doesn’t strangle
you.

‘It was
him.’

‘What?’

‘I said it was
him.’

‘What
was?’

‘He was the intellectual author of the burglary.’

‘Oh, damn, did you learn that from the telly? “Intellectual author”
–
how refined!’

‘He made me do
it.’

‘Do you want to report your brother?’

‘No, that’s not
it.’

‘What do you want, then?’

‘It’s for the investigation.’

‘What investigation?’

‘Into the burglary. I’m giving you information so you can solve the case.’

‘What the hell are you talking about? There is no case; Jaroslaw withdrew his accusation. Do you want them to screw your brother? It’s Jaroslaw you’ve got to convince.’

I looked at his hair, where at that moment the most tangled of the curls were taking control of the rest of the hairs, which had meekly retreated before the relentless advance of the frizz. I kept staring at his hair because I didn’t want to look at his face, at that expression I knew he was making to reproach me for betraying my family.

‘Hey, how old is Aristotle?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘Whoa! So if you manage to get Jaroslaw to report him and he doesn’t withdraw the accusation quickly, then him they
will
send to a juvenile detention centre.’

Officer Mophead worried about Aristotle? It was as if I’d moved to another country. And on the news too: suddenly they were no longer interested in reporting the string of percentages that illustrated our eternal march towards economic collapse. There would be elections the following year and all that mattered now was speculating as to who was going to orchestrate our cataclysms for us when the new administration came in. It was as if the president
–
and the whole country with him
–
was desperate to palm off the hole he’d been digging so diligently for the last few years on to someone else. My father expended just two words on the best-positioned man in the presidential race: dwarf and baldy. Over the next six years, and forever more, he tried out all possible variations of the two. Lousy dwarf. Bald piece of shit. Bastard dwarf. Chicken-shit dwarf. Bald arsehole. Thieving dwarf. Cocky little dwarf. Lousy bald crook. Bald son-of-a-bitch. Dwarf son-of-a-bitch. Lousy bald bastard arsehole son-of-a-bitch. Without pausing for breath.

My father wasn’t in the mood for worrying about the catastrophic state of the nation just now. His emergencies were local ones: the interim mayor
–
who had been put in place after the electoral fraud, followed by the capture and evacuation of the town hall
–
was taking advantage of the impunity typical of his position, exacerbated by the fleeting nature of his mandate, to authorise dividing the Cerro de la Chingada up into
lots.

It was a project to create an upmarket housing development on the western side of the hill
–
where we lived
–
since apparently the rich were growing tired of their hectic lives in the centre and wanted to spend the night among acacia trees, contemplating the town from on high. Given that the hill’s name was not exactly a great promotional device, the project had the pretentious
–
and sarcastic, if we took it personally
–
name of Olympus Heights
.
To tell the truth, not only had Jaroslaw been right in his real-estate predictions, but he was actually involved in the deal too. It begged the question of what came first: whether Jaroslaw was the chicken in the process of laying that particular egg, or whether the project was going to hatch from the egg Jaroslaw had foreseen. Whatever it was, various partners took it in turn to incubate the egg, among them the two most prominent families of Lagos, the ones that had controlled political and economic life since colonial times, and whose ranches by a causal coincidence happened to be clients of Jaroslaw.

Jaroslaw and my father had regular discussions, although really Jaroslaw was the insistent one: he would come by our house in the evenings and ask my father to come out and talk in the street. By street, I mean the dirt track that led to our house and the Poles’ mansion, deep in the hills. My father didn’t tell us anything about these conversations but Jaroslaw made sure I knew, because he had a little part set aside for me in his plan: I was going to have to incubate that egg for a little while
too.

‘I’m offering your father a really good deal. But your father is very stubborn and refuses to have anything to do with it. He doesn’t realise that with this deal you’d all be much better off. He’s got some very strange ideas. Do you know what I’m talking about?’

‘No.’

‘Your dad hasn’t told you anything?’

‘No.’

‘Haven’t you heard him talk to your mother about this?’

‘No.’

‘I’m not surprised she doesn’t know anything. I need to speak with her. What time does your father leave for school?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know? Do you like living in that dump? Wouldn’t you like to live in a nicer house?’

The deal was that our dump was in the way. Jaroslaw was offering to buy our house, that is, the land, at the current market price. My father refused to sell it, because of an incomprehensible attachment, although Jaroslaw thought it was because he had ambitions to sell it when the price rocketed once the hill had been developed. Nonetheless, Jaroslaw said it was now or never, that he knew how my father had ‘bought’ the land and that if he didn’t accept his, Jaroslaw’s, offer, as the rest of the hill’s wretched occupants had already done, then we would end up with nothing.

‘I haven’t told your father this yet, because I know him and I know how he’s going to react.’ (I knew how too: by summoning the Achaean army.) ‘I want to do things the right way, but if this matter isn’t sorted out fast the bulldozers will appear any day now and they’ll tear down your house. Go and tell your mother I need to speak to
her.’

Now I could see why Jaroslaw hadn’t reported Aristotle. First, because while negotiations were ongoing he couldn’t afford to fall out with my father. And second because, if he did end up tearing down our house, he probably thought that was enough of a lesson. The rich were like God, who tightens the noose but doesn’t strangle you. However, I needed Jaroslaw to forget about the Christian God and move on to the fantasy of one of those Greek gods who know no mercy and enjoy crushing mortals.

‘I’ll help you if you do me a favour.’

‘
I’m
doing
you
the favour, can’t you
see?’

‘But we can help each other.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I want you to report Aristotle and not withdraw your accusation.’

‘I’m not going to do that. Are you mad? I’m not going to fall out with your parents right
now.’

‘So don’t do it now, do it later. There’s no hurry.’

It was true, there wasn’t any hurry: I’d been waiting my whole life for this moment, so why not wait a little longer?

‘Hey, don’t be a bad person.’

A bad person? The chicken talking about
eggs?

At last I was really living up to my name: receiving secret assignments, plotting conspiracies, carrying out despicable tasks. I tackled my mother during one of the brief periods when she wasn’t crying.