The Story of My Teeth (14 page)

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
.
Everything would appear to indicate that the translation “degenerate” is correct.

When Gogol left, a third midget came into the restaurant. Predictably, he repeated the same routine as his two predecessors and sat down at the table. Studying him as he blew his nose, Guillermo Fadanelli said: Let me guess, your name is Dostoyevsky, and you are wretched because your wife is a
. The midget stared at him in astonishment. Why do you say that? he asked, after taking a long swig of beer. Guillermo Fadanelli answered that
and gave a slightly ironic smile. You’re wrong, Guillermo. My name is Daniil Kharms, and I’m blowing my nose because I’m allergic to pollen.

At that moment, the waiter approached the table holding a basket of Chinese fortune cookies. Guillermo Fadanelli took one and split it into two halves the way you would crack an egg. He let the slip of paper fall onto the table. Then, slowly unfolding it, he read aloud:

That is how one imagines the Bat of History. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees a single catastrophe that piles ruin onto ruin and he hurls it to his feet. He would dearly like to stop, to awaken the dead and to reassemble what has been torn to shreds, but a hurricane is blowing in from Paradise and becomes tangled in his wings, forming a knot of brilliant lights, a knot so strong that the angel can no longer close its wings. This hurricane impels him inevitably toward the
future, to which his back is turned, while the rubble rises up to the sky before him. That hurricane is what we call progress. (
WALTER BENJAMIN, SLIGHTLY CHANGED
)