The Story of My Teeth (9 page)

I don’t know what you’re talking about, I replied.

I then noticed that the voice was, in fact, coming from a loudspeaker in the ceiling, and that there were three other speakers, one in each corner of the room.

My cream, bloody Fancioulle. My face is cracking up and I want to take my makeup off.

I don’t use cream. I’m neither a woman nor a clown, and I don’t make myself up.

So you’re not a clown? Bloody, toothless, deceitful Fancioulle.

My name is Gustavo Sánchez Sánchez, but people call me Highway, out of affection.

Give it a rest.

And I’m the best auctioneer in the world.

Yeah? And what did you come to auction to us?

Not knowing how to respond, I held my tongue. The clown went on talking. He asked me if I knew the parable of the pearl, and, without waiting for me to reply, he began to give me a detailed explanation. He spoke to me as one does to a small child or a foreigner, pronouncing each word slowly and correctly:

Jesus said, “My Father’s kingdom can be compared to a person who had a treasure hidden in his field but did not know it. And when he died he left it to his son. The son did not know about the treasure either. He took over the field and sold it. The buyer ploughed the field, discovered the treasure, and began to lend money at interest to whomever he wished.”
Do you understand this, Fancioulle?

Yes, of course. I went to Sunday School.

So what does it mean?

It means you should check what’s in your father’s field before you sell it.

Imbecile.

The clown blinked and gave a long, unembarrassed yawn. Then he said: You’re the most unexciting, stupid person I know, Fancioulle. He immediately closed his eyes and, it seemed to me, from the sound of his breathing, that he had fallen into a deep sleep.

I was certain that I had gone to hell. During the long family meals I had to endure in my childhood, my cousin, Juan Pablo Sánchez Sartre, who used to wear white plastic flip-flops and couldn’t hold his drink, would inevitably tell us—around the time when the dessert was being served—that we were hell. He used to shout at us, curse us; sometimes he threw objects or scraps of food left scattered on the tablecloth, especially soft grains of rice, and then left, slamming the door loudly behind him. We wouldn’t see him again until the next family gathering, when the same act was repeated, with slight variations. And so it went, every couple of months, until one day Juan Pablo committed suicide by having a heart attack during spinning class under the effects of a powerful amphetamine. End of family memory. But it could be that there was something in poor Juan Pablo’s theory. Since then, I’ve always thought that hell is the people you could one day become. The most frightening ones. For Juan Pablo, they were his most contemptible
relations—the corrupt uncles, the aunts smelling of cosmetics, the unremarkable cousins. Other people are afraid of their enemies and superiors; others of the loonies who walk along the streets talking to themselves or the madwomen who scour their skin in public; some can’t tolerate the presence of the poor, amputees, vagrants. For me, there’s no one more ominous than a human being dressed up as a clown, probably because I’ve always been scared of being perceived as one. And there I was, toothless, lying on a bench in front of videotaped projections of enormous buffoons, dozing—or maybe depressed to the point of catatonia—being mistaken for one of them.

I felt the urge to run, the erection that had initially held me back no longer being an impediment. But immediately I realized that there was no point in running. Where would I go? And what good would it do? Instead, I stood up and walked around the room. It was a square no larger than twenty paces across and twenty wide. Bare, except for the four large screens upon which the sleeping clowns were projected. Near the door that had been left ajar, a small wall text read: “Ugo Rondinone.
Where do we go from here?
Four video installations, sound, ink on wall, wood, yellow neon light.” I pushed the door fully open and peeked out. The room gave onto another, much larger and well illuminated. I crossed the threshold and walked around that larger space. Placed in odd spots and in corners were a series of objects: a billboard featuring a horse inside a hotel room, a sleeping stuffed dog, a couple of plush rat and mouse costumes, a hairy prosthetic leg, a tiny baobab tree, a pile of whistles, a
music score on a tripod, and a fake window consisting solely of light thrown onto the wall by halogen spotlights. The last of these I found particularly beautiful, and thought it might be worth collecting, or at least copying the idea for my warehouse, which didn’t have as many windows as a decent place should.

I was trying to gauge how much the spotlights weighed when I heard the same phlegmatic voice in the other room. I sauntered back, taking my time.

Are you still here, Fancioulle?

Where am I supposed to go? I said, returning to sit on my bench.

You said you’d fetch my mother’s
VW
from the pound, and don’t try to pretend you didn’t. It was your fault they towed it away, Fancioulle.

I didn’t say I’d do anything. Who are you? Where are you?

Here, on your right.

Now I understood. Although the voice was the same, it was now purportedly coming from the direction of the clown in the brightly colored bodysuit. If it was intended to be convincing, this was a really bad production. The second clown was blaming me for having parked a white
VW
in a space that was obviously for disabled drivers, and, in addition to showing a lack of concern for invalids on my part, it had been, he claimed, an act of extreme passive-aggressive violence toward him and his progenitor. Generalized lack of consideration for others and passive-aggressive violence were, as he went on to explain, typical characteristics of depression.
It was, therefore, clear that I was deeply depressed, so he respectfully suggested that I go to a psychologist or psychoanalyst, and he also advised me to sleep at least eight hours a day, stop drinking alcohol, and definitely take a lot of exercise, since that leads to the production of large amounts of serotonin in the cerebellum and the hypothalamus. I interrupted:

Why don’t you go get the
VW
? What are you doing lying there?

Me? I’m just here, making some thoughts.

What do you mean,
making
thoughts? You don’t
make
thoughts.

You might not. I do.

Really? Like what?

Well, right now, for example, I’m thinking that dogs are truly contemptible animals, as well as being dangerous, and that they should be wiped out.

A very profound thought, I said with forced sarcasm. What else?

I’ve also made the thought that Italian politics are ridiculous; that stray cats can turn violent in spite of being almost always good-natured, fiercely independent beings; that abusive couples aren’t at all uncommon; that people are obliging due to fear; that lots of primary school teachers are cruel; that
The Little Prince
is a book for kitsch forty-somethings; and that it doesn’t make sense to have so many saints in the Gregorian calendar.

Ah, I said, or perhaps I didn’t. Perhaps I only sighed. Or maybe I just breathed.

I also think, for example, that the fact that you’ve forgotten to get the car has to do with Bacon’s parable of the horse’s teeth.

Another parable?

Shut up and pay attention:

In the year of our Lord 1432, there arose a grievous quarrel among the brethren over the number of teeth in the mouth of a horse. For thirteen days the disputation raged without ceasing. All the ancient books and chronicles were fetched out, and wonderful and ponderous erudition such as was never before heard of in this region was made manifest. At the beginning of the fourteenth day, a youthful friar of goodly bearing asked his learned superiors for permission to add a word, and straightway, to the wonderment of the disputants, whose deep wisdom he sore vexed, he beseeched them to unbend in a manner coarse and unheard of and to look in the open mouth of a horse and find the answer to their questionings. At this, their dignity being grievously hurt, they waxed exceeding wroth; and, joining in a mighty uproar, they flew upon him and smote him, hip and thigh, and cast him out forthwith. For, said they, surely Satan hath tempted this bold neophyte to declare unholy and unheard-of ways of finding truth, contrary to all the teachings of the fathers. After many days more of grievous strife, the dove of peace sat on the assembly, and they as one man declaring the problem to be
an everlasting mystery because of a grievous dearth of historical and theological evidence thereof, so ordered the same writ down.

I didn’t understand a word of that, I said.

Don’t you think it’s fishy?

In what way?

In the way that you’re a toothless, despicable, old man who doesn’t understand, and forgets things and people.

Maybe you’re right, I said, feeling the shrine to guilt carving out a larger space for itself somewhere in my chest.

And are you going to fetch my car now, small, insignificant, spindle-legged, deceitful, mediocre Fancioulle?

Well, maybe.

The clown said nothing—and his silence went on long enough for me to understand that our conversation had come to an end. Perhaps he was right. Maybe I should go and buy the makeup remover and get the car out of the pound. Anyway, I had nothing else to do. But what an idiotic thought. The clowns were just videos, and the voice was clearly coming in through the loudspeaker from somewhere else. I decided to wait patiently for the voice to sound again.

T
HE FIRST TIME
I felt horror in the presence of a clown was at the age of fifteen or sixteen. I was in Balderas metro station with my friend El Perro. It was just after eleven at night, and we were coming back from playing dominoes on
a friend’s rooftop in downtown Mexico City. There was no one else in the station, just El Perro and I, waiting for the last train. At some point, we heard a sort of deep grunting sound, immediately followed by a huff. And again: grunt, huff, grunt. We looked around us—nothing, not a single soul in the station. El Perro went over and looked up the stairs connecting the platforms with the concourse. He stood there for a moment, frozen in astonishment. Then he beckoned me over and put his finger to his lips to indicate that I do so in silence. I moved cautiously toward him. Squatting on the top step, his pants at half-mast, a clown was taking a leisurely shit. I tried to stifle the laugh I felt rising up through my lungs like a nervous reflux, but was too slow. I emitted a sort of sneeze: a laugh passed through the muffler of self-constraint. The clown raised his head and looked into my eyes—he seemed to me like a defenseless animal looking straight at a possible predator, quickly realizing that the stalker is, in fact, its prey. He pulled up his pants and lunged at us. We ran, faster than we had ever before.

Terrified and disoriented, we retraced our path through the labyrinth of passages in Balderas station, looking for an unlocked exit. Rounding the corner of one passage, the clown came within grabbing distance and tackled me. I fell to the ground. He threw himself onto me, like a man throws himself onto a woman who is resisting him. Pinning me down by my lower legs, the clown let his head fall and pushed it into my belly, his
button nose embedding itself in my navel. He buried his makeup-plastered face in my white shirt and, to my surprise, burst into tears—I never knew if from shame or natural sadness.

A few seconds later, having gotten my breath back, I managed to slide from under his exhausted body, and El Perro and I continued on—now slowly and in silence—through the empty passages, until we found a way out that was open. End of memory.

For a long time, we made all kinds of jokes about that day, and told increasingly exaggerated versions of the story to our acquaintances. But beneath the laughter and buffoonery accompanying the anecdote, I felt a hot weight in my stomach every time the topic came up. I suppose the embers of humiliation I discovered burning in that clown’s eyes had never left me.

A
FTER A WHILE, THE
same lethargic, nasal voice sounded from the loudspeaker.

The great Fancioulle! it said, oozing with snide humor.

I assumed that the clown on my left was now addressing me, the one with the multiple ascending eyebrows.

I know what you’re thinking, great, great Fancioulle.

What?

You’re thinking you’re better than the rest of us.

No, that’s not so.

Have you heard the parable of the red-haired man, by the great writer and philosopher Daniil Kharms?

I have, in fact.

Well, you’re like the red-haired man he wrote about, Fancioulle, so listen carefully:

There was once a red-haired man who had no eyes or ears. Nor did he have any hair, so he was only red-haired on a theoretical level. He couldn’t speak, because he didn’t have a mouth either. Nor did he have a nose. He didn’t even have arms or legs. He had no stomach, no shoulders, no dorsal spine, and no intestines at all. The man had nothing! Hence, there is no way of knowing of whom we are talking. In fact, it would be better to say nothing else about him.

End of story.

End of story?

End of story.

That’s not a parable. It’s an allegory.