Read Online Quesadillas by Neel Mukherjee Rosalind Harvey Juan Pablo Villalobos - Free Book Online

declared this with such absolute determination that it was almost possible to see the pretend twins already, to tousle their hair or hear how they stayed completely silent just like they always did. One devout old woman cried that the dear Virgin had cured her dengue fever, another that the virgencita hadn’t saved her husband but she had taken him to heaven, even though he didn’t deserve it for being an argumentative drunk. You never know! You never know when you might need the virgencita , repeated the walkers representing current misfortunes, those who at that very moment had a relative at death’s door. There was a group that specialised in mourning those who’d crossed over to the other side – but not to death, just to the United States: Look after them, virgencita ! Give them work! Bring them home soon! Disneyland, pure and fucking simple, right? Quite a few of them were pre-emptive pilgrims, who up to now hadn’t needed a big miracle, just little ones, favours (which they could easily have requested from entities of a less noble pedigree; just asking for a boyfriend wasn’t a matter to bother the Virgin with, there were a shitload of saints for that). These pilgrims were gradually accumulating credits for when life played one of its classic dirty tricks on them. There was also an army of children, who were wasted because they weren’t asking for anything. They didn’t know how, they hadn’t yet been taught how to invoke other-worldly figures; they just acted like stray dogs, following crowds with fanatical obedience. In any case, it was impossible to tell if the dogs were praying, but it was clear they were loving the chaos.
    Confusion is essentially lazy and opportunistic; it doesn’t bother turning up in controlled environments but instead comes begging around propitious scenes and never wastes a crowd. And it wasn’t about to now: it started sprouting furiously, like a watermelon plant twisting around the pilgrims’ feet.
    ‘Two twins have gone missing!’
    ‘They don’t look alike, but they are twins!’
    ‘O virgencita , find them!’
    ‘Stop! We must find the little ones!’
    ‘Oh, oh, oh, why did you take them, O Lord!’
    ‘Take me, I’m old! Why do you always take the innocent ones?’
    Aristotle attempted to quell the voluble clamour all around us with his explanations, but he was at a marked numerical and, above all, temperamental disadvantage: no one takes any notice of a spoilsport.
    ‘No, listen, you’ve got it all wrong. They haven’t just gone missing, they’ve been missing for ages.’
    It was too late. The scandal protocol had already been implemented, something crowds don’t like to abandon as quickly as all that, at merely the first few clarifications; no matter how coherent or credible they might be, they’ll never have the prestige required to challenge the fantasies of melodrama. Mobs are like aliens: they don’t give a damn about logic.
    A very nervous man appeared wearing a name badge that, in large black felt-tip letters, identified him as Juan de Irapuato . He started shaking Aristotle, demanding a verbal description of the twins, quickly, before it was too late. Before my brother forgot what they looked like, did he mean? We were experiencing one of those moments of false urgency when it seems as if it’s too late for lots of things, but can the present be too late with regard to anything? Nothing but a self-satisfied sophistic exercise.
    ‘They haven’t gone missing,’ my brother tried to explain. ‘Well, they have, but not just now. They’ve been missing for a while.’
    It was fascinating the capacity that everything relating to the pretend twins had for heading straight down the path of goddamn misunderstanding. At the same time, this capacity exacerbated our own incapacity for getting people to understand us. We were sorely in need of a class of applied rhetoric. In reply to Aristotle’s pre-logical babbles, Juan de Irapuato began to demonstrate that