Once I’ve settled my father in front of the TV, I go down to the shed in the yard to fetch my Sarasqueta shotgun, my cartridge belt and my Wellingtons, and I call to the dog in a tone of voice that he understands to mean: Get in the car. I hold open the door of my four-wheel drive and in he jumps and curls up in the back, still watching my every move. He’s a very docile creature, a good hunter, but, above all, a good companion. He lies down beside me in the workshop and stays there for hours, and if I sit in the armchair in the living room, he comes over and rests his head on my thigh, as if to say that he’s there if I need him, that I can count on him. I’ve never seen him be aggressive with anyone, far less try to bite them. He does growl if someone — usually the neighbor’s cat — goes anywhere near his bowl. Greed is his only defect, but that’s more a sign of a healthy dog really. Wherever I sit, he lies down next to me and watches me, but he’s always very still, apart from when he wags his tail or comes over to rub against my leg or to stand on his back legs, resting his front paws on my chest (easy does it, you’re going to push me over), staring up at me and barking, which is his way of speaking to me, of demanding my attention. He barks, too, when he sees me talking to someone or hears me on my cell phone, and then his barking becomes more insistent. He’s jealous. If I take him out hunting, he runs a few feet ahead of me, turning round now and then, so as not to lose that contact between man and dog. Sometimes, he runs so fast that his agility (such harmony of movement between legs and back) still fills me with admiration. He returns, panting, sometimes carrying in his mouth the creature I’ve just brought down.
With the dog sprawled in the backseat, I turn on the engine, which starts on the first try, even though it’s been a few days since I’ve driven it. Tom’s a good dog, the Toyota is a good car. We’ve had some unforgettable times up at the lagoon, plunging into the mud, into the water and the shifting sands of the marshy areas; during the winter, I love driving along the beach, right on the very edge of the sea, where the waves break on the shore. And I’ve emerged from all those situations unscathed, it’s never once let me down. I feel something very special when I take the wheel. The moment I open the door, I enjoy the car and smell the leather of its seats. I enjoy driving; I stroke the wheel and am filled with sadness, already missing that contact, thinking that soon yet another pleasure will be gone. And knowing this causes a wave of melancholy to rise up from my chest into my eyes. Life’s a waste of time, my father used to say. Well, yes, you old bastard, yours at the moment is a waste of time several times over, dragging our lives down with you. Before setting off, I glanced in the rearview mirror and caught sight of the dog’s alert eyes and thought how sad that the wisdom they express will vanish along with us, will just end up amid the detritus of our own personal garbage can. The lives of pets don’t seem to be compatible with economic returns either. Despite everything you know, dog, despite everything you’ve learned, despite the supple movements of your back when you run, despite the skill with which you sniff out your prey and diligently bring it back to me, you, too, are going to have to say goodbye to all this. What’s to be done? I think, and only then, with the ignition key between my fingers, my eyes fixed on the dog’s eyes, only then do I hesitate and feel like crying. The damn dog.
First, you mash the corn, then you add the beans and a bay leaf, heat up the stock, peel the plantains, grate the yucca. Liliana’s voice. It’s really delicious. The dog’s eyes. From the workshop, I drive along the road that skirts La Marina beach, past the apartment blocks and the gardens that peer over the walls — palm trees, bougainvilleas, jasmines, thujas, the complete catalogue of plants from the local nurseries — and on as far as the junction with Route 332. The two roads meet in a kind of suburban landscape: abandoned orchards, scrub, rubble that the autumn rains have covered in grass, the characteristic adornment of these areas that were about to be reclassified as urban in the latter years of the economic boom, but which remain in a kind of legal limbo, an apparent no-man’s land on which shacks have sprung up, doubtless built by people from Eastern Europe or by Moroccans who work as agricultural laborers and go marauding for metal, discarded household appliances, old furniture, copper, and whatever else they can find or steaclass="underline" they’ll take anything, they’ll rip up pipes, irrigation hoses, cables; they’ll make off with tractors, with tons of fruit and even destroy whole orchards; it wouldn’t be the first time a farmer has arrived at his orange grove to find that every tree has been chopped down to be sold for firewood. They work as scrap dealers near their local shantytown, piling up scrap metal and strewing around them the mutilated carcasses of cars, fridges, washing machines and old air-conditioning units, and all within sight of the housing developments advertised on the huge roadside billboards as “luxury estates.” People don’t care: as long as the marauders don’t throw their garbage over the wall and the smell of putrefaction doesn’t reach their private terrace, the whole world can sink into the shit for all they care.