Invasion of the Spirit People by Juan Pablo Villalobos

Author:Juan Pablo Villalobos
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Quesadillas;quests;comedy;dogs;migration;migrants;immigration;refugees;racism;xenophobia;aliens;space aliens;UFOs;ancient astronauts;magical realism;Mexico;Spain;Barcelona;translation;comedy;foodie
Publisher: And Other Stories Publishing
Published: 2022-06-27T11:45:29+00:00

42

It’s the sedatoress who lets Gastón know, since he hasn’t clocked it. Someone is knocking at the gate, calling out good afternoon, clapping their hands together. Gastón deposits the beer can by Kitten’s flank, the animal still contentedly sleeping his morphine sleep; he leaves the protective shade of the carob tree and walks up the path that leads to the entrance to the market garden. As he gets closer, he feels a little disappointed when he realises that it’s not Pol, who has promised to drop by one day at this sort of time so that Gastón can introduce him to the sedatoress.

It’s an older man who looks vaguely familiar, and who he only identifies when it’s already too late to think better of it and turn round, although he does manage to stop walking a few feet before the gate so that the other man can see that he is not going to let him in. It’s Pol’s boss from the Tundra, the man we saw yesterday by the entrance to the restaurant.

The older man introduces himself, but before he can explain the reason for his visit Gastón cuts in.

‘How did you find me here?’ he asks.

‘Pol was always telling us about this market garden,’ the older man replies, in an attempt at playing the sentimental card, or perhaps just telling the truth. ‘The restaurant’s closed; I didn’t get any answer at his father’s house, either. I asked around and one of his neighbours told me how to get here.’

Gastón’s body asks him to turn his back on the man and walk down the slope to get back to the sedatoress, to be at Kitten’s side, the place he should be at this moment. His head, however, starts to ask questions. What if what Pol told him wasn’t a fantasy? What if at least part of it is true? What if the older man is here, on this page, with secret, dark motivations, which we aren’t yet able to understand?

‘What are you doing here?’ Gastón asks him.

We know it’s highly unlikely that the older man will tell him the truth, the whole truth, but he will at least tell his version, and this alone is important, so that we can contrast it with Pol’s.

‘I’ll be honest,’ the older man says, and Gastón prepares himself for one of two things: a lie, or a load of nonsense, ‘this isn’t just about Pablo, it goes further than that.’

The fact that the older man says ‘Pablo’ surprises us, but Gastón is used to it, he doesn’t even notice the difference between people calling him Pablo, in the colonising language, or Pol, in the native language. The older man pauses and looks at the lock on the gate, hoping that his promise to be sincere will shift Gastón’s attitude, that he will open the gate and invite him in. But the only thing that Gastón shifts is the weight of his body, from one foot to the other.

‘I head up a group of researchers,’ continues the older man, resigning himself to Gastón’s distrust.

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