{"id":11398,"date":"2020-02-19T01:00:26","date_gmt":"2020-02-19T07:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/2022\/05\/from-i-dont-expect-anyone-to-believe-me-by-juan-pablo-villalobos\/"},"modified":"2023-06-06T06:31:55","modified_gmt":"2023-06-06T12:31:55","slug":"from-i-dont-expect-anyone-to-believe-me-by-juan-pablo-villalobos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/2020\/02\/from-i-dont-expect-anyone-to-believe-me-by-juan-pablo-villalobos\/","title":{"rendered":"From I Don&#8217;t Expect Anyone to Believe Me by Juan Pablo Villalobos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\" alignleft size-full wp-image-3549\" style=\"margin: 10px; float: left;\" src=\"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/idontexpectrgbhigh1.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"458\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/idontexpectrgbhigh1.jpg 300w, https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/idontexpectrgbhigh1-197x300.jpg 197w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/>\u201cI don\u2019t expect anyone to believe me,\u201d warns the narrator of this novel, a Mexican student called Juan Pablo Villalobos. He is about to fly to Barcelona on a scholarship when he\u2019s kidnapped in a bookshop and whisked away by thugs to a basement. The gangsters are threatening his cousin\u2015a wannabe entrepreneur known to some as \u201cProjects\u201d and to others as \u201cdickhead\u201d\u2015who is gagged and tied to a chair. The thugs say Juan Pablo must work for them. His mission? To make Laia, the daughter of a corrupt politician, fall in love with him. He accepts. . . though not before the crime boss has forced him at gunpoint into a discussion on the limits of humour in literature. Part campus novel, part gangster thriller, <em>I Don\u2019t Expect Anyone to Believe Me<\/em> is Villalobos at his best. Exuberantly foul-mouthed and intellectually agile, this hugely entertaining novel finds the light side of difficult subjects\u2015immigration, corruption, family loyalty and love\u2015in a world where the difference between comedy and tragedy depends entirely on who\u2019s telling the joke.<\/p>\n<p>Available soon from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.andotherstories.org\/i-dont-expect-anyone-to-believe-me\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">And Other Stories<\/a>.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\">p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'}<br \/>p.p2 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 12.0px 'Times New Roman'; min-height: 15.0px}<br \/>span.s1 {font: 12.0px Times}<br \/><\/style>\n<p>My cousin calls me up and says: I want to introduce you to my business partners. We agree to meet at five-thirty on Saturday at the Plaza M\u00e9xico shopping center, outside the multiplex. When I arrive, there are three of them there, plus my cousin. All with dark fuzz on their upper lips (we\u2019re sixteen at this point, maybe seventeen), faces covered in spots oozing a viscous yellowish liquid, with four enormous noses (one apiece). They\u2019re in high school with the Jesuits. We shake hands. They ask me where I\u2019m from, just assuming I can\u2019t be from Guadalajara, maybe because when we shook hands I kept my thumb pointed skyward. From Lagos, I say, I lived there till I was twelve. They don\u2019t know where that is. In Los Altos, I explain, three hours\u2019 drive away. My cousin says that\u2019s where his father\u2019s family is from, and that his father and my father are brothers. Ah, they say. We\u2019re fair-haired people from up in Los Altos, my cousin explains \u2013 as if we were some subspecies of the Mexican breed: <i>Blondus altensis<\/i> \u2013 and his business partners exchange glances, each in turn, with a sarcastic little glint in their upper-middle-class Guadalajaran eyes, or possibly lower-upper-class eyes, or possibly even aristocracy- come-down-in-the-world eyes.<\/p>\n<p>So what\u2019s this business you guys are doing? I ask, before my cousin gets a chance to start detailing the genetic havoc wreaked by French soldiers during the Intervention, the nineteenth-century bastard origins of our eyes that are blue, and our hair that is blond, or at least light brown. A golf course, says my cousin. Over in Tenacatita, says one of the others. A piece of land that belongs to my friend\u2019s brother\u2019s father-in-law, says another. We\u2019re having lunch with him next week at the Industrialists\u2019 Club to present the project, says the one who hasn\u2019t spoken yet. They explain that the only problem\u2019s water, you need a huge amount of water to keep the greens green. But my cousin\u2019s neighbor\u2019s brother-in-law runs the public waterworks for the state, says another. That\u2019ll get fixed with a quick backhander, says another. Everybody nods, pimples bobbing up and down, totally certain. All we need is a capitalist partner, says my cousin finally, we got to raise two million dollars. I ask them how much they\u2019ve managed to get hold of so far. They say thirty-five thousand new pesos. I do the calculation in my head, and it comes to something like fifteen thousand dollars (this is all happening in 1989). Thirty-seven, another corrects him, I\u2019ve just gotten hold of another two thousand from my sister\u2019s friend\u2019s sister. They exchange congratulatory hugs for the two thousand new pesos. So, are we going to a movie or not? I ask, because my cousin and I usually go to the six o\u2019clock screening on Saturdays. We discuss what\u2019s on the bill: there\u2019s an action movie with Bruce Willis and another with Chuck Norris. The two-thousand-new-pesos guy says there\u2019s nobody back at his place, his family\u2019s gone to spend the weekend in Tapalpa and he knows where his dad hides his stash of porn movies. And his house is nearby. Just behind the square. In Monraz. Why don\u2019t we check it out? Some pimples pop from the excitement, like purulent premature ejaculations.<\/p>\n<p>Our host picks the movie. It\u2019s called Hot Shrinks and Wild Kinks. We draw lots for our turn to masturbate (every man for himself, one at a time). My cousin gets to go first, and though there\u2019s a limit of ten minutes per guy, he takes ages. While we wait for him, all excited, drinking Cokes, his business partners quiz me, as we sit together in the living room of a house decorated like a colonial ranch, totally fake, with these incredibly uncomfortable armchairs, because it apparently didn\u2019t occur to anybody that the neo-Mexican style is no use unless you\u2019re doing the set design for a telenovela. They ask me if we have cars in Lagos. If electricity and telephones have made it there yet. If we brush our teeth. If my father carried my mother off on a horse. I answer yes, yes, of course. And where did you leave your big sombrero? they ask. I forgot it in your sister\u2019s bedroom, I say to the one who asked, who as it happens is the host, the one whose parents think if you paint a ranch house in a wash of bright colors it\u2019s going to look a picture of elegance. My sister\u2019s six years old, he says, suddenly angry, and he gets up to hit me. I\u2019m kind of amazed that the sister of a friend of his sister\u2019s, who is six years old, is in a position to invest two thousand new pesos in this proposed golf course. If her friend is a friend from school, in year one of primary, and she\u2019s also six, how old can her sister be? Eight? Ten? And that\u2019s assuming it\u2019s her older sister. What if she\u2019s her younger sister? But I don\u2019t have time for financial speculation because the sister\u2019s brother is up with all his pimples and his fists ready to lay into me. I leap to my feet, knocking a ceramic watermelon off a little side table \u2013 though, whatever people say about the fragility of Tlaquepaque handicrafts, it doesn\u2019t actually break \u2013 and run across the front garden, out into the street, slam the gate behind me, cross over and run very fast down the median, really incredibly fast, just like the hero of one of those action movies we didn\u2019t watch, except with a great ache in my testicles (I never got my turn to masturbate).<\/p>\n<p>Fifteen years later, we\u2019re in 2004 now, another call from my cousin: I want to introduce you to my business partners, he says again. I tell him I\u2019m really busy, I\u2019m going off to do my doctorate in Barcelona. I know, he says, your dad told me, that\u2019s why I\u2019m calling. I don\u2019t see what one thing has to do with the other, I say. I\u2019ll explain when I see you, he says. Honestly, I can\u2019t, I insist, I\u2019ve got this long list of errands that need doing, this is my only week in Guadalajara, I\u2019ve got to go to Mexico City to process my visa and then back to Xalapa to finish packing and pick up Valentina. You owe it to me, he says, for old times\u2019 sake. Anybody\u2019s guess what he could be referring to. In the old days all we ever did was go to the movies at six o\u2019clock on Saturdays. And those old times didn\u2019t last even a year, exactly up to the afternoon I had to run away from the house of one of his business partners who wanted to lynch me. That same night, my cousin called to say my behavior was damaging his business prospects. I told him he could stick his project up his ass, though I used a paraphrase that didn\u2019t involve the word \u2018ass\u2019. We stopped seeing each other. When I finished high school I went off to live in Xalapa, to study Spanish literature at the University of Veracruz. He went off to do International Business at the ITESO university, being a good follower of those Jesuits, but he never graduated. He went to live in the US for a bit, in some town near San Diego, where a sister of our fathers\u2019 lives. He said he was going to do a postgrad, an MBA, that\u2019s what he told my dad, ignoring the minor detail that in order to do this he\u2019d need to have completed his degree. One of my aunt\u2019s kids, one of the cousins who live in America, that is, told me our cousin had settled in their parents\u2019 house, where he did nothing but watch TV, supposedly to learn English though he actually only watched Univision. Then he came back to Guadalajara and went over to Cabo San Lucas. According to my mom, my aunt told her he bought a small motorboat to take tourists out whale-watching. But he didn\u2019t have a license and the union of whale guides made his life hell, until one day they sank his boat, which he\u2019d kept docked at a secret jetty. He came back to Guadalajara. He set up a surfboard store in Chapalita, which never caught on, and he had to close it within a few months. He set up a stand selling Ensenada-style fish tacos on Avenida Patria, but within two weeks the health inspectors from the Zapopan district council had shut it down. They\u2019re really out to get me, that\u2019s what my dad said my cousin told him at my grandfather\u2019s ninetieth birthday party, which I didn\u2019t go to because I was in Xalapa. He says he\u2019s been the victim of a bureaucratic plot. That it\u2019s impossible to do business in Mexico. He left again, for Cozumel this time, where for years nobody really knew what he was up to. My uncle told my sister he was waiting tables in a little thatched palapa hut where they made pescado zarandeado, except that\u2019s a Pacific-coast fish recipe, not a Caribbean one. My aunt told my mom he was taking care of some projects for a group of foreign investors. She couldn\u2019t say what projects, or where the alleged foreign investors were from. Assuming they even existed, these alleged investors. One of the few times we were together again, at the wedding of another cousin, he shouted in my ear, amid the din of a small brass band (the bride\u2019s family was from Sinaloa), that he was living off his rental income. I thought I\u2019d misheard, not least because at that time we can\u2019t have been older than twenty-seven or twenty-eight. You have property on the Caribbean? I asked him, with the utmost suspicion. Yeah, he said, ten sunbeds plus their shades. He had recently returned to Guadalajara, supposedly as a project manager for an investment fund. Someone in the family told me, I can\u2019t remember who, that it was money from American retirees living in Chapala.<\/p>\n<p>As for me, the only thing I\u2019d done in all those years was complete my degree, write a thesis on the short stories of Jorge Ibarg\u00fcengoitia, win a scholarship from the Institute of Literary-Linguistic Research and teach Spanish to the very occasional foreign students who showed up in Xalapa.<\/p>\n<p>I swear you won\u2019t regret it, says my cousin, bringing me out of the long silence that followed his demand for totally unearned loyalty, and of which I\u2019d taken advantage to cast my mind back over the fifteen years that separated the old days from the new. I won\u2019t take up more than half an hour of your time, he says, if you\u2019re not interested you\u2019ve only wasted half an hour, but I totally know you\u2019re gonna be interested. Specially \u2019cause that scholarship you got isn\u2019t going to get you very far. Your dad told me. Life in Europe\u2019s seriously expensive.<\/p>\n<p>And now, instead of describing how I eventually ended up agreeing to meet my cousin, instead of dwelling on the swiftness with which I came to the conclusion that this was the only way of getting him off my back, instead of acknowledging that I did go, voluntarily, on my own two feet, to throw myself off the precipice, I\u2019d rather, as the bad poets say, draw a dark veil over this fragment of the story, or more precisely, choose this place and this moment to make use of an effective and moderately dignified ellipsis.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\">Translated by Daniel Hahn<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cI don\u2019t expect anyone to believe me,\u201d warns the narrator of this novel, a Mexican student called Juan Pablo Villalobos. He is about to fly to Barcelona on a scholarship when he\u2019s kidnapped in a bookshop and whisked away by thugs to a basement. The gangsters are threatening his cousin\u2015a wannabe entrepreneur known to some as \u201cProjects\u201d and to others as \u201cdickhead\u201d\u2015who is gagged and tied to a chair. The thugs say Juan Pablo must work for them. His mission? To make Laia, the daughter of a corrupt politician, fall in love with him. He accepts. . . though not before the crime boss has forced him at gunpoint into a discussion on the limits of humour in literature. Part campus novel, part gangster thriller, <em>I Don\u2019t Expect Anyone to Believe Me<\/em> is Villalobos at his best. Exuberantly foul-mouthed and intellectually agile, this hugely entertaining novel finds the light side of difficult subjects\u2015immigration, corruption, family loyalty and love\u2015in a world where the difference between comedy and tragedy depends entirely on who\u2019s telling the joke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3549,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2956,2992,4451],"genre":[2022],"pretext":[],"section":[2365],"translator":[3141],"lal_author":[3053],"class_list":["post-11398","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-mexico-es","tag-mexico-es-2","tag-numero-13","genre-preview-es","section-translation-previews-and-new-releases-es","translator-daniel-hahn-es","lal_author-juan-pablo-villalobos-es"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11398","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11398"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11398\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11398"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11398"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11398"},{"taxonomy":"genre","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/genre?post=11398"},{"taxonomy":"pretext","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pretext?post=11398"},{"taxonomy":"section","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/section?post=11398"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/translator?post=11398"},{"taxonomy":"lal_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinamericanliteraturetoday.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/lal_author?post=11398"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}