Over the next few weeks, D delivered three photographs and four Chilean escudos to the Traveling Salesmen Registry. Fifteen days later his ID was ready, no. 13709.
With the ID in his pocket, and at a discount that was equivalent to a commission for 2,356 saws, 10,567 nails, 3,456 hammers, or 1,534 door viewers, he bought a Renault. Seated inside it, he started making trips to nearby towns, following the advice of an old-timer salesman. Really it was a piece of advice and a declaration.
The piece of advice:
“When you come to a town, your first task is to find the central coffeehouse and the hotel where the other traveling salesmen stay. Usually it’s on the same block as the town square and the bar.”
(That’s where he would come across the men who, from that moment forward, would be a kind of floating family. A family with no relatives and, for that reason, more tolerable than any other.
The Made-in-China plastic-products salesman.
The Parker Pen salesman.
The English cologne salesman.
And everybody else.)
The declaration:
“All towns are the same: godforsaken shit heaps.”
It is their nature, and there is nothing you can do to change the nature of things.