Synopsis

Tell Me Something Dirty (224 pages) is Diego Ameixeiras’ fourth novel and investigates the lives of people in Ourense and how they come into contact with each other by chance or deliberately. The book comprises 100 short chapters.

A fifteen-year-old girl explains the bras she likes to use, though she has to get a bigger size because her breasts are growing. The corpses of a fifteen-year-old girl and a man turn up in an industrial warehouse. The girl has been raped. Laura practises three hours of kung fu a week. It makes her feel alert and attractive. Ánxela has just moved into a new apartment. She feels distraught, despite the help she is offered on the phone. A black man dreams he is naked on a beach, but wakes up in Ourense (called Oregón) and goes out to sell music from bar to bar. Laura meets her boyfriend, Nelson, who paints graffiti. They kiss and he invites her back to his house. A young girl, prayerful after receiving first communion, is observed by a man in church with a scar on his neck. Laura and Nelson make love in the bedroom at home. Ánxela meets up with her friend Marga and reveals she separated from her boyfriend two months and twenty-four days earlier. Eduardo chats on his computer with a fifteen-year-old girl called Cady, who wants to send him a present. Ánxela found out by mistake that her boyfriend, Xaime, was cheating on her with a work colleague who is already three months pregnant. She wanted him to disappear, but at the same time to stay with her for ever. Now she tries to forget him. A taxi-driver stops in the middle of the night and hands a packet of cigarettes to a man in a green tracksuit, who gives him a piece of cardboard from a cereal packet that says ‘The murmur of melancholy is the sound of an orchestra in the distance’.

A girl inserts a Tampax for the first time, with the help of her mother. The man with the scar contemplates photographs of topless women and a boy on a bike. Eduardo is in a supermarket and gazes at the features of a girl filling shelves. When he is caught out, he pretends to be looking for toothpaste. He finds the present from Cady in an open locker, as agreed. Ánxela seeks to divest herself of her pain by swimming a length of the local swimming pool. The black man boards a bus which, as it turns a corner, almost runs down an old man. The old man’s tears make for a desolate scene. A friend of Laura’s buys her some alcohol from the supermarket where she works. Laura enters a chemist’s and, while the chemist is getting her some Risperdal from the back, which she says is for her grandmother, she steals some Durex from the counter. The present from Cady is a stuffed toy cat. Eduardo thinks he mustn’t let Cady get the upper hand. The taxi-driver stops at a newsagent’s to buy porn magazines. He’d like to have a look at them, but knows he’ll soon fall asleep. Laura gives her grandmother a shower. Her grandmother enjoys listening to music, but hasn’t spoken in six months. The village she lived in all her life is now empty of inhabitants. Ánxela tries to connect to a number that is currently unavailable and throws her mobile on the floor. She drinks a cup of herb tea and throws the cup against the wall, then anxiously tries the number again, which is still unavailable. Eduardo’s girlfriend, Miriam, gets ready for bed. He imagines Cady and the breasts of the girl filling shelves in the supermarket. A new woman has moved in upstairs. At an outdoor concert, Laura is admired by three boys. Nelson arrives and they go off to the park, where they discover a leather purse with an identity card and a 100-euro note. The man with the scar photographs a woman repeatedly dialling a number on her phone. In the photograph, he can discern her bra, but not the real dimensions of her breasts.

A girl describes her different handbags and what she takes when she goes out: her iPod, phone, make-up, purse, chewing gum in case she gets bad breath on account of her brace, the keys to her father’s and mother’s house, a condom. The taxi-driver takes an elderly lady with flowers to the cemetery, as every week. The black man touts his wares on a blanket. He sells one film, then the police turn up and he knows he must run away. Ánxela almost knocks him over as he escapes. She tells him quickly to get in the car. Eduardo sits in a bar, poring over the personal ads in a newspaper. When he wants to pay for his coffee, he realizes he has mislaid his wallet. Ánxela accompanies the black man to his house, where he enters to the sound of other voices. She gazes down the stairwell, which is deep and attractive. Laura and Nelson play on a railway bridge. They have bought a necklace for Laura and a T-shirt for Nelson with the money. Laura thinks she recognizes the face of Eduardo on the identity card. The taxi-driver drinks a brandy and gazes at a bored mother, imagining her as an unrestrained lover. He soon leaves and forgets her. The police carry out a raid on a house and arrest seven street vendors without documents. The local shopkeepers are relieved. In her bedroom, Laura cannot find her phone, but finds a defence spray and remembers why she recognized Eduardo’s face. The man with the scar meets another man by the river who likes his photographs. Laura goes to the gunsmith’s shop where she bought the spray, having remembered this is where Eduardo works. She gives him back the wallet, claiming someone stole the money. Eduardo gives her Cady’s stuffed toy and admires her adolescent body.

A girl explains how, when she was younger, she hardly had any friends and hid in the library at school. What helped her get through this period was watching the teen comedy film Mean Girls, which stars a girl by the name of Cady. The black man goes out to make a phone call to a sub-Saharan country. Ánxela dances at home to the sound of the song ‘Shake Some Action’. The taxi-driver takes a man in a great hurry to the station. As they arrive, the man gets out and beats a woman. He is arrested by two security guards. Eduardo and Miriam make love in their bedroom. The paediatrician Dr Caride offers the man with the scar a large sum of money, then switches on the screen in his sitting room to look at the photograph of a six-year-old girl. Nelson doesn’t understand why Laura had to return the wallet. He is skateboarding with his friends. Eduardo chats to Cady on the computer while watching a porn film. She explains why she cut with her boyfriend, Dani, who liked all the girls and gave her a revolting handbag. Marga tells Ánxela she did well to leave her boyfriend and she’ll get over it. A girl explains what it was like to have her tongue pierced. The black man worked for two years to collect the money he needed to make the crossing from north Africa to Spain. Miriam has lunch with a friend, Rosa, who sleeps with Ricardo from the gym to exorcise the memory of all the other men she’s slept with. The man with the scar buys a video camera.

The taxi-driver visits the family burial plot. Laura and Nelson watch videos of drunken antics. Ánxela climbs a hill on the outskirts of Ourense and feels a disconnection with the past. Eduardo arranges to meet Cady and asks a friend to lend him the keys to his apartment just in case. The man with the scar and Dr Caride visit the basement of a garage where there are guns for sale. The black man watches a football match in a shop window, next to the man in the green tracksuit and his companion. A girl discusses the merits of various exfoliants. Laura is forced to stay at home when her parents have to attend the funeral of a work colleague. Ánxela is on the verge of taking an overdose when the front-door bell rings. Laura communicates with her grandmother by signs others are unable to interpret. Nelson wants to see her, but she says she can’t. Miriam tells Eduardo she’s going away for the weekend with Rosa. On the news, a worker has died on a building site. Miriam says she has met the new neighbour upstairs, whose bra fell on to their balcony. The taxi-driver seeks refuge in the cathedral, where he recognizes the man who attacked the woman at the station. The man says his brother has just died. The taxi-driver gives him back the money he paid for the ride.

The man with the scar holds a semi-automatic and recalls the loves of his life with the coldness of a forensic scientist. The fifteen-year-old girl, Marta Nóvoa, also called Cady, attracts the gaze of grown-up men. Laura returns to the shop where Eduardo works and asks for a punch bag. Eduardo closes up and invites her into the back. Marga gets talking to some boys in a bar, Ánxela is left alone and wonders where to look. The black man recognizes Ánxela walking absent-mindedly down the street, but, before he has time to talk to her, the police arrive and he has to scarper with his merchandise. The man with the scar observes Cady with her friends and tells the doctor not to phone him in a week. In the very next chapter, the girl is raped. Ánxela drinks whisky and tries the number again, this time her ex-boyfriend answers and asks her to say what she has to say. Nelson kisses Laura’s best friend, Antía, after they’ve already made love. Ánxela explains to Xaime how much she misses him, he asks her never to call him again. Eduardo hasn’t had a message from Cady in days. He remembers the kiss Laura gave him in the shop before she vanished. He receives a message from Cady, asking if they can meet. The taxi-driver gives Ánxela a lift to the house where the black man lives. She waits outside in the rain. By the time she enters, she is soaked. The black man leads her to the sitting room. Another four black men appear from their rooms. Ánxela undresses in front of them, then puts her hand on the first black man’s chest and pleads with him to ‘tell her something dirty’.

Laura sits in her room. She doesn’t want to call Nelson. Cady decides what to wear before her first meeting with Eduardo. The taxi-driver sits in a bar and is approached by the black man selling music. Laura is on a bus with Nelson. She is in a bad mood and says she wants to ask him a question. The black man throws his rucksack into the river and prepares to enter the bottom of a crater. Laura tells Nelson to inform her first if he ever desires another woman. At precisely that moment, the bus they are on collides with the black man, who dies on the road. Ánxela undresses, on her own this time, and burns her clothes. Eduardo sits in a bar and imagines his meeting with Cady and how he hopes it will end. The man with the scar waits in a bar for Cady to appear. He has planned a slow rape and two quick corpses. The taxi-driver has a headache. Cady gets in the taxi. Laura is in a park with Nelson and tries to imagine the place where the black man has gone to. Cady waits to arrive at her destination, but the man with the scar enters the taxi at some traffic lights and forces them to drive on.

Eduardo carries on waiting for the girl. The three in the taxi reach an industrial warehouse. Cady is on the ground, naked. The man with the scar starts a video camera and tells the taxi-driver to do what he has to do. Eduardo stands on a bridge, thinking about writing Cady a message. The man in the green tracksuit gives him a piece of cardboard that says ‘Shake some action’. Somebody explains how they have bought a Wii console. Another black man goes out to sell music. Laura’s mother says she is going to get somebody to look after Laura’s grandmother. The police breaks up a ring of child pornography. In the kitchen, Miriam confesses to Eduardo that she wasn’t with Rosa the previous weekend. The man with the scar leaves Ourense. Nelson and Antía meet by the river, Laura hasn’t spoken in days. A hooded man on the camera forces the taxi-driver to insert a cylindrical object between the girl’s legs. Dr Caride examines a seven-year-old girl in his surgery and tells the mother she has nothing serious. Laura tries out a new punch bag her father has made. A woman rings at the door. It is Ánxela responding to the advertisement to look after her grandmother.

Tell Me Something Dirty is the novel that established Diego Ameixeiras as one of the most prominent Galician fiction writers of the twenty-first century. It is characterized by the pace of its narrative, the intrigue about how different characters will meet or miss each other, the inner workings of people’s minds and the contrast with how they present themselves in public. It was awarded the Special Prize of the Director of Gijón’s Black Week festival.