Cowboy Graves

by Roberto Bolaño

  Like the queen of the poooor

  In jeeeans

  long Jesus haaair

  kniiife in the pocket

  crude flower tattoooo

  I was halfway throoough

  my miserable liiife

  when yooou turned up

  flower of the gutter, flower of the diiirt

  and I was saaaved.

  Like the queen of the poooor.

  Nice, I said, looking out the garage door at the passing clouds. It’s not bad, agreed the man, I wrote it three months ago, at La Gorda Martínez’s. After a dreamy silence, he added: where they make a tomato salsa that’s finger-licking good. Then the guitar maker began talking about trips to the Chilean interior as if it were a faraway, exotic country, and about singer-songwriters, pimps, and whores. But I always come back to the shop, he said at last. Before I left, he recited another of his poems for me.

  Tempus fugit, darlin’

  said the old man to his ladyyy

  sittin’ on the edge of the abyss

  as the light was fadin’

  scraps of memoryyy

  come back, come a-flittin’

  torn photographs

  oh how we wanted

  to set life on fire

  dressin’ the sky in tatters

  Later he walked out to the street with me and showed me the way to a bus stop. We shook hands and I headed off. On a hill I saw two children playing with a metal hoop. I imagined that if I stepped through the hoop, like a trained pig, I would come out in another dimension. That night, I told Mónica everything that had happened to me and I returned the Rilke book. The next day, we went to the movies with my grandmother, who had come to Santiago to see us off and was staying with some relatives until the day of our departure—our first aborted attempt and then also the second (successful) one—though until the plane was in the air I wasn’t convinced we’d be able to leave the country. The rest of my memories are confused. I think I wrote a letter to Mónica (I don’t dare call it a poem) that I later ripped up, then I got my first passport and we went to the movies a few more times.

  And here we are back at the airport, and my mother, followed with enormous effort by my sister and me, both of us dragging suitcases that we’re trying to pass off as carry-on luggage, are taken to the Interpol offices. And I remember that everybody was staring at us and that as I became conscious of being watched I was thinking two things: first, that if I’d had my gun (the shotgun that had turned up mysteriously at our house and that I now think belonged to one of my mother’s lovers), I would have shot at the police and then set fire to the airport; second, that they would never let us leave Chile, which meant that my fate was never to see anything or be seen. And then my mother sparred (verbally) with the policemen, and if she was afraid of being arrested, she managed to hide it very skillfully, and she insulted a creditor from the lands that we were leaving behind with the elegance and disdain of someone who practically lived on planes (the phrase jet set had begun to appear frequently in the magazines that she read), hopping from capital to great world capital. And then, assuming the voice of a woman in distress, she asked for a favor, from one Chilean to another. And then she even begged to be allowed to leave, saying that the father of her children was expecting her and he was the kind of man who might commit some foolish act at the slightest provocation. But nothing could be done and that night we weren’t able to get on a plane (there was some claim about an unpaid bill, that was all) and once we’d gotten over the shock we returned to the Vargas sisters’ place with my grandmother (who spent the night there too) and Rebeca Vargas (soothing my frantic mother, what a good friend she was) and one or two other people I can’t remember now. And Mónica was there. She didn’t like goodbyes and she probably had better things to do than go to the airport with some southerners she’d likely never see again, so she made us tell the whole story over, and despite the laughter, that was a sad night. More than sad: black, gloomy, sleepless. And when everyone had gone to bed, I sat out on the balcony in shirtsleeves, freezing to death, with the Parra book unopened in my hands. And when everything seemed most hopeless, my mother had an asthma attack.

  2.

  The Grub

  He looked like a grub, with his straw hat and a Bali hanging from his lower lip. Every morning, I’d see him sitting on a bench in the Alameda as I went into the Librería de Cristal to browse, and when I raised my head, looking out through the bookstore wall, which really was made of glass, there he was, stock-still, staring into space.

  I guess we ended up getting used to each other. I’d show up at eight-thirty in the morning and he’d be there already, sitting on a bench, just smoking and staring into space. I never saw him with a newspaper, a sandwich, a beer. Once, watching him from the French literature shelves, I imagined he must sleep in the Alameda on a bench, or in some doorway on a nearby street, but then I decided that he was too clean to be sleeping on the street and he must have a room in a boardinghouse. He was a creature of habit, like me, I observed. I got up early, ate breakfast with my mother, father, and sister, pretended that I was going to school, and took a bus to the center of the city, where I devoted the first half of the morning to books and walking around and the second half to movies and sex.

  I usually bought books at the Librería de Cristal and the Librería el Sótano. If I was short of money, then it was the former, where there was always a bargain table. If I was flush, then it was the latter. If I had no money, I stole indiscriminately from one or the other, slipping a book or two among my textbooks. Either way, a visit to the Librería de Cristal and the Librería el Sótano (across from the Alameda and located in a basement, as the name indicates) was mandatory. Sometimes I arrived before the stores opened and then I would stop at a sandwich cart, buy a ham sandwich and a cup of mango juice, and wait. Sometimes—after my amazing breakfast—I wrote. All of this went on until ten, which was when some of the movie houses had their first show of the day. I preferred European movies, though some inspired mornings I would take my chances on new Mexican cinema.

  It was a French movie I saw the most, I think. Two girls live alone in a house in the middle of nowhere. The blonde has split up with her boyfriend and, on top of that (on top of her suffering, I mean), she has personality problems: she thinks she’s in love with her friend. The redhead is younger, more innocent, more irresponsible; in other words, she’s happier (though I was young, innocent, and irresponsible back then and I was convinced that I was deeply unhappy). One day, a fugitive sneaks into the house and takes them captive. The funny thing is that the break-in happens on the very night that the blonde has decided to make love with the redhead and then commit suicide. The fugitive gets in through a window, creeps around the house with a knife in his hand, comes into the redhead’s bedroom, tackles her, ties her up, interrogates her, asks how many other people live in the house. The redhead says it’s just her and the blonde, and he gags her. But the blonde isn’t in her room and the fugitive looks all over the house, getting more and more nervous, until finally he finds her on the basement floor, out cold, evidently having swallowed a whole medicine cabinet full of pills. The fugitive isn’t a killer, or anyway he doesn’t kill women, and he saves the blonde: he makes her throw up, brews her a pot of coffee, etcetera. Then the days go by and the women and the fugitive begin to grow close. The fugitive tells them his story: he’s an ex-con, an ex–bank thief, his wife has left him. The women are cabaret dancers and one afternoon or night (nobody knows exactly what time it is since they’ve been keeping the curtains drawn), they put on a play: the blonde wraps herself in a magnificent bearskin and the redhead pretends to be an animal tamer. At first the bear obeys, but then it rebels and little by little it tears the clothes off the redhead with its claws. At last she falls in defeat, naked, and the bear is on top of her. No, it doesn’t kill her; it makes love to her. And here comes the strangest part: after watch
ing this act, the fugitive falls in love with the blonde, not the redhead; in other words, the bear. The ending is predictable but poetic: one rainy night, after the fugitive kills two ex-comrades, he and the blonde flee to parts unknown and the redhead is left sitting in an armchair, reading, giving them a head start before she calls the police. The book the redhead is reading, I realized the third time I saw the movie, is Camus’s The Fall. I also saw some Mexican movies of more or less the same type: beautiful women who are kidnapped by criminal types; escaped prisoners who snatch rich girls and at the end of a night of passion are riddled with bullets; beautiful maids who start from zero and reach the zenith of wealth and power. Back then almost all movies made in Mexico were erotic thrillers, though there was some erotic horror and erotic comedy too. The horror movies followed the classic line of Mexican horror established in the fifties, as emblematic of my new country’s culture as the muralist painters. Featuring the Saint, the Mad Scientist, the Vampire Cowboy, or the Innocent Girl, they were seasoned with modern nudes (preferably unknown American or European actresses or the occasional Argentine ingenue), explicit sex scenes, and a cruelty bordering on the risible and the unforgivable. Erotic comedy wasn’t my thing.

  One morning, as I was looking for a book in the Librería el Sótano, I saw that a scene from a film was being shot and I went over to investigate. I recognized Jacqueline Andere. It was the first time I’d seen one of my movie legends in person. When I went to the movies alone I would sit in the front row and cross my legs. With my left hand I rubbed my penis through my pants until I came. The only problem was syncing my orgasms with the best scenes in the movie, which wasn’t so hard when I was seeing something for the second or third time, but could be truly agonizing on a first viewing. When I saw Barbarella, for example, I came right away (during the striptease in the spaceship) and when I saw Crimenes pasionales with an actress of Jacqueline Andere’s generation—totally gorgeous, one of my favorites, though I’ve forgotten her name—I put off coming for so long that it finally happened as the credits were rolling. My assiduous moviegoing gave me so much practice that in the end I became an expert in inscrutable masturbation and motionless orgasms (face frozen, maybe just a drop of sweat rolling down my cheek); the movements of my left hand were so precise and economical that today it strikes me as incredible. But anyway, that morning I spotted Jacqueline Andere and I had the dumb idea to go and ask for her autograph. I don’t know why; I’d never been interested in autographs. So when she finished shooting her scene I went up to her (it was a surprise to discover how short she was, even in her stiletto heels) and asked if I could get her autograph. It was one of the simplest things I’ve ever done. Nobody stopped me, nobody came between Jacqueline and me, nobody asked what I was doing there. For a second I thought that I could have kidnapped Jacqueline. Just the prospect of it made my hair stand on end. In the scene, she was walking along a path in the Alameda. When she was done, she stopped for a moment, as if she’d heard something, though none of the crew had said anything to her, and then she walked on toward the Palacio de Bellas Artes, where years later I would give a disastrous poetry reading (disastrous because of what happened at it and after it), and all I had to do was walk toward her. When I reached her, I stopped. She looked me up and down, her blond hair an ashy color that I had never seen before (it might have been dyed), her eyes big, almond shaped, sweet—but no, sweet isn’t the word; calm, incredibly calm, as if she was drugged or had flatlined or was an alien—and she said something that I didn’t understand.

  The pen, she said, the pen to sign with.

  I found a pen in my jacket pocket and I had her sign the first page of Camus’s The Fall. Are you a student? she asked. Yes, I said. So why are you here instead of in class? She didn’t say it in an aggressive way and she wasn’t being sarcastic; she was just stating a fact. Sometimes I take the morning off, I said. Actually, I had been taking every morning off for months now, and I knew I wouldn’t be going back to class, though I preferred to postpone the reckoning, the moment when I would have to tell my parents. She asked my name. All right, then, let’s sign, she said. Then she smiled at me, shook my hand (her hand was small, delicate boned), and walked off across the Alameda alone. I stood there watching her. Two women approached her fifty yards farther along. They looked like missionary nuns, two Mexican missionary nuns in Africa, pausing there with Jacqueline under an ahuehuete, and then the three of them walked off toward Bellas Artes.

  On the first page of The Fall, Jacqueline wrote: “For Arturo Belano, a liberated student, with a kiss from Jacqueline Andere.” When I read it I couldn’t help laughing. Suddenly I wasn’t in the mood for bookstores, long walks, reading, early shows (especially early shows). The prow of an enormous cloud appeared in the center of Mexico City, while to the north of the city the first thunder echoed and lightning split the sky. I realized suddenly that the filming had been cut short because it was about to rain. I felt lonely, and for a few seconds I was afraid and I wished frantically to be back home. Then the Grub waved to me. I suppose after all this time he had noticed me too. I turned and there he was, sitting on the same bench as always, distinct, absolutely real in his straw hat and white shirt. When the film crew left, I noted fearfully, it was as if the sea had parted. The empty Alameda was the ocean bottom and the Grub its most precious jewel. I greeted him, probably made some banal remark, and we headed out of the Alameda together into the neighborhood around the Blanquita Theater.

  What happened next is hazy and at the same time sharp, hyperreal. The bar was called Las Camelias. I ordered enchiladas and a Tecate, the Grub a Coca-Cola, and later (but it couldn’t have been much later) he bought two turtle eggs from a street vendor. We talked about Jacqueline Andere. It wasn’t long before I realized, astounded, that he didn’t know she was an actress. I pointed out that she had been filming just now, but the Grub simply didn’t remember the crew or the equipment set up for the shoot. Then it stopped raining and the Grub pulled a wad of bills out of his back pocket, paid, and left.

  The next day we saw each other again. By his expression, I thought that he didn’t recognize me or didn’t want to say hello. Still, I felt indebted to him and I went up to him. He seemed to be asleep with his eyes open. He was thin, but except for his arms and legs, his flesh looked soft, even flabby. His flaccidity was more moral than physical. His bones were small and strong. Soon I learned that he was from the North or he had lived in the North for a long time, which is essentially the same thing. I’m from Sonora, he said. I thought that was funny, since my grandfather was from there too. This interested the Grub, and he wanted to know what part of Sonora. Santa Teresa, I said. I’m from Villaviciosa, said the Grub. One night I asked my father if he had heard of Villaviciosa. Of course I’ve heard of it, said my father, it’s a few miles from Santa Teresa. I asked him to describe it to me. It’s a very small town, my father said, the population can’t be over a thousand (later I learned that it wasn’t even five hundred), the people are poor, no way to make a living, not a single industry. It’s fated to disappear, said my father. Disappear how? I asked. Emigration, said my father, people leaving for cities like Santa Teresa or Hermosillo or heading to the United States. When I told the Grub this, he didn’t agree, though in reality words like agree or disagree meant nothing to him: the Grub never argued about anything, nor did he express opinions. He was no model of respect for others. He listened and registered information, or maybe he just listened and then forgot, trapped in a different orbit. His voice was soft and monotonous though sometimes it rose in pitch and then he seemed like a lunatic imitating a lunatic and I never knew whether he did it on purpose, as part of a game that only he understood, or whether he just couldn’t help himself and those shrill moments were part of the hell he was living. He ascribed his confidence in Villaviciosa to the town’s longevity, and also (though I realized this later) to the precariousness that engulfed it and ate away at it—the very thing that threatened its existence, according to m
y father. He wasn’t a curious person, though few things got past him. Once he looked at the books I had with me, one by one, as if reading was a chore. Then he never showed any interest in my books again, though each morning I appeared with a new one. Occasionally—maybe because he considered me a fellow countryman somehow—we talked about Sonora, which I hardly knew: I had been there only once, for my grandfather’s funeral. He named towns like Nacozari, Bacoache, Fronteras, Villa Hidalgo, Bacerac, Bavispe, Agua Prieta, Naco, which gleamed like gold in my mind. He named lost villages in the municipalities of Nácori Chico and Bacadéhuachi, near the border with the state of Chihuahua, and then—I don’t know why—he covered his mouth, like someone about to sneeze or yawn. He seemed to have walked and slept in every mountain range: Las Palomas and La Cieneguita, Sierra Guijas and Sierra La Madera, Sierra San Antonio and Sierra Cibuta, Sierra Tumacacori and Sierra Sierrita (well over the Arizona border), Sierra Cuevas and Sierra Ochitahueca to the northeast near Chihuahua, Sierra La Pola and Sierra Las Tablas to the south on the way to Sinaloa, Sierra La Gloria and Sierra El Pinacate to the northeast, in the direction of Baja California. He had been all over Sonora, from Huatabampo and Empalme on the Gulf of California, to the lost hamlets in the desert or the mountains, near Arizona. He could speak Yaqui and Papago (which flowed freely in Sonora and Arizona) and he could understand Seri, Pima, Mayo, and English. His Spanish was flat, sometimes with a faint put-on air belied by his eyes.