The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  What did we talk about? About the maestro, of course, and his time at Saint Elizabeth's, about that strange man Fenollosa, about the poetry of the Han dynasty and the Sui dynasty, about the poetry of Liu Hsiang, Tung Chung-shu, Wang Pi, Tao Chien (Tao Yuan-ming, 365-427), the Tang dynasty, Han Yu (768-824), Meng Hao-Jan (689-740), Wang Wei (699-759), Li Po (701-762), Tu Fu (712-770), Po Chu-I (772-846), the Ming dynasty, the Ching dynasty, Mao Tse-tung-in other words, about Pound things that none of us knew anything about, not even the maestro, really, because the literature he knew best was European literature, but what a show of strength, what magnificent curiosity Pound had, to root around in that enigmatic language, am I right? What faith in humanity, wouldn't you say? And we also talked about Provençal poets, the usual ones, you know, Arnaut Daniel, Bertrán de Born, Guiraut de Bornelh, Jaufré Rudel, Guillem de Berguedà, Marcabrú, Bernart de Ventadorn, Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, the Castellan of Coucy, the towering Chrétien de Troyes, and we also talked about the Italians of the Dolce Stil Novo, Dante's compadres, as they say, Cino da Pistoia, Guido Cavalcanti, Guido Guinizelli, Cecco Angiolieri, Gianni Alfani, Dino Frescobaldi, but most of all we talked about the maestro, about Pound in England, Pound in Paris, Pound in Rapallo, Pound in Saint Elizabeth's, Pound back from Italy, Pound on the verge of death…

  And then what happened? The usual. We asked for the check. They insisted that I contribute nothing at all, but I refused point-blank. I was young once too, and I know how hard it is to make ends meet at that age, especially if you're a poet, so I put my money on the table, enough to pay for everything we'd had (there were ten of us: young Belano and eight friends of his, among them two lovely girls whose names I've unfortunately forgotten, and me), but they, and now that I think about it, this was the only strange thing that happened all night, they picked up the money and returned it to me, and I put the money back on the table and they returned it to me again, and then I said kids, when I go out for drinks or Coca-Colas (ha ha) with my students I never let them pay, and I delivered my little speech very affectionately (I love my students and I assume they return the sentiment), but then they said: don't even think about it, maestro, and that was all: don't even think about it, maestro, and at that moment, as I decoded that very polysemous (if I may) sentence, I was watching their faces, seven boys and two beautiful girls, and I thought: no, they would never be my students. I don't know why I thought it when really, they'd been so polite, so nice, but I thought it.

  I put my money back in my wallet and one of them paid the bill and then we went out. It was a beautiful night, without the daytime crush of cars and crowds, and for a while we walked toward my hotel, almost as if we were drifting along, we might just as easily have been getting farther away, and as we proceeded (but toward where?), some of the kids said goodbye, shaking my hand and heading off (the way they said goodbye to their friends was different, or so it seemed to me), and little by little the group began to dwindle, and meanwhile we kept talking, and we talked and talked, or now that I think about it, maybe we didn't talk much, I would say instead that we thought and thought, but I can't believe it, at that time of night no one thinks much, the body is begging for rest. And a moment came when there were just five of us aimlessly wandering the streets of Mexico City, possibly in the deepest silence, a Poundian silence, although the maestro is the furthest thing from silent, isn't he? His words are the words of a tribe that never stops delving into things, investigating, telling every story. And yet they're words circumscribed by silence, eroded minute by minute by silence, aren't they? And then I decided that it was time to go to bed, and I hailed a taxi and said goodbye.

  Lisandro Morales, Calle Comercio, in front of Jardín Morelos, Colonia Escandón, Mexico City DF, March 1977. It was the Ecuadorean novelist Vargas Pardo, a man who always does just as he likes and who was working as a copy editor at my publishing house, who introduced me to this Arturo Belano. A year before, the same Vargas Pardo had convinced me that it would be worth the publishing house's while to finance a magazine that would serve as a forum for the best writers in Mexico and Latin America. I listened to him and launched it. They gave me the title of honorary director and Vargas Pardo and a couple of his cronies appointed themselves to the editorial board.

  The plan, at least as they sold it to me, was for the magazine to promote the books of the publishing house. That was the main goal. The secondary goal was to put out a quality literary magazine that would reflect well on the house, as much for its content as for its contributors. They talked to me about Julio Cortázar, García Márquez, Carlos Fuentes, Vargas Llosa, the leading lights of Latin American literature. Always prudent, not to say skeptical, I told them that I would be happy to get Ibargüengoitia, Monterroso, José Emilio Pacheco, Monsiváis, Elenita Poniatowska. They said yes, of course, that before long everyone would be begging to be published in our magazine. All right, let them beg, I said, let's do good work, but don't forget the main goal: promoting the house. That would be no problem, they said. It would be a presence on every page, or every other page, and before long the magazine would be turning a profit too. And I said: gentlemen, I leave its fate in your hands. In the first magazine, as anyone can see for themselves, there was no sign of Cortázar, or García Márquez, or even José Emilio Pacheco, but we had an essay by Monsiváis, which rescued the issue, in a sense; otherwise, there was a piece by Vargas Pardo, an essay by an exiled Argentinian novelist and friend of Vargas Pardo, two excerpts from novels that we were about to publish, a story by a forgotten fellow countryman of Vargas Pardo. And poetry, too much poetry. In the review section, at least, I found nothing to object to. Most of the attention was focused on our new releases and was generally favorable.

  I remember I talked to Vargas Pardo after reading the magazine and said: I think there's too much poetry, and poetry doesn't sell. I still remember his response: what do you mean it doesn't sell, Don Lisandro, he said, look at Octavio Paz and his magazine. All right, Vargas, I said, but Octavio is Octavio, and there are luxuries the rest of us can't afford ourselves. What I didn't say was that I hadn't read Octavio's magazine for ages, nor did I rectify my use of the word luxuries, which I had meant to describe not poetic endeavors but Octavio's tedious publication, since ultimately I think publishing poetry isn't a luxury but utter foolishness. That was as far as it went, anyway, and Vargas Pardo was able to put out the second and third issues, and then the fourth and fifth. Sometimes I heard talk that our magazine was becoming too aggressive. I think it was all Vargas Pardo's fault, that he was using the magazine as a weapon against those who'd snubbed him when he first came to Mexico, as the perfect vehicle for settling a few scores (some writers are so vain and touchy!), and to tell the truth, that was all right with me. It's good for a magazine to generate controversy, it means it's selling, and it struck me as miraculous that a magazine with so much poetry could be selling. Sometimes I asked myself why that bastard Vargas Pardo was so interested in poetry. He wasn't a poet himself, I knew, but a fiction writer. So how did he come by his interest in verse?

  For a while, I admit, I engaged in all kinds of speculation. I came to suspect he was a queer. He might have been. He was married (to a Mexican, incidentally), but you never know. What kind of queer? A platonic, starry-eyed queer who got his kicks, shall we say, on a purely literary level? Or did he have a Mr. Right among the poets he published in the magazine? I don't know. To each his own. I don't have anything against queers. There are more of them every day, though. In the forties, the number of queers in Mexican literature was at an all-time high, and I thought that was as far as things could go. But today there are more of them than ever. I suppose the fault lies with the education system, the increasingly common tendency of Mexicans to make a spectacle of themselves, the movies, music, who knows what. Even Salvador Novo himself once mentioned to me that he was taken aback by the behavior and language of some of the young people who visited him. And Salvador Novo knew what he was talking about.

  So that was how I met Arturo
Belano. One afternoon Vargas Pardo told me about him, about how he was putting together a fantastic (was that the word he used?) book, the definitive anthology of young Latin American poets, and was looking for a publisher. And who is this Belano? I asked. He writes reviews for our magazine, said Vargas Pardo. These poets, I said, secretly watching him for his reaction, are like hustlers desperately seeking new women to pimp, but Vargas Pardo took it in stride and told me the book was very good, the kind of book another house would pick up if we didn't publish it ourselves (ah, what an interesting use of the plural). Then, watching him surreptitiously again, I said: bring him in, schedule me a meeting with him, and we'll see what can be done.

  Two days later Arturo Belano showed up at the publishing house. He was wearing a denim jacket and jeans. The jacket had unpatched rips on the arms and the left side, as if someone had been shooting him full of arrows for fun or spearing him. The pants, well, if he'd taken them off they would've stood up on their own. The tennis shoes he wore were frightening just to look at. He had hair down to his shoulders, and probably he'd always been skinny but now he was even skinnier. He looked like he hadn't slept for days. Good God, I thought, what a wreck. At least he seemed to have showered that morning. So I said: let's see this anthology you've put together, Mr. Belano. And he said: I already gave it to Vargas Pardo. Off to a bad start, I thought.

  I picked up the phone and told my secretary to send Vargas Pardo to my office. For a few seconds neither of us said a word. Damn it, if Vargas Pardo took any longer to get here the young poet was going to fall asleep on me. At least he didn't look like a queer. To kill time I explained to him that poetry collections, as he probably realized, were published by the dozen, but hardly ever sold. Yes, he said, they're published by the dozen. My God, he was like a zombie. For a moment I wondered whether he was on drugs, but who can tell? So, I said, was it hard to put together your anthology of Latin American poetry? No, he said, it's all friends. The arrogance. Well then, I said, there should be no problem with authors' rights, you have the permissions. He laughed. Or rather, let me explain, he twisted his mouth or curled his lip and showed a few yellowish teeth and made a sound. I swear that his laugh made the hair rise on the back of my neck. How to describe it? An otherworldly laugh? The kind of laugh you hear when you're walking down the deserted corridors of a hospital? Something along those lines. And afterward, after the laugh, we seemed about to sink back into silence, into one of those embarrassing silences between people who've just met, or between a publisher and a zombie (which happened, in this case, to be the same thing), but there was no way I wanted to be caught in that silence again, so I kept talking, talking about Chile, where he was from, about my magazine, where he'd published reviews, about how hard it could be to unload a stock of poetry books. And Vargas Pardo was nowhere to be seen (he was probably on the phone gabbing away with another poet!). And then, at that very moment, I had a kind of insight. Or a presentiment. I realized that it would be better not to publish that anthology. I realized that it would be better not to publish anything by this poet. To hell with Vargas Pardo and his brilliant ideas. If other publishing houses were interested, let them take him on, not me. In that second of clarity I realized that publishing a book by this kid would bring me bad luck, that having this kid sitting across from me in my office, looking at me with those vacant eyes, close to sleep, would bring me bad luck, that bad luck was probably already gliding over the roof of my publishing house like a vulture or an Aerolíneas Mexicanas plane fated to crash into my offices.

  And suddenly there was Vargas Pardo, brandishing the manuscript of Latin American poets, and I woke from my trance, but very slowly, at first I couldn't even really hear what Vargas Pardo was saying. All I heard was his laugh and his goddamn booming voice, cheerful as can be, as if working for me was the best thing that ever happened to him, a paid vacation in Mexico City, and I remember being so confused that I stood up and offered Vargas Pardo my hand, my God, I offered that bastard my hand like he was the boss or the general manager and I was a goddamn lackey, and I remember too that I looked at Arturo Belano and that he didn't get up from his seat when the Ecuadorean came in, and not only did he not get up, he didn't even pay attention to us, didn't even look at us, would you believe, and I saw the hairy back of his neck and for a second I thought that what I was seeing wasn't a person, not a living, breathing human being with blood in his veins like you or me, but a scarecrow, a bundle of ragged clothes on a body of straw and plastic, something like that. And then I heard Vargas Pardo saying everything's ready now, Lisandro, Martita will be here in a second with the contract. With what contract? I stammered. With the contract for Belano's book, of course, said Vargas Pardo.

  Then I sat back down and said wait a minute, wait a minute, what is this about a contract? The thing is, Belano is leaving us the day after tomorrow, said Vargas Pardo, and we have to get this resolved. Where is he leaving us for? I said. Europe, said Vargas Pardo, to get himself some Scandinavian pussy (crassness, for Vargas Pardo, is synonymous with frankness, even honesty). He's going to Sweden? I said. More or less, said Vargas Pardo, Sweden, Denmark, over there where it's cold. And can't we send him the contract? I said. No, you see, Lisandro, he's going to Europe with no fixed address and anyway he wants to get this resolved. And that bastard Vargas Pardo winked at me and brought his face close to mine (I thought he was going to kiss me, the big undercover faggot!) and I couldn't back away, didn't know how to back away, but all Vargas Pardo wanted was to say something in my ear, complicitly whisper a few words. And what he said was that we didn't have to pay an advance, that I should sign, sign right away, so Belano wouldn't back out of the deal and let the competition have the book. And I would have liked to say: I don't give a shit if he lets the competition have the book, I hope he does let them have it so they go broke before we do, but instead of telling him that, I only had the strength to ask, in a thin little voice: is this kid on drugs, or what? And Vargas Pardo burst out laughing. Then, whispering again, he said: something like that, Lisandro, something like that, you never really know, but the important thing is the book, and here it is, so let's sign the contract before it's too late. But is it wise…? I managed to whisper back. And then Vargas Pardo removed his enormous face from mine and answered me in his usual voice, his booming Amazonian voice, as he himself, in an unbelievable display of narcissism, called it. Of course, of course, he said. And then he went over to the poet and slapped him on the back. How's it going, Belano, he said, and the young Chilean looked at him and then looked at me, and an idiotic smile lit up his face, the smile of someone mentally impaired, of someone who'd been lobotomized, for God's sake. And then Martita, my secretary, came in, and she put two copies of the contract on the desk, and Vargas Pardo went looking for a pen so Belano could sign, come on, right here, but I don't have a pen, said Belano, a pen for the poet, then, said Vargas Pardo. As if by common accord, all the pens had disappeared from my office. I had a couple in my jacket pocket, of course, but I didn't want to offer them. No signature, no contract, I thought. But Martita searched through the papers on my desk and found one. Belano signed. I signed. I shook the Chilean's hand. I watched his face. He was smiling. He was about to collapse from exhaustion, and he was smiling. Where had I seen that smile before? I looked at Vargas Pardo as if to ask him where I'd seen that goddamn smile. The ultimate defenseless smile, the kind that drags us all down. But Vargas Pardo was saying goodbye to the Chilean. He was giving him advice about what to do in Europe! The faggot was reminiscing about his youth in the merchant marines! Even Martita was laughing at his stories! I could see there was nothing to be done. The book would be published.

  And I, who'd always been a brave publisher, took the blow to my pride on the chin.

  Laura Jáuregui, Tlalpan, Mexico City DF, March 1977. Before he left, he came to my house. It must have been seven in the evening. I was alone, my mother had gone out. Arturo told me that he was leaving and he wouldn't be coming back. I wished him luck, but I
didn't even ask where he was going. I think he asked me about my studies, how I was doing at the university, in biology. I said great. He said: I've been to the north of Mexico, to Sonora, and Arizona too. That's what I think he said, but I'm not sure, and then he laughed. A short, dry laugh, a rabbity laugh. Yes, he did seem high, but I know for a fact that he never did any drugs. Ulises Lima did. He would try anything, and the funny thing was that you couldn't even tell when he was high and when he wasn't. But Arturo was different. He didn't get high. If anybody should know, it's me. And then he told me again that he was leaving. And before he could say another word, I told him I thought that was a fantastic idea, there was nothing like traveling and seeing the world, different cities and different skies, and he said the sky was the same everywhere, cities changed but the sky was the same, and I said he was wrong, I told him I didn't believe it, and that in one of his own poems he talked about the skies painted by Dr. Atl, different from any other skies in art or on the planet. Something like that. The truth is that I didn't feel like arguing. At first I'd pretended I wasn't interested in his plans, his talk, anything he had to say to me, but then I realized that I really wasn't interested, that everything having to do with him bored me to tears, that what I really wanted was for him to go and let me study in peace, I had a lot of studying to do that afternoon. And then he said it made him sad to travel and see the world without me, that he'd always thought I would come everywhere with him, and he named countries like Libya, Ethiopia, Zaire, and cities like Barcelona, Florence, Avignon, and then I couldn't help asking him what his countries had to do with his cities, and he said: everything, they have everything to do with each other, and I told him that when I was a biologist I would have the time to see those cities and countries, and the money too, because I didn't plan to travel around the world hitchhiking or sleeping just anywhere. And then he said: I don't plan to see them, I plan to live in them the same way I've lived in Mexico. And I said: well good for you, then, I hope you're happy, live in them and die in them if you want; I'll travel when I have money. Then you won't have the time, he said. I will have the time, I said, you're wrong, I'll be the mistress of my time, I'll do what I like with my time. And he said: you won't be young anymore. He was on the verge of tears as he said it, and seeing him like that, so embittered, made me angry and I shouted at him: what do you care what I do with my life or my youth or where I travel? And then he looked at me and fell into a chair, as if he'd suddenly realized that he was dead tired. He whispered that he loved me, that he would never be able to forget me. Then he got up (twenty seconds after he'd spoken, at most) and slapped my face. The sound echoed through the house. We were on the first floor, but I heard the sound of his hand (when his palm left my cheek) rise up the stairs and enter each of the rooms on the second floor, dropping down through the climbing vines and rolling like glass marbles in the yard. When I could react, I made a fist with my right hand and hit him in the face. He hardly moved. But his arm was fast enough to hit me again. Bastard, I said, faggot, coward, and I launched a clumsy attack, punching, scratching, and kicking. He didn't even try to dodge my blows. Fucking masochist! I screamed at him and I kept hitting him and crying, harder and harder, until through my tears I could only see light and shadows but not a clear picture of the body I was battering. Afterward I sat on the floor, still crying. When I looked up Arturo was beside me. His nose was bleeding, I remember, a little thread of blood running down to his upper lip and from there to the corner of his mouth and down his chin. You hurt me, he said, this hurts. I looked at him and blinked several times. This hurts, he said, and he sighed. And what do you think you did to me? I said. Then he got up and tried to touch my cheek. I jumped back. Don't touch me, I said. I'm sorry, he said. I hope you die, I said. I hope I die, he said, and then he said: I know I'm going to die. He wasn't talking to me. I started to cry again, and the more I cried the more I wanted to cry, and all I could tell him was to leave my house, get out, never set foot there again. I heard him sigh and I closed my eyes. My face was burning, but what I felt was less pain than humiliation. It was as if those two blows had wounded my pride, my dignity as a woman. I knew I would never forgive him. Arturo got up (he was kneeling beside me) and I heard him go into the bathroom. When he came back he was wiping the blood from his nose with a piece of toilet paper. I told him to leave, I said I never wanted to see him again. He asked me whether I'd calmed down. I'll never be calm around you, I said. Then he turned around, dropped the bloody piece of toilet paper-like the sanitary pad of a drug-addicted whore-and left. I kept crying for a few more minutes. I tried to think about everything that had happened. When I felt better I got up, went to the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror (my left cheek was red), made myself some coffee, put on music, and went out into the yard to make sure the gate was locked. Then I went to get a few books and settled down in the living room. But I couldn't study so I called a friend from the biology department. Luckily she was home. For a while we talked about various things, I can't remember what now, her boyfriend, I think, and suddenly, as she was talking, I saw the piece of toilet paper that Arturo had used to wipe away his blood. I saw it on the floor, crumpled, white with red streaks, an almost living object, and I felt overwhelmed with nausea. I made up an excuse to get off the phone, telling my friend that I was home alone and someone was knocking at the door. Don't open it, she said, it could be a thief or a rapist, probably both! I won't open the door, I said, I'm just going to see who it is. Does your house have a wall around it? said my friend. An enormous wall, I said. Then I hung up and went through the living room to the kitchen. When I got there, I didn't know what to do. I went into the downstairs bathroom. I took some toilet paper and came back to the living room. The bloody toilet paper was still there but I wouldn't have been surprised to find it under a chair now, or under the dining room table. With the toilet paper in my hand I covered Arturo's bloody toilet paper and then I pinched it in two fingers, carried it to the toilet, and pulled the chain.