The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  Sometimes, inevitably, he would give me one of the magazines published by the visceral realists. I never saw a poem of his in any of them. In fact, when it occurred to me to talk to Zarco about his poetry I had only two poems by Luscious Skin, both of them unpublished. One was a bad imitation of a bad poem by Ginsberg. The other was a prose poem that Torri wouldn't have disapproved of, a strange poem, in which he talked vaguely about hotels and fights. I imagined it was inspired by me.

  The night before my meeting with Zarco I could hardly sleep. I felt like a Mexican Juliet, trapped in a sordid struggle between Montagues and Capulets. My relationship with Luscious Skin was secret, at least to the extent that the situation was under my control. By this I don't mean that no one in my circle of friends knew about my homosexuality, which I kept quiet but didn't hide. What they didn't know was that I was involved with a visceral realist (though Luscious Skin was hardly your typical visceral realist). How would Albertito Moore take the news that I was recommending Luscious Skin for the anthology? What would Pepín Morado say? Would Adolfito Olmo think I'd gone crazy? And Ismael Humberto himself, so cold, so sarcastic, so apparently above it all, would he not see my suggestion as a betrayal?

  So when I went to visit Ismael Humberto Zarco and showed him those two poems, which I came bearing like two precious objects, I was inwardly prepared to be asked all kinds of difficult questions. And so I was, since Ismael Humberto is no fool and he realized immediately that my protégé was from the wrong side of the fence, as they say. Luckily (Ismael Humberto is no fool, but he isn't God either), he didn't connect him to the visceral realists.

  I fought hard for Luscious Skin's prose poem. I argued that since the anthology could hardly be called selective in terms of the number of poets published, it should make no difference to him whether we included something my friend had written. The anthologist was unyielding. He planned to publish more than two hundred young poets, most represented by a single poem, but not Luscious Skin.

  At one point in our discussion he asked me the name of my protégé. I don't know his name, I said, exhausted and ashamed.

  When I saw Luscious Skin again, in a moment of weakness I told him about my failed efforts to get one of his poems into Zarco's forthcoming book. In the way he looked at me, I saw something like gratitude. Then he asked me whether Pancho and Moctezuma Rodríguez were included in Ismael Humberto's anthology. No, I said, I don't think so. What about Jacinto Requena and Rafael Barrios? They're not either, I said. María and Angélica Font? No. Ernesto San Epifanio? I shook my head, although actually I didn't know, the name didn't sound familiar. And what about Ulises Lima? I looked steadily into his dark eyes and said no. Then it's better if I'm not in it either, he said.

  Angélica Font, Calle Colima, Colonia Condesa, Mexico City DF, April 1979. At the end of 1977 Ernesto San Epifanio was admitted to the hospital to have a hole drilled in his skull so that he could be operated on for a brain aneurysm. A week later, they had to go back in because apparently they'd left something inside his head. The doctors had very little hope for this second operation. If they didn't operate he would die, and if they did operate he would die anyway, although his odds were slightly better. That was my understanding of it and I was the only person who was with him the entire time. Me and his mother, although somehow his mother doesn't count because her daily visits to the hospital turned her into the invisible woman: whenever she was there she was so quiet that even though she really did come into the room, even though she sat beside the bed, she never seemed to cross the threshold, or ever quite finish crossing the threshold, this tiny figure framed by the white opening of the doorway.

  My sister María came a few times too. And Juanito Dávila, alias El Johnny, Ernesto's last love. The rest were brothers and sisters, aunts, people I didn't know, connected to my friend only by the most unlikely family ties.

  No writers came, or poets, or ex-lovers.

  The second operation lasted more than five hours. I fell asleep in the waiting room and dreamed of Laura Damián. Laura had come looking for Ernesto and then the two of us went for a walk in a eucalyptus forest. I don't know whether there really is such a thing, because I've never been in a eucalyptus forest, but the one in my dream was horrible. The leaves were silver and when they brushed my arm they left a dark, sticky mark. The ground was soft, like the needle-carpeted ground in pine forests, although the forest in my dream was a eucalyptus forest. The trunks of all the trees, without exception, were rotten and their stink was unbearable.

  When I woke up in the waiting room there was no one there and I started to cry. How could it be that Ernesto San Epifanio was dying alone in a hospital in Mexico City? How could it be that I was the only person there, waiting for someone to tell me whether he had died or survived a terrible operation? When I was done crying I think I fell asleep again. When I woke up Ernesto's mother was beside me murmuring something I couldn't understand. It took me a while to realize that she was just praying. Then a nurse came in and said that everything had gone well. The operation was a success, she explained.

  A few days later Ernesto was discharged and went home. I had never been to his house before. We always saw each other at my house or at other friends' houses. But from then on I began to visit him at home.

  The first few days he didn't even talk. He looked around and blinked but didn't talk. He didn't seem to hear anything either. And yet the doctor had recommended that we talk to him, that we treat him as if nothing had happened. So I did. The first day I looked in his bookcase for a book I knew for sure that he liked and I started to read it out loud. It was Valéry's Cemetery by the Sea, and he didn't show the slightest sign that he recognized it. I read it and he looked at the ceiling or the walls or my face, and his real self wasn't there. Then I read him a collection of poems by Salvador Novo and the same thing happened. His mother came into the room and touched my shoulder. Don't wear yourself out, miss, she said.

  Little by little, however, he began to distinguish sounds, bodies. One afternoon he recognized me. Angélica, he said, and he smiled. I had never seen such a horrible, pathetic, crooked smile. I started to cry. But he didn't seem to notice that I was crying and kept smiling. He looked like a corpse. The trephination scars weren't hidden by his hair yet, which was maddeningly slow to grow back.

  A little later he started to talk. He had a very high-pitched, thin little voice, like a flute. Gradually it grew stronger, but no less shrill. In any case, it wasn't Ernesto's voice, that I was sure of. It was like the voice of a feebleminded adolescent, an ignorant adolescent on his deathbed. His vocabulary was limited. He had a hard time coming up with the words for some things.

  One afternoon I got to his house and his mother let me in and then led me to her room, in such a state of agitation that at first I thought my friend must have taken a turn for the worse. But it was a motherly flurry of happiness. He's cured, she told me. I didn't understand what she meant. I thought she was talking about Ernesto's voice or saying that Ernesto's mind had gotten sharper. How is he cured? I said, trying to get her to let go of my arms. It took her a while to say what she meant, but in the end she had to come out with it. Ernesto isn't a fairy anymore, miss, she said. Ernesto isn't what? I said. At that moment his father came into the room, and after asking us what we were doing in there, he declared that his son had finally been cured of his homosexuality. He didn't say it in those exact words, and I didn't want to answer or ask any more questions, so I got out of that horrible room as quickly as I could. Still, before I went into Ernesto's room, I heard his mother say: every cloud has a silver lining.

  Of course, Ernesto was still a homosexual even though sometimes he didn't remember very well what that meant. Sexuality, for him, had become something remote, something he knew was pleasurable and exciting, but remote. One day Juanito Dávila called me to say that he was going north, to work, and that I should tell Ernesto goodbye for him because he didn't have the heart. From then on there were no more lovers in Ernesto's life. His
voice changed a little, but not enough: he didn't speak, he wailed or moaned, and when he did, everyone except for his mother and me-his father and the neighbors paying their endless obligatory visits-would flee, which was ultimately a relief, so much so that once I thought Ernesto was wailing on purpose to drive away all that terrible politeness.

  As the months went by, I began to leave more time between my visits too. Having gone to see him every day when he was just out of the hospital, I visited less frequently once he started to talk and walk up and down the hall. And yet I called him every night, no matter where I was. We had some crazy conversations. Sometimes I was the one who would talk on and on, telling stories, true stories, although they went barely skin-deep, about the sophisticated Mexico City life (a way of forgetting that we lived in Mexico) that I was getting to know back then, the parties, the drugs I took, the men I slept with, and other times he was the one who would talk, reading stories to me that he'd cut out of the paper that day (a new hobby, probably suggested by the therapists who were treating him, who knows), telling me what he'd had to eat, the people who'd come to visit, something his mother had said that he'd saved up for the end of the conversation. One afternoon I told him that Ismael Humberto Zarco had chosen one of his poems for his anthology, which had just come out. What poem? said that little bird voice of his, that Gillette blade of a voice that tore at my heart. I had the book beside me. I told him. Did I write that poem? he said. It struck me that he was joking, why I'm not sure, maybe because his voice sounded so much deeper than usual. His jokes had been like that before, innocent, almost impossible to distinguish from whatever else he was saying. But he wasn't joking. That week I found time that I didn't have and went to see him. A friend, a new friend, drove me to his house but didn't want to come in. Wait for me here, I said, this neighborhood is dangerous and when we come back we might find ourselves without a car. It seemed strange to him, but he didn't say anything. Around that time, I had developed a well-deserved reputation in the circles I moved in for being eccentric. As it happened, I was right: recently Ernesto's neighborhood had been going downhill. As if the aftereffects of his operation were visible in the streets, in the people without work, the petty thieves who would come out at seven in the evening to sit in the sun, like zombies (or messengers with no message or an untranslatable message) automatically primed to kill another evening in Mexico City.

  Ernesto hardly paid any attention to the book, of course. He looked for his poem and said: oh. I don't know if he suddenly recognized it or if he was confused. Then he started to tell me the same kind of things he told me on the phone.

  When I came out my friend was standing beside the car smoking a cigarette. I asked whether anything had happened while I was gone. Nothing, he said, it's dead quiet out here. But it couldn't have been so quiet because his hair was disheveled and his hands were shaking.

  I never saw Ernesto again.

  One night he called me and recited a poem by Richard Belfer. One night I called him, from Los Angeles, and told him that I was sleeping with the theater director Francisco Segura, aka La Vieja Segura, who was at least twenty years older than me. How exciting, said Ernesto. La Vieja must be an intelligent man. He's talented, not intelligent, I said. What's the difference? he said. I sat there thinking how to answer and he waited for me to speak and for a few seconds neither of us said anything. I wish I could be with you, I told him before I said goodbye. Me too, said that voice like a bird from another dimension. A few days later his mother called and told me that he had died. An easy death, she said, while he was sitting at home in a chair in the sun. He fell asleep like a little angel. What time of day did he die? I asked. At about five, after lunch.

  Of his old friends, I was the only one who went to his burial, in one of the patchwork cemeteries on the north side of the city. I didn't see any poets, ex-lovers, or editors of literary magazines. Lots of relatives and family friends and possibly every single one of the neighbors. Before I left the cemetery, two teenagers came up to me and tried to lead me somewhere. I thought they were going to rape me. Only then did I feel rage and pain at Ernesto's death. I pulled a switchblade out of my purse and said: I'll kill you, you little creeps. They went running and I chased them for a while down two or three cemetery streets. When I finally stopped, another funeral procession appeared. I put the knife in my bag and watched as they lifted the coffin into its niche, very carefully. I think it was a child. But I couldn't say for sure. Then I left the cemetery and went to have drinks with a friend at a bar downtown.

  10

  Norman Bolzman, sitting on a bench in Edith Wolfson Park, Tel Aviv, October 1979. I've always been sensitive to the pain of others, always tried to feel a part of everyone else's suffering. I'm Jewish, a Mexican Jew, and I know the history of my two peoples. That says it all, I think. I'm not trying to justify myself. I'm just trying to tell a story. Maybe I'm also trying to understand its hidden workings, workings I wasn't aware of at the time but that weigh on me now. Still, my story won't be as coherent as I'd like. And my role in it will flicker like a speck of dust between the light and the dark, between laughter and tears, exactly like a Mexican soap opera or a Yiddish melodrama.

  Everything began last February. It was a gray afternoon, fine as a shroud, the kind that brings a shudder to the skies of Tel Aviv. Someone rang the bell of our apartment on Hashomer Street. When I opened the door, the poet Ulises Lima, leader of the self-proclaimed visceral realists, was standing there before me. I can't say I knew him, in fact I'd only met him once, but Claudia used to tell me stories about him, and Daniel read me one of his poems once. Literature isn't my specialty. It may be that I was never able to appreciate the quality of his work. In any case, the man in front of me looked less like a poet than a bum.

  We didn't get off to a good start, I admit. Claudia and Daniel were at the university and I had to study, so I let him in, made him a cup of tea, and then went into my room and shut the door. For a minute everything seemed back to normal. I immersed myself in the philosophers of the Marburg School (Natorp, Cohen, Cassirer, Lange) and in some commentaries on Solomon Maimon, indirectly devastating to the Marburg philosophers. But after a while, it might have been twenty minutes or two hours, my mind went blank and in the middle of that whiteness the face of Ulises Lima, the recent arrival, began to take shape, and even though in my mind everything was white it took me a long time, I don't know how long, to make out his features precisely, as if Ulises's face were getting darker instead of brightening in the light.

  When I came out he was sprawled in an armchair, asleep. I stood there watching him for a while. Then I went back into my room and tried to concentrate on my work. I couldn't. I should have gone out, but it seemed wrong to leave him alone. I thought about waking him up. I thought that maybe I should follow his example and go to sleep too, but I was too afraid or too embarassed, I can't say which. At last I took a book from the shelf, Natorp's Religion at the Limits of Humanity, and sat facing him on the sofa.

  It was around ten when Claudia and Daniel came in. I had cramps in both legs and my whole body ached. Worse, nothing I'd read had made any sense, but when I saw them come in the door I somehow managed to raise my finger to my lips, why I don't know, maybe because I didn't want Ulises to wake up before Claudia and I could talk, maybe because I'd grown used to hearing the steady rhythm of his breath while he was sleeping. But when Claudia, after a few seconds of hesitation, saw Ulises in the armchair, it was all for nothing. The first thing she said was carajo or bolas or cámara or chale, because even though Claudia was born in Argentina and came to Mexico when she was sixteen, deep down she's always felt Mexican. Or so she says, who knows. And Ulises woke up with a start and the first thing he saw was Claudia smiling at him from less than a foot away, and then he saw Daniel, and Daniel was smiling too. What a surprise.

  That night we went out to dinner in his honor. At first I said that I really couldn't go, that I had to finish with my Marburg School, but Claudia wouldn't let me get out
of it. Don't even think about it, Norman, let's not start. Dinner was fun, despite my fears. Ulises told us about his adventures and we all laughed, or rather he told Claudia about his adventures, but in such a charming way, in spite of how sad everything he was telling us really was, that we all laughed, which is the best you can do at times like that. Then we went walking home along Arlozorov, taking deep breaths of fresh air. Daniel and I were ahead, quite a long way ahead, and Claudia and Ulises were behind, talking as if they were in Mexico City again and they had all the time in the world. And when Daniel told me not to walk so fast, asking why I was in such a hurry, I quickly changed the subject, asking him what he'd been doing, telling him the first thing that came to mind about crazy old Solomon Maimon, anything to put off what was coming next, the moment I was afraid of. I would happily have run away that night. I wish I had.

  When we got to the apartment we still had time for a cup of tea. Then Daniel looked at the three of us and said he was going to bed. When I heard his door close I said the same thing and went into my room. Lying on my bed with the light off, I heard Claudia talking to Ulises for a while. Then the door opened and Claudia turned on the light, asked me whether I had class the next day, and started to undress. I asked her where Ulises Lima was. Sleeping on the sofa, she said. I asked her what she'd told him. I didn't tell him anything, she answered. Then I undressed too, got in bed, and squeezed my eyes shut.