The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  That was what Jacinto said, but he still wouldn't call Ulises's mother, and I said: let's see, let's examine the situation, the last thing that woman cares about is whether her son is a Pushkin or an Ambrose Bierce. I put myself in her shoes, I'm a mother, and if someday some bastard kills Franz (God forbid), then I'm not going to be thinking that the great Mexican (or Latin American) poet is dead, I'm going to be writhing in pain and anguish and I won't be having the first thought about literature, I can promise you that, because I'm a mother and I know about sleepless nights and the fears and worries that come with having a brat of your own. The best thing we could do, I swear, is to call her or go see her in Ciudad Satélite and tell her what we know about her son. And Jacinto said: she probably already knows, Montero probably already told her. And I said: how can you be so sure? And then Jacinto was quiet and I said: it hasn't even come out in the papers, no one has said anything, it's as if Ulises never went to Central America. And Jacinto said: that's true. And I said: there's nothing you or I can do, because no one will pay attention to us, but I'm sure they'll listen to his mother. They'll tell her to get lost, said Jacinto, and all we'll do is give her more to worry about, more to think about, when she's better off the way she is. What you don't know can't hurt you, he said, preparing food for Franz and pacing around the house, what you don't know can't hurt you, living in ignorance is almost like living in bliss.

  And then I said: how can you call yourself a Marxist, Jacinto, how can you call yourself a poet, when you say things like that? Do you plan to make revolution with clichés? And Jacinto answered that frankly there was no way he was planning to make revolution anymore, but that if some night he happened to be in the mood, then making it with clichés and the lyrics of sappy love songs wouldn't be such a bad idea, and he also said that it was as if I was the one who'd gotten lost in Nicaragua, I was so upset, and who's to say, he said, that Ulises did get lost in Nicaragua, he might not have gotten lost at all, he might have decided to stay of his own free will, since after all, Nicaragua must be like what we dreamed about in 1975, the country where we all wanted to live. And then I thought about the year 1975, before Franz was born, and I tried to remember what Ulises was like back then and what Arturo Belano was like, but all I could remember clearly was Jacinto's face, his gap-toothed angel smile, and it made me feel so fondly toward him, made me feel like hugging him right then and there, him and Franz, and telling the two of them that I loved them very much, but right away I remembered Ulises's mother and I thought that no one had the right not to tell her where her son was, she'd already suffered enough, the poor woman, and I insisted again that he call her, call her, Jacinto, and tell her everything you know, but Jacinto said that it wasn't his responsibility, that he wasn't one to speculate on the basis of vague news, and then I said: stay with Franz for a little while, I'll be right back, and he was quiet, watching me without saying anything, and when I picked up my bag and opened the door he said: at least try not to be alarmist. And I said: all I'm going to tell her is that her son isn't in Mexico anymore.

  Rafael Barrios, in the bathroom of his house, Jackson Street, San Diego, California, September 1982. Jacinto and I wrote each other occasionally. He was the one who let me know about Ulises's disappearance. But he didn't give me the news in a letter. He called me from his friend Efrén Hernández's house, which meant that it was serious, or at least that he thought it was serious. Efrén is a young poet who wants to write poetry like the visceral realists used to write. I don't know him. He showed up after I'd moved to California, but according to Jacinto, the kid isn't a bad writer. Send me some of his poems, I said, but Jacinto only sends letters, so I don't know whether he writes well or not, whether he writes visceral realist poetry or not, though to be honest, of course, I don't know what that means, visceral realist poetry. Maybe what Ulises Lima writes. I don't know. All I know is that no one in Mexico has heard of us anymore and those who have heard of us make fun of us (we're the example of what not to do), and maybe they're not all wrong. So it's always nice (or at least appreciated) to come across a young poet who writes or wants to write in the visceral realist style. And this poet's name was Efrén Hernández and it was from his phone, or actually his parents' phone, that Jacinto Requena called to tell me that Ulises Lima had disappeared. I listened to the story and then I said: he hasn't disappeared, he decided to stay in Nicaragua, which is a whole different thing. And he said: if he had decided to stay in Nicaragua, he would have told us so, I went to see him off at the airport and he had no intention of not coming back. I said: cool it, man, it's like you don't know Ulises. And he said: he's disappeared, Rafael, believe me, he didn't even say a thing to his mother, you don't want to know the hard time she's giving the assholes at Bellas Artes. I said: holy smoke. And he said: she thinks the peasant poets killed her son. I said: holy shit. And he said: you can say that again. Anytime somebody touches a mother's child she turns into a lioness. At least that's what Xóchitl says.

  Barbara Patterson, in the kitchen of her house, Jackson Street, San Diego, California, October 1982. Our life was miserable but when Rafael heard that Ulises Lima hadn't come back from a trip to Nicaragua it became twice as miserable.

  One day I said things can't go on like this. Rafael wasn't doing anything. He didn't work, he didn't write, he didn't help me clean the house, he didn't do the shopping, all he did was take showers (because if nothing else, Rafael is clean, like practically all fucking Mexicans) and watch TV until dawn or go out for beers or play soccer with the fucking Chicanos in the neighborhood. When I came home, there he'd be at the door, sitting on the steps or on the ground, in an Américas T-shirt that stank of sweat, drinking his Tecate and shooting the shit with his friends, this little group of brain-dead teenagers who called him Poet Man (which he didn't seem to mind) and who he'd be with until I'd made our fucking dinner. Then Rafael would say goodbye to them, and they would say sure thing, Poet Man, see you later, Poet Man, we'll catch you tomorrow, Poet Man, and only then would he come into the house.

  I was seething with rage, I really was, absolute fury, and I would happily have poisoned his goddamn scrambled eggs, but I restrained myself. I counted to ten. I told myself he was going through a bad patch. The problem was, I knew the bad patch had already been going on too long, four years, to be precise, and although there were plenty of good moments, there were more bad ones and my patience was almost at its limit. But I kept trying, and I would ask how was your day (stupid question) and he would say (what could he say?) fine, okay, so-so. And I would ask: what do you talk about with those kids? And he would say: I tell them stories, I teach them life lessons. Then we would be quiet with the TV on, each of us absorbed in our own scrambled eggs, our pieces of lettuce, our tomato slices, and I would think what life lessons are you talking about, you poor bastard, you poor jerk, what lessons did you ever learn, you pathetic leech, you pathetic loser, you fucking asshole, if it weren't for me you'd be sleeping under a bridge. But I didn't say anything, I just looked at him, and that was all. Although even my glances seemed to bother him. He would say: what are you looking at, white girl, what are you scheming? And then I would force a dumb smile, not answering, and start to clear the plates.

  Luis Sebastián Rosado, a dark office, Calle Cravioto, Colonia Coyoacán, Mexico City DF, March 1983. One afternoon, he called me. How did you get my number? I asked. I had just moved out of my parents' house and it had been a long time since I'd seen him. A moment came when I thought that our relationship was killing me and I decided to make a clean break. I stopped seeing him, I stopped showing up when we were supposed to meet, and it didn't take him long to disappear. He lost interest, he went in search of new adventures, but still, deep down (as I always knew I would), I yearned for him to call, to come looking for me, to miss me. But Luscious Skin didn't come looking for me and for a while, a year or so, we were completely out of touch. So it was a pleasant surprise when he called. How did you get my number? I asked. I called your parents and they gave it to me
, he said, I've been trying to call you all day, you're never home. I sighed. I would've preferred it if he'd had a harder time finding me. But Luscious Skin was talking as if we'd just seen each other last week, so that was that. We talked for a while. He asked how I'd been, he mentioned that he'd seen a poem of mine in Espejo de México and a story in an anthology of young Mexican writers that had just come out. I asked whether he'd liked the story. I had only recently taken up the difficult art of storytelling and my steps were still unsure. He told me he hadn't read it. I took a look at the book when I saw your name, but I didn't read it, I don't have any money, he said. Then he stopped talking, I stopped talking, and for a while we were both silent, listening to the muted humming and crackling of Mexico City's public telephones. I remember that I was quiet, smiling and thinking about Luscious Skin's face, also smiling, imagining him standing on some sidewalk in the Zona Rosa or Reforma, with his little black knapsack hanging over his shoulder, brushing his ass sheathed in worn, tight denim, a full-lipped smile sketched with surgical precision on an angular face without an ounce of fat, like a young Maya priest, and then I couldn't bear it anymore (I felt tears come to my eyes) and before he could ask for it I gave him my address (which he must have already had) and told him to come right away, and he laughed, a happy laugh, and he said it would take him more than two hours from where he was, and I said it didn't matter, I would make some dinner in the meantime, and I'd be waiting for him. Narratively speaking, that was the moment to hang up and dance for joy, but Luscious Skin always waited until the coins ran out, and he didn't hang up. Luis Sebastián, he said, I have something very important to tell you. You can tell me when you get here, I said. It's something I wanted to tell you a long time ago, he said. His voice sounded unusually forlorn. At that moment I began to suspect that something was going on, that Luscious Skin hadn't called me just because he wanted to see me, or because he needed money. What is it? I said, what's wrong? I heard the last coin fall into the bowels of the public phone, the sound of leaves, the wind whipping dead leaves, a sound like cables tangling and untangling and then slipping apart in the void. Poetic misery. Remember there was something I wanted to tell you and in the end I didn't? he said, his voice sounding perfectly normal. When? I heard myself ask stupidly. A while ago, said Luscious Skin. I told him I didn't remember and then I argued that it didn't matter, he could tell me when he got there. I'm going out to do some shopping, I'll see you soon, I said, but Luscious Skin didn't hang up. And if he wasn't going to hang up, how could I? So I waited and listened and even encouraged him to talk. And then he brought up Ulises Lima, saying that Lima had gotten lost somewhere in Managua (I wasn't surprised, half the world was going to Managua), but that actually he wasn't lost, he was hiding, or in other words, everyone thought (who was everyone? I wanted to ask, his friends, his readers, the critics who've been assiduously following his work?) that he was lost, but that he knew he wasn't lost, he was really hiding. Why would Ulises Lima want to hide? I asked. That's what it all comes down to, said Luscious Skin. I talked to you about this a while ago, remember? No, I said in a tiny voice. When? Years ago, the first time we slept together, he said. I felt shivers, a twisting in my gut; my testicles contracted. It was an effort to speak. How do you expect me to remember? I whispered. Now I was even more eager to see him. I suggested that he take a taxi. He said that he didn't have any money. I promised that I would pay, that I would be waiting for him outside. Luscious Skin was about to say something else when the line went dead.

  I thought about taking a shower but decided to save it for when he got there. I spent a while straightening things up, and then I changed my shirt and went outside to wait. It was more than half an hour, and all I did the entire time was try to remember the first time we made love.

  When he got out of the taxi he looked much thinner than he had the last time I'd seen him, vastly thinner and more worn down than in my memories, but he was still Luscious Skin and I was happy to see him. I held out my hand but he didn't take it, instead he hurled himself at me and hugged me. The rest was more or less the way I'd imagined it, the way I'd wished. There was nothing disappointing about it.

  At three in the morning we got up and I made us a second supper, this time a cold one, and I poured us some whiskey. We were both hungry and thirsty. Then, as we were eating, Luscious Skin started to talk more about Ulises Lima's disappearance. He had a wild theory that didn't stand up to the slightest scrutiny. According to him, Ulises was fleeing from an organization (or that's the way it sounded at first) that wanted to kill him, so when he ended up in Managua he decided not to come back. No matter how you looked at it, it was an unlikely story. Everything had begun, according to Luscious Skin, with a trip that Lima and his friend Belano took up north, at the beginning of 1976. After that trip they both went on the run. First they fled to Mexico City together, and then to Europe, separately. When I asked him what the founders of visceral realism were doing in Sonora, Luscious Skin said they'd gone to look for Cesárea Tinajero. After he'd spent several years in Europe, Lima had returned to Mexico. Maybe he thought the whole thing had been forgotten, but the killers showed up one night after a meeting where Lima had been trying to reunite the visceral realists, and he had to run away again. When I asked Luscious Skin why anyone would want to kill Lima, he said he didn't know. You didn't travel with him, did you? Luscious Skin said he hadn't. Then how do you know all this? Who told you this story? Lima? Luscious Skin said no, it was María Font who'd told him (he explained who María Font was), and she'd gotten it from her father. Then he told me that María Font's father was in an insane asylum. Under ordinary circumstances, I would have started to laugh right there, but when Luscious Skin told me that the person who'd started the rumor was a madman, a shiver ran up my spine. And I felt pity too, and I knew I was in love.

  That night we talked until dawn. At eight in the morning I had to go to the university. I left Luscious Skin copies of the keys to the house and I asked him to wait till I came back. From the university I called Albertito Moore and asked him whether he remembered Ulises Lima. His reply was vague. He did and he didn't. Who was Ulises Lima? A lost lover? I said goodbye and hung up. Next I called Zarco and asked him the same question. This time the reply was much more emphatic: a lunatic, said Ismael Humberto. He's a poet, I said. More or less, said Zarco. He traveled to Managua with a delegation of Mexican writers and got lost, I said. It must have been the delegation of peasant poets, said Zarco. And he didn't come back with them, he disappeared, I said. That's the kind of thing that happens to these people, said Zarco. That's it? I said. Sure, said Zarco, there's nothing else to it. When I got home, Luscious Skin was sleeping. My latest book of poetry was open next to him. That night, as we ate dinner, I suggested that he stay with me for a few days. That's what I was planning to do, said Luscious Skin, but I wanted you to be the one who asked. A little later he brought over a suitcase with all his belongings in it. He had nothing: two shirts, a serape that he'd stolen from a musician, some socks, a portable radio, a notebook he used to keep a kind of diary, and not much else. So I gave him an old pair of pants that were maybe a little tight on him but that he loved, plus three new shirts that my mother had just bought me, and one night, on my way home from work, I went to a shoe store and bought him some boots.

  Our life together was brief but happy. For thirty-five days we lived together and each night we made love and talked until late and ate meals that he cooked. Usually they were complicated or sometimes they were simple but they were always tasty. One night he told me that the first time he had sex he was ten years old. I didn't want him to tell me anything else. I remember looking away, at a Pérez Camarga print hanging on the wall, and I prayed that his first time had been with a teenager, or a kid, and that he hadn't been raped. Another night, or maybe the same night, he told me that he'd come to Mexico City when he was eighteen, with no money, no clothes, no friends to turn to, and that he'd had a rough time of it, until a journalist friend he'd had sex with let him
sleep in El Nacional's paper warehouse. Since I was there, he said, I thought I was fated be a journalist, and for a while he tried to write articles that no one would publish. Then he lived with a woman and had a child and a long string of jobs, none of them permanent. He even worked as a street hawker around Azcapotzalco, but he ended up in a knife fight with his supplier and he quit. One night, when he was inside of me, I asked him whether he had ever killed anyone. I didn't mean to ask the question, I didn't want to hear his answer, whether it was true or a lie, and I bit my lips. He said that he had and thrust even harder, and I cried when I came.

  During that time no one came to see me and I stopped visiting anyone, I told some people I didn't feel well, and others that I was working on something that required utter solitude and unbroken concentration. The truth is, I did write a little while Luscious Skin was living with me, five or six short poems. They aren't bad. I'll probably never publish them, but you never know. The visceral realists always appeared in the stories he told me and although at first it bothered me when he talked about them, little by little I got used to it and when he didn't happen to mention them, I was the one to ask: where were the Rodríguez brothers when you were in the house on Calzada Camarones? where did Rafael Barrios live when you lived in the Niño Perdido hotel? and then he would reshuffle the pieces of his story and talk to me about those shadowy figures, his occasional brothers-in-arms, the ghosts populating his vast freedom, his vast desolation.