The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  The next day I turned in my ticket, and three days later I was one of nine people who had a match for all fourteen. The first thing I thought, and you had to have been through this yourself to know how it felt, was that they wouldn't give me the money because I was in Spain illegally. So that same day I went to see a lawyer and told him everything. The shyster-Mr. Martínez was his name, and he was from Lora del Río-congratulated me on my good luck and then went on to reassure me. In Spain, he said, a child of the Americas is never a foreigner, although it was true that I had entered the country in an irregular fashion, and that would have to be fixed. Then he called a journalist at La Vanguardia, who asked me a few questions and took some pictures of me. By the next day I was famous. I was in two or three papers, at least. Stowaway Wins Pool, they said. I kept the clippings and sent them to Santiago. I gave some radio interviews. In a week, we'd straightened out my situation, and in three months I went from being an undocumented alien to being a legal resident with no work permit, while Martínez negotiated a better deal for me. The prize amounted to 950,000 pesetas, which was real money back then, and even after the lawyer bled me for 200,000, the truth is that in those days I felt rich: rich, famous, and free to do as I pleased. The first few days I toyed with the idea of packing my suitcases and returning to Chile. With the money I had, I could've started a business in Santiago, but in the end I decided to exchange 100,000 pesetas for dollars, send my mother the money, and stay in Barcelona, which now seemed to be opening up to me like a flower, if you'll pardon the expression. This was 1975, anyway, and things in Chile were looking ugly, so I got over my doubts and decided to stay the course. At the consulate, after some resistance requiring a certain amount of tact and money on my part, they agreed to give me a passport. I didn't change boardinghouses, but I asked for a bigger, brighter room of my own (which they gave me in a heartbeat, what can I say? fate had made me the darling of Casa Amelia), quit working as a dishwasher, and began nosing around for a job that would be a good match for my interests. I took my own sweet time. I'd sleep until twelve or one. Then I'd go eat at a restaurant on Calle Fernando or another place on Calle Joaquín Costa, waited on by the nicest pair of twins, and after that I would wander around Barcelona, from Plaza Catalonia to Paseo Colón, from Paralelo to Vía Layetana, having coffee at sidewalk cafés and wine and little dishes of squid at bars, reading the sports page and pondering my next step, though in my innermost self I already knew what it would be, even if my education in the Chilean schools (and granted, I never actually spent much time in class) made me reluctant to lay it out on the table. And while I was at it, I'll tell you, I even thought about that bastard Descartes. Just to give you some idea. Descartes, Andrés Bello, Arturo Prat, the men who left their mark on our long, narrow strip of land. But you can't turn your back on the truth and one afternoon I stopped beating around the bush and admitted to myself that what I really wanted was to win another soccer pool, not look for work, win another pool by any means possible, but preferably the way I knew best. Don't look at me like I'm crazy, because of course I realized that my hope, or my dream, as Lucho Gatica would say, was irrational, even highly irrational-look, what mechanism or syndrome was making those figures appear so clearly in my head? who was dictating them to me? did I believe in visions? was I an ignorant person, a superstitious person come to this corner of the Mediterranean from the farthest reaches of the Third World? or was it possible that everything that was happening to me and everything that had happened to me was just a lucky combination of fate and the delirium of a man driven halfway out of his mind by a god-awful crossing that no travel agency would dare to offer?

  Those were days of deep soul-searching. And yet, at the same time, I have to admit, nothing mattered to me (it's a contradiction, but that's the way it was) and as the days went by I stopped reading and responding to the generous job offerings in La Vanguardia, and although the numbers had fled from me ever since the prize (as a result of the shock, I presume), I tried to figure out what to do, and one afternoon, as I was feeding the pigeons in Parque de la Ciudadela, I thought I'd found the solution. If the numbers wouldn't come to me, I'd go after them in their den and drag them out by hook or by crook.

  I tried several methods, which for professional reasons I should probably spare you. You say no? All right, then, I won't spare you. I started with street numbers. For example, I would walk along Calle Oleguer and Calle Cadena and note down the numbers on the doors as I went. The ones to my right were 1s, the ones to my left were 2s, and the people who looked me straight in the face as I passed were the Xs. It didn't work. I tried playing dice by myself in a bar on Calle Princesa, a place that doesn't exist anymore called La Cruz del Sur, run in those days by an Argentinian friend. That didn't work either. Other times I would lie in bed, my mind blank, and in desperation I would order the numbers to come back, but I couldn't think, couldn't call up the 1, which in my madness I equated with cash and shelter. Ninety days after I'd won the pool, and after I'd spent more than fifty thousand pesetas on huge, futile multiple bets, I got it. I had to change neighborhoods. It was that simple. The numbers of the Old City were exhausted, at least for me, and it was time to move on. I started to roam the Ensanche, a strange neighborhood that until then I had only eyed from Plaza Catalonia, never daring to cross the boundary of Ronda Universidad, or at least not consciously, thereby exposing my senses to the neighborhood magic and walking unguarded, all eyes, defenseless; in short, the antenna man.

  The first few days I just walked up the Paseo de Gracia and down Balmes, but on the days after that I ventured onto side streets, Diputación, Consejo de Ciento, Aragón, Valencia, Mallorca, Provenza, Rosellón, and Córcega. The secret of those streets is the way they can be dazzling and somehow familiar, homey, all at once. When I would get to Diagonal, that was always the end of my walk, which sometimes followed a straight line and other times an endless series of zigzags. As you might imagine, I didn't just look lost. I looked like a crazy person. Lucky for me Barcelona prided itself on its tolerance in those days, as of course it still does. Naturally, I'd bought myself new gear. I was crazy all right, but not crazy enough to think I could pass unnoticed in clothes that reeked of a boardinghouse in Distrito 5. When I went out walking, I sported a white shirt, a tie with the Harvard logo, a sky-blue V-neck sweater, and pleated black pants. The only old things were my moccasins, because when it comes to walking, I've always favored comfort over elegance.

  For the first three days, nothing happened. The numbers were conspicuous in their absence, as they say. But something in me resisted giving up the area I had so randomly chosen. On the fourth day, as I walked up Balmes, I raised my eyes skyward and saw the following inscription on a church tower: Ora et labora. I couldn't tell you exactly what it was that drew me to that inscription, but I really did feel something. I had a premonition. I knew I was close to the source of what beckoned to me and tormented me, the thing I desired with such unhealthy intensity. As I walked along, on the other side of the tower I read: Tempus breve est. Several pictures next to the inscriptions caught my eye, making me think of mathematics and geometry. It was like seeing the face of an angel. From then on that church became the center of my wanderings, although I strictly forbade myself to go inside.

  One morning, just as I'd been hoping, the numbers came back. The sequences didn't make any sense at first, but it didn't take me long to see the logic in them. The secret was to follow their lead. That week I played three soccer pools (with four doubles) and bought two lottery tickets. As you can imagine, I was unsure of my strategy. I won one pool with thirteen matches. The lottery was a bust. The next week I tried again, this time restricting myself to the pools. I matched fourteen and took home fifteen million. Life changes so fast! In a heartbeat, I had more money than I'd ever dreamed of. I bought a bar on Calle del Carmen and sent for my mother and sister. I didn't go in person because all of a sudden I got scared. What if my plane crashed? What if the soldiers in Chile killed me? The truth is, I didn't
even have the strength to leave Pensión Amelia, and for a week I didn't go out. I just sat there, waited on hand and foot, chained to the phone, talking very little because I was afraid I'd do something stupid that would land me in a mental hospital. In the end I was spooked by the powers that I myself had called up. My mother's arrival helped me relax. There's nobody like your mother when you're feeling down! Also, my mother hit it off right away with the owner of the boardinghouse and before you knew it, everybody was eating empanadas de horno and pastel de choclo, which my mother made to spoil me. While she was at it, she spoiled all the castaways holed up there. They were good people, mostly, except for a few bad seeds, sullen types who worked hard and kept a jealous eye on me. But I was the soul of amiability! Then I started to do business. After the bar on Calle del Carmen there was a restaurant on Calle Mallorca, an elegant place where the local office workers came for breakfast and lunch. After a while we started turning a huge profit. With my family there I couldn't keep living in the boardinghouse, so I bought myself an apartment on Sepúlveda and Viladomat and had a big housewarming party. The women from the boardinghouse, who had cried when I left, cried again when I made a speech welcoming them to my new home. My mother couldn't believe it. So much good luck all at once! It was different with my sister. Now that there was money, she gave herself airs she'd never given herself before. Or if she had I never noticed. I put her to work as a cashier at the restaurant on Calle Mallorca, but after a few months I was in the position of having to choose between someone who'd become a hopeless snob and all the rest of my employees, and, even worse, a good slice of my clientele. So I got her out of there and set her up in a salon on Calle Luna, close enough to our place, across Ronda San Antonio. Of course, all of this time I kept searching for the numbers, but it was as if they'd vanished as soon as I came into my fortune. I had money, I had businesses, and above all I had lots of work, so I hardly felt the loss, at least in the first few months. Later, when things began to settle down, when the excitement wore off, and I went back to the streets of Distrito 5, where people went about the real business of life and death, I started to think about the numbers again and I came up with the wildest, most ridiculous hypotheses trying to explain the miracle that I'd called down on myself. But I was thinking about it too much, and that was bad too. Late some nights, I admit, I even scared myself, so whatever you imagine won't be far from the truth.

  Part of what I was afraid of, when I had these thoughts, was the possibility of losing, of playing and losing everything that I'd won and held on to by dint of hard work. But what scared me even more, I swear, was poking into the nature of my luck. Like a good Chilean, the desire to get ahead gnawed at me, but like the Mighty Mouse I once was-like the Mighty Mouse I still am, deep down-prudence held me back. A little voice said to me: don't tempt fate, you lucky bastard, be happy with what you've got. One night I dreamed about the church on Calle Balmes, and I saw that little message, which this time I thought I understood: Tempus breve est, Ora et labora. We aren't given much time on this earth. We have to pray and work, not go pushing our luck with soccer pools. That was all. I woke up sure I'd learned my lesson. Then Franco died, and there was the transition, then democracy. This country began to change at a pace that was something to behold, something you could hardly believe your eyes were seeing. It's such a wonderful thing to live in a democracy. I applied for and received Spanish citizenship, traveled abroad to Paris, London, Rome. Always by train. Have you ever been to London? The channel crossing is a joke. That's no channel, not by a long shot. A little rougher, I guess, than the Golfo de Penas. One morning I woke up in Athens and the sight of the Parthenon brought tears to my eyes. There's nothing like traveling to expand your horizons. But also to cultivate your taste. I saw Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco. When I was done traveling I returned convinced of one thing: we're nothing. One day a new cook came to work at my restaurant on Calle Mallorca. She was young for the job and not very good at it, but I hired her right away. Her name was Rosa, and the next thing I knew, I'd married her. I wanted to name my first son Caupolicán, but in the end we named him Jordi. Next was a girl, and we named her Montserrat. When I think about my children I feel like crying with happiness. Women are funny: my mother, who was worried about me getting married, ended up being thick as thieves with Rosita. Now my life was perfectly on track, as they say. The Napoli and my first days in Barcelona seemed so far away-never mind my misspent youth in La Cisterna! I had a family, a couple of kids I adored, a wife who was perfect for me (but whom I retired from the kitchen of my restaurant the first chance I got, since you can have too much of a good thing), health, money. If you thought about it, there was nothing I didn't have, and yet still, some nights when I was left alone at the restaurant doing the books, with no one around but some waiter I trusted or the dishwasher, whom I couldn't see but could hear hard at work in the kitchen, starting in on his last stack of dirty dishes, I was struck by the strangest ideas, very Chilean ideas, if that makes sense, and then I felt that something was missing and I started to wonder what it could be and after thinking a lot and turning it over and over in my head I always came to the same conclusion: I missed the numbers, I missed the flash of the numbers behind my eyelids, which is like saying that I was missing a purpose or the purpose. Or what amounts to the same thing, at least from my perspective: I wanted to understand the phenomenon that had jump-started my fortune, the numbers that hadn't lit up my head for so long, and accept that reality like a man.

  And it was then that I had a dream, and I started to read nonstop, with no thought for myself or my eyes, like someone half crazed, all kinds of books, from my favorite historical biographies to books of occultism or poetry by Neruda. The dream was very simple. Actually, it was more like words than a dream, words that I heard in my sleep, spoken by a voice that wasn't mine. These were the words: she's laying thousands of eggs. What do you think of that? I could have been dreaming about ants or bees. But I know it wasn't ants or bees. So who was laying the thousands of eggs? I don't know. All I know is that she was alone when she laid them and that the place they were being laid-I apologize if I sound pedantic-was like Plato's cave, a kind of hell or heaven where there are only shadows (lately I've been reading the Greek philosophers). She's laying thousands of eggs, the voice said, and I knew that it was as if it were saying she's laying millions of eggs. And then I understood that my luck was there, nestled in one of those abandoned eggs-but abandoned hopefully, I mean, with hope-in Plato's cave. And that's when I realized that I was probably never going to understand the true nature of my luck, of the money that had rained down on me from the sky. But like a good Chilean I refused to accept this, that there was anything I couldn't know, and I began to read and read, sometimes I'd stay up all night, I didn't mind. I'd get up early to open my bars, I'd work all day, immersed in the true industriousness that a person breathes day and night in Barcelona (sometimes it seems a little obsessive), and I'd close my bars and go over my accounts, and after I'd finished my accounts, I'd start to read, and many times I'd fall asleep in a chair (as Chileans also have a tendency to do), and wake up early in the morning, when the sky in Barcelona is an almost purplish blue, almost violet, a sky that makes you want to sing and cry just to look at it, and after looking up at the sky I would keep reading, without letting myself rest, as if I were about to die and I didn't want to die before I'd understood what was going on around me and over my head and under my feet.