The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  And then I thought about the painter and his abstract paintings, and I don't know why it occurred to me to tell Norman (with whom I'd surely already discussed it while we were in Puerto Ángel) that that asshole Abraham Manzur was playing in the minor leagues, maybe to change the subject, maybe because that was all I had to say just then, at a moment when whatever I said wouldn't make much difference, because it was Norman who was in charge and nothing I could add was going to change that incontrovertible fact, the Renault going over eighty down the deserted road. Did you see his paintings? said Norman. Some, I said. And what did you think of them? said Norman, as if everything we'd talked about in Puerto Ángel had been forgotten. They were all right, I said. And what did Claudia think of them? She didn't tell me what she thought, I said. We kept on like that for a while. Norman started to talk about Mexican painting, the condition of the roads, university politics, the interpretation of dreams, the children of Puerto Ángel, about Nietzsche, and I broke in at long intervals with some monosyllabic remark, some question intended just to get the basic concepts clear, although the truth is that at that point I no longer gave a shit about basic concepts and all I wanted was to get back to Mexico City as soon as possible and never set foot in the state of Oaxaca again in my life.

  And then Norman said: Ulises Lima. Do you remember Ulises Lima? Of course I did, how could I have forgotten him? And Norman said: lately I've been thinking about him, as if Ulises Lima were part of his daily reality, or had been part of his life, when I knew for a fact that he'd only been a brief episode, and an annoying episode at that. And then Norman glanced at me, as if he were expecting a wink or a knowing look, but I just said watch the road, be careful, because the Renault was heeling toward the right and we were already on the shoulder, although that didn't seem to bother Norman, because with a jerk of the wheel he had us back in the center, on course, and I looked at him again and I said: so what then? Ulises Lima, the days he spent with us in Tel Aviv, and Norman: didn't you notice anything strange, anything out of the ordinary? ultranormal Norman. And then I said: everything! because that's how Ulises was, and that's secretly how we wanted him to be. Not Norman, who wasn't his friend and who mostly knew him by reputation, but Claudia and I, who back then thought we were going to be writers and would have given anything to belong to that essentially pathetic group, the visceral realists. Youth is a scam.

  And then Norman said: it has nothing to do with the visceral realists, asshole, you haven't understood a thing. And I said: well, what does it have to do with, then? And Norman, to my relief, stopped looking at me and concentrated on the road for a few minutes, and then he said: it has to do with life, with what we lose without knowing it, and what we can regain. So what can we regain? I said. What we've lost, said Norman, we can get it back intact. It would've been easy to argue, but instead I opened the window and let the warm air ruffle my hair. The trees were passing by at an incredible speed. What can we regain? I thought, and it struck me that we were going faster and faster and that there weren't many straight lengths of road anymore, but I didn't care, maybe because Norman had always driven carefully and he could talk, watch me, look for cigarettes in the glove compartment, light them, and even glance ahead every once in a while, all without taking his foot off the accelerator. We can get back into the game whenever we want to, I heard him say. Do you remember the days Ulises spent with us in Tel Aviv? Of course I remember, I said. Do you know why he came to Tel Aviv? Goddamn Ulises, of course I know: because he was in love with Claudia, I said. He was madly in love with Claudia, Norman corrected me, so madly that he didn't realize what he had within his grasp. He didn't realize a fucking thing, I said, the truth is, I don't know how he managed not to get himself killed. You're wrong, said Norman (actually, he shouted it), you're wrong, you're wrong, he couldn't have died even if he'd wanted to. Well, he came for Claudia, he came looking for Claudia, I said, and nothing went right. That's true, he came for Claudia, said Norman, laughing. Goddamn Claudia, do you remember how beautiful she was? Of course I remember, I said. And do you remember where Ulises slept while he was staying with us? On the sofa, I said. On the fucking sofa! said Norman. Hypostasis of romantic love. Threshold space. Noman's-land. And then he whispered, so quietly that between the noise of the Renault, which was blasting down the road, and the noise of the wind rushing along my arm and up the left side of my face, I had to work hard to make out his words: some nights, he said, he would cry. What? I said. Some nights, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I would hear him sobbing. Ulises? That's right, didn't you ever hear him? No, I said, when my head hits the pillow I'm out. That's good, said Norman, although the way he said it, it sounded more like too bad, mano. And why was he crying? I said. I don't know, said Norman, I never asked, I was just on my way to the bathroom and when I passed the living room I heard him, that's all, he might not even have been crying, he might have been jerking off and what I heard might've been sounds of pleasure, see what I mean? Yes, more or less, I said. But then again he might not have been jerking off, said Norman, or crying. What, then? He might have been sleeping, said Norman, maybe those were the sounds Ulises made in his sleep. He cried in his sleep? Hasn't it ever happened to you? said Norman. Frankly, no, I said. The first few nights I was afraid, said Norman, afraid of standing there in the living room, in the dark, listening to him. But one night I stayed, and then all of a sudden I understood everything. What was there to understand? I said. Everything, the most important thing of all, said Norman, and then he laughed. What Ulises Lima was dreaming? No, no, said Norman, and the Renault leaped forward.

  Strangely enough, the leap made me remember the giant Austrian whom Ulises had shown up with a month later, and I said to Norman: do you remember that Austrian kid who was friends with Ulises? And Norman laughed and said of course he did, but that wasn't it, Ulises wasn't the same when he got back to Tel Aviv, or he was the same but he wasn't, he didn't sob at night anymore, he didn't cry, I was watching him and I noticed, or maybe that bastard Ulises had stopped indulging himself, what do I know. And then Norman said: it happened at the beginning, when he was alone and slept in the armchair. It was then and not afterward. All right, sure, I said. A long time before he showed up with the Austrian. And he never said anything? Anything about what? said Norman. For fuck's sake, anything about anything, I said. Then Norman laughed again and said: Ulises was crying because he knew that nothing was over, because he knew he would have to come back to Israel again. The eternal return? Fuck the eternal return! Here and now! But Claudia doesn't live in Israel anymore, I said. Wherever Claudia lives is Israel, said Norman, no matter what fucking place it is, call it whatever you want, Mexico, Israel, France, the United States, planet Earth. Let me see if I understand you, I said, Ulises knew that things were going to end between you and Claudia? And then he could try again? You haven't understood anything! said Norman. I have nothing to do with any of this. Claudia has nothing to do with it. Sometimes even that bastard Ulises has nothing to do with it. The tears are all that count. I guess you're right, I don't understand you, I said.

  And then Norman looked at me and I swear he had the same expression on his face that he used to have when he was sixteen or fifteen, the expression he had when we met in high school, when he was much thinner, with his bird face, his longer hair, his brighter eyes, and he had a smile that made you love him instantly, a smile that said here today, gone tomorrow. And that was when the truck came barreling toward us and Norman swerved to miss it and we went flying. Norman went flying, I went flying, glass went flying. And we all ended up where we ended up.

  When I woke up I was in a hospital in Puebla and my parents or the shadows of my parents were moving across the walls of the room. Then Claudia came and kissed me on the forehead and spent hours sitting by my bed, or so I'm told. A few days later they told me that Norman had died. A month and a half later I was able to leave the hospital and I went to live with my parents. Every so often, relatives I didn't know and friends I'd forgotten would c
ome to see me. It didn't bother me, but I decided to move out and live by myself. I rented a little house in Colonia Anzures, with a bathroom, kitchen, and one big room, and little by little I began to take long walks around Mexico City. I was limping and sometimes I got lost, but the walking did me good. One morning I started to look for work. I didn't need to, because my parents had told me they'd support me till I was stronger. I went to the university and talked to two of Norman's friends. They seemed surprised to see me there, and then they said Norman was one of the most upstanding people they had ever known. They were both philosophy professors and both supporters of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas. I asked them what Norman thought about Cárdenas. He supported him, they said, supported him in his own way, like all of us, but he supported him. The truth, I realized then, was that it wasn't Norman's political affiliation I was looking for but something else, something I wasn't even able to formulate clearly to myself. I had dinner with Claudia a few times. I wanted to talk about Norman, wanted to tell Claudia what Norman and I had talked about as we were on our way back from Puerto Ángel, but Claudia said that talking about it made her sad. Anyway, she added, when you were in the hospital all you did was repeat your last conversation with Norman. So what did I say? What everyone says when they're delirious, said Claudia, sometimes you went on and on about the scenery and other times you switched subjects so fast that it was impossible to follow.

  No matter how I tried, I couldn't get anything clear. One night, as I was sleeping, Norman appeared to me and told me to relax, that he was fine. Then, but I'm not sure if this was in the dream or when I woke up shouting, I realized that Norman seemed to be in Mexican heaven, not Jewish heaven, let alone philosophy heaven or Marxist heaven. But what was goddamned Mexican heaven? A pretense of happiness? or what lay behind it? empty gestures? or what was hidden (for reasons of survival) behind them? A little later I started to work at an advertising agency. One night, drunk, I tried to call Arturo Belano in Barcelona. At the number I tried, someone told me that no one lived there by that name. I talked to Müller, Arturo's friend, and he told me Arturo was living in Italy. What's he doing in Italy? I said. I don't know, said Müller, working, I guess. When I hung up I started to look for Ulises Lima in Mexico City. I knew I had to find him and ask him what Norman had meant in his last conversation. But looking for someone in Mexico City is easier said than done.

  For months I went back and forth, traveling by metro and in crowded buses, calling people I didn't know and didn't want to know. I was mugged three times. At first no one had heard or wanted to hear anything about Ulises Lima. According to some people I talked to, he'd become an alcoholic and a drug addict. A thug who was shunned by his closest friends. According to others, he'd gotten married and was devoting himself full-time to his family. Some said that his wife was of Japanese descent or the only heir of a Chinese family who owned a chain of Chinese cafés in Mexico City. It was all vague and depressing.

  One day, at a party, I was introduced to the woman Ulises had lived with for a while. Not the Chinese woman, an earlier one.

  She was thin and had hard eyes. We talked for a while, standing in a corner, while her friends did lines of coke. She said she had a son, but that he was the son of another man. All the same, Ulises had been like a father to him.

  Like a father to your son? Something like that, she said. Like a father to my son and like a father to me. I watched her carefully. I was afraid that she was making fun of me. Except for her eyes, everything about her radiated helplessness.

  Then she talked about drugs, probably the only subject she thought worth discussing, and I asked her whether Ulises Lima used to get high. At first he didn't, she said, he only sold, but while he was with me he started. I asked her whether he wrote. She didn't hear me or maybe she didn't want to answer. I asked her if she knew where to find Ulises. She had no idea. He might be dead, she said.

  It was only at that moment that I realized the woman was sick, possibly very sick, and I didn't know what else to say to her, I just wanted to get out of there and forget about her. And yet I stayed with her (or near her, since being in her presence for any length of time was unbearable) until the party ended at dawn. And afterward we even left together and walked a few blocks to the nearest metro station. We got on at Tacubaya. Everyone riding the metro at that time of night seemed sick. She went one way and I went the other.

  Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976. We sat in silence for a while. The boys seemed tired and I was tired. So what happened to Encarnación Guzmán? one of them said suddenly. It was the last question I'd expected to hear and yet it was the only question that made it possible for us to go on. I took my time answering. Or maybe first I answered telepathically, as drunk old men often do, and then, in the face of the obvious, I opened my big mouth and said: nothing, boys. Nothing happened to her, just like nothing happened to Pablito Lezcano or me or even Manuel, if it comes to that. Life left us all where we were meant to be or where it was convenient to leave us and then forgot us, which is as it should be. Encarnación got married. She was too pretty to end up an old maid. It came as a surprise when she showed up one afternoon at the café where we met and invited us all to the wedding. Maybe the invitation was a joke and she was really just coming to boast. We congratulated her, of course, saying wonderful, Encarnación, what a lovely surprise, and then we didn't go to her wedding, although maybe one or two of us did. How did Encarnación Guzmán Arredondo's wedding affect Cesárea? Negatively, I suppose, although with Cesárea one never knew how bad things really were, but she wasn't pleased, no question about that. We didn't realize, but in those days everything was sliding inexorably toward the edge of a cliff. Or maybe that's putting it too strongly. In those days we were all sliding downhill. And no one would try to make the climb back up again, except maybe Manuel, in his own way, but otherwise no one else. Miserable goddamn life, isn't it, boys? I said. And they said: I guess so, Amadeo. And then I thought about Pablito Lezcano, who soon afterward would get married too, and whose wedding I did attend (it was a civil ceremony), and I thought about the banquet hosted by the father of the bride, a lavish celebration in a hall that doesn't exist anymore somewhere near Arcos de Belén, on Calle Delicias, I think, with mariachis and speeches before and after the banquet, and I could see Pablito Lezcano, his forehead shiny with sweat, reading a poem dedicated to his bride and his bride's family that from then on would be like his own family, and before he started to read the poem he looked at me and at Cesárea, who was beside me, and he winked at us, as if to say don't worry, my friends, you'll always be my secret family, or so I thought, although I may have been wrong. A few days after Pablito's wedding, Cesárea left Mexico City for good. We ran into each other one afternoon on the way out of a movie theater, which really is a coincidence, isn't it? I'd gone alone and so had Cesárea, and as we walked we talked about the movie. What movie? I don't remember, boys, it would be nice if it had been something with Charlie Chaplin, but the truth is I don't remember. I do remember that we liked it, that much I can tell you, and I also remember that the theater was across from the Alameda, and that Cesárea and I walked through the Alameda first and then toward the center of town, and at some moment I remember I asked her about her life and she told me that she was leaving Mexico City. Then we talked about Pablito's wedding, and at some point in the conversation, Encarnación Guzmán came up. Cesárea had been at her wedding. I asked how it had been, just to say something, and she told me that it was very pretty and moving, those were her words. And sad, like all weddings, I added. No, said Cesárea, which is what I told the boys, weddings aren't sad, Amadeo, she said, they're happy. But I was really only interested in talking about Cesárea, not Encarnación Guzmán. What will happen to your magazine? I said. What will happen to visceral realism? She laughed when I asked her that. I remember her laugh, boys, I said, night was falling over Mexico City and Cesárea laughed like a ghost, like the invisible woma
n she was about to become, a laugh that made my heart shrink, a laugh that made me want to run away from her and at the same time made me understand beyond the shadow of a doubt that there was no place I could run to. And then it occurred to me to ask where she was going. She won't tell me, I thought, that's Cesárea, she won't want me to know. But she told me: to Sonora, the land she was from, and she said it as naturally as someone else might tell you the time or say good morning. But why, Cesárea? I said. Don't you realize that if you leave now you're going to give up your literary career? Do you have any idea what a wasteland Sonora is? What are you going to do there? Questions like that. Questions a person asks, boys, when he doesn't really know what to say. And Cesárea looked at me as we walked and said that there was nothing left for her here. Have you gone mad? I said. Have you lost your mind, Cesárea? You have your work here, you have your friends, Manuel thinks highly of you, I think highly of you, Germán and Arqueles think highly of you, the general wouldn't know what to do without you. You're a stridentist, body and soul. You'll help us build Stridentopolis, Cesárea, I said. And then she smiled, as if I was telling her a good joke but one she already knew, and she said that she had quit her job a week ago and that anyway she'd always been a visceral realist, not a stridentist. And so am I, I said or shouted, all of us Mexicans are more visceral realists than stridentists, but what does it matter? Stridentism and visceral realism are just two masks to get us to where we really want to go. And where is that? she said. To modernity, Cesárea, I said, to goddamned modernity. And then, only then, I asked her whether it was true she had quit her job with mi general. And she said of course it was true. And what did he say? I asked. He went wild, laughed Cesárea. And? That's all, he doesn't believe I'm serious, but if he thinks I'm coming back he'd better wait sitting down, because otherwise he'll get tired. Poor man, I said. Cesárea laughed. Do you have relatives in Sonora? I said. No, I don't think so, she said. So what will you do then? I said. Look for a job and a place to live, said Cesárea. And is that all? I said. Is that all fate has in store for you, Cesárea, my love? I said, although I probably didn't say my love, I may just have thought it. And Cesárea gave me a look, a brief little sideways glance, and said that the search for a place to live and a place to work was the common fate of all mankind. Deep down you're a reactionary, Amadeo, she said (but she said it fondly). And we carried on like that for a while. As if we were arguing, but not arguing. As if we were blaming each other for something, but not blaming each other. And all of a sudden, just before we got to the street where we would part forever, I tried to imagine Cesárea in Sonora, I tried to imagine her in Sonora and I couldn't. I saw the desert or what I imagined the desert to be like back then, because I've never been there, boys, I said, I've seen it over the years in movies or on television, but I've never been there, thanks be to God, and in the desert I saw a spot moving along an endless ribbon and the spot was Cesárea and the ribbon was the road that led to a nameless city or town and then, like a melancholy buzzard, I swooped down and landed my ailing imagination on a rock and I saw Cesárea walking, although it wasn't the same Cesárea I'd known anymore but a different woman, a fat Indian dressed in black under the sun of the Sonora desert, and I said or tried to say goodbye, Cesárea Tinajero, mother of the visceral realists, but only a pitiful croak came out, best regards, dear Cesárea, I tried to say, regards from Pablito Lezcano and Manuel Maples Arce, regards from Arqueles Vela and the incombustible List Arzubide, regards from Encarnación Guzmán and mi general Diego Carvajal, but all that came out was a gurgle, as if I were having a heart attack, heaven forbid, or an asthma attack, and then I saw Cesárea again, walking beside me, as sure of herself and determined and brave as ever, and I said: Cesárea, think carefully, don't be foolhardy, watch your step, and she laughed and said: Amadeo, I know what I'm doing, and then we started to talk about politics, which was a topic that Cesárea enjoyed less and less, as if she and politics had gone mad together, she had funny ideas on the subject, saying, for example, that the Mexican Revolution would come in the twenty-second century, nonsense that's no comfort to anyone, is it? and we talked about literature too, about poetry, about the latest Mexico City news, about the gossip from the literary salons, about the things Salvador Novo was writing, about accounts of bullfighters and politicians and chorus girls, subjects that we tacitly agreed didn't bear close scrutiny, or were hard to scrutinize. And then Cesárea stopped as if suddenly she remembered something very important that she'd forgotten, and she was quiet, looking at the ground or the passersby at that time of day, but without seeing them, she was frowning, boys, I said, and then she looked at me, without seeing me at first, then seeing me, and she smiled and said goodbye, Amadeo. And that was the last time I saw her alive. Cool as could be. And that was the end of everything.