The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  Another thing I did was keep Don Octavio's calendar, which was full of social engagements, everything from parties and conferences to invitations and art openings to birthday parties and the awarding of honorary doctorates. The truth is that if he'd gone to all of those events the poor man wouldn't have been able to write a single line of poetry, never mind his essays. So when I had prepared his calendar he and Señora María José would go over it with a fine-tooth comb and rule things out, and sometimes I would watch them from my little corner and say to myself: that's right, Don Octavio, punish them with your indifference.

  And then came the era of Parque Hundido, a place that isn't one bit interesting, if you want my opinion. Maybe it used to be, but today it's become a jungle swarming with thieves, rapists, drunks, and disreputable women.

  It happened like this. One morning, when I'd just gotten to the house and it wasn't even eight yet, I found Don Octavio up already, waiting for me in the kitchen. As soon as he saw me, he said: I'll trouble you to take me for a drive, Clarita, in your car. What do you think of that? As if I'd ever refused to do anything he asked me to do. So I said: just tell me where you'd like to go, Don Octavio. But he motioned to me without saying anything, and we went outside. He settled himself beside me in the car, which incidentally is only a Volkswagen, so it isn't very comfortable. When I saw him sitting there with that absent look of his, I felt a little sorry that I didn't have a better vehicle to offer him, although I didn't say anything because it also occurred to me that if I apologized he might take it as a kind of reproach, since after all he was the one who paid me and if I didn't have enough money for a better car a person could say it was his fault, which is something I'd never even have dreamed of suggesting. So I was quiet, concealing my thoughts as best I could, and I started the car. We took the first streets at random. Then we drove around Coyoacán, and finally turned up Insurgentes. When Parque Hundido appeared, he ordered me to park wherever I could. Then we got out of the car and after Don Octavio took a look around, he walked into the park, which at that time of day wasn't exactly crowded but wasn't empty either. This must bring back some memory for him, I thought. The farther we walked, the lonelier it became. I noticed that through carelessness or laziness or lack of funds or shameless irresponsibility, the park had been left in a shocking state of neglect. Once we were deep in the park we sat on a bench and Don Octavio looked up at the treetops or the sky and then he murmured some words that I didn't understand. Before we left I had grabbed the pills and a little bottle of water and since it was time for him to take them and we were sitting down now, I gave them to him. Don Octavio looked at me as if I'd gone mad but he swallowed the pills without complaint. Then he said: you stay here, Clarita, and he got up and went walking along a little dirt path scattered with pine needles, and I did as he said. It was nice to sit there, I have to admit. Sometimes, along other paths, I would see the figures of maids taking a shortcut or students who had decided not to go to class that morning. The air was breathable, the pollution wouldn't be so bad that day, and from time to time I think I even heard a bird chirp. Meanwhile, Don Octavio was walking. He walked in wider and wider circles and sometimes he would step off the path onto the grass, grass that was sickly from having been trampled so often and that the gardeners probably didn't even tend anymore.

  It was then that I saw the man. He was walking in circles too and his steps took him along the same path, but in the opposite direction, so that he would have to pass Don Octavio. For me, it was as if an alarm had gone off in my chest. I got up and tensed all my muscles in case it would be necessary for me to intervene, since I happened to have taken a course in karate and judo a few years before with Doctor Ken Takeshi, whose real name was Jesús García Pedraza and who had been a member of the federal police. But it wasn't necessary: when the man passed Don Octavio he didn't even raise his head. So I stayed where I was and this is what I saw: Don Octavio, when he passed the man, stopped and stood still as if he were thinking, then he started to walk again, but this time he wasn't moving as aimlessly or as nonchalantly as he had been a few minutes before but rather seemed to be calculating the moment that the two trajectories, his and the stranger's, would cross again. And when the stranger passed Don Octavio once more, Don Octavio turned and stood there staring at him with real curiosity. The stranger looked at Don Octavio too, and I would say that he recognized him, which is hardly surprising, since everybody, and when I say everybody, I mean literally everybody, knows who he is. On our way home Don Octavio's mood had altered notably. His eyes were brighter and he was more energetic, as if the long morning walk had given him new strength. I remember that at some point during the trip he recited some very pretty lines of poetry in English and I asked him who the poet was and he said a name, it must have been the name of an English poet, I forget what it was, and then, as if to change the subject, he asked me why I'd been so nervous, and I remember that at first I didn't answer, maybe I just exclaimed oh, Don Octavio, and then I explained that Parque Hundido was hardly a peaceful spot, a place where one could walk and think without fear of being attacked by ruffians. And then Don Octavio looked at me and said in a voice that seemed to come straight from the heart of a wolf: no one attacks me, not even the president of the Republic. And he said it with such certainty that I believed him and thought it best not to say anything else.

  The next day, Don Octavio was waiting for me when I got to the house. We left without speaking a word and I drove, silly me, toward Coyoacán, but when Don Octavio noticed he told me to head for Parque Hundido without further delay. The story repeated itself. Don Octavio left me sitting on a bench and started to walk in circles in the same place he had the day before. Before that, I gave him his pills and he took them without a fuss. A little while later the other man showed up. When Don Octavio saw him he couldn't help looking at me from the distance as if to say: you see, Clarita, everything I do is for a reason. The stranger looked at me too and then he looked at Don Octavio and for a second it seemed to me that he wavered, his steps faltering and becoming more hesitant. But he didn't turn around, as I began to fear he might, and he and Don Octavio set off again and passed each other again and each time they passed each other they would raise their eyes from the ground and look each other in the face and I realized that at first both of them were wary of each other, but by the third time around they were immersed in their own thoughts and didn't even look at each other when they crossed paths. And I think it was then that it occurred to me that neither of the two was speaking, I mean, neither one was muttering words, but numbers, that the two of them were counting something, maybe not their steps, which is the only thing I can think of now that makes sense, but something like that, random numbers, possibly, adding or subtracting, multiplying or dividing. When we left, Don Octavio was tired. His eyes were shining, those beautiful eyes of his, but otherwise he looked as if he had just run a race. I confess that for a moment I was worried and I thought that if something happened to him it would be my fault. I imagined Don Octavio having a heart attack, I imagined him dead, and then I imagined all the Mexican writers who love him so much (especially the poets) surrounding me in the visitors' lounge at the hospital where Don Octavio has his checkups and asking me with frankly hostile stares what in the world I'd done to the only Mexican Nobel laureate, how Don Octavio could possibly have been expiring in Parque Hundido, such an unpoetic spot, and so far from my boss's urban haunts. And in my imagination I didn't know what answer to give them, except to tell them the truth, which at the same time I knew wasn't going to convince them, so why bother, better to say nothing, and that's what I was thinking, driving along the increasingly unbearable streets of Mexico City and imagining myself plunged into situations full of blame and recrimination, when I heard Don Octavio say let's go to the university, Clarita, there's something I need to ask a friend. And although at that moment Don Octavio looked the same as he always had, as in command of himself as ever, the truth is that I could no longer rid myself of a nagging wor
ry, the weight of dark foreboding. Especially when at five that afternoon Don Octavio called me into his library and asked me to make a list of Mexican poets born since 1950, a request no stranger than many others, it's true, but highly disturbing given the matter we were involved in. I think Don Octavio realized how nervous I was, which wouldn't have been particularly difficult since my hands were shaking. I felt like a little bird in the middle of a storm. Half an hour later he called for me again and when I came he looked me in the eyes and asked me whether I trusted him. What a question, Don Octavio, I said, the things that occur to you. And he repeated the question, as if he hadn't heard me. Of course I do, I said, I trust you more than anyone. Then he said: not a word to a single person about anything I tell you here or what you've seen or what you'll see tomorrow. Agreed? I swear on my mother's grave, may she rest in peace, I said. And then he made a gesture as if he were shooing away flies and he said I know that boy. Really? I said. And he said: many years ago, Clarita, a group of radical leftist lunatics planned to kidnap me. I can't believe it, Don Octavio, I said and I started trembling all over again. Well, they did, he said, such are the vicissitudes of life as a public figure, Clarita, stop shaking, pour yourself a whiskey or whatever you like, but calm down. And that man is one of the terrorists? I said. I think so, he said. And what in the world did they want to kidnap you for, Don Octavio? I said. It's a mystery to me, he said, maybe they were offended because I didn't pay them any attention. It's possible, I said, people bear grudges for all kinds of silly reasons. But maybe that wasn't what it was about, maybe it was just a joke. A fine joke, I said. In any case, they never actually tried to kidnap me, he said, but they announced it with great fanfare, and so I got wind of it. And when you found out, what did you do? I said. Nothing, Clarita, I laughed a little and then I forgot about them forever, he said.

  The next morning we returned to Parque Hundido. I'd had a bad night, unable to sleep, such a nervous wreck that even reading Amado Nervo couldn't soothe me (incidentally, I would never admit to Don Octavio that I'd been reading Amado Nervo, I'd mention Don Carlos Pellicer or Don José Gorostiza, and of course I have read them, but you tell me what point there is reading Pellicer or Gorostiza when you're trying to relax, or with luck even fall asleep, when really it's better not to read anything at all, even Amado Nervo, it's better to watch television, the stupider the show, the better), and I had huge circles under my eyes that makeup couldn't hide and even my voice was a little hoarse, as if the night before I'd smoked a pack of cigarettes or had too much to drink. But Don Octavio didn't notice a thing and he got in the Volkswagen and we left for Parque Hundido, without speaking a word, as if we'd been doing it all our lives, which was exactly one of those things that drove me wild, that ability of human beings to adapt to anything, instantly. In other words: if I stopped and thought calmly, which was the proper thing to do, and said to myself that we'd only been to Parque Hundido twice, and this was the third time, well, I could hardly believe it, because it really did seem as if we'd been there many times, and if I admitted that we'd only been there twice, then it was worse, because it made me want to scream or drive my Volkswagen into a wall, so I had to get control of myself and concentrate on the steering wheel and not think about Parque Hundido or the stranger who visited it when we did. In short, not only was I haggard that morning, with circles under my eyes, I was irrationally upset. And yet what happened that morning was very different from what I'd expected.

  We got to Parque Hundido. That much is clear. We walked into the park and sat on the same bench as always, under the shelter of a big, leafy tree, although I suppose it was as sick as all the trees in Mexico City. And then, instead of leaving me alone on the bench as he had before, Don Octavio asked me whether I'd completed the task he'd given me yesterday, and I said yes, Don Octavio, I made a list of lots of names, and he smiled and asked whether I'd memorized the names and I looked at him as if to ask whether he was serious and took the list out of my bag and showed it to him and he said: Clarita, find out who that boy is. That was all he said. And I got up like an idiot and went to wait for the stranger, and to pass the time I started to walk until I realized that I was following the same path Don Octavio had taken on the two previous days and then I stopped walking, not daring to look at him, my gaze fixed on the spot where the stranger whose identity I was supposed to discover should appear. And the stranger appeared, at the same time as he had twice before, and he started to walk. And then, not wanting to prolong matters any further, I went up to him and asked him who he was and he said I'm Ulises Lima, the visceral realist poet, none other than the second-to-last visceral realist poet left in Mexico, and to be honest, what can I say, his name didn't ring any bells, although the night before, on Don Octavio's orders, I'd gone through the indexes of more than ten anthologies of recent and not so recent poetry, among them the famous Zarco anthology that catalogs more than five hundred young poets. But his name didn't ring any bells. And then I said: do you know who that gentleman is sitting over there? And he said: yes, I know. And I said (I had to be sure): who is he? And he said: it's Octavio Paz. And I said: do you want to come sit with him for a while? And he shrugged his shoulders or made a similar gesture that I interpreted as a yes and both of us went walking toward the bench from which Don Octavio was following our every move with great interest. When I reached him I thought that it wouldn't hurt to make a formal introduction, so I said: Don Octavio Paz, the visceral realist poet Ulises Lima. And then Don Octavio, as he motioned for Lima to take a seat, said: visceral realist, visceral realist (as if the name was familiar to him), wasn't that Cesárea Tinajero's circle? And Lima sat down beside Don Octavio and sighed or made a strange noise with his lungs and said yes, that was what Cesárea Tinajero's circle was called. For a minute or so they were silent, looking at each other. An excruciating minute, to be honest. In the distance, past some bushes, I saw two bums. I think I got a little nervous, which foolishly led me to ask Don Octavio what the group was and whether he had known them. I might just as well have remarked on the weather. And then Don Octavio looked at me with those pretty eyes of his and said Clarita, back in the days of the visceral realists I would hardly have been ten years old, this was around 1924, wasn't it? he said, addressing Lima. And Lima said yes, more or less, the 1920s, but he said it with such sadness in his voice, with such… emotion, or feeling, that I thought it was the saddest voice I would ever hear. I think I even felt ill. Don Octavio's eyes and the stranger's voice and the morning and Parque Hundido, such a seedy place, isn't it? so neglected, wounded me in the depths of my being, just how, I couldn't say. So I left them to talk in peace and moved several feet away, to the nearest bench, with the excuse that I had to look over the next day's schedule, and I brought along the list I'd made of the names of Mexican poets from recent generations and I went through it from beginning to end, and I can promise you that Ulises Lima was nowhere on it. How long did they talk? Not long. And yet from where I was sitting it was clear that it was a leisurely, calm, polite conversation. Then the poet Ulises Lima got up, shook Don Octavio's hand, and left. I watched him walk off toward one of the park exits. The bums I had seen in the shrubbery, three of them now, were moving toward us. Let's go, Clarita, I heard Don Octavio say.

  The next day, as I expected, we didn't go to Parque Hundido. Don Octavio got up at ten and worked on an article to be published in the next issue of his magazine. There were moments when I felt like asking him more about our little three-day adventure, but something inside of me (my common sense, probably) made me give up that idea. Things had happened the way they'd happened and if I, who was the only witness, didn't know what had gone on, it was best that I not know. Approximately a week later, Don Octavio went away with the señora to give a series of lectures at an American university. I didn't go with them, of course. One morning, while he was away, I went to Parque Hundido with the hope or fear of seeing Ulises Lima appear again. The only difference this time was that I didn't sit in plain view of everyone but hid
behind some bushes, though with a perfect view of the clearing where Don Octavio and the stranger had met for the first time. For the first few minutes of my wait, my heart raced. I was freezing cold, and yet when I touched my cheeks I had the feeling that my face was about to explode. Then came disappointment, and when I left the park at around ten, it could even be said that I felt happy. Don't ask me why, I couldn't tell you.

  María Teresa Solsona Ribot, Jordi's Gym, Calle Josep Tarradellas, Malgrat, Catalonia, December 1995. It's a sad story, but when I think about it, it makes me laugh. I needed to rent a room in my apartment and he was the first person to show up, and although I don't entirely trust South Americans, he seemed like a good guy and I said he could have it. He paid me two months in advance and went into his room and closed the door. Back then I was in every championship and demonstration in Catalonia and I also had a job as a waitress at the pub La Sirena, which is in the touristy part of Malgrat, by the sea. When I asked him what he did, he told me he was a writer, and I don't know why but I got the idea that he must work at some newspaper, and back then I had what you might call a special weakness for reporters. So I decided to be on my best behavior, and the first night he spent at my place I went to his room, knocked on the door, and invited him to have dinner with me and Pepe at a Pakistani bar. Pepe and I weren't going to eat anything at the bar, of course, a salad, maybe, but we were friends of the owner, Mr. John, and that lends a certain cachet.