The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  Yes, it was quite the gesture.

  After that, we saw each other every day. Sometimes I'd buy him dinner and sometimes he'd buy dinner for me. It was cheap, he wasn't the kind of person who ate much. Each morning he'd have his little chamomile tea and when there wasn't any chamomile he'd order linden or mint or whatever herbal tea they had, he never touched coffee or black tea and he didn't eat anything fried. He was like a Muslim, he wouldn't touch pork or drink alcohol and he always carried around lots of pills. Che Belano, I said to him one day, you're like a walking drugstore, and he gave this bitter laugh, as if to say don't hassle me, Urenda, I'm not in the mood. As for women, he got along without them, as far as I know. One night the American reporter Joe Rademacher invited some of us to a dance in the neighborhood of Pará to celebrate the end of his mission to Angola. The dance was behind a private house, in a courtyard of packed dirt, and it was wonderful how many girls were there. Like modern men, we had all brought plenty of condoms, except for Belano, who joined us at the last minute, mostly because I insisted. I won't say he didn't dance, because in fact he did, but when I started to ask him whether he had condoms or if he wanted some of mine, he cut me off, saying: Urenda, I have no need of such things, or words to that effect, which leads me to believe he limited himself to dancing.

  When I went back to Paris, he stayed in Luanda and was planning to head for the interior, which still seethed with armed, lawless gangs. We had one final conversation before I left. His story didn't really hang together. On the one hand, I got the sense that life meant nothing to him, that he'd taken the job so he could die a picturesque death, a death that was out of the ordinary, the usual bullshit. My generation all overdosed on Marx and Rimbaud. (I don't mean this as an excuse, at least not the way you think, and I'm not here to judge anyone's reading habits.) On the other hand, and this is what puzzled me, he took good care of himself. He took his little pills religiously each day. Once I went with him to a drugstore in Luanda in search of something resembling Ursochol, which is ursodeoxycholic acid, and which was more or less what kept his sclerotic bile duct functioning, as I understood it. When it came to these things, Belano behaved as if his health were extremely important to him. I watched him go into that drugstore speaking his abysmal Portuguese and scan the shelves, first in alphabetical order and then at random, and when we left, without the lousy ursodeoxycholic acid, I said to him che Belano, don't worry (because he had such a dire look on his face), I'll send you some as soon as I get to Paris, and then he said: you can't without a prescription, and I started to laugh, and I thought this man wants to live, there's no way he's planning to die.

  But it wasn't as simple as that. He needed medicine, that was a fact. Not just Ursochol, but also mesalazine, and omeprazole, and the first two had to be taken daily, four mesalazine for his colitis and six Ursochol for his sclerosis. He could do without the omeprazole, I'm not sure whether he took it for a duodenal ulcer or a gastric ulcer or acid reflux or what, but he didn't take it every day. The funny thing, if this makes any sense, is that he worried about getting his medicine, worried about eating something that might bring on an attack of pancreatitis (he'd had three already, in Europe, not Angola; if he had an attack in Angola he would die for sure), I mean, he actually worried about his health, and yet when we talked, talked man to man, I guess you'd say, which sounds terrible but what else do you call a dismal conversation like that, he insinuated that he was there to get himself killed, which I suppose isn't the same as being there to kill yourself or to commit suicide, since you aren't taking the trouble to do it yourself, although in the end it's just as disturbing.

  When I got back to Paris, I told Simone about it-that's my wife's name, she's French-and she asked me what Belano was like, asked me to describe him physically, in full detail, and then she said she understood him. How can you understand him? I didn't understand him. It was my second night back, we were in bed with the lights out, and that was when I told her everything. So what about the medicine, have you bought it? said Simone. No, not yet. Well, buy it first thing tomorrow and send it right away. I will, I said, but I kept thinking that there was something wrong with the story. In Africa you're always coming across strange stories. Do you think it's possible that someone could travel to such a faraway place in search of death? I asked my wife. It's perfectly possible, she said. Even a forty-year-old man? I said. If he has a spirit of adventure, it's perfectly possible, said my wife. Unlike most Parisian women, who tend to be practical and thrifty, she's always had a romantic streak. So I bought him the medicine, sent it to Luanda, and soon afterward received a postcard thanking me. I calculated that what I'd sent would last him twenty days. What would he do after that? I supposed he would return to Europe or die in Angola. And that was the last thought I gave it.

  Months later I ran into him at the Grand Hotel in Kigali, where I was staying and where he came every once in a while to use the fax. We greeted each other effusively. I asked whether he was still working for the same paper in Madrid and he said he was, plus a couple of South American magazines, which brought in a little more money. He'd stopped wanting to die, but he was too broke to get back to Catalonia. That night we had dinner together at the house where he was living (Belano never stayed at hotels like the other foreign journalists, he'd rent a room or a bed or a corner of some private house where they'd let him stay for cheap) and we talked about Angola. He told me he'd been in Huambo, he'd traveled the Cuanza River, he'd been in Cuito Cuanavale and in Uíge, the pieces he'd written had gone over well, and he'd made it to Rwanda overland, first heading from Luanda to Kinshasa and then on to Kisangani, sometimes along the Congo River and other times along the treacherous forest roads, and then on to Kigali, in total more than thirty days of nonstop traveling. The terrain itself would have made this next to impossible, never mind the political situation. When he was done talking I couldn't tell whether to believe him or not. On the face of it, it was incredible. Also, he told it with a half smile that inclined you to doubt him.

  I asked about his health. He said he'd come down with diarrhea in Angola, but now he was all right. I told him that my photographs were selling better and better. If he wanted, I said, and this time I think I meant it, I could lend him money, but he wouldn't hear of it. Then, despite myself, I asked him about the great death quest and he told me it made him laugh now to think about it and that I'd see real death, the beall and end-all, up close the next day. He was, what's the word, changed. He could go for days at a time without taking his pills. He seemed calmer. Happy too, when I saw him, because he'd just received medicine from Barcelona. Who sent it to you? I asked him, a woman? No, he said, a friend. His name is Iñaki Echevarne, we had a duel. A fight? I said. No, a duel. And who won? I don't know which of us killed the other, said Belano. Fantastic! I said. Yes, he said.

  Meanwhile, he'd clearly taken charge of his surroundings, or begun to, which is something I could never do. Nobody can, really, except the big media correspondents who have plenty of backup, and the rare freelancer who does without by making lots of friends and by simply getting it, how to maneuver in the African environment.

  Physically, he was thinner than he'd been in Angola, skin and bones, in fact, but he looked healthy, not sick. Or that's how he looked to me, anyway, in the middle of so much death. His hair was longer, he probably cut it himself, and he had on the same clothes he'd worn in Angola, though they were filthier now and falling apart. He'd picked up the lingo, I could tell that right away, the language of a country where life was worth nothing and talk-along with money-was ultimately the key to everything.

  The next day I went to the refugee camps and when I got back he was gone. At the hotel there was a note wishing me luck and asking me, if it wasn't too much trouble, to send him medicine when I got back to Paris. His address was included with the note. I went looking for him. He wasn't there.

  My wife wasn't surprised at all when I told her. But Simone, I said, there was one chance in a million that I would see him ag
ain. These things happen, was all she said. The next day she asked whether I was planning to send him the medicine. I already had.

  That time I didn't stay long in Paris. I went back to Africa, sure I'd run into Belano, but our paths didn't cross, and although I asked the veteran correspondents about him, none of them knew him. The few who remembered him had no idea where he might have gone. And the same thing happened on the next trip, and the next. Did you see him? my wife would ask when I got back. I didn't see him, I would reply, maybe he went back to Barcelona or back home. Or somewhere else, said my wife. Could be, I'd say, we'll never know.

  Until I ended up in Liberia. Do you know where Liberia is? That's right, on the west coast of Africa, more or less between Sierra Leone and Ivory Coast. Good. But do you know who rules the country? the right or the left? I'm willing to bet you don't.

  I got to Monrovia in April on a ship from Freetown, Sierra Leone. It had been chartered by a humanitarian organization, the name of which escapes me now, on a mission to evacuate hundreds of Europeans who were waiting at the American embassy-the only reasonably safe place in Monrovia, according to anyone who'd been there or gotten firsthand news of what was going on. These ultimately turned out to be Pakistanis, Hindus, North Africans, and the odd black Englishman. The other Europeans, if I can put it that way, had gotten out long before, and only their secretaries were left. For a Latin American it was odd to associate an American embassy with safety, it seemed a contradiction in terms, but times had changed, and why shouldn't the embassy be safe? I figured I might end up there myself. Still, the information struck me as a bad omen, a clear sign that everything would go wrong.

  A band of Liberian soldiers, none of them over twenty, escorted us to a three-story building on New Africa Avenue, the Liberian version of the old Ritz Hotel or the old Crillon. It was run now by an organization of international journalists I'd never heard of. The hotel, called the Center for Press Correspondents, was one of the few things that worked in the capital, thanks in no small part to the presence of five U.S. marines. They stood guard now and then but spent most of their time in the lobby, drinking with the American TV correspondents and playing go-between for the journalists and a group of young Mandingo soldiers whom the journalists employed as guides and bodyguards on outings to Monrovia's hot zones, or, rarely and on a whim, to areas outside the capital, the nameless villages (though they all had names and had once had people, children, work) which, mostly according to hearsay or the reports we saw each night on CNN, were a faithful reflection of the end of the world, human insanity, the evil nestled in every heart.

  The Center for Press Correspondents also functioned as a hotel, which meant we had to sign the register our first day there. I was already drinking whiskey and talking to two French friends when my turn came, and I don't know why, but I found myself flipping back, looking for a name. With no surprise, I found Arturo Belano's.

  He'd been there two weeks. He had arrived at the same time as a group of Germans, two men and a woman from a Frankfurt newspaper. I tried to get in touch with him immediately and couldn't find him. A Mexican reporter told me that it had been seven days since he showed up at the Center. If I wanted news of him I should ask at the American embassy. I thought back on our now-distant conversation in Angola, about his death wish, and it occurred to me that he might be about to get what he wanted. The Germans, I was told, had already left. Reluctantly, knowing inside I had no other choice, I went looking for him at the embassy. No one could tell me anything, but I got a few photos out of it. The streets of Monrovia, the embassy courtyards, some faces. On my way back to the Center I ran into an Austrian who knew a German who'd seen Belano before he left. This German, however, spent all day out, making the most of the daylight, and there was nothing to do but wait. I remember it was around seven when some French colleagues and I got a poker game going, and that we stocked up on candles in preparation for the blackouts that usually came at sunset, or so we were told. But the lights didn't go out and the players soon sank into a general state of apathy. I remember we drank and talked about Rwanda and Zaire and the last movies we'd seen in Paris. The German got back at midnight, by which time I was alone in the lobby of that ghost-filled Ritz, and Jimmy, a young mercenary (but in whose pay?) serving as doorman and bartender, let me know that Herr Linke, the photographer, was on his way to his room.

  I caught up with him on the stairs.

  Linke could speak only the most rudimentary English, didn't understand a word of French, and had a decent face. When I was able to make him understand that I was looking for news of my friend Arturo Belano, he asked me politely (more or less, despite the faces he made to get his message across) to wait for him in the lobby or the bar, informing me that he needed to shower and would be down right away. He was gone for more than twenty minutes and when he came back he smelled of lotion and disinfectant. We talked for a long time, in fits and starts. Linke didn't drink, and he said this was why he'd noticed Arturo Belano, because back then the Center for Press Correspondents was swarming with journalists, many more than now, and they all got deliberately drunk each night, including some famous talking heads, people who should behave responsibly and set an example, according to Linke, and who ended up being sick from the balconies. Arturo Belano didn't drink and that led to their striking up a conversation. Linke remembered him spending three days total at the Center, going out each morning and coming back at midday or dusk. Once, but this was in the company of two Americans, he spent the night away trying to interview George Kensey, Roosevelt Johnson's youngest and bloodiest general, an ethnic Krahn, but the guide accompanying them was a Mandingo who not unreasonably got scared and abandoned them in the eastern part of Monrovia, and it took them all night to get back to the hotel. The next day Arturo Belano slept until very late, according to Linke, and two days later he left Monrovia with the same Americans who had tried to interview Kensey. Presumably they went north. Before Belano left, Linke gave him a little packet of cough drops made by a natural products company in Bern-at least I think that's what he was trying to say. He hadn't seen him since.

  I asked him the names of the Americans. He knew one of them: Ray Pasteur. I thought he was joking and asked him to repeat it, I might have laughed, but the German was serious. Besides, he was too tired to joke around. Before he went to bed he took a little piece of paper out of the back pocket of his jeans and wrote it down for me: Ray Pasteur. I think he's from New York, he said. The next day Linke moved to the American embassy to try to get out of Liberia and I went with him to see if they'd had word of Ray Pasteur, but the place was total chaos and it seemed pointless to insist. When I left, Linke was in the embassy garden taking photos. I took one of him and he took one of me. In my shot, Linke is standing with his camera in his hand, looking at the ground, as if something shiny in the grass has suddenly caught his attention, drawing his eyes away from the lens. The expression on his face is calm, sad and calm. In the one he took of me, my Nikon is hanging around my neck and I'm staring into the camera (I think). I may have smiled and made the V-for-victory sign.

  Three days later, it was my turn to try to leave, but I couldn't get out. Ostensibly, an embassy official informed me, the situation was improving, but the transport chaos was inversely related to the country's political stabilization. I left the embassy not entirely convinced. I went looking for Linke among the hundreds of residents roaming the grounds and couldn't find him. I ran into a new party of journalists who had just arrived from Freetown, and several who, God knows how, had reached Monrovia by helicopter from somewhere in Ivory Coast. Most, like me, were already thinking of leaving and stopped by the embassy each day to look for a berth on one of the ships to Sierra Leone.

  It was then, when there was nothing left to do, when we had already written and photographed everything imaginable, that someone proposed that a few of us take a trip to the interior. Most, of course, turned down the offer. A Frenchman from Paris Match accepted. So did an Italian from Reuters, and me. The trip
was organized by one of the guys who worked in the kitchen at the Center and who, besides making a few bucks, wanted to have a look at his town, which he hadn't been back to in six months, even though it was only fifteen or twenty miles from Monrovia. During the trip (we were in a dilapidated Chevy driven by a friend of the cook, armed with an assault rifle and two grenades) the cook told us that he was ethnic Mano and his wife was ethnic Gio, friends of the Mandingo (the driver was Mandingo) and enemies of the Krahn, whom he accused of being cannibals, and that he didn't know whether his family was dead or alive. Shit, said the Frenchman, we should go back. But we were already halfway there and the Italian and I were happy, using up the last of our film.

  And so, without crossing a single checkpoint, we passed through the town of Summers and the hamlet of Thomas Creek, the Saint Paul River occasionally appearing to our left and other times lost from sight. The road was bad. At times it ran through the forest, what may have been old rubber plantations, and at times along the plain. From the plain one could guess at more than see the gently sloping hills rising in the south. Only once did we cross a river, a tributary of the Saint Paul, over a wooden bridge in perfect condition, and the only thing presenting itself to the camera's eye was nature, nothing I would call lush, or even exotic, so I don't know why it reminded me of a trip I made as a boy to Corrientes, but I even said as much, I said to Luigi: this looks like Argentina, saying it in French, which was the language in which the three of us communicated, and the guy from Paris Match looked at me and said that he hoped it only looked like Argentina, which frankly disconcerted me, because I wasn't even talking to him, was I? and what did he mean? that Argentina was even wilder and more dangerous than Liberia? that if the Liberians were Argentinians we would've been dead by now? I don't know. In any case his remark completely broke the spell for me and I would have liked to have it out with him then and there, but I know from experience that kind of argument gets you nowhere, and anyway the Frenchman was already annoyed by our majority decision not to go back and he had to let off steam somehow, not being satisfied by his constant grumbling about the poor black guys who just wanted to make a few dollars and see their families again. So I pretended not to have heard him, although mentally I wished him a monkey fucking, and I kept talking to Luigi, explaining things that until that moment I thought I'd forgotten, I don't know, the names of the trees, for example, which to me looked like the old Corrientes trees and had the same names as the Corrientes trees, although they obviously weren't the Corrientes trees. And I guess my enthusiasm made me seem brilliant, or in any case much more brilliant than I am, and even funny, to judge by Luigi's laughter and the occasional laughter of our companions, and it was in an atmosphere of relaxed camaraderie, excluding the Frenchman Jean-Pierre, of course, who was increasingly sulky, that we left behind those ever so Corrienteslike trees and entered a treeless stretch, only brush, bushes that were somehow sickly, and a silence split from time to time by the call of a solitary bird, a bird that called and called and received no answer, and then we started to get nervous, Luigi and I, but by then we were too close to our goal to turn back, and we kept going.