The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  Luis Sebastián Rosado, La Rama Dorada coffee shop, Colonia Coyoacán, Mexico City DF, April 1976. Monsiváis said it first: disciples of Marinetti and Tzara, their noisy, outrageous, overwrought poems did battle in the realm of simple typographic arrangement, never rising above the level of childish entertainment. Monsi was talking about the stridentists, but the same goes for the visceral realists. No one paid attention to them and they opted for indiscriminate assault. In December of '75, just before Christmas, I was unlucky enough to run into some of them here at La Rama Dorada. The owner, Don Néstor Pesqueira, will back me up: it was extremely unpleasant. One of them, the one in charge, was Ulises Lima; the second was a big fat dark guy called Moctezuma or Cuauhtémoc; the third went by the name Luscious Skin. I was sitting right here, waiting for Alberto Moore and his sister, and all of a sudden these three nuts surround me, sitting down one on each side of me, and they say Luisito, let's talk poetry, let's analyze the future of Mexican poetry, something like that. I'm not a violent person and of course I got nervous. I thought: what are they doing here? how did they find me? what scores have they come to settle? This country is a disgrace, it must be said, and so is Mexican literature, it must also be said. Anyway, we were talking for twenty minutes (I've never been so annoyed by the lateness of Albertito and his snotty sister) and finally we even managed to agree on several points. When it came down to it, ninety percent of the time we hated the same things. Of course I always stood up for what Octavio Paz was doing on the literary scene. And of course all they seemed to like was what they were doing themselves. Thank goodness. That being a lesser evil, I mean, since it would've been worse if they'd declared themselves disciples of the peasant poets or followers of poor Rosario Castellanos or disciples of Jaime Sabines (one Jaime is enough, in my opinion). And then Alberto got here and I was still alive, there'd been a little bit of shouting, some unpleasant language, a certain kind of behavior that was inappropriate in a place like La Rama Dorada, Don Néstor Pesqueira will back me up here, but that was all. And when Alberto arrived I thought I'd handled the situation well. But then Julia Moore comes right out and asks them who they are and what they plan to do that night. And the one called Luscious Skin is quick to say that they're not doing anything, that if she has any ideas she should say so, he's up for anything. And then Julita, oblivious of the looks her brother and I are shooting her, says that we could go dancing at Priapo's, an insanely vulgar place in Colonia 10 de Mayo or Tepito, I've only been there once and I've always done my best to forget it, and since neither Alberto nor I can say no to Julita, off we go in Alberto's car, with Alberto, Ulises Lima, and me in the front seat and Julita, Luscious Skin, and the guy called Cuauhtémoc or Moctezuma in the backseat. Honestly, I feared the worst, these people weren't trustworthy, somebody told me once that they cornered Monsi in Sanborn's, at the Casa Borda, but since Monsi did agree to have coffee with them, granted them an audience, you might say, it was partly his fault, because everybody knows the visceral realists are just like the stridentists and everybody knows what Monsi thinks about the stridentists, so he really couldn't complain about what happened, and anyway nobody or almost nobody knows what did happen, though occasionally I've been tempted to ask him, but I haven't, not wanting to pry or open old wounds, still, something happened to him during his meeting with the visceral realists, and everybody knows it, everybody who secretly loves or hates Monsi, and there were all kinds of hypotheses and theories, but anyway, that's what I was wondering as Alberto's car shot like lightning or crawled like a cockroach, depending on the traffic, toward Priapo's, and in the backseat Julita Moore kept talking and talking and talking to the two visceral realist bums. I'll spare you a description of the club itself. I swear to God I thought we wouldn't get out of there alive. All I'll say is that the furnishings and human specimens adorning its interior seemed arbitrarily plucked from Lizardi's The Mangy Parrot, Mariano Azuela's The Underdogs, del Paso's José Trigo, the worst novels of the Onda, and the worst fifties porn (more than one woman looked like Tongolele, who incidentally I don't think was making movies in the fifties, but should have been). So as I was saying, we went into Priapo's and sat at a table close to the dance floor and as Julita danced the cha-cha or a bolero or a danzón, I'm not exactly up on the annals of popular music, Alberto and I started to talk about something (what it was I swear I can't remember), and a waiter brought us a bottle of tequila or rat poison that we accepted without a murmur, that's how desperate we were. And suddenly, in less time than it takes to say "otherness," we were drunk and Ulises Lima was reciting a poem in French, what in the world for I don't know, but he was reciting it, I didn't realize he spoke French, English, maybe, I think I'd seen a translation of his somewhere of Richard Brautigan, a terrible poet, or John Giorno, whoever he is, maybe a stand-in for Lima himself, but French? that surprised me a little. Good enunciation, passable pronunciation, and the poem, how to put it, sounded familiar, very familiar, but because of my increasing drunkenness or the relentless boleros I couldn't identify it. I thought of Claudel, but none of us can imagine Lima reciting Claudel, can we? I thought of Baudelaire, I thought of Catulle Mendès (some of whose texts I translated for a university journal), I thought of Nerval. Ashamed as I am to admit it, those were the names that came to mind. In my defense I should say that soon, through the haze of alcohol, I asked myself what Nerval could possibly have in common with Mendès, and then I thought of Mallarmé. Alberto, who must have been playing the same game, said: Baudelaire. It wasn't Baudelaire, of course. Here's the poem. Let's see if you can guess:

  Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe,

  Mon coeur couvert de caporal:

  Ils y lancent des jets de soupe,

  Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe:

  Sous les quolibets de la troupe

  Qui pousse un rire général,

  Mon triste coeur bave à la poupe,

  Mon coeur couvert de caporal!

  Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques

  Leurs quolibets l'ont dépravé!

  Au gouvernail on voit des fresques

  Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques

  Ô flots abracadabrantesques,

  Prenez mon coeur, qu'il soit lavé!

  Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques

  Leurs quolibets l'ont dépravé

  Quand ils auront tari leurs chiques,

  Comment agir, Ô coeur volé?

  Ce seront des hoquets bachiques

  Quand ils auront tari leurs chiques:

  J'aurai des sursauts stomachiques,

  Moi, si mon coeur est ravalé:

  Quand ils auront tari leurs chiques

  Comment agir, Ô coeur volé?

  It's Rimbaud. Which was a surprise. Relatively speaking, that is. The really surprising thing was that he recited it in French. Anyway, I was a little angry not to have guessed it, since I know Rimbaud's work fairly well, but I didn't let it bother me. Another point in common. Maybe we would make it out of that hellhole alive. And after reciting Rimbaud, Ulises Lima told a story about Rimbaud and some war, which war I don't know, war not being a subject that interests me, but there was something, a common theme linking Rimbaud, the poem, and the war, a sordid story, I'm sure, although at the time my ears and then my eyes were registering other sordid little stories (I swear I'll kill Julita Moore if she drags me to another dive like Priapo's), disjointed scenes in which brooding young delinquents danced with desperate young cleaning girls or desperate young whores in a whirl of contrasts that, I confess, heightened my drunkenness, if such a thing is possible. Then there was a fight somewhere. I didn't see anything, I just heard shouts. A pair of thugs emerged from the shadows dragging a guy with blood all over his face. I remember I told Alberto that we should go, that things could take a turn for the worse, but Alberto was listening to Ulises Lima's story and he ignored me. I remember that I watched Julita dancing with one of Ulises's friends, then I remember dancing a bolero myself with Luscious Skin, as if it were a dream, but still, it might have been the
first time I'd felt good all night, in fact, it was definitely the first time I'd felt good all night. Next, like someone waking up, I remember whispering into my (dance) partner's ear that what we were doing would probably offend the other dancers and spectators. It's not clear what happened next. Someone said something rude to me. I was, I don't know, ready to crawl under a table and fall asleep or curl up on Luscious Skin's chest and fall asleep there too. But someone said something rude to me, and Luscious Skin made a motion as if to leave me and turn to face the person who'd spoken (I don't know what he said, pansy or faggot, I'm still not accustomed to that sort of language, although I know I should be), but I was so drunk, my muscles were slack and he couldn't let go of me-if he had I would've fallen-and he just shot something back from the middle of the dance floor. I closed my eyes, trying to remove myself from the situation. Luscious Skin's shoulder smelled like sweat, a strange acidic smell, as if he'd just walked away unscathed from the explosion of a chemical plant, and then I heard him speak, not to one person but to several people, more than two at least, and people were raising their voices. Then I opened my eyes, my God, and what I saw wasn't the people surrounding us but myself, my arm on Luscious Skin's shoulder, my left arm around his waist, my cheek on his shoulder, and I saw or imagined I saw the malicious looks, the stares of born killers, and then, rising in sheer terror above my drunkenness, I wanted to disappear, O Earth, swallow me up! I begged to be struck by lightning, I wished, in a word, never to have been born. How completely mortifying. I was red with shame, I wanted to vomit, I had let go of Luscious Skin and I was hardly able to stand, realizing that I was the object of cruel mockery and under attack at the same time. My one consolation was that the mocker was also under attack. It was essentially as if, having been betrayed in battle (what battles, what wars, was Ulises Lima talking about?), I was begging the angels of justice or the angels of the apocalypse for a great wave to appear, a great miraculous wave, that would sweep both of us away, that would sweep us all away, that would put an end to the ridicule and injustice. But then, through the icy lakes of my eyes (the wrong metaphor, since it was sweltering inside Priapo's, but I can't think of any better way to say that I was about to cry and that at the exact moment of "about to" had changed my mind, backpedaling, but that a distorting layer of liquid still glazed my pupils), I saw the mirific figure of Julita Moore appear intertwined with Cuauhtémoc or Moctezuma or Netzahualcóyotl or whatever his name was, and he and Luscious Skin stood up to the people who were making trouble, while Julita put her arm around my waist and asked me whether those sons of bitches had done anything to me and got me off the dance floor and out of that revolting dive. Once we were outside, Julita led me to the car and in the middle of the street I started to cry and when Julita helped me into the backseat I asked-no, begged-her to leave with me. I wanted the three of us to go and leave the others there, with their own evil kind. Please, Julita, I said, and she said for fuck's sake, Luisito, you're spoiling my night, don't start, and then I remember that I said or shouted or howled: what they've done to me is worse than what they did to Monsi, and Julita asked what the fuck they'd done to Monsi (she also asked which Monsi I meant; she said Montse or Monchi, I can't remember), and I said: Monsiváis, Julita, Monsiváis, the essayist, and she said oh, not seeming surprised at all, my God, the fortitude of that woman, I thought, and then I think I vomited and I started to cry, or I started to cry and then vomited-in Alberto's car!-and Julita started to laugh and by then the others were coming out of Priapo's, I saw their shadows in the beam of a streetlight, and I thought what have I done? what have I done? and I was so ashamed that I collapsed on the seat and curled up in a ball and pretended to be asleep. But I could hear them talking. Julita said something and the visceral realists replied. Their voices sounded cheerful, not hostile at all. Then Alberto got in the car and said what the fuck is this, it stinks in here, and then I opened my eyes and seeking his eyes in the rearview mirror I said I'm sorry, Alberto, I didn't mean to, I feel really sick, and then Julita got in the passenger seat and said my God, Alberto, open the windows, it reeks, and I said do you mind, Julita, there's no need to exaggerate, and Julita said: Luisito, it smells like you've been dead for a week, and I laughed, not much, but I was already starting to feel better. At the end of the street, under the lighted sign for Priapo's, shadows were roving, but not toward our car, and then Julita Moore rolled down her window and kissed Luscious Skin and Moctezuma or Cuauhtémoc, but not Ulises Lima, who was standing away from the car looking up at the sky, and then Luscious Skin stuck his head in the window and said how are you, Luis, and I don't think I even answered, I just made a gesture as if to say fine, I'm fine, and then Alberto started the Dodge and we headed out of Tepito with all the windows rolled down, on our way back to our own neighborhoods.

  Alberto Moore, Calle Pitágoras, Colonia Narvarte, Mexico City DF, April 1976. What Luisito says is true, up to a point. My sister is an utter lunatic, yes, but she's charming, only twenty-two, a year older than me, and an extremely intelligent woman. She's about to finish medical school and she wants to specialize in pediatrics. She's no ingenue. Let's get that clear from the start.

  Second: I didn't speed like lightning along the streets of Mexico City. The blue Dodge I was in that day is my mother's and when that's the case I'm usually a careful driver. The vomiting thing was completely unforgivable.

  Third: Priapo's is in Tepito, which is like saying a war zone, a noman's-land, or the other side of the Iron Curtain. At the end there was almost a fight on the dance floor, but I didn't see anything because I was sitting at a table talking to Ulises Lima. There is no club in Colonia 10 de Mayo as far as I know; my sister will vouch for that.

  Fourth and last: I didn't say Baudelaire. It was Luis who said Baudelaire, and Catulle Mendès, and even Victor Hugo, I think. I didn't say anything. It sounded like Rimbaud to me, but I didn't say anything. Make sure you get that straight.

  The visceral realists weren't as badly behaved as we were afraid they might be, either. I hadn't met them before, only heard of them. Mexico City, as we all know, is a small town of fourteen million. And the impression they made on me was relatively positive. The one called Luscious Skin was trying to flirt with my sister, poor idiot. The other guy, Moctezuma Rodríguez (not Cuauhtémoc), was doing his best too. At some point during the night they even seemed to think they were getting somewhere. It was a sad sight, but there was something sort of sweet about it too.

  As for Ulises Lima, he gives the impression of always being high and his French is decent. He told an amazing story too, about the poem by Rimbaud. According to him, "Le Coeur Volé" was an autobiographical text describing a trip Rimbaud took from Charleville to Paris to join the Commune. As he was traveling (on foot!), Rimbaud ran into a group of drunken soldiers on the road who first taunted him, then proceeded to rape him. Frankly, it was a pretty crude story.

  But there was even more: according to Lima, some of the soldiers, or at least their leader, the caporal of mon coeur couvert de caporal, were veterans of the French invasion of Mexico. Of course, neither Luisito nor I asked him what evidence he had for that. But I was interested in the story (unlike Luisito, who was more interested in what was or wasn't going on around us) and I wanted to know more. Then Lima told me that in 1865 a column under Colonel Libbrecht, which was supposed to occupy Santa Teresa, in Sonora, stopped sending back reports, and that Colonel Eydoux, commander of the plaza that served as a supply depot for the troops operating in that part of northeastern Mexico, sent a detachment of thirty troops to Santa Teresa.

  The detachment was under the command of Captain Laurent and lieutenants Rouffanche and González, the latter a Mexican monarchist. This detachment, according to Lima, reached a town called Villaviciosa, near Santa Teresa, on the second day's march, but never made contact with Libbrecht's column. All the men, except Lieutenant Rouffanche and three soldiers who died in the act, were taken prisoner while they ate at the only inn in town, among them the future caporal, t
hen a twenty-two-year-old recruit. The prisoners, bound and gagged with hemp rope, were brought before the man acting as military boss of Villaviciosa and a group of town notables. The boss was a mestizo who answered indiscriminately to Inocencio and El Loco. The notables were old peasants, most of them barefoot, who gazed at the Frenchmen and then retired to confer in a corner. After half an hour and some hard bargaining between two clearly opposed groups, the Frenchmen were taken to a covered corral where their clothes and shoes were removed and a little while later a group of their captors spent the rest of the day raping and torturing them.

  At midnight they slit Captain Laurent's throat. Lieutenant González, two sergeants, and seven soldiers were taken to the main street and bayoneted by torchlight by shadowy figures riding the soldiers' own horses.

  At dawn, the future caporal and two other soldiers managed to break their bonds and flee cross-country. No one came after them, but only the caporal lived to tell the tale. After two weeks of wandering in the desert he reached El Tajo. He was decorated for bravery and remained in Mexico until 1867, when he returned to France with the army under Bazaine (or whoever was in command of the French at the time), which was retreating from Mexico, leaving the emperor to his fate.

  Carlos Monsiváis, walking along Calle Madero, near Sanborn's, Mexico City DF, May 1976. No ambush, no violent incident, nothing like that. Two young men, who couldn't have been more than twenty-three, both of them with extremely long hair, longer than any other poet's (and I can testify to the length of everybody's hair), determined not to acknowledge that there could be anything good about Paz, childishly stubborn, I-don't-like-him-because-I-don't, perfectly willing to deny the obvious. In a moment of weakness (mental, I suppose), they reminded me of José Agustín, of Gustavo Sainz, but with nothing like the talent of those two outstanding novelists, in fact with nothing at all, no money to pay for the coffee we drank (I had to pay), no arguments of substance, no original ideas. Two lost souls, two empty vessels. As for myself, I think I was more than generous (coffee aside). At some point I even suggested to Ulises (I don't remember the other one's name, I think he was Argentinian or Chilean) that he should write a review of a book by Paz that we'd been discussing. If it's any good, I said to him, stressing the word good, I'll publish it. And he said yes, that he'd write it, that he'd bring it to my house. Then I said that he shouldn't bring it to my house, that my mother might be frightened if she saw him. It was the only joke I made. But they took me seriously (not a smile) and said they would send it by mail. I'm still waiting.