The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  There isn't much to tell. It was outside a movie theater on Reforma, the day of the opening of some film, American or European, I can't remember.

  It might even have been by a Mexican director.

  I was with friends and suddenly, I don't know how, I saw them. They were sitting on the stairs, smoking and talking. They had already seen me, but they hadn't come over to say hello. The truth is that they looked like bums, glaringly out of place there, at the entrance to the theater, among well-dressed, clean-shaven people who edged away as they climbed the stairs. It was as if they were afraid that one of them might reach out his hand and grope them. At least one of them seemed to me to be under the influence of some kind of drug. I think it was Belano. The other one, Ulises Lima, I think, was reading and writing in the margins of a book, singing softly to himself. The third one (no, it definitely wasn't Müller, Müller was tall and blond and this person was short and dark) looked at me and smiled as if he knew me. I had no choice but to nod in return, and when my friends were distracted I went over and said hello. Ulises Lima said hello back, although he didn't get up from the stairs. Belano did get up, like a robot, but he looked at me as if he didn't recognize me. The third one said you're Verónica Volkow and he mentioned some poems of mine that had recently been published in a magazine. He was the only one who seemed to feel like talking. Please God, I thought, don't let him talk to me about Trotsky, but he didn't talk about Trotsky, he talked about poetry, saying something about a magazine he was publishing with a mutual friend (a mutual friend? horrible!) and then he said other things that I didn't understand.

  As I was about to go-I was only with them for a minute-Belano looked at me more carefully and recognized me. Ah, Verónica Volkow, he said, and what seemed to me like an enigmatic smile appeared on his face. How's the poetry going? he said. I didn't know how to answer such a stupid question and I shrugged my shoulders. I heard one of my friends calling me and I said I had to go. Belano held out his hand and I shook it. The third one gave me a kiss on the cheek. For a moment I thought he'd have been perfectly capable of leaving his friends there on the stairs and joining my group. See you later, Verónica, he said. Ulises Lima didn't get up. As I was going into the theater I saw them for the last time. A fourth person had arrived and was talking to them. I think it was the painter Pérez Camarga, but I can't say for sure. In any case, he was nicely dressed, well groomed, and he seemed nervous about something. Later, on my way out of the theater, I saw Pérez Camarga or the person who looked like him, but I didn't see the three poets, by which I deduced that they'd been there on the stairs waiting for that fourth person and that after their brief encounter they'd left.

  Alfonso Pérez Camarga, Calle Toledo, Mexico City DF, June 1981. Belano and Lima weren't revolutionaries. They weren't writers. Sometimes they wrote poetry, but I don't think they were poets either. They sold drugs. Marijuana, mostly, although they also had a stock of shrooms in glass jars, little baby-food jars, and although at first it looked disgusting, like a tiny turd floating in amniotic fluid in a glass container, we ended up getting used to those fucking shrooms and that's what we usually ordered, shrooms from Oaxaca, shrooms from Tamaulipas, shrooms from La Huasteca in Veracruz or Potosí, or wherever they were from. Shrooms to do at our parties or in petit comité. Who were we? Painters like me, architects like poor Quim Font (in fact, he was the one who introduced them to us, never suspecting the relationship we would soon strike up, or at least that's what I'd like to think). Because beneath it all those kids were shrewd businessmen. When I met them (at poor Quim's house), we talked about poetry and painting. Mexican poetry and painting, I mean (is there any other kind?). But before long, we were talking about drugs. And from drugs we moved on to business. And after a few minutes they had taken me out into the garden, and I was under a poplar tree, sampling their marijuana. First-class? Was it ever. Like nothing I'd tasted for a long time. And that was how I became their client. And meanwhile I talked them up to various painter and architect friends of mine for free, and they became clients of Lima and Belano too. Well, from a certain point of view, it was an improvement, even a relief. They were at least clean, I guess. And you could talk to them about art while you were doing the deal. And we trusted them not to blackmail us or set us up. You know, none of the shit that small-time dealers pull. And they were more or less discreet (or so we thought) and punctual, and they had connections, you could call them and say I need fifty grams of Acapulco Gold for tomorrow because I'm throwing a surprise party, and all they would ask you was where and when, they didn't even mention money, although of course they never had anything to complain about in that regard, we paid what they asked without argument, which is always nice in a customer, don't you think? And everything went perfectly smoothly. Sometimes, of course, we had disagreements. It was mostly our fault. We were too trusting, and as everybody knows, some people are better kept at arm's length. But our democratic spirit got the best of us, and when there was a party or an especially boring meeting, for example, we would invite them in, pour them drinks, ask them to tell us more about where exactly the stuff that we were about to ingest or smoke came from, that kind of thing, innocent questions, in no way meant to be offensive, and they drank our liquor and ate our food, but-how to put it?-in an absent way, maybe, or a cold way, as if they were there but not there, or as if we were insects or cows that they bled each night and that it made sense to keep comfortably alive but without the slightest hint of closeness, warmth, or affection. And even though we were usually drunk or high, we noticed, and sometimes, to annoy them, we forced them to listen to what we had to say, our opinions, what we really thought about them. Of course, we never considered them to be real poets. Much less revolutionaries. They were salesmen, and that was all. We respected Octavio Paz, for example, and they held him in utter contempt, willfully ignorant. That's just unacceptable, don't you think? Once, I don't know why, they said something about Tamayo, something negative about Tamayo, and that was the last straw, I can't remember the context, and in fact I don't even know where it was, maybe at my house, maybe not, it doesn't matter, but someone was talking about Tamayo and José Luis Cuevas, and one of us praised José Luis's toughness, the power and courage that each and every one of his works radiates, saying how lucky we were to be his fellow citizens and contemporaries, and then Lima or Belano (the two of them were sitting in a corner, that's how I remember them, in a corner waiting for their money) said that Cuevas's courage, or his toughness, or his energy, I don't know which, was all bluff, and that declaration cast a sudden chill over us, made a cold indignation rise in us, if you know what I mean. We almost ate them alive. I mean, sometimes it was funny to hear them talk. They really seemed like two extraterrestrials. But as they got more comfortable, as you got to know them or started to listen to them more carefully, their pose seemed more sad than anything else, off-putting. They weren't poets, certainly, and they weren't revolutionaries. I don't even think they were sexualized. What do I mean by that? Just that sex didn't seem to interest them (the only thing that interested them was the money they could squeeze out of us), nor did poetry or politics, although their look seemed modeled on the hackneyed archetype of the young leftist poet. But sex didn't interest them, I know that for a fact. How do I know? From a friend, an architect friend who tried to have sex with one of them. Belano, probably. And at the moment of truth nothing happened. Limp dicks.

  14

  Hugo Montero, having a beer at the bar La Mala Senda, Calle Pensador Mexicano, Mexico City DF, May 1982. There was a free spot, and I said to myself, why don't I get my buddy Ulises Lima into the Nicaragua group? This happened in January, so it was a good way to start the year. Also, I'd heard that Lima was in bad shape, and I thought that a little field trip to the Revolution would cheer anybody up. So I got the papers in order without consulting anyone and I put Ulises on the plane to Managua. Of course, I had no idea that I was signing my own death warrant. If I'd known, Ulises Lima would never have left Mexico City, but s
ometimes I'm like that, impulsive, and in the end what's meant to be will be, because we're puppets in the hands of fate, aren't we?

  Well, anyway, as I was saying: I put Ulises on the plane, and even before we took off I think I got a whiff of what our little trip might have in store for me. My boss, the poet Álamo, was the head of the Mexican delegation, and when he saw Ulises he turned pale and called me aside. What's that idiot doing here, Montero? he said. He's coming with us to Managua, I replied. I'd rather not repeat the rest of what Álamo said, because I'm really not a bad person. But I thought: if you didn't want him on the trip, you lazy bastard, why didn't you take care of the invitations yourself? why didn't you take the trouble to call everyone who was supposed to come? Álamo had personally invited his best buddies, namely the peasant-poet gang. And then he had personally invited his favorite suck-ups, and then the heavyweights, or literary lights, all local champions in their respective divisions of Mexican literature, but as always, no one has any sense of etiquette in this country, and two or three assholes canceled at the last minute and I was the one who had to fill the gaps, or rellenar las ausencias, as Neruda puts it. And that was when I thought of Lima. I'd heard from who knows who that he was back in Mexico and that he was having a shitty time of it, and I'm the kind of guy who'll help a person out when I can, what can you do, Mexico made me this way and that's all there is to it.

  Now, of course, I'm out of a job and sometimes, when I'm in a certain mood, when I wake up with a hangover and it's one of those apocalyptic Mexico City mornings, I think that I did the wrong thing, that I could have invited someone else, in a word, that I fucked up, but most of the time I'm not sorry. And there we were on the plane, as I was saying, Álamo having just found out that Ulises was crashing our junket, and I said: relax, maestro, nothing will happen, you have my word, and then Álamo gave me a hard look, a scorching look, if that doesn't sound too ridiculous, and said: all right, Montero, it's your problem, let's see how you deal with it. And I said: the Mexican pavilion will float above the fray, boss! Peace and calm. Don't you worry about a thing. And by then we were already on our way to Managua through the blackest of black skies, and the writers of the delegation were drinking as if they knew or suspected or had been tipped off that the plane was going down, and I was walking back and forth, up and down the aisle, greeting all the attendees, passing out sheets printed with the Declaration of Mexican Writers, a statement that Álamo and the peasant poets had composed in support of their sister country of Nicaragua and that I'd typed up (and corrected, I don't mind saying), so that those who weren't familiar with it, which was most people, could read it, and those who hadn't given it their stamp of approval, which was only a few, could scrawl their names under the heading "We the undersigned," or in other words right under the signatures of Álamo and the peasant poets, the five horsemen of the apocalypse. And then, as I was collecting the missing signatures, I remembered Ulises Lima. I saw him slouched in his seat with his head hanging down, and I thought he must be sick or asleep, but whatever it was, he had his eyes closed and he was grimacing, like someone in the middle of a nightmare, I thought. And then I thought, this guy isn't going to sign the declaration just like that, and for a second, as the plane lurched from side to side and everyone's worst fears seemed about to be confirmed, I weighed the possibility of not asking for his signature, of completely ignoring him, since, after all, I'd gotten him on the trip as a friendly favor, because he wasn't doing well, or so I'd been told, not so that he would pledge his allegiance to some group or other, but then it occurred to me that Álamo and the peasant poets would go over the "We the undersigned" with a magnifying glass and I'd be the one to pay if his name was missing. And doubt, as Othon says, lodged itself in my mind. And then I went over to Ulises and touched his arm and he opened his eyes immediately, like he was a goddamn robot I had awoken by activating some hidden mechanism in his flesh, and he looked at me as if he didn't know me but did recognize me, if that makes sense (I guess it doesn't), and then I sat down next to him and I said look, Ulises, we have a problem, all the poets here have signed this stupid thing that's supposed to show their solidarity with Nicaraguan writers and the people of Nicaragua, and your signature is the only one I still don't have, but if you don't want to sign, it's no big deal, I think I can fix things, and then he said, in a voice that broke my heart: let me read it, and at first I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about and when I realized I handed him a copy of the declaration and I watched him, what's the word, immerse himself in it? something like that, and I said: I'll be back in a minute, Ulises, I'm going to take a stroll around the plane since you never know when the captain might need my help, and meanwhile you sit there and read, take your time and don't feel pressured, if you want to sign you can, and if you don't, then don't, and with that I got up and went back to the prow of the plane, it's called the prow, isn't it? well, anyway, the front part, and I spent more time handing out the fucking declaration and chatting away with the cream of Mexican and Latin American literature (there were several writers on the trip who were living in exile in Mexico: three Argentinians, one Chilean, a Guatemalan, and two Uruguayans), who by this point were beginning to show the first signs of inebriation, and when I got back to Ulises's place, I found the signed declaration, the paper neatly folded on the empty seat, and Ulises, sitting up very straight, though with his eyes closed again, as if he were suffering horribly, but also as if he were enduring his suffering with great dignity. And that was the last I saw of him until we reached Managua.

  I don't know what he did for the first few days. All I know is that he didn't go to a single reading, meeting, or roundtable discussion. Every once in a while I would think of him, fuck, the things he was missing. History in the making, as they say, one endless party. I remember that I went to his hotel room to look for him on the day that Ernesto Cardenal had a reception for us at the Ministry of Culture, but he wasn't there and at the desk they told me that he hadn't been back for a few nights. What can you do, I said to myself, he must be off boozing somewhere or with some Nicaraguan friend or whatever, I was busy, I had to take care of the whole Mexican delegation and I couldn't spend all day looking for Ulises Lima, I'd already done enough getting him on the trip in the first place. So I washed my hands of him and the days went by, as Vallejo says, and I remember that one afternoon Álamo came up to me and said Montero, where the fuck is your friend? because it's been a long time since I've seen him. And then I thought: shit, it's true, isn't it? Ulises had disappeared. Frankly, it took me a little while to grasp the situation in front of me, the array of dire and not so dire possibilities that suddenly ranged themselves before me with a dull thud. I thought: he must be somewhere, and although I can't say I forgot all about him a second later, you might say I shelved the problem. But Álamo didn't shelve it and that night, during a Nicaraguan-Mexican poets' fellowship dinner, he asked me again where the hell Ulises Lima had gone. To make matters worse, one of Cardenal's fucking protégés who had studied in Mexico knew Ulises, and when he heard that Ulises was part of the delegation he insisted on seeing him, so he could greet the father of visceral realism, he said. He was a short, dark, balding little Nicaraguan guy who looked familiar to me, maybe I'd even organized one of his readings at Bellas Artes years ago, I don't know, it struck me that he was half kidding, mostly because of the way he said what he did about the father of visceral realism, like he was mocking Ulises, getting his kicks there in front of the Mexican poets who, I have to say, laughed as if they were in on the joke, even Álamo laughed, in part because it was funny and in part to observe the protocols of hell, unlike the Nics, who mostly laughed because everybody else was laughing or because they felt they had to. It takes all kinds, especially in this business.

  And when I was finally able to get away from all those annoying bastards it was already after midnight and the next day I had to herd everyone back to Mexico City and the truth is that I suddenly felt tired, kind of queasy, almost sick but not quite, so I
decided to have a nightcap at the hotel bar, where they served more or less decent drinks, not like at other places in Managua where the stuff was pure poison, I don't know what the Sandinistas are waiting for to do something about it. And at the hotel bar I ran into Don Pancracio Montesol, who had come with the Mexican delegation even though he was Guatemalan, among other things because there was no Guatemalan delegation and because he'd been living in Mexico for at least thirty years. And Don Pancracio saw me hitting the bottle and at first he didn't say anything, but then he leaned over and said Montero, my boy, you look a little worried tonight, is it girl trouble? So he said, more or less. And I said if only, Don Pancracio, I'm just tired, a lame answer no matter how you look at it, since it's much better to be tired than to be pining away for some girl, but that was what I said, and Don Pancracio must have noticed that something was wrong because I'm usually a little less incoherent, so he leaped from his stool-I was shocked by how nimble he was-and crossed the space between us, settling himself on the stool beside me with a graceful hop. What's wrong, then? he said. I've lost a member of the delegation, I answered. Don Pancracio looked at me like I was dense and then ordered a double scotch. For a while the two of us sat there in silence, drinking and looking out the windows at the dark space that was the city of Managua, the perfect city to lose yourself in, literally, I mean, a city that only its mailmen could find their way around, and where in fact the Mexican delegation had gotten lost more than once, I can vouch for that. For the first time in a long time, I think, I started to feel comfortable. A few minutes later a kid showed up, a really skinny kid who headed straight for Don Pancracio to ask for his autograph. He had one of Don Pancracio's books with him, published by Mortiz, worn and dogeared. I heard him stammering and then he left. In a kind of sepulchral voice Don Pancracio mentioned his host of admirers. Then his small legion of plagiarizers. And finally his basketball-team's-worth of critics. And he also mentioned Giacomo Moreno-Rizzo, the Mexican-Venetian, who obviously wasn't part of our delegation, although when Don Pancracio said his name, I got the idea, idiot that I am, that Moreno-Rizzo was there, that he had just come into the bar, which was entirely unlikely since our delegation, despite all its faults, was solidly leftist, and Moreno-Rizzo, as everybody knows, is one of Paz's hangers-on. And Don Pancracio mentioned, or alluded to, Moreno-Rizzo's dogged efforts to surreptitiously imitate him, Don Pancracio. But Moreno-Rizzo couldn't help sounding prim and thuggish at the same time, typical of Europeans stranded in America, forced to make superficial gestures of bravado in order to survive in a hostile environment, whereas Don Pancracio's prose, my prose, said Don Pancracio, was the prose of a legitimate descendant of Reyes, if he did say so himself, natural foe of Moreno-Rizzo's brand of chilly fakery. Then Don Pancracio said: so which Mexican writer are you missing? His voice startled me. Someone called Ulises Lima, I said, feeling my skin erupt in goose bumps. Ah, said Don Pancracio. And how long has he been missing? I have no idea, I confessed, maybe since the first day. Don Pancracio was silent again. Signaling to the bartender, he ordered another scotch. After all, the Ministry of Education was paying. No, not since the first day, said Don Pancracio, who's the quiet type but very observant. I passed him in the hotel on the first day of our stay, and the second day too, so he hadn't left by then, although it's true I don't remember seeing him anywhere else. Is he a poet? Of course, he must be, he said without waiting for me to answer. And that was the last time you saw him, on the second day? I said. The second night, said Don Pancracio. Yes, that was the last time. And now what do I do? I said. Stop moping, said Don Pancracio, all poets get lost at some point or another. Just report his disappearance to the police. The Sandinista police, he specified. But I didn't have the balls to call the police. Sandinista or Somozan, the police is always the police, and whether it was the alcohol or the night outside the windows, I didn't have the guts to rat Ulises out like that.