The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  One night he talked to me about Cesárea Tinajero again. I told him that Lima and Belano had probably made her up to justify their trip to Sonora. I remember that we were lying naked in bed, the window open to the skies of Coyoacán, and that Luscious Skin turned on his side and pulled me to him, my erect cock seeking his testicles, his scrotum, his still flaccid cock, and then Luscious Skin said ñero (he had never addressed me in that vulgar way before), he said ñero and grabbed me by the shoulders, and he said it wasn't like that, Cesárea Tinajero existed, she might still exist, and then he was quiet, but watching me, his eyes open in the dark as my erect penis lightly tapped his testicles. And then I asked him how Belano and Lima had heard of Cesárea Tinajero, a purely perfunctory question, and he said that it was in an interview, that in those days Belano and Lima didn't have any money and they started to do interviews for a magazine, a corrupt magazine under the sway of the peasant poets or soon to be under the sway of the peasant poets, but then as now, said Luscious Skin, there was no way not to be part of one of the two camps, what camps are you talking about? I whispered, my penis rising up his scrotum and its tip touching the base of his penis, which was beginning to swell, the peasant poets' camp or Octavio Paz's camp, he said, and just as he was saying "Octavio Paz's camp" his hand moved from my shoulder to the back of my neck, since there could be no doubt that I belonged to Octavio Paz's camp, although the scene was more nuanced than that, but at any rate, the visceral realists weren't part of any camp, not the neo-PRI-ists or the champions of otherness, the neo-Stalinists or the aesthetes, those who drew a government salary or those who lived off the university, the sellers or the buyers, those who clung to tradition or those who masked ignorance with arrogance, the whites or the blacks, the Latin Americanists or the cosmopolites. But what matters is that they did these interviews (was it for Plural? was it for Plural after Octavio Paz was forced out?), and although I asked how those two could need money when they made a living selling drugs, the point is that according to Luscious Skin they needed the money and they went to interview some old men who nobody remembered, the stridentists: Manuel Maples Arce, born in 1900 and died in 1981, Arqueles Vela, born in 1899 and died in 1977, and Germán List Arzubide, born in 1898 and probably died recently too, or maybe not, I have no idea, it's not as if it makes much difference to me, since from a literary point of view the stridentists were a contemptible group, comical without intending to be. And one of the stridentists, at some point in his interview, mentioned Cesárea Tinajero, and then I told Luscious Skin that I would find out what had happened to Cesárea Tinajero. Then we made love, but it was like doing it with someone who's there but isn't there, someone who's gently drifting away and whose gestures of farewell we aren't able to decipher.

  Soon afterward, Luscious Skin left. Earlier, I'd spoken to some friends, people who specialized in the history of Mexican literature, and no one could tell me anything about the existence of a poet from the 1920s by that name. One night Luscious Skin admitted that Belano and Lima might have made her up. Now both of them have disappeared, he said, and no one can ask them anything. I tried to console him: they'll show up, I said, everyone who leaves Mexico ends up coming back someday. He didn't seem very convinced, and one morning, while I was at work, he went away, without even leaving me a note goodbye. He took some money too, not much, money that I kept in one of my desk drawers in case he needed something when I wasn't there, and a pair of pants, several shirts, and a novel by Fernando del Paso.

  For days all I did was think about him and wait for a phone call that never came. The only person from my circle whom I'd seen during his stay was Albertito Moore, when Luscious Skin and I went to the movies one night and bumped into him on our way out. Although it was a brief encounter and we hardly spoke, Albertito immediately suspected the real reason I'd been holed up and making excuses not to see anyone. When I realized that Luscious Skin wasn't coming back, I called him and told him the whole story. What seemed to interest him most was Ulises Lima's disappearance in Managua. We talked for a long time and his conclusion was that everyone was slowly but surely going insane. Albertito doesn't sympathize with the Sandinista cause, although it can't be said that he's pro-Somozan either.

  16

  Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976. Luckily, the boys weren't in a hurry. I put the snacks on a little table, we opened the cans of chipotle chilies, I passed out toothpicks, we poured the tequila, and our eyes met. Where were we, boys? I said, and they said: in the middle of the full-length portrait of General Diego Carvajal, patron of the arts and Cesárea Tinajero's boss, while outside, in the street, sirens began to wail, first police sirens and then ambulance sirens. I thought about the dead and the wounded and I said to myself that that was mi general, dead and wounded all at once, just as Cesárea was a blank and I was a tipsy, excitable old man. Then I told the boys that boss was just a manner of speaking, that you had to have known Cesárea to realize that she could never in her life have had a boss or what you might call a steady job. Cesárea was a stenographer, as I've said. That was what she did, and she was a good secretary, but her personality, her eccentricities, perhaps, outweighed her skills, and if it hadn't been for Manuel getting her the job with mi general, poor Cesárea would have been consigned by fate to wander the sinister underbelly of Mexico City. And then I asked them again whether it was really true (really and honestly true) that they had never heard of General Diego Carvajal. And they said no, Amadeo, never, what was he? Obregonista or Carrancista? one of Plutarco Elías Calles's men or a real revolutionary? A real revolutionary, I said in the saddest voice in the world, but also one of Obregón's men. There's no such thing as purity, boys, don't fool yourselves, life is shit, mi general was a wounded man and a dead man all at once, and he was brave. And then I started to talk about the night when Manuel told us his plan for an avant-garde city, Stridentopolis, and how we laughed when we heard him, thinking it was a joke, but it wasn't a joke, no, Stridentopolis was a possible city (possible at least in the tortuous pathways of the imagination) that Manuel planned to erect in Jalapa with the help of a general, General Diego Carvajal is going to help us build it, he said, and then some of us asked him who the hell that was (just as the boys asked me the night they were here) and Manuel told us the general's story, a story, boys, I told them, that could be the story of so many men who fought and made a name for themselves in our revolution, men who went naked into the whirlwind of history and came out dressed in the most glittering and terrible rags, like mi general Diego Carvajal, who went in illiterate and came out convinced that Picasso and Marinetti were the prophets of something, of what he wasn't sure-never was, boys-but we aren't much surer of anything ourselves. One afternoon we went to his office to meet him. This was a little before Cesárea joined the stridentists. At first the general was slightly chilly, at first he kept his distance. He didn't get up to greet us and while Manuel was introducing us all he hardly said a word. But he did look us each in the eye, as if he wanted to see deep into our minds or our souls. I thought: how could Manuel have become friends with this man? because at first glance the general was no different from any of the other soldiers who had washed up in Mexico City on the tides of revolution. He had the look of an intense, serious, distrustful, violent person, which is to say, nobody you would associate with poetry, although I know perfectly well that there've been poets who were intense and serious and distrustful and even violent, take Díaz Mirón, for example, but don't get me started, because sometimes I can't help thinking that poets and politicians, especially in Mexico, are one and the same, or at least I'd say that they drink from the same trough. But back then I was young, too young and idealistic, which is to say I was pure, and that kind of business affected me deeply, so I can't say that I liked General Diego Carvajal right away. But then something very simple happened and everything changed. After he'd pierced us with his gaze and sat through Manuel's preliminaries looking half bore
d and half alert, the general summoned one of his bodyguards, a Yaqui Indian he called Equitativo, and ordered him to bring tequila, bread, and cheese. And that was all, that was the magic wand the general waved to win our hearts. The way I've told it, it sounds silly, even to me it sounds silly, but back then, just by clearing the papers off his desk and telling us not to be shy and to pull up our chairs, the general demolished any reservations or prejudices we might have had, and all of us, as you can imagine, gathered around the table and started to drink and eat bread and cheese, which, according to mi general, was a French custom, and Manuel seconded him there (and everywhere), of course it was a French custom, a common habit at the hole-in-the-wall taverns off the Boulevard du Temple and around the Faubourg St. Denis, and Manuel and mi general Diego Carvajal got to talking about Paris and the bread and cheese that people ate in Paris, and the tequila that people drank in Paris and how you could hardly believe how well people drank, how well the goddamn Parisians around the Marché aux Puces could drink, as if in Paris, or so I thought, everything happened around some street or place and never on a specific street or in a specific place, and this was because, as I later discovered, Manuel had never been to the City of Light, and neither had mi general, although both of them, I don't know why, professed a fondness or passion for that faraway and presumably intoxicating metropolis that struck me as worthy of better objects. And now that we've reached this point, allow me to digress: years later, some time after Manuel had let our friendship lapse, I read in the paper one morning that he was leaving for Europe. The poet Manuel Maples Arce, the item said, will depart from Veracruz en route to Le Havre. It didn't say the father of stridentism is going to Europe or the leading Mexican poet of the avant-garde is leaving for the Old World, but simply: the poet Manuel Maples Arce. And maybe it didn't even say poet, maybe the note said Mr. Maples Arce, bachelor of arts, is bound for a French port, where he will continue his trip to Italian soil by other means (by train, by runaway carriage!), in order to assume the duties of consul or vice-consul or cultural attaché at the Mexican embassy in Rome. Well. My memory isn't what it used to be. There are things I forget, I admit it. But that morning, when I read those few lines and learned that Manuel would see Paris at last, I was happy, I felt my chest swell with happiness, even though Manuel didn't consider himself my friend anymore, even though stridentism was dead, even though life might have changed us so much that we'd have had trouble recognizing each other on the street. I thought about Manuel and I thought about Paris, which I've never seen but which I've visited once or twice in dreams, and it seemed to me that his trip vindicated us and, in some inexplicable way, did us justice. Of course, mi general Diego Carvajal never left Mexico. He was killed in 1930, in a shootout still shrouded in mystery, in the inner courtyard of the Rojo y Negro, a brothel, which in those days was on Calle Costa Rica, a few blocks from here, under the direct protection of a bigwig at the Ministry of the Interior, or so it was said. Killed in the firefight were mi general Diego Carvajal, one of his bodyguards, three gunmen from the state of Durango, and Rosario Contreras, a whore said to be Spanish who was famous in those days. I went to the burial and on my way out of the cemetery I ran into List Arzubide. According to List (who in his day traveled to Europe too), they had laid a trap for mi general for political reasons, which was the exact opposite of what the newspapers said, the press inclining toward a brothel skirmish or a crime of passion with Rosario Contreras in a leading role. According to List, who was personally familiar with the brothel, mi general liked to screw in the most out-of-the-way room, which wasn't very big but had the advantage of being at the back of the house, far from the noise, near this courtyard where there was a fountain. And after screwing, mi general liked to go out into the courtyard to smoke a cigarette and think about postcoital sadness, that vexing sadness of the flesh, and about all the books he hadn't read. And according to List, the killers stationed themselves in the hallway leading to the main rooms, and there they commanded every corner of the courtyard. Which suggests that they knew mi general's habits. And they waited and waited, as mi general screwed Rosario Contreras, a whore by avocation, or so I understood, since she'd had plenty of retirement offers and she'd always chosen her freedom. Stranger things have happened. And as the story goes, it was a long and meticulous screwing, as if the cherubs or cupids wanted Rosario and mi general to fully enjoy their last lovemaking, or their last here on the Mexican part of planet Earth, at least. And so the hours went by, with Rosario and mi general engaged in what young people and not so young people today call a lay, or a ride, or a tumble, or a poke, or a balling, or a plowing, or a roll in the hay, or a few laps around the track, although this run would have to last them through all eternity. And meanwhile the killers waited, getting bored, but what they didn't expect was that mi general, who was a creature of habit, would come out into the courtyard with his pistol in his belt or his pocket or tucked between his trousers and his belly. And when mi general finally came out at last to smoke his cigarette, the shooting began. According to List, mi general's bodyguard had already been butchered without further ado, so when the dance began it was three to one and on top of that the killers had the advantage of surprise. But mi general Diego Carvajal was all man and he still had good reflexes too, and things didn't go their way. The first shots struck him, but he had the gumption to pull out his pistol and fire back. According to List, mi general could have kept them at bay indefinitely, because if the killers were staked out in an unbeatable position, the spot where mi general had taken cover behind the fountain was just as good, and neither side dared to make the first move. But then Rosario Contreras came out of her room, roused by the noise, and a bullet killed her. The rest is unclear: mi general probably ran to help her, to escort her to safety, or maybe he realized that she was dead and his rage got the better of his good judgment and he rose and strode toward the killers with guns blazing. That's how Mexican generals used to die, boys, I said, what do you think? And they said: we don't know what to think, Amadeo, it sounds like a movie. And then I started to think again about Stridentopolis, about its museums and bars, its open-air theaters and newspapers, its schools and its dormitories for traveling poets, dormitories where Borges and Tristan Tzara, Huidobro and André Breton would sleep. And I saw mi general talking to us again. I saw him making plans, I saw him drinking, standing at the window, I saw him receiving Cesárea Tinajero, who had come in with a letter of recommendation from Manuel, I saw him reading a little book by Tablada, maybe the one where Don José Juan says: "Under fearful skies/keening for the only star/the song of the nightingale." Which is as if to say, boys, I said, that I saw our struggles and dreams all tangled up in the same failure, and that failure was called joy.

  Joaquín Font, psychiatric hospital La Fortaleza, Tlalnepantla, Mexico City, March 1983. Now that I'm surrounded by penniless lunatics, hardly anyone comes to see me. And yet my psychiatrist tells me I'm getting a little better every day. My psychiatrist is called José Manuel, which I think is a nice name. When I tell him so he laughs. It's a very romantic name, I say, a name that would make any girl fall in love with you. It's a shame he's almost never here when my daughter comes to visit, because visiting days are Saturday and Sunday, and those are the days my psychiatrist doesn't work, except for one Saturday and Sunday each month when he's on duty. If you could see my daughter, I tell him, you'd fall in love with her. Oh, Don Joaquín, he says. But I persist: if you saw her you'd drop at her feet like a wounded bird, José Manuel, and you'd suddenly understand all kinds of things that you don't understand right now. Like what, for example? he says, trying to sound as if he's not paying attention, as if he's politely indifferent, but I know deep down he's very interested. Like what, for example? Then I opt for silence. Sometimes silence is best. Descending into the catacombs of Mexico City again to pray in silence. The courtyards of this jail are perfect for silence. Rectangular and hexagonal, as if designed by the great Garábito, they all converge on the big courtyard, an expanse the size o
f three soccer fields, bordered by a nameless street where the Tlalnepantla bus goes by, full of workers and people with nothing better to do than stare wide-eyed at the madmen roaming the courtyard in the uniform of La Fortaleza, or half naked, or in their shabby street clothes, these last being the recent arrivals who haven't been able to find themselves uniforms, let alone uniforms in the proper size, since very few here wear uniforms that fit. This big courtyard is the natural abode of silence, although the first time I saw it I thought the noise and clamor of the lunatics might become unbearable and it took me a while to get up the courage to set foot on that steppe. But soon I realized that if there was a place anywhere in La Fortaleza where sound bounded away like a frightened rabbit, it was the big courtyard protected by a tall fence from the nameless street, while the people outside drove right by, safe inside their vehicles, since real pedestrians were rare, although sometimes the confused family member of some lunatic or people who preferred not to enter by the main door would stop outside the fence for just a minute, and then go on their way. At the far end of the courtyard, near the buildings, are the tables where the lunatics usually spend a few minutes visiting with their families, who bring them bananas or apples or oranges. In any case, they don't stay there long, because when the sun is out it's unbearably hot and when the wind blows, the madmen who never get visitors shelter under the eaves. When my daughter comes to visit I tell her we should stay in the visitors' hall or go out into one of the hexagonal courtyards, although I know that she finds the visitors' hall and the small courtyards unsettling and sinister. But things happen in the big courtyard that I don't want my daughter to see (a sign, according to my psychiatrist, that I'm definitely on the road to recovery), as well as other things that for now I'd rather keep to myself. Anyway, I have to tread carefully and never let down my guard. The other day (a month ago), my daughter told me that Ulises Lima had disappeared. I know, I said. How do you know? she said. Oh dear. I read it in the paper, I said. But it wasn't in any of the papers! she said. Well then, I must have dreamed it, I said. What I didn't say was that a lunatic from the big courtyard had told me about it two weeks ago. A lunatic whose real name I don't even know. Everyone calls him Chucho or Chuchito (his name is probably Jesús, but I prefer to avoid all religious references, which are beside the point and only poison the silence of the big courtyard), this Chucho or Chuchito came up to me, as he often does, since in the courtyard we all approach each other and retreat, those of us who are doped up and those who are well on the way to recovery, and when he passed me he whispered: Ulises has disappeared. The next day I saw him again (maybe I was unconsciously seeking him out), and I walked toward him, my steps very slow, very patient, so slow that sometimes the people going by in buses on the street may get the idea that we don't move, but we do, I have no doubt that we do, and when he saw me his lips began to tremble, as if just seeing me triggered some urgent message, and as he passed me I heard the same words again: Ulises has disappeared. And only then did I realize that he meant Ulises Lima, the young visceral realist poet whom I'd seen for the last time behind the wheel of my shiny Ford Impala in the first minutes of 1976, and I realized that black clouds had begun to cover the sky again, that above Mexico's white clouds the black clouds drifted, impossibly heavy and terrifyingly imperious, and that I had to be careful and take refuge in pretense and silence.