The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  Suddenly, out of the blue, he asked me about Arturo Belano. It surprised me because Abraham never asked such direct questions. I told him that I didn't know what had happened to Arturo. I do, he said, do you want me to tell you? First I thought about saying no, but then I told him to go ahead, that I wanted to know. I saw him one night in the Barrio Chino, he said, and at first he didn't recognize me. He was with a blond woman. He looked happy. I said hello to him, since we were in a little dive bar, practically at the same table (here Abraham laughed), and it would have been stupid to pretend I hadn't seen him. It took him a while to recognize me. Then he came closer, almost pushing his face in mine, which made me realize that he was completely drunk (so was I, probably), and asked about you. And what did you say? I told him that you were living in the United States and you were fine. And what did he say? That it was a weight off his shoulders, or something, I guess, that sometimes he thought you were dead. And that was all. He turned back to the blonde and a little later my friends and I left.

  Fifteen days later we went back to Silverado. One afternoon I ran into John on the street and I told him that if he kept calling me and bothering me I would kill him. John apologized and said that he'd fallen in love with me, but that he wasn't in love with me anymore and he wouldn't call me again. Around that time, I weighed one hundred and ten pounds and I wasn't losing or gaining weight and my mother was happy. She had a steady relationship with the engineer and they were even talking about getting married, although my mother never sounded as if she meant it. She opened a shop of Mexican handicrafts with a friend in Laguna Beach, and the business didn't bring in much money but it wasn't losing much either, and the social life it gave her was exactly what she wanted. A year after Mr. Schwartz's death Mrs. Schwartz got sick and had to be admitted to a hospital in Los Angeles. The next day I went to see her and she was asleep. The hospital was downtown, on Wilshire Boulevard, near MacArthur Park. My mother had to leave and I wanted to stay and wait until Mrs. Schwartz woke up. The problem was the car, because if my mother left and I didn't, who would take me back to Silverado? After a long discussion in the hallway, my mother said she would come pick me up between nine and ten that night, and if for some unexpected reason she was held up, she would call me at the hospital. Before she left she made me promise that I wouldn't budge. I don't know how much time I spent in Mrs. Schwartz's hospital room. I ate at the hospital cafeteria and struck up a conversation with a nurse. The nurse's name was Rosario Álvarez and she was born in Mexico City. I asked her what life was like in Los Angeles and she said that it was different every day, that sometimes it could be very good and sometimes very bad, but if you worked hard you could get ahead. I asked her how long it had been since she was in Mexico. Too long, she said, I don't have the money to be nostalgic. Then I bought a paper and went back up to Mrs. Schwartz's room. I sat next to the window and looked up the museum and movie listings in the paper. There was a movie on Alvarado Street that I suddenly felt like seeing. It had been a long time since I'd been to the movies and Alvarado Street wasn't far from the hospital. And yet, when I was outside the ticket window I didn't feel like it anymore and I kept walking. Everyone says that Los Angeles isn't a pedestrian city. I walked along Pico Boulevard to Valencia and then turned left and walked along Valencia back to Wilshire Boulevard, a two-hour walk in all, without hurrying, stopping in front of buildings that might have seemed uninteresting or carefully watching the flow of traffic. At ten my mother came back from Laguna Beach and we left. The second time I went to see Mrs. Schwartz, she didn't recognize me. I asked the nurse whether she'd had any visitors. The nurse said that an older woman had come to see her that morning and had left just before I got there. This time I came in the Nissan, because my mother and the engineer, who had just arrived, had taken his car to Laguna Beach. According to the nurse I talked to, Mrs. Schwartz was fading fast. I ate at the hospital and sat in the room for a while, thinking, until six. Then I got in the Nissan and went for a drive around Los Angeles. In the glove compartment there was a map that I consulted carefully before I turned the key in the ignition. Then I started the car and left the hospital. I know I passed the Civic Center, the Music Center, the Dorothy Chandler Pavillion. Then I headed for Echo Park and I merged into traffic on Sunset Boulevard. I don't know how long I was driving. All I know is that I never got out of the Nissan and that in Beverly Hills I got off Highway 101 and meandered along on side roads until I got to Santa Monica. There I got on Interstate 10, or the Santa Monica Freeway, and I headed back downtown, then took Highway 11, passing Wilshire Boulevard, although I couldn't turn off until farther up, at Third Street. When I got back to the hospital it was ten at night and Mrs. Schwartz had died. I was going to ask whether she was alone when she died but then I decided not to ask anything. The body wasn't in the room anymore. I sat next to the window for a while, breathing and recovering from my trip to Santa Monica. A nurse came in and asked me whether I was related to Mrs. Schwartz and what I was doing there. I told her that I was a friend and I was just trying to calm down, that was all. She asked me whether I was calm yet. I said yes. Then I got up and left. I got to Silverado at three in the morning.

  A month later my mother married the engineer. The wedding was in Laguna Beach and the engineer's children were there, as well as one of my brothers and the friends my mother had made in California. They lived in Silverado for a while and then my mother sold the shop in Laguna Beach and they went to live in Guadalajara. For a while, I didn't want to leave Silverado. Without my mother, the house seemed much bigger and quieter and cooler than before. Mrs. Schwartz's house was empty for a while. In the afternoons I would get in the Nissan and go to a bar in town and have a coffee or a whiskey and reread some old novels whose plot I'd forgotten. At the bar I met a guy who worked for the Forest Service and we slept together. His name was Perry and he knew a few words of Spanish. One night Perry told me that my vagina had an unusual smell. I didn't answer and he thought he'd offended me. Have I offended you? he said, I'm sorry if I have. But I was thinking about other things, other faces (if it's possible to think about a face), and he hadn't offended me. Most of the time, however, I was alone. Each month there was a check for me from my mother at the bank and I spent my days cleaning the house, sweeping, mopping, going to the supermarket, cooking, washing the dishes, taking care of the yard. I didn't call anyone and the only calls I got were from my mother, and, once a week, from my father or one of my brothers. When I was in the mood, I would go to a bar in the afternoon, and when I wasn't in the mood I would stay home reading beside the window. If I raised my eyes I could see the Schwartzes' empty house from where I sat. One afternoon a car stopped in front of it and a man in a jacket and tie got out. He had keys. He went in and ten minutes later he came out again. He didn't look like a relative of the Schwartzes. A few days later two women and a man came back to visit the house again. When they left, one of the women put a sign out saying that the house was for sale. Then many days went by before anyone came to visit it, but one day at noon, while I was busy in the yard, I heard children shouting and I saw a couple in their thirties going into the house led by one of the women who'd been there before. I knew immediately that they would buy the house and right there in the yard, without taking off my gloves, standing there like a pillar of salt, I decided that the time had come for me to leave too. That night I listened to Debussy and thought about Mexico and then, I don't know why, I thought about my cat Zia and I ended up calling my mother and asking her to get me a job in Mexico City, any job. I told her I'd be leaving soon. A week later my mother and her new husband were in Silverado, and two days later, one Sunday night, I flew to Mexico City. My first job was at a gallery in the Zona Rosa. It didn't pay much, but the work wasn't hard. Then I started to work at a publishing house, the Fondo de Cultura Economica, in the English Philosophy division, and my work life was finally settled.

  Felipe Müller, sitting on a bench in Plaza Martorell, Barcelona, October 1991. I'm almost sure it was Arturo Be
lano who told me this story, because he was the only one of us who liked to read science fiction. It's by Theodore Sturgeon, or so Arturo said, although it might be by some other author or even Arturo himself; the name Theodore Sturgeon means nothing to me.

  The story, a love story, is about a hugely rich and extremely intelligent girl who one day falls in love with her gardener or her gardener's son or a young tramp who just happens to end up on one of the estates she owns and becomes her gardener. The girl, who's not only rich and smart but also headstrong and a little impulsive, lures him into bed the first chance she gets, and without quite knowing how, falls madly in love with him. The tramp, who's nowhere near as smart as she is and who doesn't have a high school degree but who makes up for it by being angelically pure, falls in love with her too, though naturally not without a few complications. In the first phase of the romance, they live in her palatial mansion, where they spend their time looking at art books, eating exquisite delicacies, watching old movies, and mostly making love all day. Then they live for a while in the gardener's cottage and then on a boat (maybe the kind that cruises the rivers of France, like in the Jean Vigo film) and then they roam the vast expanse of the United States on a couple of Harleys, which was one of the tramp's long-cherished dreams.

  As the girl lives out her love, her interests continue to prosper, and since money begets money, she gets richer by the day. Of course, the tramp, who's generally clueless, is decent enough to convince her to devote part of her fortune to good works or charity (which is something the girl has always done anyway, through lawyers and a network of various foundations, though she doesn't tell him so, in order to make him think she's doing it on his account) and then he forgets about it all, because ultimately the tramp has only the vaguest idea of the mass of money that trails like a shadow behind his beloved. Anyway, for a while, months, maybe a year or two, the girl millionaire and her lover are indescribably happy. But one day (or one evening), the tramp falls ill and although the best doctors in the world come to examine him, there's nothing to be done. His health has been ruined by an unhappy childhood, an adolescence plagued with hardships, a troubled life that the short time he's spent with the girl has barely managed to ease or sweeten. Despite all the efforts of science, he dies of cancer.

  For a few days the girl seems to lose her mind. She travels all over the globe, takes lovers, immerses herself in dark pursuits. But she ends up coming home, and soon, when it becomes clear that she's more obsessed than ever, she decides to embark on a project that in some way had already begun to take root in her mind just before the tramp's death. A team of scientists moves into the mansion. In record time, the house is doubly transformed, the inside into a sophisticated laboratory, and the outside, the lawns and the gardener's cottage, into a replica of Eden. To shield it all from the gaze of strangers, an extremely high wall is erected around the grounds. Then the work begins. Soon the scientists implant a clone of the tramp in the womb of a whore, who will be generously compensated. Nine months later the whore has a boy, hands him over to the girl, and disappears.

  For five years the girl and a team of specialists care for the boy. Then the scientists implant a clone of the girl in her own womb. Nine months later the girl has a child. The laboratory in the mansion is dismantled and the scientists disappear, replaced by teachers, the tutor-specialists who will keep watch from a distance as both children are raised according to a plan previously drawn up by the girl. When everything is set in motion the girl disappears. She travels, she attends society parties again, she plunges headfirst into perilous adventures, takes lovers: her name shines like a star's. But every once in a while, cloaked in the greatest secrecy, she returns to the mansion and observes the children's progress, unseen by them. The clone of the tramp is an exact replica of the man she fell in love with, his purity and innocence intact. Except that now all his needs are met and his childhood is a peaceful succession of games and teachers who instruct him in all he needs to know. The female clone is an exact replica of the girl herself, and her teachers repeat the same successes and failures, the same actions of the past.

  The girl, of course, hardly ever lets herself be seen by the children, although occasionally the clone of the tramp, who is never tired of playing and is a bold child, spots her through the lace curtains of the mansion's upper floors and goes running after her, always in vain.

  The years pass and the children grow up, becoming more and more inseparable. One day the millionairess falls ill, with whatever, a deadly virus, cancer, and after a purely symbolic struggle, gives in and prepares to die. She's still young, forty-two. Her only heirs are the two clones and she leaves everything ready for them to inherit part of her immense fortune the moment they're married. Then she dies and her lawyers and scientists weep bitterly for her.

  The story ends with a meeting of her staff after the reading of the will. Some, the most innocent and farthest from the millionairess's inner circle, ask the questions that Sturgeon guesses readers might ask themselves. What if the clones refuse to marry? What if the boy and girl love each other, as seems indisputable, but their love never goes beyond the strictly fraternal? Will their lives be ruined? Will they be condemned to live together like two prisoners serving life sentences?

  Arguments and debates break out. Moral and ethical questions are raised. The oldest lawyer and scientist, however, soon take it upon themselves to clear up all doubts. Even if the boy and girl don't agree to marry, even if they don't fall in love, they'll still be given the money they're due and they'll be free to do as they like. No matter how the relationship between them develops, within a year the scientists will implant a new clone of the tramp in the body of a surrogate, and five years later they'll repeat the operation with a new clone of the millionairess. And when these new clones are twenty-three and eighteen, no matter what their interpersonal relationship might be-in other words, whether they love each other like brother and sister or like lovers-the scientists or the scientists' successors will implant two more clones, and so on until the end of time or until the millionairess's immense fortune is exhausted.

  This is where the story ends, with the faces of the millionairess and the tramp silhouetted against the sunset, and then the stars, and then infinite space. A little creepy, isn't it? Sublime, in a way, but creepy too. Like all crazy loves, don't you think? If you add infinity to infinity, you get infinity. If you mix the sublime and the creepy, what you end up with is creepy. Right?

  20

  Xosé Lendoiro, Terme di Traiano, Rome, October 1992. I was no ordinary lawyer. Lupo ovem commisisti or Alter remus aquas, alter tibi radat harenas: either could be said of me with equal justice. And yet I've preferred to adhere to the Catullian noli pugnare duobus. Someday my merits will be recognized.

  In those days I was traveling and conducting experiments. My practice as a lawyer or jurist afforded me sufficient income so that I could devote ample time to the noble art of poetry. Unde habeas quaerit nemo, sed oportet habere, which, simply put, means that no one inquires as to the source of one's possessions, but possessions are necessary. An essential truth if one wants to devote oneself to one's most secret calling: poets are dazzled by the spectacle of wealth.

  But let us return to my experiments. At first, these consisted solely of traveling and observing, although I was soon given to know that my unconscious intention was the attainment of the ideal map of Spain. Hoc erat in votis, such were my desires, as the immortal Horace says. Naturally, I had a magazine. I was, if I may say so, the funder and editor, the publisher and star poet. In petris, herbis vis est, sed maxima verbis: stones and grass have many virtues, but words have more.

  My publication was tax-deductible too, which meant that it was little burden. But why bore you? Details have no place in poetry. That's always been my maxim, along with Paulo maiora canamus: let us sing of greater things, as Virgil says. One has to get to the marrow, the pith, the essence. I had a magazine and I headed a firm of lawyers, ambulance chasers and sharks, a firm of
not undeserved renown, and during the summers I traveled. Life was good. And yet one day I said to myself, Xosé, you've been all over the world: incipit vita nova. It's time for you to tread the pathways of Spain, though you be no Dante, time for you to tread the roads of this country of ours, so battered and long-suffering and yet still so little known.

  I'm a man of action. What's said is done: I bought myself a roulotte and off I went. Vive valeque. I traveled through Andalusia. Granada is so pretty, Seville so lovely, Cordoba so severe. But I needed to go deeper, get to the source. Doctor of law and criminal lawyer that I was, I couldn't rest until I'd found the right path: the ius est ars boni et aequi, the libertas est potestas faciendi id quod facere iure licet, the root of the apparition. It was a summer of initiation. I kept repeating to myself, after sweet Horace: nescit vox missa reverti, the word, once spoken, cannot be withdrawn. From the legal point of view, the statement has its loopholes. But not for a poet. By the time I returned from that first trip, I was in a state of excitement, and also somewhat confused.

  Before long, I separated from my wife. There were no scenes and no one was hurt, since fortunately our daughters were already grown and had the sufficient discernment to understand me, especially the older one. Keep the apartment and the house in Tossa, I said, and let that be the end of it. My wife accepted, surprisingly enough. We put the rest in the hands of a few lawyers she trusted. In publicis nihil est lege gravius: in privatis firmissimum est testamentum. Although why I say that I don't know. What do wills have to do with divorce? My nightmares are getting the better of me. In any case, legum omnes servi sumus, ut liberi esse possimus, which means that in order to be free, which is our most precious desire, we are all slaves before the law.