The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  What was born in me, however, wasn't words or poetry, not even a single solitary line, but a great desire for revenge, the determination to get my own back, the firm resolve to make that third-rate Julien Sorel pay for his insolence and gall. Prima cratera ad sitim pertinet, secunda ad hilaritatem, tertia ad voluptatem, quarta ad insaniam. The fourth cup brings madness, said Apuleius, and that was what I needed. I realized it at that moment with a clarity that seems touching to me now. The waitress, a girl my daughter's age, was watching me from the other side of the counter. Across from her, having a soda, was a woman who worked as a door-to-door pollster. The two of them were talking animatedly, although from time to time the waitress would turn her gaze in my direction. I raised my hand and ordered a fourth cognac. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that the waitress looked sympathetic.

  I decided to crush Arturo Belano like a cockroach. For two weeks, unhinged and unbalanced, I would show up at my old apartment, my daughter's apartment, at odd hours. Four times I caught them together again. Twice they were in my bedroom, once they were in my daughter's bedroom, and once they were in the master bathroom. This last time I wasn't able to spy on them, although I could hear them, but the other three times I could see with my own eyes the terrible acts to which they abandoned themselves fervently, recklessly, shamelessly. Amor tussisque non caelatur: neither love nor a cough can be concealed. But was it love that they felt for each other? I asked myself more than once, especially as I snuck feverishly out of my apartment after those unspeakable acts that I was obliged to witness as if by a mysterious force. Was it love that Belano felt for my daughter? Was it love that my daughter felt for that cheap imitation of Julien Sorel? Qui non zelat, non amat, I said or whispered to myself when it occurred to me, in a burst of clarity, that my behavior was more like that of a jealous lover than a strict father. And yet I wasn't a jealous lover. What was it I felt, then? Amantes, amentes. Lovers, lunatics, dixit Plato.

  As a precautionary measure, I decided to sound them out, to give them one last chance, in my own way. As I feared, my daughter was in love with the Chilean. Are you sure? I asked her. Of course I'm sure, she answered. And what do the two of you plan to do? Nothing, Dad, said my daughter, who bore no resemblance to me in these matters, being in fact almost the complete opposite. She'd turned out a pragmatist like her mother. A little later I spoke to Belano. He came to my office, as he did each month, to deliver a poetry review for the law school journal and collect his payment. So, Belano, I said when I had him in front of me, sitting in a low chair, crushed beneath the legal heft of my diplomas and the burnished weight of the silver-framed photographs of great poets that adorned my sturdy ten-by-five-foot oak table. I think it's time, I said, for you to make the leap. He looked at me blankly. The qualitative leap, I said. After a moment in which we were both silent, I explained what I meant. I wanted him (it was my wish, I said) to make the move from reviewer for the law school magazine to regular contributor to my magazine. I think his only commentary was a rather subdued "wow." As you'll understand, I explained, this is a great responsibility I've assumed. The magazine is gaining in reputation every day. Its contributors include many distinguished Spanish and Latin American poets. You read it, I assume, so you'll have noticed that we've published Pepe de Dios, Ernestina Buscarraons, and Manolo Garcidiego Hijares, not to mention the young blades who make up our team of regular contributors: Gabriel Cataluña, who bids fair to become the great bilingual poet we've all been waiting for, Rafael Logroño, an extremely young but staggeringly powerful poet, Ismael Sevilla, meticulous and elegant, Ezequiel Valencia, a stylist of blazing warmth and cool intelligence capable of composing the most rabidly modern sonnets in Spain today, and last but not least, of course, our two gladiators of poetry criticism, Beni Algeciras, almost always ruthless, and Toni Melilla, professor at the Autónoma and an expert in the poetry of the 1950s. All of them men, I said in conclusion, whom I have the honor to lead and whose names are destined to shine in bronze letters in the literature of this country (the motherland, as you people say) that has opened its arms to you, and in whose company you'll work.

  Then I was silent and we watched each other for a while, or rather I watched him, searching his face for any sign that would give away what was going on inside his head, and Belano looked at my pictures, my objets d'art, my diplomas, my paintings, my collection of handcuffs and shackles mostly dating from before 1940 (it was a collection to which my clients usually reacted with interest and a tinge of fear, my legal colleagues with some tasteless joke or remark, and the poets who visited me with admiring fascination), the spines of the few carefully chosen books that I keep in my office, most of them first editions of the nineteenth-century Spanish Romantics. As I was saying, his gaze slithered over my possessions like a small and highly nervous rat. What do you think? I blurted out. Then he looked at me and I realized abruptly that my proposal had fallen on fallow ground. Belano asked me how much I planned to pay him. I looked at him and didn't answer. The arriviste was already calculating his take. He looked at me, waiting for my answer. I watched him, poker-faced. He asked in a stammer whether the pay would be the same as for the law school journal. I sighed. Emere oportet, quem tibi oboedire velis. His gaze was clearly that of a frightened rat. I don't pay, I said. Only the greats, the big names, the names with clout. For now, you'll only be assigned a few reviews. Then he moved his head, as if he were reciting: O cives, cives, quaerenda pecunia primum est, virtus post nummos. After that he said that he would think about it, and he left. When he closed the door I buried my head in my hands and remained like that for a while, thinking. Deep down I didn't want to hurt him.

  It was like sleeping, it was like dreaming, it was like rediscovering my true self: I was a giant. When I woke up I walked to my daughter's apartment ready to have a long father-daughter talk. It had probably been some time since I'd spoken with her, listened to her fears, her concerns, her doubts. Pro peccato magno paulum supplicii satis est patri. That night we had dinner at a nice restaurant on Calle Provenza and although we only talked about literature, the giant in me behaved just as I expected it to behave: it was elegant, agreeable, understanding, full of plans, in love with life. The next day I visited my younger daughter and took her to La Floresta, to a friend's house. The giant drove carefully and said funny things. When we parted my daughter gave me a kiss on the cheek.

  It was just the beginning, but inside, on the burning life raft of my brain, I was already starting to feel the healing effects of my new attitude. Homo totiens moritur quotiens emittit suos. I loved my daughters, and I knew I'd been on the verge of losing them. Maybe, I thought, they've been too much alone, spent too much time with their mother, a docile woman given to carnal abandonment, and now the giant needs to make an appearance, demonstrate that he's alive and thinking of them, that's all. It was such a simple thing that I felt angry (or maybe just sorry) not to have done it before. Meanwhile, the giant's coming did more than help improve my rapport with my daughters. I began to notice a clear change in my daily dealings with clients at the firm: the giant wasn't afraid of anything, he was bold, he came up instantly with the most unexpected strategies, he could fearlessly navigate legal twists and turns with his eyes shut and without the least hesitation. And that's not to mention his dealings with the literary types. There the giant, I realized with true pleasure, was sublime, majestic, a towering mass of sounds and pronouncements, constant affirmation and negation, a fount of life.

  I stopped spying on my daughter and her wretched lover. Odero, si potero. Si non, invitus amabo. And yet I let the full weight of my authority fall against Belano. I was at peace again. It was the best time of my life.

  Now I think about the poems that I could have written and didn't and it makes me want to laugh and cry all at once. But back then, I wasn't thinking about the poems I could write: I was writing them, or I thought I was. Around that time I had a book out: I got one of the most respected publishing houses of the day to publish it for me.
I covered all the costs, of course. They just printed the book and distributed it. Quantum quisque sua nummorum servat in arca, tantum habet ei fidei. The giant didn't worry about money. Instead, he made it flow, dispensed it, exercised his sovereignty over it fearlessly and unabashedly, just as a giant should.

  Regarding money, naturally, I have indelible memories. Memories that glisten like a drunkard in the rain or a sick man in the rain. There was a time when my money was the object of jokes and ridicule, I know that. Vilius argentum est auro, virtutibus aurum. I know there was a time, at the beginning of my magazine's run, when my young collaborators mocked the source of my money. You pay poets, it was said, with the money you make from crooked businessmen, embezzlers, drug traffickers, murderers of women and children, money launderers, corrupt politicians. I never dignified this slander with a reply. Plus augmentantur rumores, quando negantur. Someone has to defend the murderers, the crooks, the men who want divorces and aren't prepared to surrender all their money to their wives; someone has to defend them. And my firm defended them all, and the giant absolved them and charged them a fair price. That's democracy, you fools, I told them, it's time you understood. For better or for worse. And instead of buying a yacht with the money I made, I started a literary magazine. And although I knew that the money troubled the consciences of some of the young poets of Barcelona and Madrid, when I had a free moment I would come up silently behind them and touch their backs with the tips of my fingers, which were perfectly manicured (no longer, since even my nails are ragged now), and I would whisper in their ears: non olet. It doesn't smell. The coins earned in the urinals of Barcelona and Madrid don't smell. The coins earned in the toilets of Zaragoza don't smell. The coins earned in the sewers of Bilbao don't smell. Or if they smell, they smell of money. They smell of what the giant dreams of doing with his money. Then the young poets would understand and nod, even if they didn't entirely follow what I was saying, even if they didn't comprehend every jot and tittle of the terrible, timeless lesson I'd meant to drum into their silly little heads. And if any of them failed to understand, which I doubt, they understood when they saw their pieces published, when they smelled the freshly printed pages, when they saw their names on the cover or in the table of contents. It was then that they got a whiff of what money really smells like: like power, like the gracious gesture of a giant. And then there were no more jokes and they all grew up and followed me.

  All except Arturo Belano, and he didn't follow me for the simple reason that he wasn't called. Sequitur superbos ultor a tergo deus. And everyone who had followed me embarked on a career in the world of letters or cemented a career already begun but still in its infancy, except for Arturo Belano, who buried himself in a world where everything stank, where everything stank of shit and urine and rot and poverty and sickness, a world where the stink was suffocating and numbing, and where the only thing that didn't stink was my daughter's body. And I didn't lift a finger to put an end to their unnatural relationship, but I bided my time. And one day I discovered (don't ask me how because I've forgotten) that even my daughter, my beautiful older daughter, had begun to smell to that wretched ex-watchman of the Castroverde campground. Her mouth had begun to smell. The smell worked its way into the walls of the apartment where the wretched ex-watchman of the Castroverde campground was living. And my daughter, whose hygiene I refuse to let anyone question, brushed her teeth constantly: when she got up, at midmorning, after lunch, at four in the afternoon, at seven, after dinner, before she went to bed, but there was no way to get rid of the smell, there was no way to eliminate or hide the smell that the watchman scented or sniffed like a cornered animal, and although my daughter rinsed her mouth with Listerine between brushings, the smell persisted. It would go away for a moment only to appear again when it was least expected: at four in the morning, in the watchman's big castaway bed, when he would turn to my daughter in his sleep and screw her. It was an unbearable smell that chipped away at his patience and tact, the smell of money, the smell of poetry, maybe even the smell of love.

  My poor daughter. It's my wisdom teeth, she said. My poor daughter. It's my last wisdom tooth coming in. That's why my mouth smells, she would protest, when faced with the increasing coolness of the ex-watchman of the Castroverde campground. Her wisdom tooth! Numquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit. One night I invited her to have dinner with me. Just you, I said, although by then she and Belano hardly ever saw each other, but I made it plain: just you, sweetheart. We talked until three in the morning. I talked about the path the giant was blazing, the path that led to real literature. She talked about her wisdom tooth, about the new words that the emerging wisdom tooth was depositing on her tongue. At a literary meeting a little later, almost casually and as if in passing, my daughter informed me that she'd broken things off with Belano, and that after thinking about it carefully, she couldn't take a favorable view of his future inclusion on the magazine's eminent team of reviewers. Non aetate verum ingenio apiscitur sapientia.

  Innocent darling! At that moment I would have loved to tell her that Belano was never part of the team, which could be seen just by looking through the last ten issues of the magazine. But I didn't say anything. The giant embraced her and forgave her. Life went on. Urget diem nox et dies noctem. Julien Sorel was dead.

  Around this time, months after Arturo Belano had left our lives for good, I had a dream, and in my dream I heard once again the howl that had emerged from the mouth of the pit at the Castroverde campground. In se semper armatus Furor, as Seneca says. I woke up trembling. It was four in the morning, I remember, and instead of going back to sleep, I went to look for the Pío Baroja story "The Chasm" in my library, without quite knowing why. I read it twice before the sun came up, the first time slowly, still lost in the fog of sleep, and the second time at top speed, returning to certain passages that struck me as highly revealing and that I hadn't quite understood. With tears in my eyes, I tried to read it for a third time, but exhaustion overcame the giant and I fell asleep on a chair in the library.

  When I woke up, at nine in the morning, all my bones hurt and I'd shrunk at least ten inches. I took a shower, grabbed Don Pío's book, and left for the office. There, nil sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus, after taking care of a few urgent matters, I gave orders that no one disturb me and immersed myself once more in the desolation of "The Chasm." When I finished I closed my eyes and thought about the men's fear. Why didn't anyone climb down to rescue the boy? I asked myself. Why was his own grandfather afraid? I asked. If they thought he was dead, why didn't someone go down to look for his little body, damn it? I asked. Then I closed the book and paced around my office like a caged lion, until I couldn't stand it anymore, and I threw myself on the sofa, curled up as tight as I could, and let my lawyer's tears, poet's tears, and giant's tears flow all at once, mingling in streams of burning magma that instead of calming me pushed me toward the mouth of the pit, toward the gaping crevice, a crevice that I could see with increasing clarity, despite my tears (which cast a veil over the things in my office), and I associated this crevice-I don't know why, since it didn't suit my mood-with a toothless mouth, a mouth full of teeth, a fixed smile, a young girl's gaping sex, an eye watching me from the depths of the earth. The eye was, in some dark sense, innocent, since I knew that it thought no one could see it as long as it couldn't see anyone-absurdly, since it was inevitable that as it kept watch, giants or ex-giants like me were watching it too. I don't know how long I lay there like that. Then I got up, went into the bathroom to wash my face, and told my secretary to cancel all my appointments for the day.

  The next few weeks I lived as if in a dream. I did everything correctly, as I always had, but I was no longer living in my own skin. Instead I was watching myself from the outside, facies tua computat annos, pitying myself, criticizing myself in the harshest terms, mocking my ridiculous propriety, the manners and empty phrases that I knew wouldn't get me anywhere.

  I soon understood how vain all my ambitions had been,
the ambitions that trundled the golden labyrinth of the law as well as those I set spinning along the edge of the edge of the cliff of literature. Interdum lacrimae pondera vocis habent. I realized what Arturo Belano had known from the moment he saw me: I was a terrible poet.

  At least things still functioned when it came to love, I mean I could still get it up, but I'd almost lost my taste for sex: I didn't like to see myself fucking, I didn't like to see myself moving on top of the defenseless body of the woman whom I was seeing at the time (poor innocent soul!). Soon I managed to shake her off. Gradually I began to prefer strangers, girls I picked up in bars or all-night clubs and whom I could confuse, at least at first, with the shameless display of my old giant's powers. Some, I'm sorry to say, could have been my daughters. More than once I came to this realization in situ, which troubled me greatly and made me want to go running outside howling and leaping, though out of respect for the neighbors, I never did. In any case, amor odit inertes, I slept with women and made them happy (the gifts I had once lavished on young poets I began to give to wayward girls) and their happiness pushed back the onset of my unhappiness, which came when it was time to sleep and dream, or dream that I was dreaming, about the cries that came from the maw of a chasm in a Galicia that was itself like the maw of a savage beast, a gigantic green mouth open painfully wide under a sky in flames, the sky of a scorched world, a world charred by a World War III that never was or at least never was in my lifetime, and sometimes the wolf was maimed in Galicia, but other times the backdrop of its martyrdom was the Basque country, Asturias, Aragon, even Andalusia! and in my dream, I remember, I would take refuge in Barcelona, a civilized city, but even in Barcelona the wolf howled and writhed in madness and the sky was rent and nothing could be put right.