The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  Guillem Piña, Calle Gaspar Pujol, Andratx, Mallorca, June 1994. We met in 1977. It's been a long time since then. A lot has happened. Back then I used to buy two newspapers each morning and several magazines. I read everything. I knew everything that was going on. We saw a lot of each other, always on my turf. I think I only went to his place once. We went out to eat together. I paid. It's been a long time since then. Barcelona has changed. Barcelona's architects haven't changed, but Barcelona has. I used to paint every day, not like now, but there were too many parties, too many gatherings, too many friends. Life was exciting. In those days everybody had a magazine and I liked that. I had shows in Paris, New York, Vienna, London. Arturo would disappear for long stretches at a time. He liked my magazine. I would give him back issues, and I gave him a drawing too. I gave it to him framed because I knew he didn't have the money to frame anything. What drawing was it? A sketch for a painting I never finished: The Other Demoiselles d'Avignon. I met dealers who were interested in my work. But I wasn't very interested in my work. Around that time I painted three fake Picabias. They were perfect. I sold two and kept one. Painting the fakes, I saw a faint light, but it was a light, which is the important thing. With the money I made I bought a Kandinsky print and a batch of arte povera, possibly also forgeries. Sometimes I would get on a plane and fly to Mallorca. I would go see my parents in Andratx and take long walks in the country. Sometimes I would just watch my father, who painted too, when he went out with his canvases and easel, and strange ideas would come to my head. Ideas that were like dead fish or fish on the verge of death at the bottom of the sea. But then I would think about other things. In those days I had a studio in Palma. I moved paintings back and forth. I would bring them from my parents' house to the studio and from the studio to my parents' house. Then I would get bored and fly back to Barcelona. Arturo would come to my house to shower. He didn't have a shower where he was living, obviously, and he would come use mine on Moliner, near Plaza Cardona.

  We talked, we never argued. I would show him my paintings and he would say fantastic, I love them, that kind of thing. I've always found that oppressive. I know he meant what he said, but still, I felt oppressed. Then he would be quiet, smoking, and I would make tea or coffee or bring out a bottle of whiskey. I don't know, I don't know, I would think, I might be doing something right, I might be onto something. The visual arts are ultimately incomprehensible. Or they're so comprehensible that nobody, first and foremost myself, will accept the most obvious reading of them. Back then, Arturo was sleeping occasionally with a girlfriend of mine. He didn't know about us. That is, he knew we were friends, how could he not when I was the one who'd introduced them, but what he didn't know was that she was a girlfriend. They slept together every once in a while: once a month, say. I thought it was funny. In some ways he could be very naïve. My friend lived on Calle Denia, not far from where I lived, and I had the key to her apartment and sometimes I would show up there at eight in the morning, looking for something I had forgotten for one of my classes, and I would find Arturo in bed or making breakfast, and he would look at me as if asking himself is she his friend or a girlfriend? I thought it was funny. Good morning, Arturo, I would say, and sometimes I had to make an effort not to laugh. I was sleeping with another friend too, but I slept with her much more often than my friend slept with Arturo. Problems. Life is full of problems, although life was wonderful in Barcelona in those days, and problems were called surprises.

  Then came the disenchantment. I was teaching classes at the university and I wasn't happy there. I didn't want to explain my work in theoretical terms. I was teaching classes and my colleagues seemed to fall into two clearly distinct groups: the frauds (the mediocrities and scoundrels), and those who weren't just teaching but were getting somewhere with their art outside of work, for better or for worse. And all of a sudden I realized that I didn't want to belong to either group, and I quit. I started to teach at a high school. What a relief. Was it like being demoted from lieutenant to sergeant? Possibly. Maybe to corporal. Though I didn't feel like a lieutenant or a sergeant or a corporal, but a ditch digger, sewer dredger, a road worker lost or separated from his crew. In retrospect, the passage from one state to another takes on the harsh, brutal overtones of the sudden and irremediable, but of course it all happened much more slowly. I met a millionaire who bought my work, my magazine died of neglect and lack of interest, I started other magazines, I had shows. But none of that exists anymore: the words are more real than the actuality. The truth is that one day it was over and all I had left was my fake Picabia, my only guide, my only handhold. Some unemployed person could reproach me for being incapable of happiness, even though I had everything. I could reproach a murderer for committing murders, and a murderer could reproach a suicide victim for his desperate or enigmatic last act. The truth is that one day it was all over and I took a look around me. I stopped buying so many magazines and newspapers. I stopped having shows. I started to teach my drawing classes at the high school with humility and seriousness and even (although I don't make a big deal about it) a certain sense of humor. Arturo had disappeared from our lives long ago.

  I don't know what reasons he had for disappearing. One day he got angry at my friend because he found out that she was a girlfriend, or maybe he slept with my other friend and she said to him you dope, can't you see that Guillem's friend is a girlfriend? or something, conversations in bed do oscillate between the cryptic and the transparent. I don't know, not that it matters much. All I know is that he left and for a long time I didn't see him. It certainly wasn't my intent. I try to hold on to my friends. I try to be pleasant and sociable, I try not to rush the passage from comedy to tragedy. Life does a fine job on its own. Anyway, one day Arturo disappeared. The years went by and I didn't see him again. Until one day my friend said: guess who called me tonight. I wish I'd said: Arturo Belano. It would have been funny if I'd guessed it right away, but I said other names and then I gave up. Still, when she said Arturo I was happy. How many years had it been since we'd seen each other? Many years, so many that it was better not to count, not to remember, although I remembered them all, each and every one. So Arturo showed up at my friend's place one day, and she called me and I went over to see him. I hurried, I was running. I don't know why I started to run, but I did. It was almost eleven at night and it was cold and when I got there I saw a guy who was in his forties now, like me, and as I walked toward him I felt like the Nude Descending a Staircase, although I wasn't descending any staircase, not that I recall.

  After that we met several times. One day he came to my studio. I was sitting there staring at a tiny canvas set beside a canvas that was at least ten feet by seven. Arturo looked at the small painting and the big painting and asked me what they were. What do you think they are? I said. Ossuaries, he said. In fact, they were ossuaries. By that point, I hardly ever painted and I never showed my work. Those who had been lieutenants with me were captains now, or colonels, and one, my dear Miguelito, had even reached the rank of general or field marshal. Others had died of AIDS or drugs or cirrhosis or had simply been given up for lost. I was still a ditch digger. I know that this lends itself to all kinds of interpretations, most of them grim. But my situation wasn't grim at all. I felt reasonably happy, I kept busy, I watched things, I watched myself watch things, I read, I lived a peaceful life. I didn't produce much. That may be important. Arturo, on the other hand, produced a lot. Once I ran into him as I was coming out of the laundry. He was on his way to my house. What are you doing? he said. As you can see, I answered, I'm leaving with clean clothes. Don't you have a washing machine at home? he said. It broke five years ago, I said. That afternoon Arturo went out into the inner courtyard and spent some time looking at my washing machine. I made myself tea (by then I hardly ever drank) and watched him as he examined the washing machine. For a brief moment I thought he was going to fix it. It wouldn't have seemed so remarkable, but it would have made me happy. But in the end, my washing machine was as dead
as ever. I told him again about an accident I'd had. I think I told him about it because I saw him eyeing my scars. The accident happened in Mallorca. A car accident. I almost lost both of my arms and my jaw. There were only a few scratches on the rest of my body. Strange accident, wouldn't you say? Very strange, said Arturo. He told me that he'd been in the hospital too, six times in two years. In what country? I asked him. Here, he said, at Valle Hebrón and before that at Josep Trueta in Gerona. So why didn't you let us know? we would've come to see you. Well, it doesn't matter. Once he asked me whether I was depressed. No, I said, sometimes I feel like the Nude Descending a Staircase, which can actually be nice when you're with friends and not so nice if you're walking along the Paseo de Gracia, for example, but mostly I feel good.

  One day, not long before he disappeared for the last time, he came to my house and said: someone's going to write a bad review of my book. I made him some chamomile tea and didn't say anything, which is the right thing to do, I think, when there's a story to be told, sad or happy. But he was quiet too, and for a while we just sat there, he staring at his tea or the little slice of lemon floating in his tea as I smoked a Ducados. I think I'm one of the few left who still smoke Ducados, or one of the few of my generation, I mean. Even Arturo smokes blond tobacco now. After a while, just to say something, I said: are you going to spend the night in Barcelona? and he shook his head. When he spent the night in Barcelona he stayed at my friend's house (in separate rooms, although it cheapens everything to spell these things out), not with me. Still, we would have dinner together, and sometimes the three of us would go for a drive in my friend's car. Anyway, I asked him whether he was going to spend the night and he said he couldn't, he had to get back to the town where he lived, a town on the coast a little more than an hour away by train. And then the two of us were quiet again, and I started to think about what he'd said about a bad review, and no matter how much I thought about it I had no idea what he meant, so I stopped thinking about it. Instead I waited, which is what the Nude Descending a Staircase does, contrary to one's expectation and which is exactly why it has always provoked such a peculiar critical response.

  For a while all I heard was the noise Arturo made as he drank his tea, muffled sounds from the street, the elevator going up and down a few times. And suddenly, when I wasn't thinking or hearing anything anymore, I heard him repeat that a critic was going to trounce him. It doesn't really matter, I said. It's a hazard of the trade. It does matter, he said. It's never mattered to you before, I said. Now it does matter to me, he said, I must be getting bourgeois. Then he explained that there were similarities between his last book and his new book that fell into the realm of games that were impossible to decipher. I had read his last book and liked it, and I didn't have any idea what his new book was about, so I didn't have anything to say. All I could ask was: what kind of similarities? Games, Guillem, he said. Games. The fucking Nude Descending a Staircase, your fucking fake Picabias, games. So what's the problem? I said. The problem, he said, is that the critic, a guy named Iñaki Echevarne, is a shark. Is he a bad critic? I said. No, he's a good critic, he said, or at least he isn't a bad critic, but he's a fucking shark. And how do you know that he's going to review your new book when it isn't even in bookstores yet? Because the other day, he said, while I was at the publishing house, he called the head of publicity and asked for my last novel. So? I said. So I was sitting there, across from the head of publicity, and she said hello, Iñaki, what a coincidence, Arturo Belano is right here across from me, and that bastard Echevarne didn't say anything. What was he supposed to say? Hello, at least, said Arturo. And since he didn't say anything, you've decided that he's going to tear you apart? I said. Besides, what if he does tear you apart? It doesn't matter! Look, said Arturo, Echevarne fought recently with Aurelio Baca, the Cato of Spanish letters, do you know him? I haven't read him but I know who he is, I said. It was all because of a review Echevarne had written of a book by one of Baca's friends. I don't know whether the criticism was justified or not. I haven't read the book. All I know for sure is that this novelist had Baca to defend him. And Baca's attack on the critic was the kind of thing that brings a person to tears. But I don't have any self-righteous strongman to defend me, absolutely no one, so Echevarne can do whatever he wants to me. Not even Aurelio Baca could defend me, because I make fun of him in my book, not the one that's about to come out but the last one, although I doubt he's ever read me. You make fun of Baca? I made fun of him a little, said Arturo, although I doubt he or anyone else would ever notice. That rules out Baca as a champion, I admitted, thinking that I too had overlooked the passage that was worrying my friend. That's right, said Arturo. Well, let Echevarne lay into you, I said. Who cares? None of this matters. Of all people you should know that. We're all going to die, think about the hereafter. But Echevarne must feel like taking it out on someone, said Arturo. Is he really that bad? I said. No, no, he's very good, said Arturo. Well then? It has nothing to do with that, it's about exercising the muscles, said Arturo. The muscles of the brain? I said. Some kind of muscles, and I'm going to be the punching bag Echevarne trains on for his second or eighth round with Baca, said Arturo. I see, this is an old fight, I said. So what do you have to do with all of it? Nothing, I'm just going to be the punching bag, said Arturo. For a while we sat there without saying anything, thinking, as the elevator went up and down and the noise it made was like the sound of all the years we hadn't seen each other. I'm going to challenge him to a duel, said Arturo at last. Do you want to be my second? That's what he said. I felt as if someone had given me a shot in the arm. First the pinprick, then the liquid going not into my veins but my muscles, an icy liquid that made me shiver. The proposition seemed crazy and unwarranted. You don't challenge a man for something he hasn't done yet, I thought. But then I thought that life (or the specter of life) is constantly challenging us for acts we've never committed, and sometimes for acts we never even thought of committing. My answer was yes and immediately afterward I thought that maybe in the hereafter Nude Descending a Staircase or The Large Glass really does exist or will exist. And then I thought: what if the review is good? What if Echevarne likes Arturo's novel? Wouldn't it be unfair then, gratuitous, to challenge him to a duel?

  Little by little, various questions began to come to mind, but I decided that it wasn't the moment to be sensible. There's a time for everything. The first thing we discussed was the choice of weapon. I suggested balloons filled with red dye. Or a battle of exaggerated sombrero doffing. Arturo insisted that it had to be with sabers. To first blood? I proposed. Grudgingly, although deep down probably in relief, Arturo accepted my suggestion. Then we went looking for the sabers.

  My original plan was to buy them in one of those tourist stores that sell everything from blades made in Toledo to samurai swords, but informed of our intentions, my friend said that her late father had left a pair of swords, so we went to look at them and they turned out to be real ones. After giving them a good polish, we decided to use them. Then we looked for the perfect place. I suggested the Parque de la Ciudadela, at midnight, but Arturo preferred a nudist beach halfway between Barcelona and the town where he lived. Then we got Iñaki Echevarne's telephone number and called him. It took us a long time to convince him that it wasn't a joke. Arturo spoke to him three times all together. Finally Iñaki Echevarne said that he agreed and that we should let him know the date and time. The afternoon of the duel we ate at a snack bar in Sant Pol de Mar. Fried cuttlefish and shrimp. My friend (who had come this far with us but wasn't planning to attend the duel), Arturo, and me. The meal, I have to say, was a little gloomy, and while we were eating Arturo pulled out a plane ticket and showed it to us. I thought it would be to Chile or Mexico and that Arturo was, in some sense, bidding farewell to Catalonia and Europe. But the ticket was for a flight to Dar es Salaam with stopovers in Rome and Cairo. Then I realized that my friend had gone completely insane and that if the critic Echevarne didn't kill him with a whack on the head he would
be eaten by the black or red ants of Africa.

  Jaume Planells, Bar Salambó, Calle Torrijos, Barcelona, June 1994. One morning my friend and colleague Iñaki Echevarne called me and said he needed a second for a duel. I was a little hungover, so at first I didn't understand what Iñaki was saying, and anyway he hardly ever calls me, especially at that time of day. Then, when he explained, I thought he was kidding and I went along with him, people are always kidding me, but I don't mind, and anyway Iñaki is a little strange, strange but attractive, the kind of guy women think is really handsome and men think is nice, if slightly intimidating, and whom they secretly admire. Not long ago he'd had a feud with the great Madrid novelist Aurelio Baca, and even though Baca thundered and stormed, hurling abuse at him, Iñaki managed to emerge unscathed from the exchange of hostilities, coming out even with Baca, you might say.

  The funny thing is that Iñaki hadn't criticized Baca but a friend of Baca's, so you can only imagine what would've happened if he'd gone after the great man himself. As far as I could tell, the problem was that Baca was a writer on the model of Unamuno, there being no lack of them nowadays, who would launch into some lecture full of cheap moralizing whenever he got the chance, the typical preachy, irate Spanish lecture, and Iñaki was the typical provocative, kamikaze critic who liked making enemies and who had a habit of leaping in with both feet. It was a matter of time before they clashed. Or at least Baca had to clash with Echevarne, call him to order, give him a slap on the wrist, something like that. Underneath, they both fell somewhere along the increasingly vague spectrum we call the left.