The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  So when Iñaki explained to me about the duel, I thought he must be joking. The passions Baca had unleashed couldn't be so powerful that authors were taking justice into their own hands now, and in such a melodramatic way. But Iñaki said it had nothing to do with that. He sounded a little bit confused but he said this was something different and he had to accept the challenge (could he have mentioned the Nude Descending a Staircase? but what did Picasso have to do with it?) and I should tell him once and for all whether I was prepared to be his second or not, and he had no time to waste because the duel was taking place that very afternoon.

  What could I say but yes, of course I'll do it, tell me where and when, although afterward, when Iñaki hung up, I started to think that maybe I'd just gotten myself mixed up in some serious shit, and that I, who have a pretty nice life and enjoy a good joke every once in a while like any normal guy so long as it doesn't go too far, might be landing myself in one of those messes that never end well. And then, on top of that, I got to thinking (something a person should never, ever do in cases like this), and I came to the conclusion that it was strange to begin with that Iñaki would call me to be his second in a duel, since I'm not exactly one of his best friends. We work for the same newspaper, we run into each other sometimes at the Giardinetto or the Salambó or the bar at Laie, but we're not really what you'd call friends.

  And since there were only a few hours left before the duel, I called Iñaki to see whether I could catch him, but no, clearly he'd called me and then gone right out to, I don't know, write his last article or head for the nearest church, so once that had been established, I called Quima Monistrol on her cell phone, it was like a light going off in my head, if I'm with a woman things can't get too ugly, although of course I didn't tell Quima the truth, I said Quima, baby, I need you, Iñaki Echevarne and I are meeting someone and we want you to come with us, and Quima asked when, and I said right now, sweetheart, and Quima said all right, come pick me up at the Corte Inglés, something like that. When I hung up I tried to get in touch with two or three other friends, because all of a sudden I realized that I was much more nervous than I should've been, but no one answered.

  At five-thirty I spotted Quima smoking a cigarette on the corner of Plaza Urquinaona and Pau Claris, and after a pretty bold U-turn I had the intrepid reporter in the passenger seat. As hundreds of drivers honked their horns at us and I could see the menacing outline of a cop in the rearview mirror, I stepped on the gas and we headed for the A-19, toward the Maresme. Of course, Quima asked me where I was hiding Iñaki (the man has an amazing effect on women, it must be said), so I had to tell her that he was waiting for us at the bar Los Calamares Felices, outside of Sant Pol de Mar, near a cove that becomes a nudist beach in spring and summer. For the rest of the trip, which took less than twenty minutes (my Peugeot goes like lightning), I was on edge, listening to Quima's stories and unable to find the right moment to tell her the real reason we were going to the Maresme.

  To make matters worse, we got lost in Sant Pol. According to some locals, we had to take the road to Calella, but turn left at a gas station after a quarter of a mile, as if we were heading for the mountains, then turn right again and go through a tunnel-but what tunnel?-and come back out onto a beach road, where the place called Los Calamares Felices stood, solitary and desolate. For half an hour Quima and I argued and fought. Finally we found the damn bar. We got there late and for an instant I thought Iñaki wouldn't be there, but the first thing I saw was his red Saab, actually all I saw was his red Saab, parked on a strip of sand and scrub, and then the desolate building, the dirty windows of Los Calamares Felices. I parked next to Iñaki's car and honked the horn. Without a word, Quima and I decided to stay in the Peugeot. Soon afterward we saw Iñaki appear from around the other side of the restaurant. He didn't scold us for being late, as I thought he might, and he didn't seem to be angry when he saw Quima. I asked him where his adversary was, and Iñaki smiled and shrugged his shoulders. Then the three of us went walking toward the beach. When Quima heard why we were there (it was Iñaki who explained it to her, clearly and objectively and in just a few words, something I could never have done), she seemed more excited than ever and for a second I was sure everything would turn out all right. The three of us were laughing for a while. There wasn't a soul on the beach. He hasn't come, I heard Quima say, and I thought she sounded a tiny bit disappointed.

  From the north end of the beach, two figures emerged from among the rocks. My heart skipped a beat. The last time I was in a fight I was eleven or twelve. Since then I've always avoided acts of violence. There they are, said Quima. Iñaki looked at me and then he looked at the sea and only then did I realize that there was something hopelessly ridiculous about the scene and that its ridiculousness was not unrelated to my presence there. The two figures that had appeared from among the rocks kept walking toward us, along the water's edge, and finally they stopped about three hundred feet away, close enough for us to see that one of them was carrying a package with the points of two swords poking out. Quima had better stay here, said Iñaki. After our companion had finished protesting, the two of us headed slowly toward the pair of madmen. So you're going to go ahead with this farce? I remember I asked as we walked along the sand, so this duel is going to happen for real, not pretend? so you've chosen me to be the witness to this madness? because it was just then that I sensed or had the revelation that Iñaki had chosen me because his real friends (if he had any, maybe Jordi Llovet or some intellectual like that) would have refused point-blank to take part in something so absurd and he knew it and everyone knew it, except for me, the dumb hack, and I also thought: my God, this is all that bastard Baca's fault, if he hadn't attacked Iñaki this wouldn't be happening, and then I couldn't think anymore because we had come up to the other two and one of them said: which of you is Iñaki Echevarne? and then I looked Iñaki in the face, suddenly afraid that he would say it was me (with my nerves in the state they were in, I thought Iñaki might be capable of anything), but Iñaki smiled as if he were delighted and said that he was who he was, and then the other one looked at me and introduced himself: hello, I'm Guillem Piña, the second, and I heard myself saying: hello, I'm Jaume Planells, the other second, and frankly now that I remember it I could puke or laugh my ass off, but what I felt then more than anything else was a sharp pain in my stomach, and cold, because it had suddenly gotten cold and only a few rays of the setting sun lit the beach where in the spring people stripped naked, little coves, rocky inlets, seen only by the passengers on the train along the coast, passengers unmoved by the spectacle, that's democracy and civic spirit for you, in Galicia those same passengers would have stopped the train and climbed down to hack the balls off the nudists, anyway, I was thinking all of this when I said hello, I'm Jaume Planells, the other second.

  And then this Guillem Piña unwrapped the package he was carrying and the swords were bared, and I thought the blades even seemed to glow a little bit, steel? bronze? iron? I don't know anything about swords, but I did know enough to realize that they weren't plastic, and then I reached out my hand and touched the blades with my fingertips, metal, of course, and when I pulled back my hand I saw the shine again, a very faint shine, as if they were coming to life, or at least that's what Iñaki's friends would have said if he'd had the guts or the decency to ask them to come with him, and if they'd come, which I thought was unlikely, and it struck me as too much of a coincidence, or in any case too intense a coincidence: the sun going down behind the mountains and the glow of the swords, and only then, at last, was I able to ask (who? I don't know, Piña, maybe Iñaki himself) whether they were really serious, whether the duel was in earnest, and warn them in a loud though not very steady voice that the last thing I wanted was trouble with the police. The rest is a blur. Piña said something in Mallorcan. Then he let Iñaki choose one of the swords. Iñaki took his time, hefting each of them, first one, then the other, then both at the same time, as if he'd done nothing all his life but play muskete
ers. The swords weren't gleaming anymore. The other guy, the writer with a grievance (but a grievance against whom, and why, if the goddamn offending review hadn't even been published yet?) waited until Iñaki had chosen. The sky was a milky gray and a dense fog was drifting out to sea from the hills and fields. My memories are confused. I think I heard Quima shout: go, Iñaki, or something like that. Then, by common accord, Piña and I retreated, backing away. A little wave wet my pant legs. I remember looking down at my moccasins and cursing. I also remember the feeling I had of indecency, illicitness, because of my wet socks, and the noise they made as I moved. Piña retreated toward the rocks. Quima had gotten up and come a little closer to the duelers. They clashed swords. I remember that I sat on a mound and took off my shoes and was careful to wipe off the wet sand with a handkerchief. Then I tossed the handkerchief away and watched the line of the horizon as it grew darker, until Quima put her hand on my shoulder and with her other hand put into my hand a live, wet, prickly object that it took me a while to identify as my own handkerchief coming back to me, returned to me like a curse.

  I remember that I put the handkerchief in a pocket of my blazer. Later Quima would say that Iñaki handled the sword like an expert and the fight went his way from the start. But that's not what I would've said. They were evenly matched at first. Iñaki's swings were on the timid side. All he did was clash swords with his adversary, and he kept backing farther away, out of fear or because he was sizing up the other guy. In contrast, his opponent's blows were increasingly confident. At some point he took a thrust at Iñaki, the first of the fight, gripping the sword and lunging with his right foot and right arm, and the tip of his sword almost touched the seam of Iñaki's pants. It was then that Iñaki seemed to wake from the foolish dream he was in and plunge into another dream where the danger was real. From that moment on, his steps became much more nimble and he moved more quickly, always backing away, although not in a straight line but in circles, so that sometimes I'd see him from the front, other times from the side, and other times from behind. What were the rest of the spectators doing all this time? Quima was sitting on the sand behind me, and every once in a while she would cheer Iñaki on. Piña, meantime, was standing, quite far from where the swordsmen were circling, and his face looked like the face of someone who was used to this kind of thing and also the face of someone who was sleeping.

  In a brief moment of lucidity, I was sure that we'd all gone crazy. But then that moment of lucidity was displaced by a supersecond of super-lucidity (if I can put it that way), in which I realized that this scene was the logical outcome of our ridiculous lives. It wasn't a punishment but a new wrinkle. It gave us a glimpse of ourselves in our common humanity. It wasn't proof of our idle guilt but a sign of our miraculous and pointless innocence. But that's not it. That's not it. We were still and they were in motion and the sand on the beach was moving, not because of the wind but because of what they were doing and what we were doing, which was nothing, which was watching, and all of that together was the wrinkle, the moment of superlucidity. Then, nothing. My memory has always been mediocre, no better than a reporter needs to do his job. Iñaki attacked the other guy, the other guy attacked Iñaki, I realized they might go on like this for hours, until the swords were heavy in their hands, I got out a cigarette, I didn't have a light, I looked in all my pockets, I got up and went over to Quima, only to learn that she'd quit a long time ago, a year or an eternity. For a moment I considered going to ask Piña for a light, but that seemed excessive. I sat next to Quima and watched the duelers. They were still moving in circles but they were slowing down. I also got the impression that they were talking to each other, but the sound of the waves drowned out their voices. I said to Quima that I thought it was all a farce. You're absolutely wrong, she answered. Then she said that she thought it was very romantic. Strange woman, that Quima. I wanted a cigarette more than before. In the distance, Piña was sitting in the sand like us now, and a trail of cobalt blue smoke issued from his lips. I couldn't take it anymore. I got up and went over to him, going the long way around, to keep out of range of the duelers. A woman was watching us from a hill. She was leaning on the hood of a car and shading her eyes with her hands. I thought she was looking at the sea, but then I realized that she was watching us, of course.

  Piña offered me his lighter without a word. I looked at his face: he was crying. I'd felt like talking but now when I saw him I suddenly didn't feel like it. So I went back over to Quima and looked up again at the woman alone on top of the hill and I also watched Iñaki and his opponent, who instead of crossing swords were just pacing and eyeing each other now. When I let myself drop down beside Quima my body made a sound like a sack of sand. Then I saw Iñaki's sword raised higher than prudence or musketeer movies would advise and I saw his opponent's sword advance until its point was a fraction of an inch from Iñaki's heart, and I think, though it can't be, that I saw Iñaki turn pale and I heard Quima say my God, or something like that, and I saw Piña flick his cigarette far away, toward the hill, and I saw that there was no one on the hill anymore, not the woman or the car, and then the other guy abruptly drew back the point of his sword and Iñaki stepped forward and struck him with the flat of his blade on the shoulder, in revenge for the fright he'd given him, I think, and Quima sighed and I sighed and blew smoke rings into the tainted air of that hideous beach and the wind whipped the rings away instantly, before there was time for anything, and Iñaki and his opponent kept going at it like two stupid children.

  23

  Iñaki Echevarne, Bar Giardinetto, Calle Granada del Penedés, Barcelona, July 1994. For a while, Criticism travels side by side with the Work, then Criticism vanishes and it's the Readers who keep pace. The journey may be long or short. Then the Readers die one by one and the Work continues on alone, although a new Criticism and new Readers gradually fall into step with it along its path. Then Criticism dies again and the Readers die again and the Work passes over a trail of bones on its journey toward solitude. To come near the work, to sail in her wake, is a sign of certain death, but new Criticism and new Readers approach her tirelessly and relentlessly and are devoured by time and speed. Finally the Work journeys irremediably alone in the Great Vastness. And one day the Work dies, as all things must die and come to an end: the Sun and the Earth and the Solar System and the Galaxy and the farthest reaches of man's memory. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragedy.

  Aurelio Baca, Feria del Libro, Madrid, July 1994. Not only to myself or before the mirror or at the hour of my death, which I hope will be long in coming, but in the presence of my children and my wife and in the face of the peaceful life I'm building, I must acknowledge: (1) That under Stalin I wouldn't have wasted my youth in the gulag or ended up with a bullet in the back of my head. (2) That in the McCarthy era I wouldn't have lost my job or had to pump gas at a gas station. (3) That under Hitler, however, I would have been one of those who chose the path of exile, and that under Franco I wouldn't have composed sonnets to the caudillo or the Holy Virgin like so many lifelong democrats. One thing is as true as the other. My bravery has its limits, certainly, but so does what I'm willing to swallow. Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy.

  Pere Ordóñez, Feria del Libro, Madrid, July 1994. In years past, the writers of Spain (and Latin America) joined the public fray to subvert it, reform it, set it on fire, revolutionize it. The writers of Spain (and of Latin America) were generally from well-to-do families or families of a certain social standing. As soon as they took up the pen, they rejected or chafed at that standing: to write was to renounce, to forsake, sometimes to commit suicide. It meant going against the family. Today, to an ever more alarming degree, the writers of Spain (and Latin America) come from lower-class families, the proletariat and the lumpen proletariat, and they tend to use writing as a means to move a few rungs up the social ladder, as a way to make a place for themselves while being very careful not to overstep any bounds. I'm not saying they're uneducated. They're as we
ll educated as the writers who came before them. Or nearly so. I'm not saying they don't work hard. They work much harder than those earlier writers! But they're also much more vulgar. And they act like businessmen or gangsters. And they don't renounce anything, or they renounce what's easily renounced, and they're very careful not to make enemies, or to choose their enemies from among the defenseless. They are driven to suicide not for the sake of ideas but by rage and madness. Little by little, the doors inexorably open to them. And so literature is what it is. Everything that begins as comedy inevitably ends as comedy.

  Julio Martínez Morales, Feria del Libro, Madrid, July 1994. I'm going to tell you something about the honor of poets as I stroll now around the Feria del Libro. I'm a poet. I'm a writer. I've made a fair name for myself as a critic. At a guess, 7 × 3 = 22 booths, but in fact there are many more. Our sight is limited. And yet I've managed to make a place for myself under the sun of this feria. Left behind are the wrecked cars, the limits of writing, the 3 × 3 = 9. It hasn't been easy. Left behind are the A and the E, bleeding to death hanging from a balcony to which I sometimes return in dreams. I'm an educated man: the prisons I know are subtle ones. And of course poetry and prison have always been neighbors. And yet it's melancholia that's the source of my attraction. Am I in the seventh dream or have I truly heard the cocks crow at the other end of the feria? It might be one thing or it might be another. But cocks crow at dawn, and it's noon now, according to my watch. I wander through the feria and greet my colleagues who are wandering as dreamily as I am. Dreamily× dreamily = a prison in literary heaven. Wandering. Wandering. The honor of poets: the chant we hear as a pallid judgment. I see young faces looking at the books on display and feeling for coins in the depths of pockets as dark as hope. 7 × 1 = 8, I say to myself as I glance out of the corner of my eye at the young readers and a formless image is superimposed on their remote little smiling faces as slowly as an iceberg. We all pass under the balcony where the letters A and E hang and their blood gushes down on us and stains us forever. But the balcony is pallid like us, and pallor never attacks pallor. At the same time, and I say this in my defense, the balcony wanders with us too. Elsewhere this is called mafia. I see an office, I see a computer running, I see a lonely hallway. Pallor× iceberg = a lonely hallway slowly peopled by our own fear, peopled with those who wander the feria of the hallway, looking not for any book but for some certainty to shore up the void of our certainties. Thus we interpret life at moments of the deepest desperation. Herds. Hangmen. The scalpel slices the bodies. A and E × Feria del Libro = other bodies; light as air, incandescent, as if last night my publisher had fucked me up the ass. Dying can seem satisfactory as a response, Blanchot would say. 31 × 31 = 961 good reasons. Yesterday we sacrificed a young South American writer on the town altar. As his blood dripped over the bas-relief of our ambitions I thought about my books and oblivion, and that, at last, made sense. A writer, we've established, shouldn't look like a writer. He should look like a banker, a rich kid who grows up without a care in the world, a mathematics professor, a prison official. Dendriform. Thus, paradoxically, we wander. Our arborescence × the balcony's pallor = the hallway of our triumph. How can young people, readers by antonomasia, not realize that we're liars? All one has to do is look at us! Our imposture is blazoned on our faces! And yet they don't realize, and we can recite with total impunity: 8, 5, 9, 8, 4, 15, 7. And we can wander and greet each other (I, at least, greet everyone, the juries and the hangmen, the benefactors and the students), and we can praise the faggot for his unbridled heterosexuality and the impotent man for his virility and the cuckold for his spotless honor. And no one moans: there is no anguish. Only our nocturnal silence when we crawl on all fours toward the fires that someone has lit for us at a mysterious hour and with incomprehensible finality. We're guided by fate, though we've left nothing to chance. A writer must resemble a censor, our elders told us, and we've followed that marvelous thought to its penultimate consequence. A writer must resemble a newspaper columnist. A writer must resemble a dwarf and MUST survive. If we didn't have to read too, our work would be a point suspended in nothingness, a mandala pared down to a minimum of meaning, our silence, our certainty of standing with one foot dangling on the far side of death. Fantasies. Fantasies. In some lost fold of the past, we wanted to be lions and we're no more than castrated cats. Castrated cats wedded to cats with slit throats. Everything that begins as comedy ends as a cryptographic exercise.