The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  That night I found out that he didn't work for any newspaper but wrote novels. That got Pepe excited, because Pepe is a mystery novel fanatic and they had plenty to talk about. Meanwhile, I picked at my salad and watched him, sizing him up as he talked or listened to Pepe. He ate well and he was polite, to start with. Then, the more you watched him, other things began to appear, things that slipped away like those fish that come close to the shore when the water is shallow and you see dark things (darker than the water) moving very quickly past your legs.

  The next day Pepe went back to Barcelona to compete in Mister Olympia Catalan and didn't come back. That same morning, very early, the writer and I met in the living room while I was doing my exercises. I do them every day. First thing in the morning in high season, because I have less time then and I have to make the most of the day. So there I was, in the living room, doing push-ups on the floor, and he comes in and says good morning, Teresa, and then he goes into the bathroom, I think I didn't even answer him or maybe I grunted, I'm not used to being interrupted, and then I heard his footsteps again, the bathroom or kitchen door closing, and a little later I heard him asking me whether I'd like a cup of tea. I said I would and for a while we stared at each other. I think he'd never seen a woman like me. Do you want to exercise a little? I said. I said it just for the sake of saying something, of course. He didn't look well and he was already smoking. As I expected, he said no. People only take an interest in their health when they end up in the hospital. He left a cup of tea on the table and shut himself in his room. A little later I heard the sound of his typewriter. That was the last we saw of each other that day. The next morning, however, he appeared in the living room again at six in the morning and offered to make me breakfast. I don't eat or drink anything at that time of day, but it made me feel sort of, I don't know, bad to say no, so I let him make me another cup of tea, and I told him that while he was at it he could look in the cupboard for some jars of Amino Ultra and Burner that I should have had the night before but had forgotten about. What, I said, haven't you ever seen a chick like me? No, he said, never. He was pretty honest, but it was the kind of honesty that makes you not know whether to feel offended or flattered.

  That afternoon, when my shift was over, I went to get him and said we should go out. He said that he would rather stay home and work. I'll buy you a drink, I said. He thanked me and said no. The next morning we had breakfast together. I was doing my exercises and wondering to myself where he was because it was already seven forty-five and he still hadn't come out. When I start to do my exercises I usually let my mind wander. At first I think about something specific, like my job or my competitions, but then my head starts to do its own thing and I might start thinking about where I'll be a year from now or I might just as easily end up thinking about my childhood. That morning I was thinking about Manoli Salabert, who won whatever there was to win wherever she went, and I was wondering how she did it, when suddenly I heard his door open and a little later I heard his voice asking me whether I wanted tea. Of course I want tea, I said. When he brought it I got up and sat at the table with him. That time we spent maybe two hours talking, until nine-thirty, when I had to leave in a hurry for the pub, because the manager, who's a friend of mine, had asked me to settle something with the cleaning lady. We talked about all kinds of things. I asked him what he was writing. He said a book. I asked him whether it was a romance. He didn't know what to answer. I asked him again and he said he didn't know. Man, I said, if you don't know, who the fuck will? Or maybe it wasn't until later that night that I said that, when we had gotten a little more relaxed around each other. Anyway, love was a subject I enjoyed and we talked about that till I had to leave. I said I could tell him a thing or two about love. That I'd been involved with this guy Nani, the top bodybuilder in Gerona, and that after that experience I felt qualified to teach a course. He asked me how long it had been since we broke up. About four months, I said. Did he leave you? he said. Yes, I admitted, he left me. But now you're going out with Pepe, he said. I explained that Pepe was a good person, a sweetheart, he wouldn't hurt a fly. But it isn't the same, I said. Arturo had a habit that I'm not sure whether to call good or bad. He would listen and not take sides. I like it when people express their opinions, even if I don't agree with them. One afternoon I invited him to come to La Sirena. He said he didn't drink and so he felt sort of dumb hanging out in a pub. I'll make you an herbal tea, I said. He didn't come and I stopped inviting him. I'm outgoing and friendly, but I don't like to be a pest.

  A while later he showed up at the pub, though, and I made him his chamomile tea myself. After that he came every day. Rosita, the other waitress, thought there was something going on between us. When she said that it made me laugh. I thought about it for a while and it made me laugh even more. How could there be anything between Arturo and me! But then, for no good reason, I thought about it again and I realized I wanted to be his girlfriend. Until then I'd only dealt with two South Americans, both basically assholes, and I didn't have any desire to go through that again. And I'd never known any novelists. Here was this guy from South America and he was a writer and suddenly I wanted to be his girlfriend. Anyway, it's better to share an apartment with a boyfriend than a stranger. But it wasn't just practical reasons that made me want to be his girlfriend. It was how I felt, I didn't ask myself why. He needed someone too, I could see that right away. One morning I asked him to tell me something about himself. I was always the one who talked. That time he didn't tell me anything, but he said I could ask him whatever I wanted. I found out that he'd been living near Malgrat and that he'd recently given up his place. He didn't say why. I found out he was divorced and had a son. His son lived in Arenys de Mar. Once a week, on Saturdays, he would go see him. Sometimes we took the train together. I would go into Barcelona, to see Pepe or my friends at Muscle Gym, and he would go to Arenys to see his son. One night, as he was having his chamomile tea at La Sirena, I asked him how old he was. Over forty, he said, but he didn't look it. I would have guessed thirty-five at most, which is what I said. After that, even though he hadn't asked, I told him how old I was. Thirty-five. Then he smiled at me. I didn't like that smile at all. He smiled at me like someone with a kind of complex, or someone who doesn't give a shit. Anyway, it was a smile I didn't like. I'm basically a fighter. I try to stay positive. Things don't have to be bad or inevitable. That night, after that smile, I don't know why but I said that I didn't have kids even though I would've loved to have them, and that I had never been married either, and I didn't have much money, which was obvious, but that I thought life could be a pretty thing, a beautiful thing, and a person had to try to live a happy life. I don't know why I said all that corny stuff. I regretted it immediately. Naturally, all he said was of course, of course, like he was talking to a moron. Still, we talked. More and more. In the mornings, over breakfast, and at night, when he came to La Sirena, once he finished his workday. Or took a break, because I guess writers are always working: I remember hearing the sound of his typewriter at four in the morning in my sleep. And we talked about everything. Once, while he was watching me lift weights, he asked me why I'd gotten into bodybuilding. Because I like it, I answered. Since when? he said. Since I was fifteen, I said. Do you think there's something wrong with it? Does it seem unfeminine to you? Does it seem weird? No, he said, but there aren't many girls like you. I tell you, sometimes he drove me crazy. I should have answered that I was a woman, not a girl, but instead I told him there were more and more women doing what I did. Then, I don't know why, I told him about the time two summers ago that Pepe suggested that we perform in Gramanet, at a club in Gramanet. They gave us all stage names. They called me Lady Samson. I had to strike poses on the go-go girls' platform and also lift weights. That was all. But I didn't like the name. I'm no Lady Samson, I'm Teresa Solsona Ribot, period. But it was an opportunity, it paid all right, and Pepe said that some guy who scouted for models for the special-interest magazines might show up any night. In the end
no one showed up, or if they did nobody told me. Still, it was a job, and I did it. What was it that you didn't like about the job? he asked me. Well, I answered, thinking about it for a while, what I didn't like was the stage name they gave me. It's not that I'm against stage names, but I think that if someone's going to take a different name she should have the right to choose it. I would never have called myself Lady Samson. I don't see myself as a Lady Samson. It's a cheap, sleazy name. Anyway, I wouldn't have chosen it. What name would you have chosen? Kim, I said. After Kim Basinger? he said. I knew he was going to say that. No, I said, after Kim Chizevsky. And who's Kim Chizevsky? A champion in the sport, I said.

  Later on that night, I showed him a photo album I had with pictures in it of Kim Chizevsky and Lenda Murray, who's perfect, and Sue Price and Laura Creavalle and Debbie Muggli and Michele Ralabate and Natalia Murnikoviene, and then we went out walking around Malgrat. It was too bad we didn't have a car. If we did we could've gone someplace else, to some club in Lloret, for example, I know lots of people in Lloret. Well, I know lots of people everywhere. As I said before: I'm sociable, I'm a person who likes to be happy, and where do you find happiness if not in people? Anyway, that's how we became friends. Friends is the word for it. We respected each other and we had our own lives, but we talked more every day. What I mean is, it became a habit for us to talk. I was usually the one who started it, I don't know why, maybe because he was a writer. And then, democratically, he would follow. I found out a lot about his life. His wife had left him, he adored his son, at one time he'd had lots of friends but now he had hardly any. One night he told me that he'd been involved with a girl in Andalusia. I listened patiently and then I told him that life was long and there were many women in the world. That was where we had our first important difference of opinion. He said no, that for him there weren't lots, and then he quoted a poem that I begged him to write down on a page in my order pad so I could learn it by heart. The poem was by some French guy. It said more or less that the flesh was sad and that he, the poet who was writing the poem, had already read all the books. I don't know what to think, I said to him, I haven't read much, but it still seems impossible to me that anyone, no matter how much he read, could've read every book in the world. There must be so many of them, and I don't mean every single book, good and bad, just the good ones. There must be stacks of them! Enough so you could spend twenty-four hours a day reading! And that's not to mention the bad ones, since there must be more bad ones than good ones, and at least a few of those, like anything, must be good and worth reading. And then we started to talk about this "sad flesh." What did he mean by that? That he'd already fucked all the women in the world? That just like he'd read every book in the world he'd slept with every woman? I'm sorry, Arturo, I said, but that poem is total bullshit. Neither of those things is possible. And he started to laugh, you could see he thought it was funny to talk to me, and he said that it was possible. No it isn't, I said, the person who wrote that is full of shit. He probably hardly slept with anybody, I can tell you that for a fact. And I'm sure he didn't read all those books he bragged about reading either. There were a few more things I would've liked to say, but it was hard to keep up the conversation because I was always having to come out from behind the bar to wait on people. Arturo was sitting on a stool and when I came out I would look at his back or neck, poor thing, or I would search for his face in the mirror behind the shelves holding the bottles. And then I finished my shift. That night I got off at three in the morning, and we went walking home. At some point I suggested that we go to an after-hours club on the coast road, but he said that he was tired, so we went home, and as we walked I asked him, as if I had accepted his argument, what a person was supposed to do after reading everything and sleeping with everyone, according to the French poet, of course, and he said travel, go away, and I said well, as far as traveling is concerned, you never even go as far as Pineda, and he didn't say anything back.

  Strangely enough, after that night I couldn't forget the poem. I won't say I thought about it constantly, but I thought about it a lot. I still thought it was bullshit, but I couldn't get it out of my head. One night when Arturo didn't come to La Sirena I went to Barcelona. Sometimes I get like that: I can't help myself. I came back the next day at ten in the morning, in terrible shape. When I got home he was in his room with the door shut. I got in bed and went to sleep listening to the sound of his typewriter. At noon he knocked on my door and when I didn't answer he came in and asked me whether I was all right. Aren't you going to work today? he said. Fuck work. I'll make you some tea, he said. Before he brought it to me I got up, got dressed, put on sunglasses, and went to sit in the living room. I thought I was going to throw up, but I didn't. I had a bruise on my cheek that there was no way to hide and I was waiting for him to ask me about it. But he didn't ask me anything. It was a miracle I didn't get fired from La Sirena that time. That night I wanted to go out for drinks with some friends and Arturo came too. We were at a pub on the Paseo Marítimo and then I met some other friends and we partied some more in Blanes and Lloret. At some point during the night I told Arturo to stop fooling around and devote himself to the things he really loved, which were his son and his novels. If that's what you care about most, devote yourself to them, I said. He both liked and didn't like to talk about his son. He showed me a picture of the kid, who must have been about five and looked just like his father. You're such a lucky bastard, I said. Yes, I'm very lucky, he said. Then why leave, you dumbass? Why risk your health, when you know it isn't good? Why don't you settle down and work and be happy with your son and find yourself a woman who'll really love you? It's a funny thing: he wasn't drunk, but he was acting like he was. He said other people's drunkenness had a psychological effect on him. Or maybe I was so drunk that I couldn't tell the difference between someone who was drunk and someone who wasn't.

  Did you used to get drunk? I asked him one morning. Of course I did, he said, like everybody else, although usually I preferred being sober. I could have guessed that, I said.

  One night I got in a fight with a guy who came on to me. It was at La Sirena. The guy was rude and I asked him whether he wanted to come outside and repeat what he'd said. I didn't notice that there were people with him. The guy followed me out and I got him in an armlock and threw him. His friends came after me, but my manager and Arturo talked them out of it. Until then I hadn't been noticing anything, but when I saw Arturo and my manager, I don't know what it was but I felt free, that was the main thing, and I also felt loved, embraced, protected, I felt like I was a worthwhile person and that made me happy. And then Pepe just happened to show up a little later that same night, and by five in the morning we were making love, and that really was the best. Total happiness. While we were in bed, I closed my eyes and thought about everything that had happened that night, all the violent things and then all the nice things and how the nice things had overcome the violent things, and without having to get too violent, the nice things, I mean, and I was thinking about all of that and whispering other things in Pepe's ear, and suddenly, bam, I started to think about Arturo, I heard the sound of his typewriter and instead of including that image, instead of saying to myself "Arturo is fine too," instead of saying to myself "we're all fine, the world's still turning," instead of that, as I was saying, I started to think about my roommate and his state of mind and I made a decision that I would help him. And the next morning, as Pepe and I were doing stretches and Arturo was watching us, sitting in the same place he always sat, I went on the attack. I don't know what I said to him. Maybe that he should take the day off, since he was his own boss, and go spend the day with his son. And if I said that I must have been so insistent that in the end Arturo let himself be convinced and Pepe said Arturo could come with him, that he'd give him a ride to Arenys.

  That night Arturo didn't show up at La Sirena.

  I was on my way home at three in the morning when I ran into him at one of the public phones on the Paseo Marítimo. I spot
ted him from a distance. A group of drunk tourists were hanging around the phone next to his, which didn't seem to be working. A car was parked at the curb, with the doors open and the music cranked up all the way. As I came closer (I was with Cristina), I got a better look at Arturo. Long before I could see his face (he was standing with his back to me, wedged into the booth) I knew that he was crying or about to cry. Could he possibly have gotten drunk? Could he be high? That's what I was wondering as I hurried toward him, ahead of Cristina. For a second, when I got to where he was and the tourists were giving me weird looks, I thought maybe it wasn't him after all. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt I'd never seen before. I touched him on the shoulder. Arturo, I said, I thought you must be staying in Arenys tonight. He turned around and said hello. Then he hung up the phone and started to talk to me and Cristina, who'd caught up with me by now. I noticed that he had forgotten to take his change out of the slot. It was more than fifteen hundred pesetas. That night, when we were alone, I asked him how things had gone in Arenys. He said fine. His wife was living with a Basque guy and seemed happy, and his son was fine. So what else? I said. That's all, he said. So who were you calling? Arturo looked at me and smiled. That fucking Andalusian? I said. That bitch who's brainwashed you? Yes, he said. And did you talk to her? Only for a little while, he said, the English guys wouldn't shut up and it was annoying. So if you weren't talking to her anymore what the hell were you doing there, hanging on to the phone? I said. He shrugged his shoulders. He thought about it for a second, then he said he was getting ready to call her again. Call her from here, I said. No, he said, my calls are long and then you'll have a big phone bill. You pay your part and I'll pay mine, I told him gently. No, he said. By the time the bill comes I'll be in Africa. My God, you're such an idiot, I said, go on, just call, I'm going to take a bath, let me know when you're done.