The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

  "And what does it mean if you dar labiada, Lupe?" said Lima.

  I thought about something sexual, about Lupe's pussy, which I'd only touched and not seen, about María's pussy and Rosario's pussy. I think we were going more than one hundred and ten.

  "To give someone a chance, of course," said Lupe, and she looked at me as if she could guess what I was thinking. "What did you think it was, García Madero?" she said.

  "What does de empalme mean?" said Belano.

  "Something that's funny but hurts because it's true," said Lupe, undaunted.

  "And a chavo giratorio?"

  "A pothead," said Lupe.

  "And a coprero?"

  "A cokehead," said Lupe.

  "And echar pira?" said Belano.

  Lupe looked at him and then at me. I could feel the insects hopping from her eyes and landing on my knees, one on each knee. A white Impala just like ours shot past heading for Mexico City. As it disappeared through the back window it honked several times, wishing us luck.

  "Echar pira?" said Lima. "I don't know."

  "When more than one man rapes a woman," said Lupe.

  "Gang rape, that's right, you know them all, Lupe," said Belano.

  "And do you know what it means if you say somebody's entrado en la rifa?" said Lupe.

  "Of course I know," said Belano. "It means you've already gotten involved in the problem, you're mixed up in it whether you want to be or not. It can also be taken as a veiled threat."

  "Or not so veiled," said Lupe.

  "So what would you say?" said Belano. "Have we entrado en la rifa or not?"

  "All the way," said Lupe.

  The lights of the cars that were following us suddenly disappeared. I had the feeling that we were the only people on the road in Mexico at that hour. But a few minutes later, I saw the lights again in the distance. There were two cars, and the distance separating them from us seemed to have decreased. I looked forward. There were insects smashed on the windshield. Lima was driving with both hands on the wheel and the car was vibrating as if we'd turned onto a dirt road.

  "What is an epicede?" I said.

  No one answered.

  For a while we were all silent as the Impala sped forward in the dark.

  "Tell us what an epicede is," said Belano without turning around.

  "It's an elegy, recited in the presence of the dead," I said. "Not to be confused with the threnody. The epicede took the form of a choral dialogue. The meter used was the dactylo-epitrite, and later elegiac verse."

  No reply.

  "Fuck, this goddamn road is pretty," said Belano after a while.

  "Ask us more questions," said Lima. "How would you define a threnody, García Madero?"

  "Just like an epicede, except that it wasn't recited in the presence of the dead."

  "More questions," said Belano.

  "What's an alcaic?" I said.

  My voice sounded strange, as if it wasn't I who'd spoken.

  "A stanza of four alcaic verses," said Lima, "two hendecasyllables, one endecasyllable, and one decasyllable. The Greek poet Alcaeus used it, which is where the name comes from."

  "It isn't two hendecasyllables," I said. "It's two decasyllables, one endecasyllable, and a trochaic decasyllable."

  "Maybe," said Lima. "Who cares."

  I watched Belano light a cigarette with the car lighter.

  "Who introduced the alcaic stanza into Latin poetry?" I said.

  "Man, everyone knows that," said Lima. "Do you know, Arturo?"

  Belano had the lighter in his hand and he was staring at it, although his cigarette was already lit.

  "Of course," he said.

  "Who?" I said.

  "Horace," said Belano, and he slid the lighter into its socket and then rolled down the window. The air ruffled my hair and Lupe's.

  JANUARY 3

  We had breakfast at a gas station outside of Culiacán, huevos rancheros, fried eggs with ham, eggs with bacon, and poached eggs. We each drank two cups of coffee and Lupe had a big glass of orange juice. We ordered four ham and cheese sandwiches for the road. Then Lupe went into the women's room, and Belano, Lima, and I went into the men's room, where we proceeded to wash our faces, hands, and necks, and use the facilities. When we came out the sky was a deep blue, as blue as I'd ever seen it, and there were lots of cars driving north. Lupe was nowhere to be seen, so after waiting a prudent amount of time, we went looking for her in the ladies' room. We found her brushing her teeth. She looked at us and we left without a word. Next to Lupe, bent over the other sink, was a woman in her fifties, brushing long black hair that fell to her waist.

  Belano said we had to go into Culiacán to buy toothbrushes. Lima shrugged and said he didn't care. I said that I thought we had no time to lose, although actually time was the only thing we had more than enough of. In the end, Belano got his way. In a supermarket on the outskirts of Culiacán we bought toothbrushes and other personal hygiene things that we would need and then we turned around and left without going into the city.

  JANUARY 4

  We passed through Navojoa, Ciudad Obregón, and Hermosillo like ghosts. We were in Sonora, although I'd felt as if we were in Sonora ever since Sinaloa. Sometimes we saw pitahayas, nopals, or saguaros rising alongside the road in the noonday glare. In the Hermosillo municipal library, Belano, Lima, and I searched for traces of Cesárea Tinajero. We couldn't find anything. When we got back to the car Lupe was asleep on the backseat and two men were standing on the sidewalk, motionless, watching her. Belano thought it might be Alberto and one of his friends and we separated to approach them. Lupe's dress had ridden up around her hips and the men were masturbating, their hands in their pockets. Get lost, said Arturo, and they went, turning to watch us as they retreated. Then we were in Caborca. If that's what Cesárea's magazine was called, it must have been for some reason, said Belano. Caborca is a little town northwest of Hermosillo. To get there we took the federal highway to Santa Ana and from Santa Ana we turned west along a paved road. We passed through Pueblo Nuevo and Altar. Before we got to Caborca we saw a turnoff and a sign with the name of another town: Pitiquito. But we drove on and got to Caborca, where we wandered around the town hall and the church, talking to everyone, searching in vain for someone who could tell us something about Cesárea Tinajero until night fell and we got in the car again, because Caborca didn't even have a boardinghouse or a little hotel where we could stay (and if it did we couldn't find it). So that night we slept in the car and when we woke up we headed back to Caborca, got gas, and drove to Pitiquito. I have a hunch, said Belano. In Pitiquito we had a good meal and we went to see the church of San Diego del Pitiquito, from the outside, because Lupe said she didn't want to go in and we didn't really feel like it either.

  JANUARY 5

  We're heading northeast, along a good road, as far as Cananea, then south along a dirt road to Bacanuchi, and then on to 16 de Septiembre and Arizpe. I've stopped going along with Belano and Lima to ask questions. I stay in the car with Lupe or we get a beer. In Arizpe the road is better again and we head down to Banámichi and Huépac. From Huépac we head back up to Banámichi, this time without stopping, and return to Arizpe, turning east along a hellish dirt track to Los Hoyos, and from Los Hoyos, along a much better road, to Nacozari de García.

  On the way out of Nacozari a patrolman stops us and asks for the car's papers. Are you from Nacozari, officer? Lupe asks him. The patrolman looks at her and says no, why would she think that, he's from Hermosillo. Belano and Lima laugh. They get out to stretch their legs. Then Lupe gets out and she and Arturo whisper to each other a little. The other officer gets out of his car too and comes over to talk to his partner, who is busy deciphering Quim's papers and Lima's driver's license. The two officers watch Lupe, who has walked a few yards away from the road, into a stony yellow landscape with darker patches, minuscule plants colored a nauseating brownish-purple-green. The brown, green, and purple of permanent exposure to an eclipse.

  So where a
re you from? says the second officer. From Mexico City, I hear Belano answer. Mexiquillos? says the patrolman. More or less, says Belano, with a smile that frightens me. Who is this jerk? I think, but I'm thinking about Belano, not the policeman, and about Lima too, who's leaning on the hood of the car and staring at a point on the horizon, between the clouds and the quebrachos.

  Then the policeman returns our papers and Lima and Belano ask him the shortest way to Santa Teresa. The second patrolman goes back to his car and gets out a map. When we leave the patrolmen wave goodbye. The paved road soon becomes a dirt road again. There are no cars, just a pickup truck every once in a while loaded with sacks or men. We pass towns called Aribabi, Huachinera, Bacerac, and Bavispe before we realize that we're lost. Just before dark a town suddenly appears in the distance that might or might not be Villaviciosa, but it's too much effort to find the way there. For the first time, Belano and Lima look nervous. Lupe is immune to the pull of the town. As far as I'm concerned, I don't know what to think: I might feel strange things, I might just want to sleep, I might be dreaming for all I know. Then we turn down another terrible road that seems to go on forever. Belano and Lima want me to ask them tough questions. I assume they mean questions about meter, rhetoric, and style. I ask them one and then I fall asleep. Lupe's sleeping too. In the time it takes me to fall asleep, I hear Belano and Lima talking. They talk about Mexico City, about Laura Damián and Laura Jáuregui, about a poet I've never heard of before, and they laugh, apparently the poet is a nice guy, a good person, they talk about people who are publishing magazines and who I gather are naïve or unsophisticated or just desperate. I like to hear them talk. Belano talks more than Lima, but both of them laugh a lot. They also talk about Quim's Impala. Sometimes, when there are lots of potholes in the road, the car jumps in a way that Belano doesn't think is normal. Lima thinks it's the noise the engine makes that isn't normal. Before I fall into a deep sleep I realize that neither of them knows anything about cars. When I wake up we're in Santa Teresa. Belano and Lima are smoking and the Impala is circling around the city center.

  We check into a hotel, the Hotel Juárez, on Calle Juárez, Lupe taking one room and the three of us taking another. The only window in our room looks onto an alley. At the end of the alley, which runs into Calle Juárez, there's a gathering of shadowy figures who talk in low voices, although every so often someone curses or starts to shout for no reason, and after a prolonged period of observation, I see one of the shadows raise an arm and point at the window I'm watching from. At the other end of the alley, trash piles up, and it's even darker, if possible, although among the buildings one stands out, one that's a little more brightly lit. It's the back of the Hotel Santa Elena, with a tiny door that no one uses, except for a kitchen worker who comes out once with a trash can and stops beside the door when he goes back in, craning his neck to watch the traffic on Calle Juárez.

  JANUARY 6

  Belano and Lima spent all morning at the Municipal Registry Office, the census office, a few churches, the Santa Teresa Library, the university archives, and the archives of the only newspaper here, El Centinela de Santa Teresa. We met for lunch in the main square, next to an odd statue commemorating the victory of the locals over the French. In the afternoon, Belano and Lima are resuming their search. They have a meeting, they said, with the number one man in the literature department at the university, a jerk named Horacio Guerra, who is (surprise!) the spitting image of Octavio Paz, but in miniature, and that goes for his name too, if you think about it, said Belano, so tell me, García Madero, did Horace live in the same era as Caesar Augustus? I told him I didn't know. Let me think, I said. But they were in a rush and they started to talk about other things and when they went off I was left alone with Lupe again, and I thought about taking her to the movies, but since Lima and Belano had the money and I'd forgotten to ask them for some we couldn't go, and we had to settle for walking around Santa Teresa and window-shopping at the stores in the center and then going back to the hotel and watching television in a room off the lobby. There we met two little old ladies who, after staring at us for a while, asked us whether we were husband and wife. Lupe said yes. I had no choice but to play along, though the whole time I was thinking about what Belano and Lima had asked me, whether Horace had lived in the same era as Caesar Augustus, and I thought he had, my instinct would've been to say yes, but I also had the feeling that Horace wasn't exactly a champion of Augustus, and Lupe was talking to the old ladies, snoopy old ladies, as it turned out, and I don't know why but I kept thinking about Augustus and Horace and listening with my left ear to the soap opera that was on TV and with my right ear to Lupe and the old ladies talking, and suddenly my memory went plumph, like a soft wall collapsing, and I saw Horace fighting against Augustus or Octavian and for Brutus and Cassius, who had murdered Caesar and wanted to bring back the Republic, shit, it couldn't have been weirder if I had dropped acid, I saw Horace, twenty-four at Philippi, only a little older than Belano or Lima and just seven years older than me, and that bastard Horace, who was staring into the distance, suddenly turned around and looked at me! Hello, García Madero, he said in Latin, although I don't understand a fucking word of Latin, I'm Horace, born in Venusia in 65 B.C., son of a freed slave (the most loving father anyone could ask for), appointed tribune under Brutus, ready to march into battle, the Battle of Philippi, which we'll lose but which I'm destined to fight, the Battle of Philippi, where the fate of mankind is at stake, and then one of the old ladies touched my arm and asked me what had brought me to the city of Santa Teresa, and I saw Lupe's smiling eyes and the eyes of the other old lady, which were shooting sparks as she watched Lupe and me, and I answered that we were on our honeymoon, our honeymoon, ma'am, I said, and then I got up and told Lupe to follow me and we went to her room where we fucked like crazy or as if we were going to die the next morning, until it got dark and we heard the voices of Lima and Belano, who had come back to their room and were talking, talking, talking.

  JANUARY 7

  Now we know for sure: Cesárea Tinajero was here. There was no trace of her at the registry, or the university, or the parish archives, or the library, where for some reason the archives of the old Santa Teresa hospital, now called the General Sepúlveda Hospital after the Revolutionary hero, are stored. And yet, at the Centinela de Santa Teresa they let Belano and Lima comb through the morgue and in the news from 1928 there was a June 6 mention of a bullfighter named Pepe Avellaneda, who fought two bulls from Don José Forcat's stock in the Santa Teresa bullring with considerable success (two ears) and of whom there's a profile and interview in the June 11, 1928, issue, in which it says, among other things, that Pepe Avellaneda was traveling in the company of a woman named Cesárea Tinaja [sic], formerly of Mexico City. There are no photographs with the piece, but the local reporter describes her as "tall, attractive, and reserved," although I frankly have no idea what he could mean by that, unless he's saying it to emphasize the difference between the woman and the bullfighter she was accompanying, who is described, somewhat bluntly, as a little man, no more than five feet tall, very thin, with a big dented skull, a description that reminds Belano and Lima of a Hemingway bullfighter (Hemingway's an author I unfortunately haven't read), the typical brave and luckless Hemingway bullfighter, more sad than anything else, deathly sad, although I wouldn't dare say as much with so little to go on, and anyway Cesárea Tinajero is one thing and Cesárea Tinaja is another, which is something my friends refuse to admit, chalking it up it to a misprint, a bad transcription, or the reporter's faulty hearing, and maybe even an intentional slip on Cesárea Tinajero's part, saying her name wrong, a joke, a modest way of hiding a modest clue.

  The rest of the article is unremarkable. Pepe Avellaneda talks about bullfighting, saying incomprehensible or incongruous things, but so mildly that he never sounds pedantic. A final clue: the July 10 issue of the Centinela de Santa Teresa announces the departure of the bullfighter (and presumably his companion) for Sonoyta, where he will share
billing in the ring with Jesús Ortiz Pacheco, bullfighter from Monterrey. So Cesárea and Avellaneda were in Santa Teresa for about a month, evidently doing nothing, seeing the local sights or holed up in their hotel. In any case, according to Lima and Belano we now had someone who knew Cesárea, who knew her well, and who plausibly still lived in Sonora, although with bullfighters you never know. Their response to my argument that Avellaneda might be dead was that we would still have his family and friends. So now we were looking for Cesárea and the bullfighter. They told outrageous stories about Horacio Guerra. They said again that he was exactly like Octavio Paz. Considering the short time they'd spent with him I don't know how they could know so much about him, but they said that his acolytes in this lost corner of Sonora were carbon copies of Paz's acolytes. As if in this forgotten province, forgotten poets, essayists, and professors were simulating the mass-media actions of their idols.

  At first, they said, Guerra was extremely interested in knowing who Cesárea Tinajero was, but his interest evaporated when Belano and Lima explained the avant-garde nature of her work, and how little of it there was.

  JANUARY 8

  We didn't find anything in Sonoyta. On our way back we stopped in Caborca again. Belano insisted it couldn't be just a coincidence that Cesárea had named her magazine after it. But once again we found nothing to suggest that the poet had ever been there.

  In the archives of the Hermosillo paper, on the other hand, we stumbled on our first day of searching upon the announcement of Pepe Avellaneda's death. On the fragile old sheets we read that the bullfighter had died in the Agua Prieta bullring, charged by the bull as he prepared to deliver the coup de grâce, a thing at which Avellaneda had never excelled given how short he was: no matter the size of the bull, he had to leap to kill it and as he leaped his little body was unprotected, vulnerable to the beast's slightest lunge.