Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

One afternoon, as I was walking in an area that would doubtless be of interest to a paleontologist, the misfortune that I'm about to describe took place. I saw a group of campers coming down the mountain. From the looks of shock on their faces, one didn't need to be a genius to realize that something bad had happened. Gesturing for them to stop, I made them tell me their news. It turned out that the grandson of one of them had fallen down a shaft or pit or chasm up the mountain. My experience as a criminal lawyer told me that we had to act fast, facta, non verba , so while half the party continued on its way to the campground, I scaled the steep hill with the others and came to where they claimed the misfortune had occurred.

The chasm was deep, bottomless. One of the campers said that it was called Devil's Mouth. Another said that the locals claimed it was really the dwelling place of the devil or one of his earthly incarnations. I asked what the disappeared child's name was and one of the campers answered: Elifaz. The situation was already strange, but with his answer it became frankly ominous, because it isn't every day that a chasm swallows up a boy with such an unusual name. So it's Elifaz, is it? I said or whispered. That's his name, said the one who'd spoken. The others, uncultured office workers and government clerks from Lugo, looked at me and didn't say anything. I'm a man of thought and reflection, but I'm also a man of action. Non progredi est regredi , I remembered. So I went up to the rim of the chasm and shouted the boy's name. A menacing echo was the only answer I got: a shout, my shout, returned to me from the depths of the earth, turned into its blood-chilling echo. A shiver ran up my spine, but to hide it I think I laughed, telling my companions that the hole was certainly deep, and suggesting that if we tied all of our belts together we could create a makeshift rope so that one of us, the thinnest, of course, could go down and explore the first few feet of the pit. We conferred. We smoked. No one seconded my proposal. After a while, the people who had continued on to the campground returned with the first reinforcements and the necessary equipment to make the descent. Homo fervidus et diligens ad omnia est paratus , I thought.

We roped up a sturdy young man from Castroverde as well as we could, and with five strong men at the other end of the rope, he began his descent, equipped with a flashlight. He soon disappeared from sight. From above, we shouted: what can you see? and from the depths came his ever-fainter reply: nothing! Patientia vincit omnia , I advised, and we kept calling. We couldn't see anything, not even the light of the flashlight, although the walls of the cave closest to the surface were sporadically lit with a brief splash of light, as if the boy were pointing the flashlight over his head to check how many feet deep he was. It was then, as we were remarking on the light, that we heard a superhuman howl and we all moved to the edge of the shaft. What happened? we shouted. There was another howl. What happened? What did you see? Did you find him? No one answered from below. A few women started to pray. I wasn't sure whether to be appalled or to let myself be swept up in the phenomenon. Stultorum plena sunt omnia , as Cicero points out. A relative of our explorer asked us to haul him up. The five men who were holding the rope couldn't do it and we had to help them. The shout from down below was repeated several times. Finally, after tireless efforts, we managed to get him to the surface.

The young man was alive, and except for tattered jeans and a few scrapes on his arms, he seemed to be all right. To make sure, the women felt his legs. He hadn't broken any bones. What did you see? his relative asked him. He wouldn't answer and covered his face with his hands. That was when I should have taken charge and stepped in, but my position as spectator kept me, how shall I say, bewitched by the play of shadows and useless gestures. Others repeated the question, with slight variations. I may have recalled aloud that occasiones namque hominem fragilem non faciunt, sed qualis sit ostendunt . This young fellow was clearly a weak character. Given a swallow of cognac, he offered no resistance and drank as if his life depended on it. What did you see? the group repeated. Then he spoke and only his relative could hear him. The relative asked him the same question again, as if he couldn't believe what he'd heard. The young man replied: I saw the devil.

From that moment on, the rescue group was seized by confusion and anarchy. Quot capita, tot sententiae : some said that they had called the Guardia Civil from the campground and the best thing we could do was wait. Others asked about the boy, whether the youth had gotten a glimpse of him or heard him on the way down, and the reply was negative. Most asked what the devil was like, whether the youth had seen all of him or just his face, what he looked like, what color he was, etc. Rumores fuge , I said to myself and gazed out at the surrounding countryside. Then the camp watchman and the bulk of the women appeared with another group from the campground, among them the mother of the vanished boy, who hadn't heard what was happening because she'd been watching a game show, as she announced to anyone who would listen. Who's down there? asked the watchman. In silence, someone pointed out the youth, who was still lying in the grass. The mother, helpless, went up to the mouth of the cave and shouted her son's name. No one answered. She shouted again. Then the cave howled, and it was as if it were answering back.

Some people turned pale. Most backed away from the hole, afraid that a foggy hand might suddenly shoot out and drag them down into the depths. More than one person said that a wolf must be living down there. Or a wild dog. Meanwhile, it had gotten dark, and the gas lanterns and flashlights competed in a macabre dance, with that open wound in the mountainside for its magnetic center. People were laughing or speaking in Galician, a language that, uprooted as I was from my origins, I no longer remembered. They kept pointing with trembling hands toward the mouth of the pit. The Guardia Civil hadn't shown up. It was imperative that a decision be made, although everything was in utter confusion. Then I saw the camp watchman tie the rope around his waist and I realized that he was preparing to go down. His behavior, I confess, struck me as admirable, and I went over to congratulate him. Xosé Lendoiro, lawyer and poet, I said as I shook his hand effusively. He looked at me and smiled as if we'd met before. Then, amid general expectation, he started down into that terrible pit.

To be honest, I and many of those gathered there feared the worst. The watchman went down as far as the rope reached. At that point we all thought he would come back up, and for a moment, I think, he pulled from below and we pulled from above and the search stalled in an ignoble series of misunderstandings and shouts. I tried to make peace, addito salis grano . If I hadn't had courtroom experience, those angry people would have thrown me down the pit headfirst. Finally, however, I seized control. With no little effort, we managed to communicate with the watchman and decipher what he was shouting. He was asking us to let go of the rope. So we did. More than one of us felt our hearts stop to see the remaining length of rope disappear into the chasm like a rat's tail into a snake's jaws. We told each other that the watchman must know what he was doing.

Suddenly, the night got darker, and the black hole got blacker, if that was possible, and those who minutes before were making brief forays around the edge of the hole, carried away by impatience, stopped, since the possibility of tripping and being swallowed up by the chasm was manifested as sins are sometimes manifested. Fainter and fainter howls escaped from within, as if the devil were retreating into the depths of the earth with his two freshly caught prey. It goes without saying that the wildest hypotheses were making the rounds of our group on the surface. Vita brevis, ars longa, occasio praeceps, experimentum periculosum, iudicium difficile . There were those who couldn't stop checking their watches, as if time played a crucial role in this adventure. There were those who were chain-smoking, and others who were attending to the fainting fits of the lost boy's female relatives. There were those who cursed the Guardia Civil for taking so long. Suddenly, as I was watching the stars, it occurred to me that all of this bore an extraordinary resemblance to a story by Don Pío Baroja that I'd read in my years as a law student at the University of Salamanca. The story was called "The Chasm," and in it a little shepherd boy is lost deep inside a mountain. A lad with a rope tied securely around him is lowered in search of the boy, but the howls of the devil scare him away and he comes back up without the boy, whom he hasn't seen but whose moans of pain are clearly audible from outside. The story ends with a scene of complete powerlessness, in which fear vanquishes love, duty, and even the bonds of family. No one in the rescue group (made up, it must be said, of uncouth and superstitious Basque shepherds) dares to go down after hearing the stammered story that the first would-be rescuer tells, in which he claims to have seen the devil, or to have felt or sensed or heard him, I forget. In se semper armatus Furor . In the last scene, the shepherds go home, including the boy's terrified grandfather, and the whole night long (a windy night, I suppose) they can hear the boy's cries from the chasm. That's Don Pío's story. A youthful effort, I think, in which his glorious prose hasn't quite taken wing. A good story, nevertheless. And that was what I thought as behind me human passions roiled and my eyes counted the stars: that the story I was living was just like Baroja's story and that Spain was still Baroja's Spain, in other words a Spain where chasms weren't barricaded and children were still careless and fell into them, where people smoked and fainted in a rather excessive way, and where the Guardia Civil never showed up when it was needed.