Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

What was born in me, however, wasn't words or poetry, not even a single solitary line, but a great desire for revenge, the determination to get my own back, the firm resolve to make that third-rate Julien Sorel pay for his insolence and gall. Prima cratera ad sitim pertinet, secunda ad hilaritatem, tertia ad voluptatem, quarta ad insaniam . The fourth cup brings madness, said Apuleius, and that was what I needed. I realized it at that moment with a clarity that seems touching to me now. The waitress, a girl my daughter's age, was watching me from the other side of the counter. Across from her, having a soda, was a woman who worked as a door-to-door pollster. The two of them were talking animatedly, although from time to time the waitress would turn her gaze in my direction. I raised my hand and ordered a fourth cognac. I don't think it would be an exaggeration to say that the waitress looked sympathetic.

I decided to crush Arturo Belano like a cockroach. For two weeks, unhinged and unbalanced, I would show up at my old apartment, my daughter's apartment, at odd hours. Four times I caught them together again. Twice they were in my bedroom, once they were in my daughter's bedroom, and once they were in the master bathroom. This last time I wasn't able to spy on them, although I could hear them, but the other three times I could see with my own eyes the terrible acts to which they abandoned themselves fervently, recklessly, shamelessly. Amor tussisque non caelatur : neither love nor a cough can be concealed. But was it love that they felt for each other? I asked myself more than once, especially as I snuck feverishly out of my apartment after those unspeakable acts that I was obliged to witness as if by a mysterious force. Was it love that Belano felt for my daughter? Was it love that my daughter felt for that cheap imitation of Julien Sorel? Qui non zelat, non amat , I said or whispered to myself when it occurred to me, in a burst of clarity, that my behavior was more like that of a jealous lover than a strict father. And yet I wasn't a jealous lover. What was it I felt, then? Amantes, amentes . Lovers, lunatics, dixit Plato.

As a precautionary measure, I decided to sound them out, to give them one last chance, in my own way. As I feared, my daughter was in love with the Chilean. Are you sure? I asked her. Of course I'm sure, she answered. And what do the two of you plan to do? Nothing, Dad, said my daughter, who bore no resemblance to me in these matters, being in fact almost the complete opposite. She'd turned out a pragmatist like her mother. A little later I spoke to Belano. He came to my office, as he did each month, to deliver a poetry review for the law school journal and collect his payment. So, Belano, I said when I had him in front of me, sitting in a low chair, crushed beneath the legal heft of my diplomas and the burnished weight of the silver-framed photographs of great poets that adorned my sturdy ten-by-five-foot oak table. I think it's time, I said, for you to make the leap. He looked at me blankly. The qualitative leap, I said. After a moment in which we were both silent, I explained what I meant. I wanted him (it was my wish, I said) to make the move from reviewer for the law school magazine to regular contributor to my magazine. I think his only commentary was a rather subdued "wow." As you'll understand, I explained, this is a great responsibility I've assumed. The magazine is gaining in reputation every day. Its contributors include many distinguished Spanish and Latin American poets. You read it, I assume, so you'll have noticed that we've published Pepe de Dios, Ernestina Buscarraons, and Manolo Garcidiego Hijares, not to mention the young blades who make up our team of regular contributors: Gabriel Cataluña, who bids fair to become the great bilingual poet we've all been waiting for, Rafael Logroño, an extremely young but staggeringly powerful poet, Ismael Sevilla, meticulous and elegant, Ezequiel Valencia, a stylist of blazing warmth and cool intelligence capable of composing the most rabidly modern sonnets in Spain today, and last but not least, of course, our two gladiators of poetry criticism, Beni Algeciras, almost always ruthless, and Toni Melilla, professor at the Autónoma and an expert in the poetry of the 1950s. All of them men, I said in conclusion, whom I have the honor to lead and whose names are destined to shine in bronze letters in the literature of this country (the motherland, as you people say) that has opened its arms to you, and in whose company you'll work.

Then I was silent and we watched each other for a while, or rather I watched him, searching his face for any sign that would give away what was going on inside his head, and Belano looked at my pictures, my objets d'art, my diplomas, my paintings, my collection of handcuffs and shackles mostly dating from before 1940 (it was a collection to which my clients usually reacted with interest and a tinge of fear, my legal colleagues with some tasteless joke or remark, and the poets who visited me with admiring fascination), the spines of the few carefully chosen books that I keep in my office, most of them first editions of the nineteenth-century Spanish Romantics. As I was saying, his gaze slithered over my possessions like a small and highly nervous rat. What do you think? I blurted out. Then he looked at me and I realized abruptly that my proposal had fallen on fallow ground. Belano asked me how much I planned to pay him. I looked at him and didn't answer. The arriviste was already calculating his take. He looked at me, waiting for my answer. I watched him, poker-faced. He asked in a stammer whether the pay would be the same as for the law school journal. I sighed. Emere oportet, quem tibi oboedire velis . His gaze was clearly that of a frightened rat. I don't pay, I said. Only the greats, the big names, the names with clout. For now, you'll only be assigned a few reviews. Then he moved his head, as if he were reciting: O cives, cives, quaerenda pecunia primum est, virtus post nummos . After that he said that he would think about it, and he left. When he closed the door I buried my head in my hands and remained like that for a while, thinking. Deep down I didn't want to hurt him.

It was like sleeping, it was like dreaming, it was like rediscovering my true self: I was a giant. When I woke up I walked to my daughter's apartment ready to have a long father-daughter talk. It had probably been some time since I'd spoken with her, listened to her fears, her concerns, her doubts. Pro peccato magno paulum supplicii satis est patri . That night we had dinner at a nice restaurant on Calle Provenza and although we only talked about literature, the giant in me behaved just as I expected it to behave: it was elegant, agreeable, understanding, full of plans, in love with life. The next day I visited my younger daughter and took her to La Floresta, to a friend's house. The giant drove carefully and said funny things. When we parted my daughter gave me a kiss on the cheek.

It was just the beginning, but inside, on the burning life raft of my brain, I was already starting to feel the healing effects of my new attitude. Homo totiens moritur quotiens emittit suos . I loved my daughters, and I knew I'd been on the verge of losing them. Maybe, I thought, they've been too much alone, spent too much time with their mother, a docile woman given to carnal abandonment, and now the giant needs to make an appearance, demonstrate that he's alive and thinking of them, that's all. It was such a simple thing that I felt angry (or maybe just sorry) not to have done it before. Meanwhile, the giant's coming did more than help improve my rapport with my daughters. I began to notice a clear change in my daily dealings with clients at the firm: the giant wasn't afraid of anything, he was bold, he came up instantly with the most unexpected strategies, he could fearlessly navigate legal twists and turns with his eyes shut and without the least hesitation. And that's not to mention his dealings with the literary types. There the giant, I realized with true pleasure, was sublime, majestic, a towering mass of sounds and pronouncements, constant affirmation and negation, a fount of life.