Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

The fragility of those shacks, though this only occurs to me now, gave me a funny feeling more than once, not of precariousness or poverty but of obscure tenderness and foreboding; I'm probably not making much sense. Norman called the spot the "resort," although during my stay I never saw anyone swimming at the beaches in that part of Puerto Ángel. The water was pretty rough. The rest of the day we spent talking, especially about politics and the state of the country, which we saw from different perspectives but which seemed equally grim to both of us, and then Norman would shut himself in his office and work on an essay on Nietzsche that he was planning to publish in the Revista del Colegio de México . Thinking about it now, I realize we actually didn't talk very much. That is, we didn't talk much about ourselves. I might have talked about myself some night. I must have told him about my adventures, my life in Israel and Europe, but we never talked .

On my sixth day there, it was a Sunday morning, we left for Mexico City. Norman had to teach at the university on Monday and I had to look for work. We left Puerto Ángel in Norman's white Renault, which he only used when he came to Oaxaca, because in Mexico City he preferred to get around on public transportation. We talked about Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals , how every time Norman reread it he found (to his dismay) more and more points in common between the philosopher and the Nazis who would soon take over Germany. We talked about the weather, about the seasons, which I claimed I was going to miss and which Norman assured me I would soon forget, about the people I'd left behind but with whom I meant to keep in touch by postcard from time to time. I don't remember when we started to talk about Claudia. All I know is that somehow I became aware of it because then I stopped talking and started to listen. He said things had ended between them soon after he started working at the university, which I already knew, and that the breakup wasn't as painful as everybody assumed. You know how she is, he said, and I said yes, I know. Then he said that since then his relationships with women had been relatively cool. Then he laughed. I remember his laugh with utter clarity. There wasn't a car to be seen on the road, just trees, mountains, and sky, and the sound of the Renault cutting through the air. He said that he slept with women, or that he still liked to sleep with women, but that in some way he couldn't understand he was having more and more problems in that regard. What kind of problems? I asked. Problems, problems, said Norman. You can't get it up? I said. Norman laughed. Is that it, you can't get a hard-on? I said. That's a symptom, he said, not a problem. That answers my question, I said, you can't get it up. Norman laughed again. He had the window down and the wind was whipping his hair. He was very tan. He seemed happy. The two of us laughed. Sometimes I can't get a hard-on, he said, but what kind of word is that, hard-on? No, sometimes it won't get hard, but that's just a symptom, and sometimes not even a symptom. Sometimes it's just a joke, he said. I asked him whether he hadn't found anyone in all this time, a question that seemed to answer itself, and Norman said yes, that he'd found someone in a way, but that both he and she, a divorced philosophy professor with two children who for some reason I imagined as ugly, or at least not as beautiful as Claudia, wanted to wait, not take things too fast, a relationship on ice.

Then he talked about children, children in general and the children of Puerto Ángel in particular, asking me what I thought about the children of Puerto Ángel, and the truth is I didn't think anything about the children of the town we were leaving behind, I mean I hadn't even noticed them! and then Norman looked at me and said: each time I think about them it centers me. Just like that. It centers me. And I thought: it would be better if he watched the highway instead of me, and I also thought: something's up. But I didn't say anything. I didn't say: drive more carefully, I didn't say: Norman, what's going on? Instead I started to watch the scenery: trees and clouds, mountains, rolling hills, the tropics, with Norman already talking about something else, a dream Claudia had had, when? not long ago, she called him early one morning and told him about it. Evidently they were still close friends. And do you know what the dream was about? he said. Why, mano , I asked, do you want me to interpret it for you? A dream about colors, with a battle in the background, a battle drifting away, carrying all interpretations with it as it went. But Norman said: she dreamed about the children we hadn't had. Fuck off, I said. That was the meaning of the dream. So according to you, the battle drifting away is the children you didn't have? More or less, said Norman, that was the shadows fighting. And the colors? They're what's left, said Norman, a shitty abstraction of what's left.

And then I thought about the painter and his abstract paintings, and I don't know why it occurred to me to tell Norman (with whom I'd surely already discussed it while we were in Puerto Ángel) that that asshole Abraham Manzur was playing in the minor leagues, maybe to change the subject, maybe because that was all I had to say just then, at a moment when whatever I said wouldn't make much difference, because it was Norman who was in charge and nothing I could add was going to change that incontrovertible fact, the Renault going over eighty down the deserted road. Did you see his paintings? said Norman. Some, I said. And what did you think of them? said Norman, as if everything we'd talked about in Puerto Ángel had been forgotten. They were all right, I said. And what did Claudia think of them? She didn't tell me what she thought, I said. We kept on like that for a while. Norman started to talk about Mexican painting, the condition of the roads, university politics, the interpretation of dreams, the children of Puerto Ángel, about Nietzsche, and I broke in at long intervals with some monosyllabic remark, some question intended just to get the basic concepts clear, although the truth is that at that point I no longer gave a shit about basic concepts and all I wanted was to get back to Mexico City as soon as possible and never set foot in the state of Oaxaca again in my life.

And then Norman said: Ulises Lima. Do you remember Ulises Lima? Of course I did, how could I have forgotten him? And Norman said: lately I've been thinking about him, as if Ulises Lima were part of his daily reality, or had been part of his life, when I knew for a fact that he'd only been a brief episode, and an annoying episode at that. And then Norman glanced at me, as if he were expecting a wink or a knowing look, but I just said watch the road, be careful, because the Renault was heeling toward the right and we were already on the shoulder, although that didn't seem to bother Norman, because with a jerk of the wheel he had us back in the center, on course, and I looked at him again and I said: so what then? Ulises Lima, the days he spent with us in Tel Aviv, and Norman: didn't you notice anything strange, anything out of the ordinary? ultranormal Norman. And then I said: everything! because that's how Ulises was, and that's secretly how we wanted him to be. Not Norman, who wasn't his friend and who mostly knew him by reputation, but Claudia and I, who back then thought we were going to be writers and would have given anything to belong to that essentially pathetic group, the visceral realists. Youth is a scam.

And then Norman said: it has nothing to do with the visceral realists, asshole, you haven't understood a thing. And I said: well, what does it have to do with, then? And Norman, to my relief, stopped looking at me and concentrated on the road for a few minutes, and then he said: it has to do with life, with what we lose without knowing it, and what we can regain. So what can we regain? I said. What we've lost, said Norman, we can get it back intact. It would've been easy to argue, but instead I opened the window and let the warm air ruffle my hair. The trees were passing by at an incredible speed. What can we regain? I thought, and it struck me that we were going faster and faster and that there weren't many straight lengths of road anymore, but I didn't care, maybe because Norman had always driven carefully and he could talk, watch me, look for cigarettes in the glove compartment, light them, and even glance ahead every once in a while, all without taking his foot off the accelerator. We can get back into the game whenever we want to, I heard him say. Do you remember the days Ulises spent with us in Tel Aviv? Of course I remember, I said. Do you know why he came to Tel Aviv? Goddamn Ulises, of course I know: because he was in love with Claudia, I said. He was madly in love with Claudia, Norman corrected me, so madly that he didn't realize what he had within his grasp. He didn't realize a fucking thing, I said, the truth is, I don't know how he managed not to get himself killed. You're wrong, said Norman (actually, he shouted it), you're wrong, you're wrong, he couldn't have died even if he'd wanted to. Well, he came for Claudia, he came looking for Claudia, I said, and nothing went right. That's true, he came for Claudia, said Norman, laughing. Goddamn Claudia, do you remember how beautiful she was? Of course I remember, I said. And do you remember where Ulises slept while he was staying with us? On the sofa, I said. On the fucking sofa! said Norman. Hypostasis of romantic love. Threshold space. Noman's-land. And then he whispered, so quietly that between the noise of the Renault, which was blasting down the road, and the noise of the wind rushing along my arm and up the left side of my face, I had to work hard to make out his words: some nights, he said, he would cry. What? I said. Some nights, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I would hear him sobbing. Ulises? That's right, didn't you ever hear him? No, I said, when my head hits the pillow I'm out. That's good, said Norman, although the way he said it, it sounded more like too bad, mano . And why was he crying? I said. I don't know, said Norman, I never asked, I was just on my way to the bathroom and when I passed the living room I heard him, that's all, he might not even have been crying, he might have been jerking off and what I heard might've been sounds of pleasure, see what I mean? Yes, more or less, I said. But then again he might not have been jerking off, said Norman, or crying. What, then? He might have been sleeping, said Norman, maybe those were the sounds Ulises made in his sleep. He cried in his sleep? Hasn't it ever happened to you? said Norman. Frankly, no, I said. The first few nights I was afraid, said Norman, afraid of standing there in the living room, in the dark, listening to him. But one night I stayed, and then all of a sudden I understood everything. What was there to understand? I said. Everything, the most important thing of all, said Norman, and then he laughed. What Ulises Lima was dreaming? No, no, said Norman, and the Renault leaped forward.