Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

Once we argued. Why? I've forgotten. It didn't have anything to do with jealousy, that much I remember. He wasn't jealous at all. For several days he didn't call me and I didn't visit him. I wrote him a letter. I told him that he should grow up, that he should take better care of himself, that his health was fragile (he had sclerosis of the bile duct, a sky-high liver count, extensive ulcerative colitis, he had just recovered from an attack of hyperthyroidism, and every once in a while his teeth hurt!), that he should get his life on track because he was still young, that he should forget the woman who'd "broken his heart," that he should buy a washing machine. I spent a whole afternoon writing it and then I ripped it up and started to cry. Sometime later I received his last phone call.

You want to see me but we aren't going to talk? I said. That's right, he said, that's right, we aren't going to talk, I just need to know you're nearby, but we aren't going to see each other either. Have you gone crazy? No, no, no, he said. It's very simple. But it wasn't very simple. To make a long story short, what he wanted was for me to see him. You won't see me? I said. No, there's no way I'll be able to see you, I've worked it all out very carefully, you have to park the car at the curve by the gas station, on the shoulder, and from there you'll be able to see me, you won't even have to get out of the car. Are you planning to commit suicide, Arturo? I said. I heard him laugh. No suicide, at least not for now, he said. You could hardly hear what he was saying. I have a ticket to Africa. I'm leaving in a few days. Africa, what part of Africa? I said. Tanzania, he said, I've already gotten every vaccine there is. Will you be there? he asked. None of this makes any sense, I said, I don't see the point. There is a point! he said. But not for me, asshole, I said. All you have to do is park your car at the first curve after the gas station and wait. How long? I don't know, five minutes, he said. If you get there when I tell you to, only five minutes. And then what? I said. Then you wait for ten more minutes, then you leave. And that's all. So what about Africa? I said. Africa comes afterward, he said (his voice sounded the same as it always did, a tiny bit ironic, but not the least bit insane), it's the future. The future? Nice future. And what do you plan to do there? I said. His answer was vague, as always. Things, assignments, the usual, is what I think he said, or something like that. When I hung up I didn't know what baffled me most, his invitation or his announcement that he was leaving Spain.

The day of the appointment I followed his instructions word for word. High up on the road, with the car parked on the shoulder, there was a view of almost the whole cove, a little beach where the local nudists came in the summer. To my left was a row of hills and crags with a house poking up every so often, to my right the railroad line, some brush, and then, past a dip in the ground, the beach. It was a gray day and when I got there I couldn't see anyone. At one end of the cove was the bar Los Calamares Felices, a wooden shack painted blue, and not a soul in sight. At the other end were some rocks hiding smaller coves, more sheltered from the public gaze, which was where most of the nudists congregated in summer. I got there half an hour before the specified time. I didn't want to get out of the car, but after waiting for ten minutes and smoking two cigarettes, it became suffocating inside, in every sense of the word. When I opened the door to get out, a car parked in front of Los Calamares Felices. I watched it closely: a man got out, a guy with long, straight hair, presumably young, and after looking all around (except up, toward where I was), he walked behind the bar and vanished from sight. I don't know why I was so nervous. I got back in the car and locked the doors. I was thinking seriously about leaving when a second car parked at the entrance to Los Calamares Felices. A man and a woman got out. After looking at the first car, the man raised his hands to his mouth and shouted or whistled, I don't know, because just then a truck went by and I couldn't hear anything. The man and woman waited for a moment and then they walked toward the beach down a little dirt path. After a while, the first man came out from behind the part of Los Calamares Felices that I couldn't see and walked toward them. They must have known each other, because they shook hands and the woman kissed the first man. Then, in a motion that struck me as excessively slow, the second man's hand pointed to a spot on the beach. Emerging from among the rocks, two men were heading toward the bar, walking just at the line where the waves vanished on the sand. Although they were far away, I recognized one of them as Arturo. I don't know why, but I got out of the car as fast as I could, maybe with the idea that I would go down to the beach, although I realized immediately that to get there I would have to make a huge detour through a pedestrian underpass, and that by the time I got there they might all be gone. So I stayed there beside the car and watched. Arturo and his companion stopped in the middle of the beach. The two men from the cars walked toward them and the woman sat on the sand and waited. When the four met, one of the men, Arturo's companion, set a package on the ground and unwrapped it. Then he stood up and moved back. The first man went over to the package, took something out of it, and moved back too. Then Arturo went over to the package and took something out himself, imitating the previous man. Now Arturo and the first man were each holding a long thing in their hands. The second man went up to the first man and said something. The first man nodded and the second man moved away, but he must have been a little confused because he moved toward the water and a wave washed over his shoes, which made him jump as if he'd been bitten by a piranha and retreat quickly in the opposite direction. The first man didn't even look at him: he was talking to Arturo in what seemed a friendly way, and Arturo was moving his left foot, as if while he was listening he was amusing himself by tracing something, a face or a few numbers, with the tip of his boot in the wet sand. Arturo's companion backed several feet away toward the rocks. The woman got up and went over to the second man, who was sitting on the sand cleaning his shoes. Only Arturo and the first man were left in the middle of the beach. Then they raised what they were holding in their hands and struck them together. At first glance I thought it was walking sticks and I laughed, because I realized that this was what Arturo had wanted me to see: some clowning around, a strange kind of clowning around, but definitely clowning around. But doubt crept into my mind. What if those weren't walking sticks? What if they were swords?

Guillem Piña, Calle Gaspar Pujol, Andratx, Mallorca, June 1994. We met in 1977. It's been a long time since then. A lot has happened. Back then I used to buy two newspapers each morning and several magazines. I read everything. I knew everything that was going on. We saw a lot of each other, always on my turf. I think I only went to his place once. We went out to eat together. I paid. It's been a long time since then. Barcelona has changed. Barcelona's architects haven't changed, but Barcelona has. I used to paint every day, not like now, but there were too many parties, too many gatherings, too many friends. Life was exciting. In those days everybody had a magazine and I liked that. I had shows in Paris, New York, Vienna, London. Arturo would disappear for long stretches at a time. He liked my magazine. I would give him back issues, and I gave him a drawing too. I gave it to him framed because I knew he didn't have the money to frame anything. What drawing was it? A sketch for a painting I never finished: The Other Demoiselles d'Avignon . I met dealers who were interested in my work. But I wasn't very interested in my work. Around that time I painted three fake Picabias. They were perfect. I sold two and kept one. Painting the fakes, I saw a faint light, but it was a light, which is the important thing. With the money I made I bought a Kandinsky print and a batch of arte povera , possibly also forgeries. Sometimes I would get on a plane and fly to Mallorca. I would go see my parents in Andratx and take long walks in the country. Sometimes I would just watch my father, who painted too, when he went out with his canvases and easel, and strange ideas would come to my head. Ideas that were like dead fish or fish on the verge of death at the bottom of the sea. But then I would think about other things. In those days I had a studio in Palma. I moved paintings back and forth. I would bring them from my parents' house to the studio and from the studio to my parents' house. Then I would get bored and fly back to Barcelona. Arturo would come to my house to shower. He didn't have a shower where he was living, obviously, and he would come use mine on Moliner, near Plaza Cardona.