Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

We talked, we never argued. I would show him my paintings and he would say fantastic, I love them, that kind of thing. I've always found that oppressive. I know he meant what he said, but still, I felt oppressed. Then he would be quiet, smoking, and I would make tea or coffee or bring out a bottle of whiskey. I don't know, I don't know, I would think, I might be doing something right, I might be onto something. The visual arts are ultimately incomprehensible. Or they're so comprehensible that nobody, first and foremost myself, will accept the most obvious reading of them. Back then, Arturo was sleeping occasionally with a girlfriend of mine. He didn't know about us. That is, he knew we were friends, how could he not when I was the one who'd introduced them, but what he didn't know was that she was a girlfriend. They slept together every once in a while: once a month, say. I thought it was funny. In some ways he could be very naïve. My friend lived on Calle Denia, not far from where I lived, and I had the key to her apartment and sometimes I would show up there at eight in the morning, looking for something I had forgotten for one of my classes, and I would find Arturo in bed or making breakfast, and he would look at me as if asking himself is she his friend or a girlfriend? I thought it was funny. Good morning, Arturo, I would say, and sometimes I had to make an effort not to laugh. I was sleeping with another friend too, but I slept with her much more often than my friend slept with Arturo. Problems. Life is full of problems, although life was wonderful in Barcelona in those days, and problems were called surprises.

Then came the disenchantment. I was teaching classes at the university and I wasn't happy there. I didn't want to explain my work in theoretical terms. I was teaching classes and my colleagues seemed to fall into two clearly distinct groups: the frauds (the mediocrities and scoundrels), and those who weren't just teaching but were getting somewhere with their art outside of work, for better or for worse. And all of a sudden I realized that I didn't want to belong to either group, and I quit. I started to teach at a high school. What a relief. Was it like being demoted from lieutenant to sergeant? Possibly. Maybe to corporal. Though I didn't feel like a lieutenant or a sergeant or a corporal, but a ditch digger, sewer dredger, a road worker lost or separated from his crew. In retrospect, the passage from one state to another takes on the harsh, brutal overtones of the sudden and irremediable, but of course it all happened much more slowly. I met a millionaire who bought my work, my magazine died of neglect and lack of interest, I started other magazines, I had shows. But none of that exists anymore: the words are more real than the actuality. The truth is that one day it was over and all I had left was my fake Picabia, my only guide, my only handhold. Some unemployed person could reproach me for being incapable of happiness, even though I had everything. I could reproach a murderer for committing murders, and a murderer could reproach a suicide victim for his desperate or enigmatic last act. The truth is that one day it was all over and I took a look around me. I stopped buying so many magazines and newspapers. I stopped having shows. I started to teach my drawing classes at the high school with humility and seriousness and even (although I don't make a big deal about it) a certain sense of humor. Arturo had disappeared from our lives long ago.

I don't know what reasons he had for disappearing. One day he got angry at my friend because he found out that she was a girlfriend, or maybe he slept with my other friend and she said to him you dope, can't you see that Guillem's friend is a girlfriend ? or something, conversations in bed do oscillate between the cryptic and the transparent. I don't know, not that it matters much. All I know is that he left and for a long time I didn't see him. It certainly wasn't my intent. I try to hold on to my friends. I try to be pleasant and sociable, I try not to rush the passage from comedy to tragedy. Life does a fine job on its own. Anyway, one day Arturo disappeared. The years went by and I didn't see him again. Until one day my friend said: guess who called me tonight. I wish I'd said: Arturo Belano. It would have been funny if I'd guessed it right away, but I said other names and then I gave up. Still, when she said Arturo I was happy. How many years had it been since we'd seen each other? Many years, so many that it was better not to count, not to remember, although I remembered them all, each and every one. So Arturo showed up at my friend's place one day, and she called me and I went over to see him. I hurried, I was running. I don't know why I started to run, but I did. It was almost eleven at night and it was cold and when I got there I saw a guy who was in his forties now, like me, and as I walked toward him I felt like the Nude Descending a Staircase , although I wasn't descending any staircase, not that I recall.

After that we met several times. One day he came to my studio. I was sitting there staring at a tiny canvas set beside a canvas that was at least ten feet by seven. Arturo looked at the small painting and the big painting and asked me what they were. What do you think they are? I said. Ossuaries, he said. In fact, they were ossuaries. By that point, I hardly ever painted and I never showed my work. Those who had been lieutenants with me were captains now, or colonels, and one, my dear Miguelito, had even reached the rank of general or field marshal. Others had died of AIDS or drugs or cirrhosis or had simply been given up for lost. I was still a ditch digger. I know that this lends itself to all kinds of interpretations, most of them grim. But my situation wasn't grim at all. I felt reasonably happy, I kept busy, I watched things, I watched myself watch things, I read, I lived a peaceful life. I didn't produce much. That may be important. Arturo, on the other hand, produced a lot. Once I ran into him as I was coming out of the laundry. He was on his way to my house. What are you doing? he said. As you can see, I answered, I'm leaving with clean clothes. Don't you have a washing machine at home? he said. It broke five years ago, I said. That afternoon Arturo went out into the inner courtyard and spent some time looking at my washing machine. I made myself tea (by then I hardly ever drank) and watched him as he examined the washing machine. For a brief moment I thought he was going to fix it. It wouldn't have seemed so remarkable, but it would have made me happy. But in the end, my washing machine was as dead as ever. I told him again about an accident I'd had. I think I told him about it because I saw him eyeing my scars. The accident happened in Mallorca. A car accident. I almost lost both of my arms and my jaw. There were only a few scratches on the rest of my body. Strange accident, wouldn't you say? Very strange, said Arturo. He told me that he'd been in the hospital too, six times in two years. In what country? I asked him. Here, he said, at Valle Hebrón and before that at Josep Trueta in Gerona. So why didn't you let us know? we would've come to see you. Well, it doesn't matter. Once he asked me whether I was depressed. No, I said, sometimes I feel like the Nude Descending a Staircase , which can actually be nice when you're with friends and not so nice if you're walking along the Paseo de Gracia, for example, but mostly I feel good.

One day, not long before he disappeared for the last time, he came to my house and said: someone's going to write a bad review of my book. I made him some chamomile tea and didn't say anything, which is the right thing to do, I think, when there's a story to be told, sad or happy. But he was quiet too, and for a while we just sat there, he staring at his tea or the little slice of lemon floating in his tea as I smoked a Ducados. I think I'm one of the few left who still smoke Ducados, or one of the few of my generation, I mean. Even Arturo smokes blond tobacco now. After a while, just to say something, I said: are you going to spend the night in Barcelona? and he shook his head. When he spent the night in Barcelona he stayed at my friend's house (in separate rooms, although it cheapens everything to spell these things out), not with me. Still, we would have dinner together, and sometimes the three of us would go for a drive in my friend's car. Anyway, I asked him whether he was going to spend the night and he said he couldn't, he had to get back to the town where he lived, a town on the coast a little more than an hour away by train. And then the two of us were quiet again, and I started to think about what he'd said about a bad review, and no matter how much I thought about it I had no idea what he meant, so I stopped thinking about it. Instead I waited, which is what the Nude Descending a Staircase does, contrary to one's expectation and which is exactly why it has always provoked such a peculiar critical response.