Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

For a while all I heard was the noise Arturo made as he drank his tea, muffled sounds from the street, the elevator going up and down a few times. And suddenly, when I wasn't thinking or hearing anything anymore, I heard him repeat that a critic was going to trounce him. It doesn't really matter, I said. It's a hazard of the trade. It does matter, he said. It's never mattered to you before, I said. Now it does matter to me, he said, I must be getting bourgeois. Then he explained that there were similarities between his last book and his new book that fell into the realm of games that were impossible to decipher. I had read his last book and liked it, and I didn't have any idea what his new book was about, so I didn't have anything to say. All I could ask was: what kind of similarities? Games, Guillem, he said. Games. The fucking Nude Descending a Staircase , your fucking fake Picabias, games. So what's the problem? I said. The problem, he said, is that the critic, a guy named Iñaki Echevarne, is a shark. Is he a bad critic? I said. No, he's a good critic, he said, or at least he isn't a bad critic, but he's a fucking shark. And how do you know that he's going to review your new book when it isn't even in bookstores yet? Because the other day, he said, while I was at the publishing house, he called the head of publicity and asked for my last novel. So? I said. So I was sitting there, across from the head of publicity, and she said hello, Iñaki, what a coincidence, Arturo Belano is right here across from me, and that bastard Echevarne didn't say anything. What was he supposed to say? Hello, at least, said Arturo. And since he didn't say anything, you've decided that he's going to tear you apart? I said. Besides, what if he does tear you apart? It doesn't matter! Look, said Arturo, Echevarne fought recently with Aurelio Baca, the Cato of Spanish letters, do you know him? I haven't read him but I know who he is, I said. It was all because of a review Echevarne had written of a book by one of Baca's friends. I don't know whether the criticism was justified or not. I haven't read the book. All I know for sure is that this novelist had Baca to defend him. And Baca's attack on the critic was the kind of thing that brings a person to tears. But I don't have any self-righteous strongman to defend me, absolutely no one, so Echevarne can do whatever he wants to me. Not even Aurelio Baca could defend me, because I make fun of him in my book, not the one that's about to come out but the last one, although I doubt he's ever read me. You make fun of Baca? I made fun of him a little, said Arturo, although I doubt he or anyone else would ever notice. That rules out Baca as a champion, I admitted, thinking that I too had overlooked the passage that was worrying my friend. That's right, said Arturo. Well, let Echevarne lay into you, I said. Who cares? None of this matters. Of all people you should know that. We're all going to die, think about the hereafter. But Echevarne must feel like taking it out on someone, said Arturo. Is he really that bad? I said. No, no, he's very good, said Arturo. Well then? It has nothing to do with that, it's about exercising the muscles, said Arturo. The muscles of the brain? I said. Some kind of muscles, and I'm going to be the punching bag Echevarne trains on for his second or eighth round with Baca, said Arturo. I see, this is an old fight, I said. So what do you have to do with all of it? Nothing, I'm just going to be the punching bag, said Arturo. For a while we sat there without saying anything, thinking, as the elevator went up and down and the noise it made was like the sound of all the years we hadn't seen each other. I'm going to challenge him to a duel, said Arturo at last. Do you want to be my second? That's what he said. I felt as if someone had given me a shot in the arm. First the pinprick, then the liquid going not into my veins but my muscles, an icy liquid that made me shiver. The proposition seemed crazy and unwarranted. You don't challenge a man for something he hasn't done yet, I thought. But then I thought that life (or the specter of life) is constantly challenging us for acts we've never committed, and sometimes for acts we never even thought of committing. My answer was yes and immediately afterward I thought that maybe in the hereafter Nude Descending a Staircase or The Large Glass really does exist or will exist. And then I thought: what if the review is good? What if Echevarne likes Arturo's novel? Wouldn't it be unfair then, gratuitous, to challenge him to a duel?

Little by little, various questions began to come to mind, but I decided that it wasn't the moment to be sensible. There's a time for everything. The first thing we discussed was the choice of weapon. I suggested balloons filled with red dye. Or a battle of exaggerated sombrero doffing. Arturo insisted that it had to be with sabers. To first blood? I proposed. Grudgingly, although deep down probably in relief, Arturo accepted my suggestion. Then we went looking for the sabers.

My original plan was to buy them in one of those tourist stores that sell everything from blades made in Toledo to samurai swords, but informed of our intentions, my friend said that her late father had left a pair of swords, so we went to look at them and they turned out to be real ones. After giving them a good polish, we decided to use them. Then we looked for the perfect place. I suggested the Parque de la Ciudadela, at midnight, but Arturo preferred a nudist beach halfway between Barcelona and the town where he lived. Then we got Iñaki Echevarne's telephone number and called him. It took us a long time to convince him that it wasn't a joke. Arturo spoke to him three times all together. Finally Iñaki Echevarne said that he agreed and that we should let him know the date and time. The afternoon of the duel we ate at a snack bar in Sant Pol de Mar. Fried cuttlefish and shrimp. My friend (who had come this far with us but wasn't planning to attend the duel), Arturo, and me. The meal, I have to say, was a little gloomy, and while we were eating Arturo pulled out a plane ticket and showed it to us. I thought it would be to Chile or Mexico and that Arturo was, in some sense, bidding farewell to Catalonia and Europe. But the ticket was for a flight to Dar es Salaam with stopovers in Rome and Cairo. Then I realized that my friend had gone completely insane and that if the critic Echevarne didn't kill him with a whack on the head he would be eaten by the black or red ants of Africa.

Jaume Planells, Bar Salambó, Calle Torrijos, Barcelona, June 1994. One morning my friend and colleague Iñaki Echevarne called me and said he needed a second for a duel. I was a little hungover, so at first I didn't understand what Iñaki was saying, and anyway he hardly ever calls me, especially at that time of day. Then, when he explained, I thought he was kidding and I went along with him, people are always kidding me, but I don't mind, and anyway Iñaki is a little strange, strange but attractive, the kind of guy women think is really handsome and men think is nice, if slightly intimidating, and whom they secretly admire. Not long ago he'd had a feud with the great Madrid novelist Aurelio Baca, and even though Baca thundered and stormed, hurling abuse at him, Iñaki managed to emerge unscathed from the exchange of hostilities, coming out even with Baca, you might say.

The funny thing is that Iñaki hadn't criticized Baca but a friend of Baca's, so you can only imagine what would've happened if he'd gone after the great man himself. As far as I could tell, the problem was that Baca was a writer on the model of Unamuno, there being no lack of them nowadays, who would launch into some lecture full of cheap moralizing whenever he got the chance, the typical preachy, irate Spanish lecture, and Iñaki was the typical provocative, kamikaze critic who liked making enemies and who had a habit of leaping in with both feet. It was a matter of time before they clashed. Or at least Baca had to clash with Echevarne, call him to order, give him a slap on the wrist, something like that. Underneath, they both fell somewhere along the increasingly vague spectrum we call the left.