Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

Pancho's family lived in two rooms on the roof.

"Temporarily," explained Pancho, "until we save enough for a house around here."

I was formally introduced to his mother, Doña Panchita; his brother Moctezuma, nineteen, Catullian poet and union organizer; and his younger brother Norberto, fifteen, high school student.

One room served as dining and TV room during the day, and as Pancho, Moctezuma, and Norberto's bedroom at night. The other was a kind of giant closet or wardrobe, which held the refrigerator, the kitchen supplies (they brought the portable stove out into the hallway during the day and put it back in the room at night), and the mattress where Doña Panchita slept.

As we were starting to eat, we were joined by a guy called Luscious Skin, twenty-three, rooftop neighbor, who was introduced as a visceral realist poet. A little before I left (many hours later; the time passed in a flash), I asked him again what his name was and he said Luscious Skin so naturally and confidently (much more naturally and confidently than I would've said Juan García Madero) that for a minute I actually believed that somewhere amid the back alley and swamps of our Mexican Republic there was actually a family named Skin.

After lunch, Doña Panchita sat down to watch her favorite soap operas and Norberto began to study, his books spread out on the table. Pancho and Moctezuma washed the dishes in a sink from which there was a view of lots of the Parque de las Américas, and behind it the threatening hulks-looking as if they'd dropped from another planet, and an unlikely planet too-of the Medical Center, the Children's Hospital, the General Hospital.

"The good thing about living here, if you don't mind the close quarters," said Pancho, "is that you're close to everything, right in the heart of Mexico City."

Luscious Skin (called Skin, of course, by Pancho and his brother-and even Doña Panchita!) invited us to his room, where, he said, he had some marijuana left over from the last big party.

"No time like the present," said Moctezuma.

Unlike the two rooms occupied by the Rodríguezes, Luscious Skin's room was a model of bare austerity. I didn't see clothes strewn around, I didn't see household things, I didn't see books (Pancho and Moctezuma were poor, but where they lived I'd seen books in the most unexpected places, by Efraín Huerta, Augusto Monterroso, Julio Torri, Alfonso Reyes, the aforementioned Catullus in a translation by Ernesto Cardenal, Jaime Sabines, Max Aub, Andrés Henestrosa), just a thin mattress and a chair-no table-and a nice leather suitcase where he kept his clothes.

Luscious Skin lived alone, although from remarks that he and the Rodríguez brothers made, I gathered that not long ago a woman (and her son), both pretty tough, had lived there and taken off with most of the furniture when they left.

For a while we smoked marijuana and surveyed the landscape (which, as I've said, basically consisted of the silhouettes of the hospitals, endless rooftops like the one we were on, and a sky of low clouds moving swiftly toward the south), and then Pancho started to tell the story of his adventures that morning at the Fonts' house and his meeting with me.

I was questioned about what had happened, this time by all three of them, but they didn't manage to get anything out of me that I hadn't already told Pancho. At some point they started to talk about María. From what I could gather, it seemed as though Luscious Skin and María had been lovers. And that Luscious Skin was banned from the Fonts' house. I wanted to know why. They explained to me that Mrs. Font had walked in on Luscious Skin and María one night as they were screwing in the little house. There was a party going on in the big house, in honor of a Spanish writer who had just come to Mexico, and at a certain point during the party, Mrs. Font wanted to introduce her older daughter-María, that is-to the writer and couldn't find her. So she went looking for her, arm in arm with the Spanish writer. When they got to the little house it was dark and from inside they could hear a noise like blows: loud, rhythmic blows. Mrs. Font surely wasn't thinking (if she'd thought first, said Moctezuma, she would've taken the Spaniard back to the party and come back alone to see what was going on in her daughter's room), but as it was, she didn't think, and she turned on the light. There, to her horror, was María, at the other end of the little house, dressed only in a shirt, her pants down, sucking Luscious Skin's dick as he slapped her on the ass and the cunt.

"Really hard slaps," said Luscious Skin. "When they turned on the light I saw her ass and it was all red. I actually got scared."

"But why were you hitting her?" I said angrily, afraid I would blush.

"Isn't he an innocent. Because she asked for it," said Pancho.

"I find that hard to believe," I said.

"Stranger things have happened," said Luscious Skin.

"It's all because of that French girl Simone Darrieux," said Moctezuma. "I know for a fact that María and Angélica invited her to a feminist meeting and afterward they talked about sex."

"Who is this Simone?" I asked.

"A friend of Arturo Belano's."

"I went up to them. I was like, how's it going, girls, and the little sluts were talking about the Marquis de Sade," said Moctezuma.

The rest of the story was predictable. María's mother tried to say something, but nothing came out of her mouth. The Spaniard, who, according to Luscious Skin, turned visibly pale at the sight of María's raised and proffered backside, took Mrs. Font's arm with the solicitude reserved for the mentally ill and dragged her back to the party. In the sudden silence that fell over the little house, Luscious Skin could hear them talking in the courtyard, exchanging hurried words, as if the horny Spanish bastard were proposing something unsavory to poor Mrs. Font as she leaned there on the fountain. But then he heard their footsteps fade away in the direction of the big house and María said that they should keep going.

"That I really can't believe," I said.

"I swear on my mother," said Luscious Skin.

"After you were interrupted, María wanted to keep making love?"

"That's how she is," said Moctezuma.

"And how would you know?" I said, getting more worked up by the second.

"I've fucked her too," said Moctezuma. "She's the wildest girl in Mexico City, although I've never hit her, that's for sure; I don't like that weird stuff. But I know for a fact that she does."

"I didn't hit her, man, what happened was that María was obsessed with the Marquis de Sade and she wanted to try the spanking thing," said Luscious Skin.

"That's very María," said Pancho. "She takes her reading seriously."

"And did you keep fucking?" I asked. Or whispered, or howled, I can't remember, although I do remember that I took several long drags on the joint and that they had to ask me several times to pass it on, that it wasn't just for me.

"Yeah, we kept fucking, or anyway she kept sucking my dick and I kept slapping her but less and less hard, and somehow I wasn't so into it anymore. I think her mother showing up had gotten to me, even if it hadn't gotten to her, and it was like I didn't feel like fucking anymore, like I'd cooled off and now I just wanted to get out and maybe see what was going on at the party, I think some of the famous poets were there, the Spanish writer, Ana María Díaz and Mr. Díaz, Laura Damián's parents, the poets Álamo, Labarca, Berrocal, Artemio Sánchez, the actress América Lagos from TV, and also I was a little afraid that María's mother would show up again, but this time with the fucking architect and then I was really going to get it."

"Laura Damián's parents were there?" I asked.

"The casta diva's parents themselves," said Luscious Skin, "and other celebrities. Believe me, I notice these things. I'd seen them before through the window and said hello to Berrocal, the poet. I'd been to his workshop a few times, but I don't know whether he remembered me or what. I think I was hungry too, and just imagining the things they were eating in the other house was making me drool. I wouldn't have minded showing up there, with María of course, and digging in. I felt really beat, it must have been the blow job. But I honestly wasn't thinking about the blow job, you know? I wasn't thinking about María's lips, or her tongue wrapping around my dick, or her saliva, which by that point was trickling down the hair on my balls…"