Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

No one was at Café Quito and I didn't feel like sitting at a table and reading in the middle of the dreary bustle at that time of day. For a while I walked along Bucareli. I called María, who wasn't home, walked past the Encrucijada Veracruzana twice, went in the third time, and there, behind the bar, was Rosario.

I thought she wouldn't recognize me. Sometimes I don't even recognize myself! But Rosario looked at me and smiled, and after a while, once she had waited on a table of regulars, she came over.

"Have you written me my poem yet?" she said, sitting down beside me. Rosario has dark eyes, black, I'd say, and broad hips.

"More or less," I said, with an ever-so-slight feeling of triumph.

"All right, then, read it to me."

"My poems are meant to be read, not spoken," I said. I think José Emilio Pacheco claimed something similar recently.

"Exactly, so read it to me," said Rosario.

"What I mean is, it's better if you read it yourself."

"No, you'd better do it. If I read it myself, I probably won't understand it."

I chose one of my latest poems at random and read it to her.

"I don't understand it," said Rosario, "but thank you anyway."

For a second I waited for her to ask me back to the storage room. But Rosario wasn't Brígida, that much was immediately clear. Then I started to think about the abyss that separates the poet from the reader and the next thing I knew I was deeply depressed. Rosario, who had gone off to wait on other tables, came back to me.

"Have you written Brígida some poetry too?" she asked, gazing into my eyes, her thighs grazing the edge of the table.

"No, just you," I said.

"They told me what happened the other day."

"What happened the other day?" I asked, trying to seem distant. Pleasant, but distant.

"Poor Brígida has been crying over you," said Rosario.

"And why is that? Have you seen her crying?"

"We've all seen her. She's crazy about you, Mr. Poet. You must have some special thing with women."

I think I blushed, but at the same time I was flattered.

"It's nothing… special," I murmured. "Did she tell you anything?"

"She told me lots of things, do you want to know what she said?"

"All right," I said, although the truth is I wasn't very sure I wanted to hear Brígida's confidences. Almost immediately, I despised myself. Human beings are ungrateful, I said to myself, thoughtless and quick to forget.

"But not here," said Rosario. "In a little while I get an hour off. Do you know where the gringo's pizzeria is? Wait for me there."

I said I would, and I left the Encrucijada Veracruzana. Outside the day had turned cloudy and a strong wind was making people walk faster than usual or take shelter in the entrances to stores. When I passed Café Quito I glanced in and didn't see anyone I knew. For a minute I thought about calling María again, but I didn't.

The pizzeria was full and people were standing up to eat the slices that the gringo in person cut with a big chef's knife. I watched him for a while. I thought that the business must bring in good money and I was happy because the gringo seemed nice. He did everything himself: mix the dough, spread tomato sauce and mozzarella, put the pizzas in the oven, cut them, hand the slices to the customers who crowded around the counter, make more pizzas, and start all over again. Everything except take money and make change. That job was handled by a dark kid, maybe fifteen, with very short hair, who constantly consulted with the gringo in a low voice, as if he still didn't know the prices very well or wasn't good at math. After a while I noticed another odd detail. The gringo never let go of his big knife.

"Here I am," said Rosario, tugging on my sleeve.

She didn't look the same out on the street as she did at the Encrucijada Veracruzana. Outside, her face was less firm, her features more transparent, vaporous, as if on the street she were in danger of turning invisible.

"Let's walk a little way, then you can treat me to something, okay?"

We started to walk toward Reforma. Rosario took my arm the first time we crossed the street and didn't let go.

"I want to be like your mother," she said, "but don't get the wrong idea, I'm not a slut like that Brígida, I want to help you, be good to you, I want to be with you when you become famous, darling."

This woman must be crazy, I thought, but I didn't say anything. I just smiled.

Everything is getting complicated. Horrible things are happening. At night I wake up screaming. I dream about a woman with the head of a cow. Its eyes stare at me. With touching sadness, actually. On top of it all, I had a little "man-to-man" talk with my uncle. He made me swear that I wasn't doing drugs. No, I said, I don't do drugs, I swear. None at all? he said. What does that mean? I said. What do you mean what does that mean! he roared. Exactly what I say, what do you mean? Could you please be a little more precise, I said, shrinking like a snail. At night I called María. She wasn't there, but I talked to Angélica for a while. How are you? she said. Not very well, really, I said, in fact, pretty bad. Are you sick? said Angélica. No, nervous. I'm not very well either, said Angélica, I can hardly sleep. I would've liked to ask her more, one ex-virgin to another, but I didn't.

Horrible things keep happening, dreams, nightmares, impulses I indulge that are completely out of my control. It's like when I was fifteen and always masturbating. Three times a day, five times a day, nothing was enough! Rosario wants to marry me. I told her I didn't believe in marriage. Well, she said with a laugh, married or not, what I'm trying to say is that I NEED to live with you. Live together, I said, in the SAME house? Well, of course, in the same house, or in the same ROOM, if we don't have enough money to RENT a house. Or even in a cave, she said, I'm not PICKY. Her face shone, whether from sweat or pure faith in what she was saying I'm not sure. The first time we did it was at her place, a crummy tenement building way out in the Colonia Merced Bal-buena, near the Calzada de la Viga. The room was full of postcards of Veracruz and pictures of movie actors tacked to the walls.

"Is it your first time, papacito ?" Rosario asked me.

I said yes, I don't know why.

I drift from place to place like a piece of flotsam. Today I went to Catalina O'Hara's house without being invited and without calling first. It so happened that she was there. She'd just gotten home and her eyes were red, an unmistakable sign that she'd been crying. At first she didn't recognize me. I asked her why she was crying. Man trouble, she said. I had to bite my tongue not to say that if she needed someone I was there, ready and willing. We had some whiskey-I need it, said Catalina-and then we went to pick up her son at nursery school. Catalina drove like a maniac and I felt sick. On the way home, as I played with her son in the backseat, she asked whether I wanted to see her paintings. I said yes. In the end we finished half a bottle of whiskey and after Catalina put her son to bed she started to cry again. Don't go near her, I told myself, she's a MOTHER. Then I thought about graves, about fucking on a grave, about sleeping in a grave. Luckily, the painter she shares the house and studio with came in a few minutes later and the three of us started to make dinner together. Catalina's friend is separated, but evidently she handles it better. As we were eating she told jokes. Painter jokes. I'd never heard a woman tell such good jokes (unfortunately I can't remember a single one). Then, why I don't know, they started to talk about Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano. According to Catalina's friend, there was a poet who was six and a half feet tall and weighed more than two hundred pounds, the nephew of an administrator at UNAM, who was looking to beat them up. Knowing he was after them, they'd disappeared. But Catalina O'Hara didn't buy it; according to her, our friends were off looking for Cesárea Tinajero's lost papers, hidden in archives and used bookstores around Mexico City. I left at midnight, and when I was outside all of a sudden I had no idea where to go. I called María, prepared to tell her everything about Rosario (and while I was at it, about the affaire in the storage room with Brígida) and ask her to forgive me, but the telephone rang and rang and no one answered. The whole Font family had disappeared. So I set off south, toward Ulises Lima's rooftop. When I arrived, no one was there, so I ended up heading downtown again, toward Calle Bucareli. Once I got there, before I went to the Encrucijada Veracruzana, I looked in the window of Café Amarillo (Quito was closed). At one of the tables, I saw Pancho Rodríguez. He was alone with a half-drunk cup of coffee in front of him. He had a book on the table, one hand flat on the pages to hold it open, and his face was twisted in an expression of intense pain. From time to time he grimaced, making faces that were terrifying to see through the window. Either the book he was reading was having a wrenching effect on him, or he had a toothache. At one moment he raised his head and looked all around, as if he sensed that he was being watched. I hid. When I looked in the window again, Pancho was still reading and the expression of pain had disappeared from his face. Rosario and Brígida were working that night at the Encrucijada Veracruzana. Brígida came up to me first. In her face I detected bitterness and resentment, but also the suffering of the rejected. Honestly, I felt sorry for her! Everybody was suffering! I bought her a tequila and listened without flinching to everything she had to say to me. Then Rosario came over and said that she didn't like to see me standing at the bar writing, like an orphan. There's no free table, I said and went on writing. My poem is called "Everybody Suffers." I don't care if people stare.