Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

"What did I know?"

"That it was somebody else, not Angélica," said Ulises.

"No I didn't," I said.

"Unconsciously you did," said Arturo.

"But who was it, then?"

Arturo and Ulises laughed.

"There's actually a simple answer, and it's funny too."

"Stop torturing me, then, and tell me what it is," I said.

"Think a little," said Arturo. "Come on, use your head. Was it Angélica? Clearly not. Was it María? Even less likely. Who's left? The maid, but she isn't there at the time of day you called, and anyway you'd already talked to her and you would've recognized her voice, right?"

"Right," I said. "It definitely wasn't the maid."

"Who's left?" said Ulises.

"María's mother and Jorgito."

"I don't think it was Jorgito, was it?"

"No, it couldn't have been Jorgito," I admitted.

"And can you see María Cristina putting on an act like that?"

"Is María's mother called María Cristina?"

"That's her name," said Ulises.

"No, I really can't, but who was it, then? There's no one left."

"Someone crazy enough to imitate Angélica's voice," said Arturo, and he looked at me. "The only person in the house who would pull a weird stunt like that."

I looked from one to the other as gradually the answer began to take shape in my mind.

"Warm, warmer…" said Ulises.

"Quim," I said.

"Who else," said Arturo.

"That son of a bitch!"

Later I remembered the story about the deaf-mute that Quim had told me and I thought about child abusers who had themselves once been abused as children. Although now that I write it, the cause-and-effect relationship between the deaf-mute and Quim's personality shift doesn't seem so clear. Then I went storming out into the street and wasted coin after coin on futile calls to María's house. I talked to her mother, the maid, Jorgito, and, very late that night, Angélica (this time it was the real Angélica), but María was never there and Quim would never come to the phone.

For a while, Belano and Ulises Lima kept me company. I gave them my poems to read while I made the first phone calls. They said the poems weren't bad. The purge of visceral realism is just a joke, said Ulises. But do the people who were purged know it's a joke? Of course not, it wouldn't be funny if they did, said Arturo. So no one is expelled? Of course not. And what have you two been doing all this time? Nothing, said Ulises.

"There's some asshole who wants to beat us up," they admitted later.

"But there are two of you and only one of him."

"But we aren't violent, García Madero," said Ulises. "At least, I'm not, and neither is Arturo, anymore."

Between phone calls to the Fonts', I spent the evening with Jacinto Requena and Rafael Barrios at Café Quito. I told them what Belano and Ulises had told me. They must be finding things out about Cesárea Tinajero, they said.

No one gives the visceral realists ANYTHING. Not scholarships or space in their magazines or invitations to book parties or readings.

Belano and Lima are like two ghosts.

If simón is slang for yes and nel means no, then what does simonel mean?

I don't feel very good today.

Don Crispín Zamora doesn't like to talk about the Spanish Civil War. So I asked him why he'd given his bookstore a military-sounding name. He confessed that he hadn't come up with the name himself. It was the previous owner, a Republican colonel who had covered himself in glory in the battle in question. I detected a hint of irony in Don Crispín's words. At his request, I talked to him about visceral realism. After he'd made a few observations like "realism is never visceral," "the visceral belongs to the oneiric world," etc., which I found rather disconcerting, he theorized that we underprivileged youth were left with no alternative but the literary avant-garde. I asked him what exactly he meant by underprivileged. I'm hardly underprivileged. At least not by Mexico City standards. But then I thought about the tenement room Rosario was sharing with me and I wasn't so sure he was wrong. The problem with literature, like life, said Don Crispín, is that in the end people always turn into bastards. By now, I had the impression that Don Crispín was talking just for the sake of talking. The whole time I was sitting in a chair while he kept scurrying around moving books from one place to another or dusting stacks of magazines. At a certain moment, however, he turned around and asked how much it would cost him to sleep with me. I've noticed you're short on cash, which is the only reason I'd venture to propose such a thing. I was stunned.

"You're making a mistake, Don Crispín," I said.

"Don't take it the wrong way, my boy. I know I'm old and that's why I'm suggesting a transaction. Call it a reward."

"Are you homosexual, Don Crispín?"

The word was scarcely out of my mouth before I realized how stupid it was and I blushed. I didn't wait for him to answer. Did you think I was homosexual? Aren't you? asked Don Crispín.

" Ay, ay, ay , I've really put my foot in it. Forgive me, my boy, for heaven's sake," said Don Crispín, and he started to laugh.

I stopped wanting to go running out of the Batalla del Ebro, which had been my first reaction. Don Crispín asked me to give up my chair because he was laughing so hard he was afraid he might have a heart attack. When he had calmed down, still apologizing profusely, he asked me to understand that he was a timid homosexual (never mind my age, Juanito!) and that he was out of practice in the art of hooking up, always difficult even when it wasn't downright mysterious. You must think I'm an ass, and rightly so, he said. Then he confessed that it had been at least five years since he'd slept with anyone. Before I left, he insisted on giving me the Porrúa edition of the complete works of Sophocles and Aeschylus to make up for bothering me. I told him that I hadn't been bothered at all, but it would have seemed rude not to accept his gift. Life is shit.

I'm sick for real. Rosario is making me stay in bed. Before she left for work she went out to borrow a thermos from a neighbor and she left me half a liter of coffee. Also four aspirin. I have a fever. I've started and finished two poems.

Today a doctor came to see me. He looked at the room, looked at my books, and then took my blood pressure and felt different parts of my body. Afterward he went to talk to Rosario in a corner, in whispers, stressing his words with the emphatic motion of his shoulders. When he left I asked Rosario how she could have called a doctor without consulting me first. How much did you spend? I said. That doesn't matter, papacito . You're the only thing that matters.

This afternoon I was shivering with fever when the door opened and my aunt and then my uncle came in, followed by Rosario. I thought I was hallucinating. My aunt threw herself on the bed, covering me with kisses. My uncle stood stoically by, waiting until my aunt had unburdened herself, and then he clapped me on the shoulder. The threats, scolding, and advice followed soon after. Basically, they wanted me to come straight home, or if not, then go to the hospital, where they intended to have me undergo a thorough examination. I refused. In the end there were threats and when they left I was laughing hysterically and Rosario was sobbing.

First thing in the morning, Requena, Xóchitl, Rafael Barrios, and Barbara Patterson came to visit me. I asked them who had given them my address. Ulises and Arturo, they said. So they've appeared, I said. They've appeared and disappeared again, said Xóchitl. They're finishing work on an anthology of young Mexican poets, said Barrios. Requena laughed. It wasn't true, according to him. Too bad: for a moment I had hoped that they'd include some poems of mine. What they're doing is getting the money together to go to Europe, said Requena. Getting it together how? Selling pot left and right, how else, said Requena. The other day I saw them on Reforma with a backpack full of Acapulco Gold. I can't believe it, I said (but I remembered that the last time I'd seen them they had, in fact, been carrying a backpack). They gave me a little, said Jacinto, and he pulled out some weed. Xóchitl said that it wasn't good for me to smoke in my condition. I told her not to worry, that I was already feeling much better. You're the one who shouldn't smoke, said Jacinto, unless you want our baby to turn out retarded. Xóchitl said that there was no reason marijuana should hurt the fetus. Don't smoke, Xóchitl, said Requena. What hurts the fetus is bad vibes, said Xóchitl, bad food, alcohol, abuse of the mother, not marijuana. Don't smoke anyway, said Requena, just in case. Let her smoke if she wants, said Barbara Patterson. Fucking gringa, don't butt in, said Barrios. Once you've given birth, you can do whatever you want, but for now you'll have to go without, said Requena. While we smoked, Xóchitl went to sit in a corner of the room, next to some cardboard boxes where Rosario keeps the clothes she isn't wearing. Arturo and Ulises aren't saving money, she said (although they are setting a little aside, why deny it), they're putting the final touches on something that's going to blow everybody's minds. We looked at her, waiting to hear more. But Xóchitl was silent.