Roberto Bolaño: The Savage Detectives

"Do you feel it?" she said.

"What?"

"My heart, you idiot, can't you feel it beating?"

With my fingertips I explored as much territory as I could: Brígida's linen blouse and her breasts, framed by a bra that seemed too small to contain them. But no trace of a heartbeat.

"I don't feel anything," I said with a smile.

"My heart, bonehead, can't you hear it beating, can't you feel it slowly breaking?"

"I'm sorry, I can't hear anything."

"How do you expect to hear anything with your hand, lamebrain, I'm just asking whether you feel it. Don't your fingers feel anything?"

"Honestly… no."

"Your hand is icy," said Brígida. "Such pretty fingers. It's obvious you've never had to work."

I felt watched, scrutinized, bored into. The grisly drunks at the bar had taken an interest in Brígida's last remark. Preferring not to confront them just yet, I announced that she was wrong, that of course I had to work to pay my tuition. Now Brígida was gripping my hand as if she were about to read my palm. That interested me, and I forgot about the potential spectators.

"Don't be cagey," she said. "You don't have to lie to me, I know you. You're rich and spoiled, but you're very ambitious. And lucky. You'll go as far as you want to go. Although here I see that you'll lose your way several times, and it'll be your own fault, because you don't know what you want. You need a girl to stand by you in good times and bad. Am I wrong?"

"No, that's perfect, keep going, keep going."

"Not here," said Brígida. "There's no reason these nosy bastards should hear your fortune, is there?"

For the first time I dared to take a good look around. Four or five grisly drunks were still hanging on Brígida's words, one of them even staring at my hand with unnatural intensity, as if it were his own. I smiled at all of them, not wanting to upset them, trying to let them know this had nothing to do with me. Brígida pinched the back of my hand. Her eyes were burning, as if she were about to start a fight or burst into tears.

"We can't talk here, follow me."

I watched her whisper to one of the waitresses, then she beckoned to me. The Encrucijada Veracruzana was full, and a cloud of smoke and the music of the blind man's accordion rose over the heads of the regulars. I looked at the clock. It was almost twelve; time is flying, I thought.

I followed her.

We went into a kind of long, narrow storage room piled with cartons of bottles and cleaning supplies for the bar (detergent, brooms, bleach, a squeegee, a collection of rubber gloves). At the back stood a table and two chairs. Brígida motioned me toward one of them. I sat down. The table was round and its surface was covered with gouges and names, mainly illegible. The waitress remained standing, less than an inch from me, watchful as a goddess or a bird of prey. Maybe she was waiting for me to ask her to sit. Touched by her shyness, I did. To my surprise, she proceeded to sit on my lap. The situation was uncomfortable and yet in a few seconds I realized with horror that my instincts, taking leave of my mind, my soul, and even my most shameful wishes, were stiffening my dick to the point that it was impossible to hide. Brígida surely noticed the state I was in, because she got up and, after studying me again from above, offered me a blow job.

"What…" I said.

"A blow job, do you want me to give you a blow job?"

I looked at her blankly, although the truth, like a lone and flagging swimmer, was gradually making some headway in the black sea of my ignorance. She stared back at me. Her eyes were hard and flat. And there was something about her that distinguished her from every other human being I'd known up until then: she always (wherever you were, whatever the circumstances, no matter what was happening) looked you straight in the eye. Brígida's gaze, I decided then, could be unbearable.

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"Baby, I'm talking about sucking your dick."

I didn't have time to reply, which was probably all for the best. Without taking her eyes off me, Brígida kneeled down, unzipped my pants, and took my cock in her mouth. First the head, which she nibbled, the bites no less disturbing for being light, and then, showing no signs of choking, the whole penis. At the same time, she ran her right hand over my lower abdomen, stomach, and chest, slapping me hard at regular intervals and giving me bruises I still have. The pain probably helped make the pleasure I felt even more exquisite, but it also prevented me from coming. Every so often, Brígida would lift her eyes from her work, although without releasing my member, and search for my eyes. Then I would close my own and mentally recite random lines from the poem "The Vampire," which later, when I reviewed the incident, turned out not to be lines from "The Vampire" at all, but an unholy mixture of poetry from different sources, my uncle's pronouncements, childhood memories, the faces of actresses I loved in puberty (Angélica María's face in black and white, for example), a whirlwind of spinning scenes. At first I tried to shield myself from the slaps, but once I realized that my efforts were futile, my hands went to Brígida's hair (dyed a light chestnut color and not very clean, as I discovered) and her ears, which were small and fleshy but almost unnaturally tough, as if they weren't made of flesh and blood at all, only cartilage or plastic, or no: barely tempered metal, from which hung two big fake silver hoops.

When the end was near, and in order not to cry out I had raised my fists and was shaking them at some invisible being slithering along the walls of the storage room, the door opened suddenly (but silently), and a waitress's head appeared, a terse warning issuing from her lips:

"Look out!"

Brígida immediately abandoned her task. She got up, looked me in the eyes with an expression of great suffering, and then, pulling me by the jacket, led me to a door I hadn't noticed before.

"See you next time, baby," she said, her voice much throatier than usual, as she pushed me through the door.

Suddenly, I found myself in the toilets of the Encrucijada Vera-cruzana, a long, gloomy, rectangular room. I stumbled around a little, still dazed by how quickly things had just happened. It smelled like disinfectant and the floor was wet, and partly flooded. The lighting was dim to nonexistent. Between two chipped sinks, I saw a mirror, and glancing sideways at myself, I caught an image in the mercury that made my hair stand on end. In silence, and trying not to splash in the rivulet that I'd just noticed trickling from one of the stalls, I turned back to the mirror, drawn by curiosity. The mirror revealed a cuneiform face, dark red and beaded with sweat. I sprang backward and almost fell. There was someone in one of the toilets. I heard him mutter, swear. One of the regulars, I assumed. Then someone called me by my name:

"Poet García Madero."

I saw two shadows next to the urinals. They were enveloped in a cloud of smoke. Two queers, I thought. Two queers who know my name?

"Poet García Madero. Come closer, man."

Although logic and prudence urged me to find the door and leave the Encrucijada without further delay, what I did was take two steps toward the smoke. Two pairs of bright eyes were watching me, like the eyes of wolves in a gale (poetic license: I've never seen a wolf; I have seen gales, though, and they didn't really go with the mantle of smoke that enveloped the two strangers). I heard them laugh. Hee hee hee. There was a smell of marijuana. I relaxed.

"Poet García Madero, your thing is hanging out."

"What?"

"Hee hee hee."

"Your penis… It's hanging out."

I patted my fly. It was true. I'd been so flustered I really had forgotten to tuck myself back in. I blushed, and thought about telling them to go fuck themselves, but I contained myself, fixed my pants, and took a step in their direction. They looked familiar, and I tried to pierce the surrounding darkness and decipher their faces. No luck.