Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

Felipe Müller, Bar Céntrico, Calle Tallers, Barcelona, May 1977. Arturo Belano stayed with his mother when he came to Barcelona. His mother had been living here for a few years. She was sick. She had hyperthyroidism, and she'd lost so much weight that she looked like a walking skeleton.

I was living at my brother's house at the time, on Calle Junta de Comercio, which was full of Chileans. Arturo's mother was living here on Tallers, where I live now, in this same place with no shower and the crapper in the hall. When I got to Barcelona I brought her a book of poetry that Arturo had published in Mexico. She looked at it and murmured something, I don't know what, something that made no sense. She wasn't well. Because of the hyperthyroidism she was constantly running back and forth in a fever and she cried a lot. Her eyes seemed to bulge out of their sockets. Her hands shook. Sometimes she had asthma attacks, but she smoked a pack a day. She smoked black tobacco, like Carmen, Arturo's younger sister, who lived with her mother but spent almost all day out. Carmen worked at Telefónica, cleaning, and she was dating an Andalusian who belonged to the Communist Party. Carmen was a Trotskyite when I met her in Mexico and she still was, but she was dating the Andalusian anyway-an Andalusian who was, if not a committed Stalinist, then very much a committed Brezhnevist, which under the circumstances was essentially the same thing. In any case, he was a bitter enemy of the Trotskyites, so things between them must have stayed pretty lively.

In my letters to Arturo I explained all of this. I told him that his mother wasn't well. I told him that she was wasting away, that she had no money, that this city was killing her. Sometimes I pestered him because I didn't know what else to do, telling him that he had to help her somehow, either send money or bring her back to Mexico. Sometimes Arturo's replies were the kind of thing you don't know whether to take seriously or not. Once he wrote: "Tell them to hang in there. I'll be there soon to take care of everything. But for now they have to hang in there." Such gall. My reply was that she (singular) couldn't hang in there. His sister was perfectly fine, as far as I could tell, although she fought with her mother every day, but unless he did something about his mother right away he would lose the woman who'd brought him into this world. Around that time I'd loaned Arturo's mother all the money I had left, about two hundred dollars, the remainder of a poetry prize I'd won in Mexico in 1975, which was how I bought my ticket to Barcelona in the first place. I didn't tell him that, of course. Although I think his mother did. She wrote him a letter every three days: I guess it was the hyperthyroidism. Anyway, the two hundred dollars was enough to pay her rent, but that was pretty much it. One day I got a letter from Jacinto Requena saying, among other things, that Arturo didn't read his mother's letters. That dumb jerk Requena meant it as a joke, but that was the last straw and I wrote Arturo a letter with nothing in it about literature and plenty about money matters, health, and family problems. I heard back from him right away (say what you like about Arturo, but he never lets a letter go unanswered) and he wrote that he'd already sent his mother money and that he was about to do something even better, he was going to get her a job, because his mother's problem was that she'd always worked and it was fucking her up to feel useless. I wanted to tell him unemployment was high in Barcelona and besides his mother was in no shape to work, if she showed up for a job she would probably frighten her bosses because she was so thin, so horribly thin that she looked more like an Auschwitz survivor than anything else, but I didn't. I decided to give him a break, give myself a break, and talk to him about poetry: Leopoldo María Panero, Félix de Azúa, Gimferrer, Martínez Sarrión, poets he and I liked, and Carlos Edmundo de Ory, the creator of postism, with whom I had recently begun to correspond.

One afternoon Arturo's mother came to my brother's house looking for me. She said that her son had sent her the most complicated letter. She showed it to me. Inside the envelope was Arturo's letter and a letter of introduction to the Catalan novelist Juan Marsé, written by the Ecuadorian novelist Vargas Pardo. What his mother had to do, Arturo explained in the letter, was go to Juan Marsé's house, near the Sagrada Familia, and give Marsé Vargas Pardo's introduction. The introduction was on the brief side. The first few lines were a greeting to Marsé, mentioning (in a confused way) what seemed to have been a festive incident on a street near Plaza Garibaldi. Then came a rather cursory introduction of Arturo, and then, immediately, the really important part: the plight of the poet's mother, the request that Marsé do whatever was in his power to find her a job. We're going to meet Juan Marsé! said Arturo's mother. You could see she was happy and proud of what her son had done. I had my doubts. She wanted me to go with her to visit Marsé. If I go alone, she said, I'll be too nervous and I won't know what to say, but you're a writer and if things go wrong you can help me out.

I wasn't thrilled by the idea, but I agreed to go with her. One afternoon we went. Arturo's mother fixed herself up a little more than usual, but she was still in terrible shape. We got on the subway at Plaza Catalonia and got off at the Sagrada Familia. Just before we arrived she felt an asthma attack coming on and had to use her inhaler. Juan Marsé himself came to the door. We greeted him and Arturo's mother explained what she wanted. She made a mess of it, talking about "needs" and "crises" and "socially engaged poetry" and "Chile" and "illness" and "regrettable situations." I thought she'd lost it. Juan Marsé looked at the envelope she was holding out and let us in. Would you like something to drink? he said. No, very kind of you, said Arturo's mother. No, thank you, I said. Then Marsé began to read Vargas Pardo's letter and asked us whether we knew him. He's a friend of my son's, said Arturo's mother. I think he was at my house once, but no, I never met him. I said I didn't know him either. An excellent person, Vargas Pardo, murmured Marsé. And has it been a long time since you lived in Chile? he asked Arturo's mother. Many, many years, yes, so many I can hardly recall. Then Arturo's mother started to talk about Chile and Mexico and Marsé started to talk about Mexico and I don't know when it happened but suddenly they were tú -ing each other, laughing. I was laughing too. Marsé probably told some kind of joke. As it happens, he said, I know of a person who has something that might interest you. It isn't a job but a scholarship, a scholarship to study special education. Special education? said Arturo's mother. Well, said Marsé, I think that's what it's called. It has to do with teaching the mentally disabled, or children with Down syndrome. Oh, I'd love that, said Arturo's mother. After a while we left. Call me tomorrow, said Marsé from the door.

On the trip back we couldn't stop laughing. Arturo's mother thought Juan Marsé was handsome, with beautiful eyes, a wonderful man, and so nice and forthright. It had been a long time since I saw her so happy. The next day she called him and Marsé gave her the number of the woman who handled the scholarships. A week later, Arturo's mother was studying to teach the mentally disabled, autistic children, people with Down syndrome, at a school in Barcelona, where she worked as a student teacher while she studied. The scholarship was for three years, renewable from year to year depending on her grades. A little while later she went into the hospital to get her thyroid treated. At first we thought she would have to have an operation, but she didn't. So when Arturo got to Barcelona his mother was much better. The scholarship wasn't lavish but she could get by, and she even had the money to buy all kinds of chocolate, because she knew Arturo liked chocolate, and European chocolate, as everybody knows, is infinitely better than the chocolate you get in Mexico.