Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

The next day, after breakfast, they let us go. The guard who spoke Spanish walked my good friend Ulises to the bus stop for the bus to Jerusalem. They talked. The guard told stories and my good friend Ulises listened, then Ulises told a story. The guard bought a lemon ice cream for Ulises and an orange ice cream for himself. Then he looked at me and asked me whether I wanted an ice cream too. Do you want an ice cream too, poor bastard? he asked. Chocolate, I said. When I had the ice cream in my hand I felt in my pockets for coins. I felt in my left-hand pockets with my left hand, and in my right-hand pockets with my right hand. I handed him a few coins. The Jew looked at them. The sun was melting the tip of his orange ice cream. I went back the way I'd come. I walked away from the bus stop. I walked away from the road and the desert café. It was a little farther to my rock. Quickly. Quickly. When I got there I leaned on my rock and took a breath. I looked for my maps and my drawings and I couldn't find anything. There was only the heat and the noise the scorpions make in their holes. Bzzzz . I dropped to the ground and kneeled. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. Or a bird. What could I do but watch? I hid among the rocks and listened for the sounds of Beersheba, but all I could hear was the sound of the air, a puff of hot dust that burned my face. And then I heard my good friend Ulises's voice calling me, Heimito, Heimito, where are you, Heimito? And I knew I couldn't hide. Not even if I wanted to. And I came out of the rocks, with my backpack in one hand, and I followed my good friend Ulises, who was calling me to the path that fate had determined for me. Villages. Vacant lots. Jerusalem. In Jerusalem I sent a telegram to Vienna asking for money. I demanded my money, my inheritance money. We begged. In front of hotels. In the places where tourists went. We slept in the street. Or in church doorways. We ate soup from the Armenian brothers, bread from the Palestinian brothers.

I told my good friend Ulises what I'd seen. About the Jews' diabolical plans. He said: sleep, Heimito. Then my money came. We bought two airplane tickets and then we didn't have any money left. That was all the money I had. Lies. I wrote a postcard from Tel Aviv and demanded it all. We flew. From up above I saw the sea. The surface of the sea is a trick, I thought. The only real mirage. Fata morgana, said my good friend Ulises. In Vienna it was raining. But we're not sugar cubes! We took a taxi to Landesgerichtsstrasse and Lichtenfelsgasse. When we got there I punched the taxi driver in the back of the neck and we walked away. First along the Josefstädter Strasse, quickly, then along the Strozzigasse, then the Zeltgasse, then the Piaristengasse, then Lerchenfelder Strasse, then Neubaugasse, then Siebensterngasse, to Stuckgasse, where I live. Then we walked up five floors. Quickly. But I didn't have the key. I had lost the key to my apartment in the Negev. Relax, Heimito, said my good friend Ulises, let's check your pockets. We checked them. One by one. Nothing. The backpack. Nothing. The clothes in the backpack. Nothing. My key, lost in the Negev. Then I remembered the spare key. There's a spare key, I said. What do you know, said my good friend Ulises. He was breathing hard. He was sprawled on the floor, his back against my door. I was kneeling. Then I got up and thought about the spare key and went to the window at the end of the hallway. Through the window there was a view of an inner courtyard of cement and the roofs of the Kirchengasse. I opened the window and the rain got my face wet. Outside, in a little hole, was the key. When I pulled my hand back there were wisps of cobweb on my fingers.

We lived in Vienna. It rained a little more each day. The first two days we didn't leave the apartment. I went out. But not much. Only to buy bread and coffee. My good friend Ulises stayed in his sleeping bag, reading or looking out the window. We ate bread. It was all we ate. I was hungry. On the third night, my good friend Ulises got up, washed his face, combed his hair, and we went out. In front of the Figarohaus I went up to a man and hit him in the face. My good friend Ulises searched his pockets as I held him. Then we went off along Graben and lost ourselves on small, busy streets. In a bar on the Gonzagagasse, my good friend Ulises wanted a beer. I ordered an orange Fanta and made a phone call from the phone booth at the bar, asking for my money, the money that is legally mine. Then we went to see my friends on the Aspern Bridge, but no one was there and we walked home.

The next day we bought sausages and ham and pâté and more bread. We went out every day. We took the subway. In the Rossauer Lände station I ran into Udo Möller. He was having a beer and he looked at me like I was a scorpion. Who is this, he said, pointing to my good friend Ulises. He's a friend, I said. Where did you find him? said Udo Möller. In Beersheba, I said. We took one train to Heiligenstadt and then we took the Schnellbahn to Hernals. Is he Jewish? said Udo Möller. He isn't Jewish, he's not circumcised, I said. We walked in the rain. We were walking to the garage of some guy called Rudi. Udo Möller talked to me in German, but he never took his eyes off my good friend Ulises. It struck me that we were walking into a trap and I stopped. Only then did I see clearly that they wanted to kill my good friend Ulises. And I stopped. I said that I had just realized we had things to do. What things? said Udo Möller. Things, I said. Shopping. We're almost there, said Udo Möller. No, I said, we have things to do. It will just be a minute, said Udo Möller. No! I said. The rain was running down my nose and into my eyes. With the tip of my tongue I licked the rain and said no. Then I turned around and told my good friend Ulises to follow me and Udo Möller started to follow us. Come on, we're almost there, come with me, Heimito, it'll just be a minute. No!

That week we pawned the television and a clock that used to belong to my mother. We took the subway at Neubaugasse, walked along Stephansplatz, and went out on Vorgartenstrasse or the Donauinsel. We spent hours watching the river. The surface of the river. Sometimes we saw cardboard boxes floating on the water. Which brought back terrible memories for me. Sometimes we got off the train in Praterstern and walked around the station. We followed people. We never did anything. It's too dangerous, said my good friend Ulises, it isn't worth the risk. We were hungry. There were days when we didn't leave the house. I did push-ups: ten, twenty, thirty. My good friend Ulises watched, still in his sleeping bag, a book in his hands. But mostly I looked out the window. The gray sky. And sometimes I looked toward Israel. One night, as I was drawing in my notebook, my good friend Ulises asked me: what were you doing in Israel, Heimito? I told him. Searching, searching. The word searching alongside the house and the elephant that I had drawn. And what were you doing, my good friend Ulises? Nothing, he said.

When it stopped raining we went out again. We found a man in the Stadtpark station and followed him. On the Johannesgasse, my good friend Ulises grabbed his arm and as the man looked to see who was grabbing him I slammed my fist into the back of his neck. Sometimes we would go to the Neubaugasse post office, close to home, so my good friend Ulises could mail his letters. On the way back we would pass the Rembrandt Theater and my good friend Ulises could spend five minutes looking at it. Sometimes I would leave him in front of the theater and go make phone calls from a bar! The same answer! They wouldn't give me my money! When I came back my good friend Ulises would be there, looking at the Rembrandt Theater. Then I would sigh in relief and we would go home to eat. Once we ran into three of my friends. We were walking along the Franz-Josefs-Kai toward Julius-Raab-Platz, and all of a sudden, there they were. As if they had been invisible up until then. Trackers. Beaters. They said hello to me. They said my name. One of them stepped in front of me. Gunther, the strongest one. Another one moved to my left. Another moved to my good friend Ulises's right. We couldn't walk. We could turn around and run, but we couldn't move forward. It's been a long time, Heimito, said Gunther. It's been a long time, Heimito, they all said. No! We don't have time. But there was nowhere for us to run.