Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

Around then I'd gotten my job as a cashier at a Gigante, thanks to my father, who'd talked to a friend who had a friend who was the manager of the Gigante in Colonia San Rafael. And María was working as a secretary at one of the offices of the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes. During the day, Franz would go to school and a fifteen-year-old girl who made her spending money that way would go pick him up for me and take him to a park or watch him at home till I got back from work. At night, after dinner, María would come down to my room or I'd go upstairs and read her the poems I'd written that day, at Gigante or while I was heating up Franz's dinner, or the night before, while I watched Franz sleep. The television had been a bad habit of mine when I lived with Jacinto. Now I only turned it on when there was big news and I wanted to find out what was going on, and sometimes not even then. What I did, as I was saying, was sit at the table, which had been moved and was over by the window now, and start to read and write poems until my eyes closed, I was so sleepy. I would rewrite my poems as many as ten or fifteen times. When I saw Jacinto, he would read them and give me his opinion, but my real reader was María. Finally I would type them up and put them in a folder that kept growing day by day, to my satisfaction and delight, since it was like concrete proof that my struggle wasn't in vain.

After Jacinto left it was a long time before I slept with another man, and my only passion, besides Franz, was poetry. The complete opposite of María, who had stopped writing and brought home a new lover each week. I met three or four of them. Sometimes I'd say: what do you see in that guy, mana , he's not right for you, if worse comes to worst, he'll end up hitting you, but María said that she knew how to handle things, and the truth is she did, although more than once I was so scared by the shouting I had to go running up to her room and tell her lover that he'd better leave right away or I'd call my father, who was in the secret police, and then he'd really be sorry. Fucking police sluts, I remember one of them shouted at us from the middle of the street, and María and I both burst out laughing on the other side of the glass. But most of the time she didn't have serious problems. The poetry problem was different. Why don't you write anymore, mana ? I asked her once and she answered that she didn't feel like it, that was all, she just didn't feel like it.

Luis Sebastián Rosado, a dark study, Calle Cravioto, Colonia Coyoacán, Mexico City DF, February 1984. One morning, Albertito Moore called me at work and told me that he'd had the worst night of his life. At first I thought he was talking about some wild party, but then he stammered, he hesitated, and I heard something else underneath the words he was saying. What's going on? I said. I had a terrible night, said Albertito, you can't imagine. For a moment I thought he was going to cry, but suddenly, before he said anything, I realized that I'd be the one who cried, that inevitably it would be me who cried. What's going on? I said. Your friend, said Albertito, got Julita in trouble. Luscious Skin, I said. That's right, said Albertito, I didn't know. What's going on? I said. I was up all night, Julita was up all night, she called me at ten last night, the police were at her apartment and she didn't want our parents to know, said Albertito. What's going on? I said. This country is a fucking mess, said Albertito. The police don't do what they're supposed to do and neither do the hospitals or the morgues or the funeral homes. That guy had Julita's address and the police had the nerve to question her for more than three hours. What's going on? I said. And worst of all, said Albertito, is that then Julita wanted to go see him, she went crazy, and the goddamn policemen, who at first had wanted to arrest her, told her that they could give her a ride to the morgue themselves, they probably would have raped her in some dark alley, but Julita was beside herself and she wouldn't listen to reason and she was about to head out when I put my foot down, me and the lawyer I'd brought with me (you know Sergio García Fuentes, don't you), and said that there was no way she was going anywhere alone. That pissed them off, and they started to ask questions again. What they wanted to know, basically, was the name of the deceased. Then I thought of you, I thought that you might know his real name, but of course I didn't say anything. The same thought occurred to Julita, but that girl is a wild thing and she only said what she wanted to say. I guess the police haven't been to see you. What's going on? I said. But when the police left, Julita couldn't sleep, and there were the three of us, Julita, poor García Fuentes, and me, scouring police stations and morgues so we could identify your friend's body. Finally, thanks to some friend of García Fuentes, we found him at the Camarones police station. Julita recognized him right away even though half his face was blown off. What's going on? I said. Take it easy, said Albertito. García Fuentes's friend told us that the police had killed him in a shootout in Tlalnepantla. The police were after some narcos, and they had the address of a boardinghouse on the way to Tlalnepantla. When they got there the people in the house put up a fight and the police killed all of them, including your friend. The awful part of it is that when they tried to identify Luscious Skin all they could find was Julita's address. He didn't have a record, no one knew his name or alias, and the only clue was my sister's address. It seems the others were known criminals. What's going on? I said. So no one knows what his name is and Julita loses it, she starts to cry, she uncovers the corpse, she says Luscious Skin, she screams Luscious Skin right there in the morgue for anyone to hear, and García Fuentes takes her by the shoulders, puts his arms around her, you know García Fuentes has always been a little in love with Julita, and then there I was face-to-face with the corpse, not a pleasant sight, I can tell you, he didn't look very luscious anymore, because even though it hadn't been that long since he was killed, his skin was ashen, and he was bruised all over, as if he'd been beaten, and he had an enormous scar from his neck to his crotch, although the expression on his face was almost calm, that dead person calm that isn't really calm, that isn't really anything at all, just dead flesh with no memories. What's going on? I said. It was seven in the morning before we left the police station. They asked us if we were going to take charge of the body. I said no, that they could do what they wanted with it. He'd only been my sister's off-and-on-again lover, after all, and then García Fuentes slipped something to one of the officials to make sure that they wouldn't bother Julita again. Later, as we were having breakfast, I asked Julita how long she'd been seeing the guy and she said that after he lived with you for a while he started seeing her. But how did he find you? I asked her. It seems he got the phone number out of your address book. She didn't know he was dealing drugs. She thought that he lived on air, on the money he got from people like you or her. When you get mixed up with people like that you always end up with dirty hands, I said, and Julita started to cry and García Fuentes told me not to make a fuss, that it was all over now. What's going on? I said. Nothing's happening, it's all over, said Albertito, but I didn't get any sleep, and I couldn't take the day off either, because we're swamped at the office.

Jacinto Requena, Café Quito, Calle Bucareli, Mexico City DF, September 1985. Two years after he disappeared in Managua, Ulises Lima came back to Mexico. Not many people saw him after that, and when anyone did it was almost always by accident. For most, he was dead as a person and a poet.