Roberto Bolaño - The Savage Detectives

The night before I left I went to see him. We talked about the trip. He asked me whether I was sure I was doing the right thing. I told him I wasn't sure, but that I had the ticket and I had to go through with it now. He asked who would take me to the airport. I told him Abraham and a friend. He said I shouldn't leave. No one had ever asked me not to leave the way he asked me. I told him that if he wanted to make love with me (I said: if you want to fuck) we should do it now. It was all very melodramatic. If what you want is to fuck, let's fuck now. Now? he said. Right now, I said, and without waiting for him to say yes or no, I took off my sweater and got undressed. And we didn't make love (or maybe not making love was our way of making love) because he didn't get hard, but we did hold each other and his hands stroked my legs and between my legs, his hands caressed my stomach, my breasts, and when I asked him what was wrong he said: nothing's wrong, Edith, and I thought he didn't like me, that it was my fault, and then he said no, it's not your fault, it's my fault, I can't get it up, or maybe he said it won't get hard or something like that. Then he said: don't worry. And I said: if you aren't worried, I won't worry. And then I told him that I hadn't had my period for almost a year, and that I had medical problems, that I had been sexually assaulted twice, that I was angry and afraid, that I was going to make a film, that I had plans, and as he listened to me he stroked my body and looked at me and suddenly everything that I was telling him seemed stupid to me and I wanted to sleep, sleep with him, on his mattress on the floor of that tiny apartment, and immediately I was asleep, I slept for a long time, a deep peaceful sleep, and when I woke up, daylight was coming in the only window of the apartment and there was the sound of a radio in the distance, the radio of a worker getting ready to go to work, and Arturo was asleep beside me, curled up a little, the blankets pulled up to his ribs, and for a while I lay there watching him and thinking about what my life would be like if I lived with him, but then I decided that I had to be practical and not let myself be carried away by fantasies and I got up carefully and left.

My return to Mexico was miserable. At first I lived in my mother's house and then I rented a little place in Coyoacán and started to take classes at the university. One day I was thinking about Arturo and I decided to call him. When I dialed the number I felt as if I couldn't breathe and I thought I was going to die. A voice told me that Arturo didn't get into work until nine at night, Spanish time. When I hung up, my first impulse was to get into bed and go to sleep. But at almost the same instant I realized that I wouldn't be able to sleep, so I started to read, sweep the house, clean the kitchen, write a letter, think about meaningless things until it was midnight and I called again. This time it was Arturo who answered. We talked for almost fifteen minutes. After that we started to call each other every week. Sometimes I would call him at work and other times he would call me at home. One day I asked him to come and live in Mexico with me. He said he wasn't allowed into the country, that Mexico wouldn't give him a visa. I told him to fly to Guatemala, we could meet in Guatemala and get married there, and then he would be able to get in, no problem. We discussed this possibility for days. He'd been to Guatemala, I hadn't. Some nights I dreamed of Guatemala. One afternoon my mother came to see me and I made the mistake of telling her about it. I told her about my Guatemala dreams and my phone conversations with Arturo. Everything became unnecessarily complicated. My mother reminded me of my health problems, maybe she even started to cry, although I don't think so, or at least I don't remember seeing tears on her face. Another afternoon, my mother and my father came together and begged me to see a famous specialist. I had no choice but to accept since they were the ones giving me money. Luckily, there was no problem with the doctor. Edith is completely recovered, he told them. Still, over the next few days I went to see two other famous specialists and their diagnoses weren't so positive. My friends kept asking what was wrong with me. I told only one of them that I was in love, and that my love lived in Europe and couldn't come to Mexico to be with me. I talked about Guatemala. My friend pointed out that it would be easier for me to go back to Barcelona. I hadn't thought about that, and when I did, I felt like an idiot. Why not go back to Barcelona? I tried to solve my problems with my parents. I got money for the ticket. I talked to Arturo and told him I was coming. When I got there, he was at the airport. I don't know why, but I wasn't really expecting anyone to be there. Or I was expecting more people, not just Arturo, maybe some of his friends. That was the beginning of my new life in Barcelona.

One afternoon, as I was sleeping, I heard a woman's voice. Right away I knew it was one of Arturo's old lovers. I called her Santa Teresa. She was older than me, probably twenty-eight at least, and people told outrageous stories about her. Then I heard Arturo's voice, saying very quietly that I was asleep. For a few minutes, the two of them went on whispering to each other. Then Arturo asked her something and his old lover said yes. Much later I realized that what Arturo had asked her was whether she wanted to see me sleeping. Santa Teresa said yes. I pretended to be asleep. The curtain that separated the only bedroom from the living room was pulled back and Arturo and Santa Teresita came into the darkness. I didn't want to open my eyes. Afterward, I asked Arturo who'd been in the apartment. He said Santa Teresa's name and showed me some flowers that she'd brought me. If you love each other so much, I thought, you should still be together. But deep down I knew that Arturo and Santa Teresa would never live together again. I didn't know many things, but that I knew for sure. I was absolutely sure he loved me. The first few days of our life together weren't easy. He wasn't used to sharing his little house with anyone and I wasn't used to living so precariously. But we talked, and that got us through the day. We talked to the point of exhaustion, from the moment we got up until the moment we went to bed. And we made love too. Badly and awkwardly the first few days, but it got better every day. Still, I didn't like the way he tried so hard to make me come. I just want you to enjoy yourself, I would say, if you want to come, come, don't wait for me. Then he just wouldn't come (to spite me, I think) and we could spend the whole night screwing and he would say that he liked it that way, not coming, but after a few days his testicles would hurt horribly and he'd have to come even if I couldn't.

Another problem was my smell, the smell of my vagina, the smell when we had sex. I'd always been ashamed of it. Back then it was very strong, and it made its way into every corner of the room where we were fucking. And Arturo's apartment was so small and we made love so often that my smell wasn't confined to the bedroom but seeped into the living room, which was only separated from the bedroom by a curtain, and into the kitchen, a tiny room that didn't even have a door. And the worst of it was that the apartment was in the center of Barcelona, in the old city, and Arturo's friends would stop by every day without calling first, most of them Chileans, although there were Mexicans too, Daniel among them, and I didn't know whether I was more embarrassed by the smell when it was the Chileans, who hardly knew me, or the Mexicans, who in some sense were our mutual friends. Either way, I hated my smell. One night I asked Arturo whether he'd ever slept with a woman who smelled that way. He said no. And I started to cry. Arturo added that he'd never slept with anyone he loved so much either. I didn't believe him. I told him that he must have had a better time with Santa Teresa. He said yes, sexually he'd had a better time, but he loved me more. Then he said that he loved Santa Teresa too, but in a different way. She really loves you, he said. All that love made me feel like throwing up. I made him promise that he wouldn't open the door if some friend of his came by and the smell hadn't gone away yet. He answered that he didn't care whether he never saw anyone again except for me. Of course, I thought he was joking. Then I don't know what happened.