Roberto Bolano - The Savage Detectives

NOVEMBER 20

Political affiliations: Moctezuma Rodrguez is a Trotskyite. Jacinto Requena and Arturo Belano used to be Trotskyites.

Mara Font, Anglica Font, and Laura Juregui (Belanos ex-girlfriend) used to belong to a radical feminist movement called Mexican Women on the Warpath. Thats where they supposedly met Simone Darrieux, friend of Belano and promoter of some kind of sadomasochism.

Ernesto San Epifanio started the first Homosexual Communist Party of Mexico and the first Mexican Homosexual Proletarian Commune.

Ulises Lima and Laura Damin once planned to start an anarchist group: the draft of a founding manifesto still exists. Before that, at the age of fifteen, Ulises Lima tried to join what remained of Lucio Cabaass guerrilla group.

Quim Fonts father, also called Quim Font, was born in Barcelona and died in the Battle of the Ebro.

Rafael Barrioss father was active in the illegal railroad workers union. He died of cirrhosis.

Luscious Skins father and mother were born in Oaxaca and, according to Luscious Skin himself, they starved to death.

NOVEMBER 21

Party at Catalina OHaras house.

This morning I talked to my uncle on the phone. He asked me when I planned to come back. Always, I said. After an awkward silence (he probably didnt understand my answer but didnt want to admit it), he asked me what Id gotten myself mixed up in. Nothing, I said. Tonight I want to see you home where you belong, he said. Or else. Behind him I could hear my aunt Martita crying. Of course, I said. Ask him if hes on drugs, my aunt said, but my uncle said he can hear you and then he asked me whether I had money. Ive got bus fare, I said, and then I couldnt talk anymore.

Actually, I didnt even have bus fare. But then things took an unexpected turn.

At Catalina OHaras house were Ulises Lima, Belano, Mller, San Epifanio, Barrios, Barbara Patterson, Requena and his girlfriend Xchitl, the Rodrguez brothers, Luscious Skin, the woman painter who shared the studio with Catalina, plus lots of other people I didnt know and hadnt heard of, who came and went like a dark river.

When Mara, Anglica, and I made our entrance, the door was open. As we came in the only people we saw were the Rodrguez brothers, sitting on the stairs to the second floor sharing a joint. We said hello and sat down next to them. I think they were waiting for us. Then Pancho and Anglica went upstairs and we were left alone. From above came spooky music that was supposed to be soothing, full of the sounds of birds, ducks, frogs, wind, the sea, and even peoples footsteps on the earth or dry grass, but the general effect was terrifying, like the sound track for a horror movie. Then Luscious Skin came in, kissed Mara on the cheek (I looked the other way, at a wall covered in prints of women or womens dreams), and started to talk to us. Why I dont know, maybe because I was shy, but while they talked (Luscious Skin was a regular at the dance school; he spoke Maras language), I gradually tuned out, turning inward, and started to think about all the strange things I had experienced that morning at the Fonts.

At first everything went smoothly. I sat down to breakfast with the family. Mrs. Font greeted me with a pleasant good morning. Jorgito didnt even glance at me (he was half asleep). The maid, when she arrived, waved in a friendly way. So far so good, and in fact for a moment I even thought I might be able to live in Maras little house for the rest of my life. But then Quim appeared, and just the sight of him gave me the shivers. He looked as if he hadnt slept all night, as if hed just emerged from a torture chamber or an executioners den, his hair was a mess, his eyes were red, he hadnt shaved (or showered), and the backs of his hands were spotted with something that looked like iodine, his fingers stained with ink. Of course, he didnt greet me, although I said good morning to him as warmly as I could. His wife and daughters ignored him. After a few minutes, I ignored him too. His breakfast was much more frugal than ours: he swallowed two cups of black coffee and then he smoked a wrinkled cigarette that he pulled from his pocket instead of a pack, watching us in the strangest way, as if he were defying us but at the same time didnt see us. Finished with breakfast, he got up and asked me to follow him, saying that he wanted to have a word with me.

I looked at Mara, I looked at Anglica, and since nothing in their faces told me to say no, I followed.

It was the first time I had been in Quim Fonts study, and I was surprised by the size of the room, which was much smaller than any of the other rooms in the house. There were photographs and plans tacked to the walls or scattered around any which way on the floor. A drafting table and a stool were the only furniture and they took up more than half the space. The study smelled like tobacco and sweat.

Ive been working all night, said Quim. I couldnt sleep a wink.

Oh, really? I said, thinking that now I was in for it, that Quim must have heard me come by the night before, that he had seen Mara and me through the studys one little window, and now I was going to get it.

Yes, look at my hands, he said.

He held his two hands at chest height. They were trembling considerably.

On a project? I said affably, looking at the papers spread out on the table.

No, said Quim, on a magazine. A magazine thats coming out soon.

I dont know why, but I immediately thought (or knew, as if he had told me so himself) that he meant the visceral realist magazine.

Im going to show them, everyone whos against me, yes, sir, he said.

I went over to the table and studied the diagrams and drawings, leafing slowly through the rough stack of papers. The mock-up for the magazine was a chaos of geometric figures and randomly scribbled names or letters. It was obvious that poor Mr. Font was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

What do you think?

Extremely interesting, I said.

Those jackasses will learn what the avant-garde is now, wont they? And thats even without the poems, see? This is where all of your poems will go.

The space he showed me was full of lines, lines mimicking writing, but also little drawings, like when someone swears in the comics: snakes, bombs, knives, skulls, crossbones, little mushroom clouds. The rest of each page was a compendium of Quim Fonts extravagant ideas about graphic design.

Look, this is the magazines logo.

A snake (which might have been smiling but more likely was writhing in a spasm of pain) was biting its tail with a hungry, agonized expression, its eyes fixed like daggers on the hypothetical reader.

But nobody knows what the magazine will be called yet, I said.

It doesnt matter. The snake is Mexican and it also symbolizes circularity. Have you read Nietzsche, Garca Madero? he said suddenly.

I confessed apologetically that I hadnt. Then I looked at each of the pages of the magazine (there were more than sixty), and just as I was getting ready to leave, Quim asked how things were going between me and his daughter. I told him that things were fine, that Mara and I were getting along better and better every day, and then I decided to shut my mouth.