The Savage Detectives (22 page)

Manuel Maples Arce, walking along the Calzada del Cerro, Chapultepec Park, Mexico City DF, August 1976
. This young man, Arturo Belano, came to interview me. I only saw him once. He was with two boys and a girl, I don't know their names, they hardly said a word. The girl was American.

I told them that I abhorred tape recorders for the same reason that my friend Borges abhorred mirrors. Were you friends with Borges? Arturo Belano asked in a tone of astonishment that I found slightly offensive. We were quite good friends, I answered, close friends, you might say, in the far-off days of our youth. The American wanted to know why Borges abhorred tape recorders. Because he's blind, I suppose, I told her in English. What does blindness have to do with tape recorders? she said. It reminds him of the perils of hearing, I replied. Listening to one's own voice, one's own footsteps, the footsteps of the enemy. The American looked me in the eyes and nodded. I don't think she knew much about Borges. I don't think she knew my work at all, although I was translated by John Dos Passos. I don't think she knew much about John Dos Passos either.

But I've lost my train of thought. Where was I? I told Arturo Belano that I would prefer that he not use the tape recorder and that it would be better if he left me a list of questions. He agreed. He pulled out a sheet of paper and wrote the questions while I showed his companions some of the rooms in the house. Then, when he had finished the list, I had drinks brought in and we talked for a while. They had already interviewed Arqueles Vela and Germán List Arzubide. Do you think anyone is interested in stridentism these days? I asked Arturo Belano. Of course, maestro, he answered, or words to that effect. My opinion is that stridentism is history now and as such it can only be interesting to literary historians, I said. It interests me and I'm not a historian, he said. Well, then.

Before bed that night I read the list. Just the kind of questions an ignorant, zealous young man might ask. That same night I drafted my answers. The next day I made a clean copy. Three days later, as we had arranged, he came to pick up the list. The maid let him in, but following my express instructions, she told him I wasn't there. Then she handed him the package I had prepared for him: the list of questions with my answers and two books of mine that I was afraid to inscribe to him (I think young people today scorn such sentimentalism). The books were
Andamios interiores
and
Urbe
. I was on the other side of the door, listening. The maid said: Mr. Maples left this for you. Silence. Arturo Belano must have taken the package and looked at it. He must have leafed through the books. Two books published so long ago, their pages (excellent paper) uncut. Silence. He must have looked over the questions. Then I heard him thank the maid and leave. If he comes back to see me, I thought, I'll be justified, if he shows up here one day, without calling first, to talk to me, to listen to me tell my old stories, to submit his poems for my consideration, I'll be justified. All poets, even the most avant-garde, need a father. But these poets were meant to be orphans. He never came back.

Barbara Patterson, in a room at the Hotel Los Claveles, Avenida Niño Perdido and Juan de Dios Peza, Mexico City DF, September 1976
. Motherfucking hemorrhoid-licking old bastard, I saw the distrust in his pale, bored little monkey eyes right from the start, and I said to myself this asshole will take every chance he gets to spit on me, the motherfucking son of a bitch. But I'm dumb, I've always been dumb and naïve, and I let down my guard. And the same thing happened that always happens. Borges. John Dos Passos. Vomit carelessly soaking Barbara Patterson's hair. And on top of it all the dumbfuck looks at me like he's sorry for me, as if to say these kids have brought me this pale-eyed gringa just so I can shit on her, and Rafael looked at me too and the fucking dwarf didn't even blink, like he was used to me being insulted by any old fart-breath, any constipated grand old man of Mexican literature who got the urge. And then the old bastard comes right out and says he doesn't like tape recorders, never mind how hard it was for me to get this one, and the ass kissers say okay, no problem, we'll write up a question sheet right here, Mr. Great Poet of the Pleistocene, yes sir, instead of pulling down his pants and shoving the tape recorder up his ass. And the old guy struts around listing his friends (all of them dead or practically dead), and he keeps calling me miss, as if that could make up for the puke, the vomit all over my shirt and jeans, and what can I say, I didn't even have the strength to answer him when he started talking to me in English, just yes, no, or I don't know, mostly I don't know, and when we left his house, which was a mansion, I said so where did the money come from, you dead-rat-fucking bastard, where did you get the money to buy this house? I told Rafael we had to talk, but Rafael said that he wanted to hang out with Arturo Belano, and I said you goddamn bastard I
need
to talk to you, and he said later, Barbarita, later, like I was some girl he fucked up the ass every night and not a woman who's three inches taller and at least thirty pounds heavier than he is (I have to go on a diet but who can
diet
with all this fucking Mexican food), and then I said I need to talk to you
now
, and the lousy prick, acting like the cocksucker he is, turns around and stares at me and says hey baby, what's wrong? some unexpected problem? and luckily Belano and Requena had gone on ahead and didn't hear him. It's especially lucky they didn't see me, because I guess my martyred face must have just collapsed, I could actually feel it changing. At any rate, I felt my eyes flare up with a lethal dose of hatred, and then I said go screw your mother, asshole, so I wouldn't say anything worse, and turned and left. I spent the afternoon in tears. I was supposedly in Mexico to do a postgraduate course on Juan Rulfo, but I met Rafael at a poetry reading at the Casa del Lago and we fell in love at first sight. Or at least that's how it was for me. I'm not so sure about Rafael. That very night I dragged him to the Hotel Los Claveles, where I still live, and we fucked until we dropped. Actually, Rafael doesn't have much stamina, but I do, and I kept him going until daylight came down along Niño Perdido, like something swooning or struck by lightning, dawn is so weird in this fucking city. The next day I stopped going to class and I spent my time having these endless conversations with the visceral realists, who back then were still more or less normal, more or less sick kids, and weren't calling themselves visceral realists yet. I liked them. They reminded me of the beats. I liked Ulises Lima, Belano, María Font. I liked that conceited bastard Ernesto San Epifanio a little less. Anyway, I liked them. I wanted to have a good time, and around them things were always lively. I met lots of people, people who gradually began to drift away from the group. I met an American, from Kansas (I'm from California), the painter Catalina O'Hara, but we never hit it off. A stuck-up bitch who thought she invented the wheel and acted like she was a revolutionary just because she'd been in Chile during the coup. Anyway, I got to know her a little after she separated from her husband and all the poets were dying to fuck her. Even Belano and Ulises Lima, who were obviously asexual and secretly got it on together (you know, I'll suck you, you suck me, just for a minute and then we'll stop), seemed to be wild for the fucking cowgirl. Rafael too. But I grabbed Rafael and said: if I find out you're sleeping with that bitch I'll cut your balls off. And Rafael laughed and said but baby, why would you cut my balls off? You're the only one I love. But even his eyes (which were the best thing about Rafael, Arab eyes, tents and oases) were saying the exact opposite. I'm with you because you give me money to pay the bills. I'm with you because you put up the cash. I'm with you because right now I don't have anyone better to be with or fuck. And I said: Rafael, you bastard, you stupid prick, you son of a bitch, when your friends disappear I'll still be with you,
I know it
, when you're left all alone and helpless,
I'm
the one who'll be by your side and who'll help you. Not some old bastard festering in his memories and literary quotations. And definitely not your second-rate gurus (Arturo and Ulises? he said, they aren't my gurus, you dumb gringa, they're my friends), who the way I see it are going to vanish one of these days. Why would they vanish? he said. I don't know, I said, out of fucking embarrassment? shame? mortification? insecurity? indecision? evasiveness? spinelessness? and then I had to stop because my Spanish wasn't good enough. Then he laughed at me and said you're a witch, Barbara, go on, get back to work on Rulfo, I'm leaving now but I'll be back soon, and instead of listening to him I threw myself on the bed and started to cry. They're all going to leave you, Rafael, I shouted from the window of my room at the Hotel Los Claveles as Rafael disappeared in the crowd, except me, asshole, except me.

Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976
. So what did Manuel, Germán, and Arqueles say? I asked them. What did they say about what? one of them said. About Cesárea, of course, I said. Very little. Maples Arce hardly remembered her. Neither did Arqueles Vela. List said he'd only heard of her. When Cesárea Tinajero was in Mexico, he lived in Puebla. According to Maples she was a very young girl, very quiet. And that was all they told you? That was all. And what about Arqueles? More of the same, nothing. And how did you find me? Through List, they said, he told us that you, Amadeo, must have more information about her. And what did Germán say about me? That you really had known her, that before you joined the stridentists you were part of Cesárea's group, the visceral realists. He also told us about a magazine, a magazine that he said Cesárea published back then,
Caborca
he said it was called. That Germán, I said and I poured myself another shot of Los Suicidas. At the rate we were going the bottle wouldn't last until dark. Drink up, boys, drink up and don't worry, if we finish this bottle we'll go down and buy another one. Of course, it won't be the same as the one we've got now, but it'll be better than nothing. Ah, what a shame they don't make Los Suicidas mezcal anymore, what a shame that time passes, don't you think? what a shame that we die, and get old, and everything good goes galloping away from us.

Joaquín Font, Calle Colima, Colonia Condesa, Mexico City DF, October 1976
. Now that the days are going by, coldly, in the cold way that days go by, I can say without the slightest resentment that Belano was a romantic, often pretentious, a good friend to his friends, I hope and trust, although no one really knew what he was thinking, probably not even Belano himself. Ulises Lima, on the other hand, was much friendlier and more radical. Sometimes he seemed like Vaché's younger brother. Other times he seemed like an extraterrestrial. He smelled strange. This I know, this I can say, this I can attest to because on two unforgettable occasions he showered at my house. More precisely: he didn't smell bad, he had a strange smell, as if he'd just emerged from a swamp and a desert at the same time. Extreme wetness and extreme dryness, the primordial soup and the barren plain. At the same time, gentlemen! A truly unnerving smell! It bothered me, for reasons that aren't worth getting into here. His smell, I mean. Characterologically, Belano was extroverted and Ulises was introverted. In other words, I had more in common with Belano. Belano knew how to swim with the sharks much better than Lima did, no doubt about that. Much better than I did. He came across better, he knew how to handle things, he was more disciplined, he could pretend more convincingly. Good old Ulises was a ticking bomb, and what was worse, socially speaking, was that everyone knew or could sense that he was a ticking bomb and no one wanted him to get too close, for obvious and understandable reasons. Ah, Ulises Lima… He wrote constantly, that's what I remember most about him, in the margins of books that he stole and on pieces of scrap paper that he was always losing. And he never wrote poems, he wrote stray lines that he'd assemble into long, strange poems later on if he was lucky… Belano, on the other hand, wrote in notebooks… They both still owe me money…

Jacinto Requena, Café Quito, Calle Bucareli, Mexico City DF, November 1976
. Sometimes they disappeared, but never for more than two or three days. When you asked them where they were going, they said in search of provisions. That was all. They never talked too much about
that
. Some of us, of course, those of us who were closest to them, knew what they were doing while they were gone, even if we didn't know where they were going. Some of us didn't care. Others thought it was wrong, saying that it was lumpen behavior. Lumpenism: the childhood syndrome of intellectuals. And others actually thought it was a good thing, mostly because Lima and Belano were generous with their ill-gotten gains. I was one of those. Things weren't going well for me. Xóchitl, my partner, was three months pregnant. I didn't have a job. We were living in a hotel that her father paid for, near the Monumento a la Revolución, on Calle Montes. We had one room with a bathroom and a tiny kitchen but at least we could make our meals there, which was much cheaper than going out to eat every day. Xóchitl's father had already had the room, which was actually more like a little apartment, long before she got pregnant, when he turned it over to us. He must have used it as a place to bring women or something. He let us have it, but first he made us promise to get married. I said yes right away, I think I even swore that we would. Xóchitl said nothing, just staring her father in the eyes. An interesting man. He was so old he could easily have passed for her grandfather, but he also had a look about him that gave you the shivers, the first time you saw him, anyway. I definitely got the shivers. He was big and hulking, huge, which is funny because Xóchitl is short and fine-boned. But her father was big and dark (in that sense, Xóchitl does take after him), with very wrinkled skin, and every time I saw him he was wearing a suit and tie, sometimes a navy suit, sometimes a brown one. Two nice suits, though they weren't new. Sometimes, especially at night, he wore a trench coat over the suit. When Xóchitl introduced me to him, the time we went to ask him for help, the old man looked at me and then he said come with me, I want to talk to you alone. Now we're in trouble, I thought, but what could I do? I followed him, prepared for the worst. But all the old man did was tell me to open my mouth. What? I said. Open your mouth, he said. So I opened my mouth and the old man looked at me and asked me how I'd lost the three teeth I'm missing. In a fight in school, I said. And my daughter met you like this? he said. Yes, I said, I already looked like this when she met me. Goddamn, he said, she must really love you. (The old man had stopped living with my partner's family when she was six, but she and her sisters would go see him once a month.) Then he said: if you leave her I'll kill you. He stared me in the eyes as he said it, his ratlike little eyes-even the pupils looked wrinkled in that face-fixed on mine, but without raising his voice, like a fucking gangster in an Orol movie, which was ultimately probably what he was. I, of course, swore that I would never leave her, especially now that she was going to be the mother of my child, and that was the end of our private talk. We went back to Xóchitl and the old man gave us the key to his place, promising us that we wouldn't have to worry about the rent, that he would take care of it, and handing us a wad of cash to keep us going.