The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

Mexican poets (poets in general, I guess) hate to have their ignorance brought to light.

I woke up at Catalina O’Hara’s house. As I was having breakfast, very early, with Catalina and her son, Davy, who had to be taken to nursery school (María wasn’t there, everyone else was asleep), I remembered that the night before, when there were just a few of us left, Ernesto San Epifanio had said that all literature could be classified as heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Novels, in general, were heterosexual, whereas poetry was completely homosexual; I guess short stories were bisexual, although he didn’t say so.

The problem with literature, like life, said Don Crispín, is that in the end people always turn into bastards.

Hours later, as we were on our way back in my father’s car, him in front and me in back, he said that there was probably some pyramid lying buried under our land. I remember that my father turned his eyes from the road to look at him. Pyramids? Yes, he said, deep underground there must be lots of pyramids. My father didn’t say anything. From the darkness of the backseat, I asked him why he thought that. He didn’t answer. Then we started to talk about other things but I kept wondering why he’d said that about the pyramids. I kept thinking about pyramids. I kept thinking about my father’s stony plot of land and much later, when I’d lost touch with him, each time I went back to that barren place I thought about the buried pyramids, about the one time I’d seen him riding over the tops of the pyramids, and I imagined him in the hut, when he was left alone and sat there smoking.

There are books for when you’re bored. Plenty of them. There are books for when you’re calm. The best kind, in my opinion. There are also books for when you’re sad. And there are books for when you’re happy. There are books for when you’re thirsty for knowledge. And there are books for when you’re desperate. The latter are the kind of books Ulises Lima and Belano wanted to write. A serious mistake, as we’ll soon see.

Ah, what a relief to come into the light, even when it’s a shadowy half-light, what a relief to come where it’s clear.

All the more reason to stay awake and worry. And that’s what I did.

Do you know what the worst thing about literature is? said Don Pancracio. I knew, but I pretended I didn’t. What? I said. That you end up being friends with writers. And friendship, treasure though it may be, destroys your critical sense.

All of us architects deserve to be shot.

That was all there was left of Cesárea, I thought, a boat on a calm sea, a boat on a choppy sea, and a boat in a storm.

The nurse’s name was Rosario Álvarez and she was born in Mexico City. I asked her what life was like in Los Angeles and she said that it was different every day, that sometimes it could be very good and sometimes very bad, but if you worked hard you could get ahead. I asked her how long it had been since she was in Mexico. Too long, she said, I don’t have the money to be nostalgic.