The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

I told Bulteau that I planned to translate him and I planned to publish my translation (publish is the key word) in a nonexistent Peruvian magazine (I made up the name), a magazine that counted Westphalen among its contributors, that’s what I told him, and he was happy to agree, although I think he had no idea who Westphalen was, I might as well have said that the magazine published Huamán Poma, or Salazar Bondy. Anyway, I set to work. I don’t remember whether Ulises had already left or was still around. “Sang de satin.” From the start I had trouble with that shitty poem. How to translate the title? “Satin Blood” or “Blood of Satin”? I thought about it for more than a week. And it was then that I was suddenly overcome by the full horror of Paris, the full horror of the French language, the poetry scene, our state as unwanted guests, the sad, hopeless state of South Americans lost in Europe, lost in the world, and then I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to finish translating “Satin Blood” or “Blood of Satin,” I knew that if I did I would end up murdering Bulteau in his study on the Rue de Téhéran and then fleeing Paris like an outlaw. So in the end I decided not to go through with it and when Ulises Lima left (I can’t remember exactly when), that was the end of my dealings with the French poets.