The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

He said: I don’t give a shit about Neruda’s poetry or Parra’s poetry. So why the big argument, then, why the fight? I managed to ask, and he didn’t answer. Then I made a mistake. I came a little closer, sitting down beside him on the bed, and I took a book out of my pocket, a book of poetry, and I read him a few lines. He listened in silence. It was a poem about Narcissus and a nearly endless forest inhabited by hermaphrodites. When I finished he didn’t say anything. What do you think? I asked. I don’t know, he said, what do you think? Then I told him that I thought poets were hermaphrodites and that they could only be understood by each other. Poets, I said. What I would have liked to say was: we poets. But he looked at me as if the flesh had been stripped from my face and it was just a skull, he looked at me with a smile and said: don’t be corny, Perla. That was all. I turned pale and flinched, only managing to move a little bit away, and I tried to get up but I couldn’t, and all that time he sat there motionless, looking at me and smiling, as if all the skin, muscles, fat, and blood had slid off my face, leaving only the yellow or white bone. At first I was unable to speak.