The Savage Detectives

by Roberto Bolaño

Luscious Skin had no qualms about introducing me to friends of his, male and female, who would show up in the most unexpected places and whose looks spoke more of a penitentiary Mexico than of otherness, although otherness, as I tried to explain to him, could take many forms. (Like the Holy Spirit, said Luscious Skin, that noble savage.) When night came, we took shelter like two pilgrims in cheap rooms or the lowliest hotels, though there was a certain splendor to them (at the risk of waxing romantic, I’d even say a certain hope), places in La Bondojito or on the edges of Talismán. Our relationship was spectral. I don’t want to talk about love, and I’m reluctant to talk about desire. We had only a few things in common: some films, some folkloric figurines, the way he liked to tell tales of desperation, the way I liked to listen to them.