The Savage Detectives Read online

  I spent the evening on Calle Corazón (the street one block over from mine), watching a soccer game. The people playing were my childhood friends, although friends is maybe too strong a word. Mostly they're still in high school but some have left school and gone to work with their parents or don't do anything. When I started college, the gulf between us suddenly deepened and now it's as if we're from different planets. I asked if I could play. The light on Calle Corazón isn't very good, and you could hardly see the ball. Also, every once in a while cars would go by and we'd have to stop. I got kicked twice and slammed once in the face with the ball. Enough. I'll read a little more Pierre Louys and then turn out the light.

  NOVEMBER 7

  There are fourteen million people living in Mexico City. I'll never see the visceral realists again. And I'll never go back to the university or to Álamo's workshop either. I don't know what I'm going to tell my aunt and uncle. I finished Aphrodite, the book by Louys, and now I'm reading the dead Mexican poets, my future colleagues.

  NOVEMBER 8

  I've discovered an amazing poem. They never said anything about its author, Efrén Rebolledo (1877-1929), in any of our literature classes. I'll copy it here:

  The Vampire

  Whirling your deep and gloomy tresses pour

  over your candid body like a torrent,

  and on the shadowy and curling flood

  I strew the fiery roses of my kisses.

  As I unlock the tight rings

  I feel the light chill chafing of your hand,

  and a great shudder courses over me

  and penetrates me to the very bone.

  Your chaotic and disdainful eyes

  glitter like stars when they hear the sigh

  that from my vitals issues rendingly,

  and you, thirsting, as I agonize,

  assume the form of an implacable

  black vampire battening on my burning blood.

  The first time I read it (a few hours ago), I couldn't help locking myself in my room and masturbating as I recited it once, twice, three times, as many as ten or fifteen times, imagining Rosario, the waitress, on all fours above me, asking me to write a poem for her long-lost beloved relative or begging me to pound her on the bed with my throbbing cock.

  Now that I've gotten that over with, I've had some time to think about the poem.

  There can be no doubt, I think, about the meaning of "deep and gloomy tresses." The same isn't true of the first line of the second stanza: "As I unlock the tight rings," which could refer to the "deep and gloomy tresses" and to drawing them out or untangling them one by one, but the verb unlock might conceal a different meaning.

  "The tight rings" isn't very clear either. Does it mean curls of pubic hair, the vampire's curly tresses, or the human orifices-plural? I.e., is he sodomizing her? I think I'm still haunted by my reading of Pierre Louys.

  NOVEMBER 9

  I've decided to go back to the Encrucijada Veracruzana, not because I expect to find the visceral realists there, but to see Rosario. I've written a few lines for her. I talk about her eyes and the endless Mexican horizon, about abandoned churches and mirages over the roads that lead to the border. I don't know why, but somehow I got the idea that Rosario is from Veracruz or Tabasco, possibly even Yucatán. Maybe she mentioned it, although I may have just made it up. Or maybe the name of the bar confused me, and Rosario isn't from Veracruz or Yucatán at all. Maybe she's from Mexico City. Anyway, I thought that some poetry evoking lands that are the diametric opposite of hers (assuming she is from Veracruz, which seems more and more unlikely) would be more promising, at least as far as my intentions are concerned. After that, whatever happens will happen.

  This morning I wandered around downtown thinking about my life. The future doesn't exactly look bright, especially if I keep cutting class. But what really worries me is my sexual education. I can't spend my whole life jerking off. (I'm worried about my poetic education too, but one thing at a time.) Could Rosario have a boyfriend? If she does have a boyfriend, what if he's jealous and possessive? She's too young to be married, but you never know. I think she likes me; that much is clear.

  NOVEMBER 10

  I found the visceral realists. Rosario is from Veracruz. All the visceral realists gave me their respective addresses, and I gave them all mine. They meet at Café Quito, on Bucareli, a little past the Encrucijada, and at María Font's house, in Colonia Condesa, or at the painter Catalina O'Hara's house, in Colonia Coyoacán. (María Font, Catalina O'Hara, such evocative names-but what is it they evoke?)

  As for the rest of it, everything went fine, although it almost ended in tragedy.

  Here's what happened: I got to the Encrucijada at eight. The bar was packed, the crowd grim and grisly beyond belief. In a corner there was actually a blind man playing the accordion and singing. All the same, I elbowed my way into the first opening I spotted at the bar. Rosario wasn't there. When I asked the girl behind the bar where Rosario was, she acted as if the question were somehow fickle, flighty, presuming. But she was smiling, as if she didn't think that was so bad. Honestly, I had no idea what she was trying to get at. Then I asked her where Rosario was from, and she told me that she was from Veracruz. I asked her where she was from too. From here, from Mexico City, she said. What about you? I'm a cowboy from Sonora, I said. I'm not sure why, it just popped out. In real life, I've never been to Sonora. She laughed, and we might have kept talking for a while, but she had to go wait on a table. But Brígida was there, and when I was on my second tequila, she came over and asked me how I was. Brígida is a woman with a frowning, melancholy, offended look. I remembered her differently, but I'd been drunk the time before, and this time I wasn't. Brígida, I said, how's it going, long time no see. I was trying to seem friendly, even cheerful, though I can't say I felt that way exactly. Brígida took my hand and pressed it to her heart, which made me jump, and my first impulse was to back away from the bar, maybe even just take off, but I restrained myself.

  "Do you feel it?" she said.

  "What?"

  "My heart, you idiot, can't you feel it beating?"

  With my fingertips I explored as much territory as I could: Brígida's linen blouse and her breasts, framed by a bra that seemed too small to contain them. But no trace of a heartbeat.

  "I don't feel anything," I said with a smile.

  "My heart, bonehead, can't you hear it beating, can't you feel it slowly breaking?"

  "I'm sorry, I can't hear anything."

  "How do you expect to hear anything with your hand, lamebrain, I'm just asking whether you feel it. Don't your fingers feel anything?"

  "Honestly… no."

  "Your hand is icy," said Brígida. "Such pretty fingers. It's obvious you've never had to work."

  I felt watched, scrutinized, bored into. The grisly drunks at the bar had taken an interest in Brígida's last remark. Preferring not to confront them just yet, I announced that she was wrong, that of course I had to work to pay my tuition. Now Brígida was gripping my hand as if she were about to read my palm. That interested me, and I forgot about the potential spectators.

  "Don't be cagey," she said. "You don't have to lie to me, I know you. You're rich and spoiled, but you're very ambitious. And lucky. You'll go as far as you want to go. Although here I see that you'll lose your way several times, and it'll be your own fault, because you don't know what you want. You need a girl to stand by you in good times and bad. Am I wrong?"

  "No, that's perfect, keep going, keep going."

  "Not here," said Brígida. "There's no reason these nosy bastards should hear your fortune, is there?"

  For the first time I dared to take a good look around. Four or five grisly drunks were still hanging on Brígida's words, one of them even staring at my hand with unnatural intensity, as if it were his own. I smiled at all of them, not wanting to upset them, trying to let them know this had nothing to do with me. Brígida pinched the back of my hand. Her eyes were burning, as if she were about to start
a fight or burst into tears.

  "We can't talk here, follow me."

  I watched her whisper to one of the waitresses, then she beckoned to me. The Encrucijada Veracruzana was full, and a cloud of smoke and the music of the blind man's accordion rose over the heads of the regulars. I looked at the clock. It was almost twelve; time is flying, I thought.

  I followed her.

  We went into a kind of long, narrow storage room piled with cartons of bottles and cleaning supplies for the bar (detergent, brooms, bleach, a squeegee, a collection of rubber gloves). At the back stood a table and two chairs. Brígida motioned me toward one of them. I sat down. The table was round and its surface was covered with gouges and names, mainly illegible. The waitress remained standing, less than an inch from me, watchful as a goddess or a bird of prey. Maybe she was waiting for me to ask her to sit. Touched by her shyness, I did. To my surprise, she proceeded to sit on my lap. The situation was uncomfortable and yet in a few seconds I realized with horror that my instincts, taking leave of my mind, my soul, and even my most shameful wishes, were stiffening my dick to the point that it was impossible to hide. Brígida surely noticed the state I was in, because she got up and, after studying me again from above, offered me a blow job.

  "What…" I said.

  "A blow job, do you want me to give you a blow job?"

  I looked at her blankly, although the truth, like a lone and flagging swimmer, was gradually making some headway in the black sea of my ignorance. She stared back at me. Her eyes were hard and flat. And there was something about her that distinguished her from every other human being I'd known up until then: she always (wherever you were, whatever the circumstances, no matter what was happening) looked you straight in the eye. Brígida's gaze, I decided then, could be unbearable.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

  "Baby, I'm talking about sucking your dick."

  I didn't have time to reply, which was probably all for the best. Without taking her eyes off me, Brígida kneeled down, unzipped my pants, and took my cock in her mouth. First the head, which she nibbled, the bites no less disturbing for being light, and then, showing no signs of choking, the whole penis. At the same time, she ran her right hand over my lower abdomen, stomach, and chest, slapping me hard at regular intervals and giving me bruises I still have. The pain probably helped make the pleasure I felt even more exquisite, but it also prevented me from coming. Every so often, Brígida would lift her eyes from her work, although without releasing my member, and search for my eyes. Then I would close my own and mentally recite random lines from the poem "The Vampire," which later, when I reviewed the incident, turned out not to be lines from "The Vampire" at all, but an unholy mixture of poetry from different sources, my uncle's pronouncements, childhood memories, the faces of actresses I loved in puberty (Angélica María's face in black and white, for example), a whirlwind of spinning scenes. At first I tried to shield myself from the slaps, but once I realized that my efforts were futile, my hands went to Brígida's hair (dyed a light chestnut color and not very clean, as I discovered) and her ears, which were small and fleshy but almost unnaturally tough, as if they weren't made of flesh and blood at all, only cartilage or plastic, or no: barely tempered metal, from which hung two big fake silver hoops.

  When the end was near, and in order not to cry out I had raised my fists and was shaking them at some invisible being slithering along the walls of the storage room, the door opened suddenly (but silently), and a waitress's head appeared, a terse warning issuing from her lips:

  "Look out!"

  Brígida immediately abandoned her task. She got up, looked me in the eyes with an expression of great suffering, and then, pulling me by the jacket, led me to a door I hadn't noticed before.

  "See you next time, baby," she said, her voice much throatier than usual, as she pushed me through the door.

  Suddenly, I found myself in the toilets of the Encrucijada Vera-cruzana, a long, gloomy, rectangular room. I stumbled around a little, still dazed by how quickly things had just happened. It smelled like disinfectant and the floor was wet, and partly flooded. The lighting was dim to nonexistent. Between two chipped sinks, I saw a mirror, and glancing sideways at myself, I caught an image in the mercury that made my hair stand on end. In silence, and trying not to splash in the rivulet that I'd just noticed trickling from one of the stalls, I turned back to the mirror, drawn by curiosity. The mirror revealed a cuneiform face, dark red and beaded with sweat. I sprang backward and almost fell. There was someone in one of the toilets. I heard him mutter, swear. One of the regulars, I assumed. Then someone called me by my name:

  "Poet García Madero."

  I saw two shadows next to the urinals. They were enveloped in a cloud of smoke. Two queers, I thought. Two queers who know my name?

  "Poet García Madero. Come closer, man."

  Although logic and prudence urged me to find the door and leave the Encrucijada without further delay, what I did was take two steps toward the smoke. Two pairs of bright eyes were watching me, like the eyes of wolves in a gale (poetic license: I've never seen a wolf; I have seen gales, though, and they didn't really go with the mantle of smoke that enveloped the two strangers). I heard them laugh. Hee hee hee. There was a smell of marijuana. I relaxed.

  "Poet García Madero, your thing is hanging out."

  "What?"

  "Hee hee hee."

  "Your penis… It's hanging out."

  I patted my fly. It was true. I'd been so flustered I really had forgotten to tuck myself back in. I blushed, and thought about telling them to go fuck themselves, but I contained myself, fixed my pants, and took a step in their direction. They looked familiar, and I tried to pierce the surrounding darkness and decipher their faces. No luck.

  Then a hand, followed by an arm, emerged from the globe of smoke around them. The hand offered me the end of a joint.

  "I don't smoke," I said.

  "It's weed, poet García Madero. Acapulco Gold."

  I shook my head.

  "I don't like it," I said.

  I was startled by a noise in the room next door. Somebody's voice was raised. A man's. Then someone shouted. A woman. Brígida. I was sure the owner of the bar was hitting her and I wanted to come to her defense, although the truth is I didn't care all that much about Brígida (I didn't care about her at all, really). Just as I was turning back toward the door, the strangers' hands grabbed me. Then I saw their faces emerge from the smoke. It was Ulises Lima and Arturo Belano.

  I sighed with relief, I almost burst into applause; I told them that I had been looking for them for days. Then I made another attempt to come to the aid of the shouting woman, but they wouldn't let me.

  "Don't make trouble for yourself, those two are always at it," said Belano.

  "Who?"

  "The waitress and her boss."

  "But he's hitting her," I said. The slaps were clearly audible now. "We can't just let him hit her."

  "Ah, García Madero, what a poet," said Ulises Lima.

  "You're right, we couldn't let him hit her," said Belano, "but things aren't always the way they sound. Trust me."

  Clearly they knew all about the Encrucijada, and I would have liked to ask them some questions, but I didn't want to seem indiscreet.

  When I came out of the toilets, the light of the bar hurt my eyes. Everybody was talking at the top of their lungs. Some people were singing along to the blind man's song, a bolero, or what sounded to me like a bolero, about a desperate love, a love that time could never heal, although with the passage of the years it became more humiliating, more pathetic, more terrible. Lima and Belano were carrying three books apiece, and they looked like students, like me. Before we left, we went up to the bar, shoulder to shoulder, and ordered three tequilas which we downed in a single gulp, and then we went out into the street, laughing. As we left the Encrucijada, I looked back for the last time in the vain hope of seeing Brígida appear in the doorway to the storage room, but she
wasn't there.

  Ulises Lima's books were:

  Manifeste électrique aux paupieres de jupes, by Michel Bulteau, Matthieu Messagier, Jean-Jacques Faussot, Jean-Jacques Nguyen That, and Gyl Bert-Ram-Soutrenom F.M., and other poets of the Electric Movement, our French counterparts (I think).

  Sang de satin, by Michel Bulteau.

  Nord d'été naître opaque, by Matthieu Messagier.

  The books Arturo Belano was carrying were:

  Le parfait criminel, by Alain Jouffroy.

  Le pays où tout est permis, by Sophie Podolski.

  Cent mille milliards de poèmes, by Raymond Queneau. (The Queneau was a photocopy, and the way it had been folded, in addition to the wear and tear of too much handling, had turned it into a kind of startled paper flower, its petals splayed toward the four points of the compass.)

  Later we met up with Ernesto San Epifanio, who was also carrying three books. I asked him to let me make a note of them. They were:

  Little Johnny's Confession, by Brian Patten.

  Tonight at Noon, by Adrian Henri.

  The Lost Fire Brigade, by Spike Hawkins.

  NOVEMBER 11

  Ulises Lima lives in a room on a roof on Calle Anáhuac, near Insurgentes. It's a tiny place, ten feet by eight, with books piled up everywhere. Through the only window, as small as a porthole, you can see the neighboring rooftops, where human sacrifices are still performed, according to Ulises Lima, who got it from Monsiváis. In the room there's only a thin mattress on the floor, which Lima rolls up during the day or when he has visitors and uses as a sofa; there's also a tiny table, its entire top taken up by a typewriter, and a single chair. Visitors, obviously, have to sit on the mattress or the floor or just stand. Today there were five of us: Lima, Belano, Rafael Barrios, and Jacinto Requena. Belano took the chair, Barrios and Requena the mattress, Lima stood the whole time (sometimes pacing around the room), and I sat on the floor.