The Savage Detectives

I stopped spying on my daughter and her wretched lover. Odero, si potero. Si non, invitus amabo. And yet I let the full weight of my authority fall against Belano. I was at peace again. It was the best time of my life.

Now I think about the poems that I could have written and didn't and it makes me want to laugh and cry all at once. But back then, I wasn't thinking about the poems I could write: I was writing them, or I thought I was. Around that time I had a book out: I got one of the most respected publishing houses of the day to publish it for me. I covered all the costs, of course. They just printed the book and distributed it. Quantum quisque sua nummorum servat in arca, tantum habet ei fidei. The giant didn't worry about money. Instead, he made it flow, dispensed it, exercised his sovereignty over it fearlessly and unabashedly, just as a giant should.

Regarding money, naturally, I have indelible memories. Memories that glisten like a drunkard in the rain or a sick man in the rain. There was a time when my money was the object of jokes and ridicule, I know that. Vilius argentum est auro, virtutibus aurum. I know there was a time, at the begi

All except Arturo Belano, and he didn't follow me for the simple reason that he wasn't called. Sequitur superbos ultor a tergo deus. And everyone who had followed me embarked on a career in the world of letters or cemented a career already begun but still in its infancy, except for Arturo Belano, who buried himself in a world where everything stank, where everything stank of shit and urine and rot and poverty and sickness, a world where the stink was suffocating and numbing, and where the only thing that didn't stink was my daughter's body. And I didn't lift a finger to put an end to their u

My poor daughter. It's my wisdom teeth, she said. My poor daughter. It's my last wisdom tooth coming in. That's why my mouth smells, she would protest, when faced with the increasing coolness of the ex-watchman of the Castroverde campground. Her wisdom tooth! Numquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit. One night I invited her to have di

I

Around this time, months after Arturo Belano had left our lives for good, I had a dream, and in my dream I heard once again the howl that had emerged from the mouth of the pit at the Castroverde campground. In se semper armatus Furor, as Seneca says. I woke up trembling. It was four in the morning, I remember, and instead of going back to sleep, I went to look for the Pío Baroja story "The Chasm" in my library, without quite knowing why. I read it twice before the sun came up, the first time slowly, still lost in the fog of sleep, and the second time at top speed, returning to certain passages that struck me as highly revealing and that I hadn't quite understood. With tears in my eyes, I tried to read it for a third time, but exhaustion overcame the giant and I fell asleep on a chair in the library.

When I woke up, at nine in the morning, all my bones hurt and I'd shrunk at least ten inches. I took a shower, grabbed Don Pío's book, and left for the office. There, nil sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus, after taking care of a few urgent matters, I gave orders that no one disturb me and immersed myself once more in the desolation of "The Chasm." When I finished I closed my eyes and thought about the men's fear. Why didn't anyone climb down to rescue the boy? I asked myself. Why was his own grandfather afraid? I asked. If they thought he was dead, why didn't someone go down to look for his little body, damn it? I asked. Then I closed the book and paced around my office like a caged lion, until I couldn't stand it anymore, and I threw myself on the sofa, curled up as tight as I could, and let my lawyer's tears, poet's tears, and giant's tears flow all at once, mingling in streams of burning magma that instead of calming me pushed me toward the mouth of the pit, toward the gaping crevice, a crevice that I could see with increasing clarity, despite my tears (which cast a veil over the things in my office), and I associated this crevice-I don't know why, since it didn't suit my mood-with a toothless mouth, a mouth full of teeth, a fixed smile, a young girl's gaping sex, an eye watching me from the depths of the earth. The eye was, in some dark sense, i