The Savage Detectives

"Pancho couldn't care less? Luscious Skin couldn't care less?"

"Those two might care. The others have just been relieved of a burden. Now they're free to join the ranks of the peasant poets or go kiss up to Paz."

"What Belano is doing doesn't seem very democratic to me," I said.

"True enough. It isn't exactly what you might call democratic."

"We should go see him and tell him," I said.

"No one knows where he is. He and Ulises have disappeared."

For a while we sat watching the Mexico City night through the window.

Outside people were walking fast, hunched over, not as if they were expecting a storm, but as if the storm were already here. Still, no one seemed to be afraid.

Later Requena started to talk about Xóchitl and the baby they were going to have. I asked what they would call it.

"Franz," said Requena.

DECEMBER 8

Since I don't have anything to do, I've decided to go looking for Belano and Ulises Lima in the bookstores of Mexico City. I've discovered the antiquarian bookstore Plinio el Joven, on Venustiano Carranza. The Lizardi bookstore, on Donceles. The antiquarian bookstore Rebeca Nodier, at Mesones and Pino Suárez. At Plinio el Joven the only clerk is a little old man who, after waiting obsequiously on a "scholar from the Colegio de México," soon fell asleep in a chair next to a stack of books, supremely ignoring me. I stole an anthology of Marco Manilio's Astronómica, with a prologue by Alfonso Reyes, and Diary of an Unknown Writer by a Japanese writer from the Second World War. At Lizardi I thought I saw Monsiváis. I tried to sidle up next to him to see what book he was looking at, but when I reached him, Monsiváis turned around and stared straight at me, with a hint of a smile, I think, and keeping a firm grip on his book and hiding the title, he went to talk to one of the clerks. Provoked, I filched a little book by an Arab poet called Omar Ibn al-Farid, published by the university, and an anthology of young American poets put out by City Lights. By the time I left, Monsiváis was gone. The Rebeca Nodier bookstore is tended by Rebeca Nodier herself, an old woman in her eighties who is completely blind and wears unruly white dresses that match her dentures; armed with a cane and alerted by the creaky wooden floor, she hops up and introduces herself to everyone who walks into her store, I'm Rebeca Nodier, etc., finally asking in turn the name of the "lover of literature" she has the "pleasure of meeting" and inquires what kind of literature he or she is looking for. I told her that I was interested in poetry, and to my surprise, Mrs. Nodier said all poets were bums but they weren't bad in bed. Especially if they don't have any money, she went on. Then she asked me how old I was. Seventeen, I said. Oh, you're still a pipsqueak, she exclaimed. And then: you're not pla

DECEMBER 9

The Mexican literary mafia has nothing on the Mexican bookseller mafia. Bookstores visited: the Librería del Sótano, in a basement on Avenida Juárez where the clerks (numerous and neatly uniformed) kept me under strict surveillance and from which I managed to leave with volumes by Roque Dalton, Lezama Lima, and Enrique Lihn. The Librería Mexicana, staffed by three samurais, on Calle Aranda, near the Plaza de San Juan, where I stole a book by Othón, a book by Amado Nervo (wonderful!), and a chapbook by Efraín Huerta. The Librería Pacífico, at Bolívar and 16 de Septiembre, where I stole an anthology of American poets translated by Alberto Girri and a book by Ernesto Cardenal. And in the evening, after reading, writing, and a little fucking: the Viejo Horacio, on Correo Mayor, staffed by twins, from which I left with Gamboa's Santa, a novel to give to Rosario; an anthology of poems by Ke

DECEMBER 10

Librería Orozco, on Reforma, between Oxford and Praga: Nueve novísimos, the Spanish anthology; Corps et biens, by Robert Desnos; and Dr. Brodie's Report, by Borges. Librería Milton, at Milton and Darwin: Vladimir Holan's A Night with Hamlet and Other Poems, a Max Jacob anthology, and a Gu

DECEMBER 11

Before, I didn't have time for anything, and now I have time for everything. I used to spend my life on the bus and subway, having to cross the city from north to south at least twice a day. Now I walk everywhere, read a lot, write a lot. Every day I make love. In our tenement room, a little library has already begun to grow from my thefts and visits to bookstores. Last on the list, the Batalla del Ebro: its owner is a little old Spaniard named Crispín Zamora. I think we've gotten to be friends. Naturally, the store is almost always deserted and Don Crispín likes to read but he doesn't mind spending hours at a time talking about any old thing. Sometimes I need to talk too. I confessed that I was making the rounds of Mexico City bookstores looking for two friends who had disappeared, that I'd been stealing books because I didn't have any money (Don Crispín immediately gave me a Porrúa edition of Euripides translated by Father Garibay), that I admired Alfonso Reyes because in addition to Greek and Latin he knew French, English, and German, and that I had stopped going to the university. Everything I tell him makes him laugh, except my not going to class anymore, because it's important to have a degree. He distrusts poetry. When I explained that I was a poet, he said that distrust wasn't exactly the right word and that he'd known some poets. He wanted to read my poems. When I brought them to him I could see he found them a little confusing, but when he was done reading he didn't say anything. All he asked me was why I used so many ugly-sounding words. What do you mean, Don Crispín? I asked. Blasphemy, swear words, curses, insults. Oh, that, I said, well, it must just be the way I am. When I left that afternoon, Don Crispín gave me Ocnos, by Cernuda, and urged me to study it, because Cernuda was also a poet with a difficult disposition.

DECEMBER 12

After I walked Rosario to the door of the Encrucijada Veracruzana (all the waitresses, including Brígida, greeted me effusively, as if I'd become part of the club or the family, all of them convinced that someday I'd be an important person in Mexican literature), my feet carried me unthinkingly to Río de la Loza and the Media Luna hotel, where Lupe was staying.

In the shoe box-size lobby, much more sinister than I remembered it, the wallpaper patterned with flowers and bleeding deer, a squat man with a broad back and big head said there was no Lupe staying there. I demanded to see the register. The clerk told me it was impossible, that the register was absolutely confidential. I argued that it was my sister, separated from my brother-in-law, and that the reason I was there was to bring her money to pay the hotel bill. The clerk must have had a sister in similar circumstances, because he immediately became more understanding.