The Savage Detectives

Alberto Moore, Calle Pitágoras, Colonia Narvarte, Mexico City DF, April 1976. What Luisito says is true, up to a point. My sister is an utter lunatic, yes, but she's charming, only twenty-two, a year older than me, and an extremely intelligent woman. She's about to finish medical school and she wants to specialize in pediatrics. She's no ingenue. Let's get that clear from the start.

Second: I didn't speed like lightning along the streets of Mexico City. The blue Dodge I was in that day is my mother's and when that's the case I'm usually a careful driver. The vomiting thing was completely unforgivable.

Third: Priapo's is in Tepito, which is like saying a war zone, a noman's-land, or the other side of the Iron Curtain. At the end there was almost a fight on the dance floor, but I didn't see anything because I was sitting at a table talking to Ulises Lima. There is no club in Colonia 10 de Mayo as far as I know; my sister will vouch for that.

Fourth and last: I didn't say Baudelaire. It was Luis who said Baudelaire, and Catulle Mendès, and even Victor Hugo, I think. I didn't say anything. It sounded like Rimbaud to me, but I didn't say anything. Make sure you get that straight.

The visceral realists weren't as badly behaved as we were afraid they might be, either. I hadn't met them before, only heard of them. Mexico City, as we all know, is a small town of fourteen million. And the impression they made on me was relatively positive. The one called Luscious Skin was trying to flirt with my sister, poor idiot. The other guy, Moctezuma Rodríguez (not Cuauhtémoc), was doing his best too. At some point during the night they even seemed to think they were getting somewhere. It was a sad sight, but there was something sort of sweet about it too.

As for Ulises Lima, he gives the impression of always being high and his French is decent. He told an amazing story too, about the poem by Rimbaud. According to him, "Le Coeur Volé" was an autobiographical text describing a trip Rimbaud took from Charleville to Paris to join the Commune. As he was traveling (on foot!), Rimbaud ran into a group of drunken soldiers on the road who first taunted him, then proceeded to rape him. Frankly, it was a pretty crude story.

But there was even more: according to Lima, some of the soldiers, or at least their leader, the caporal of mon coeur couvert de caporal, were veterans of the French invasion of Mexico. Of course, neither Luisito nor I asked him what evidence he had for that. But I was interested in the story (unlike Luisito, who was more interested in what was or wasn't going on around us) and I wanted to know more. Then Lima told me that in 1865 a column under Colonel Libbrecht, which was supposed to occupy Santa Teresa, in Sonora, stopped sending back reports, and that Colonel Eydoux, commander of the plaza that served as a supply depot for the troops operating in that part of northeastern Mexico, sent a detachment of thirty troops to Santa Teresa.

The detachment was under the command of Captain Laurent and lieutenants Rouffanche and González, the latter a Mexican monarchist. This detachment, according to Lima, reached a town called Villaviciosa, near Santa Teresa, on the second day's march, but never made contact with Libbrecht's column. All the men, except Lieutenant Rouffanche and three soldiers who died in the act, were taken prisoner while they ate at the only i

At midnight they slit Captain Laurent's throat. Lieutenant González, two sergeants, and seven soldiers were taken to the main street and bayoneted by torchlight by shadowy figures riding the soldiers' own horses.

At dawn, the future caporal and two other soldiers managed to break their bonds and flee cross-country. No one came after them, but only the caporal lived to tell the tale. After two weeks of wandering in the desert he reached El Tajo. He was decorated for bravery and remained in Mexico until 1867, when he returned to France with the army under Bazaine (or whoever was in command of the French at the time), which was retreating from Mexico, leaving the emperor to his fate.

Carlos Monsiváis, walking along Calle Madero, near Sanborn's, Mexico City DF, May 1976. No ambush, no violent incident, nothing like that. Two young men, who couldn't have been more than twenty-three, both of them with extremely long hair, longer than any other poet's (and I can testify to the length of everybody's hair), determined not to acknowledge that there could be anything good about Paz, childishly stubborn, I-don't-like-him-because-I-don't, perfectly willing to deny the obvious. In a moment of weakness (mental, I suppose), they reminded me of José Agustín, of Gustavo Sainz, but with nothing like the talent of those two outstanding novelists, in fact with nothing at all, no money to pay for the coffee we drank (I had to pay), no arguments of substance, no original ideas. Two lost souls, two empty vessels. As for myself, I think I was more than generous (coffee aside). At some point I even suggested to Ulises (I don't remember the other one's name, I think he was Argentinian or Chilean) that he should write a review of a book by Paz that we'd been discussing. If it's any good, I said to him, stressing the word good, I'll publish it. And he said yes, that he'd write it, that he'd bring it to my house. Then I said that he shouldn't bring it to my house, that my mother might be frightened if she saw him. It was the only joke I made. But they took me seriously (not a smile) and said they would send it by mail. I'm still waiting.

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Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976. Ah, I said to them, Cesárea Tinajero, where did you hear about her, boys? Then one of them explained that they were writing a piece about the stridentists and that they'd interviewed Germán, Arqueles, and Maples Arce, and read all the magazines and books of the era, and that among all those names, the names of established figures and empty names that mean nothing anymore and aren't even an unpleasant memory, they'd found Cesárea's name. So? I said. They looked at me and smiled, both at the same time, damn them, as if they were interco