The Savage Detectives

With what you make, I said to Ulises once, you hardly manage to keep from starving. How do you expect to ever get to Israel? There's time, he answered, and that was the last we talked about money. Actually, now that I think about it, it's hard to say what kind of conversations we had. Just as with Arturo it was always clear (we talked about literature and sex, basically), with Ulises the boundaries were vague. Maybe this was because we saw each other so infrequently (although in his own way he was loyal to our friendship, loyal to my phone number). Maybe it was because he seemed to be, or was, someone who made no demands.

Sofía Pellegrini, sitting in the Jardins du Trocadero, Paris, September 1977. They called him the Christ of the Rue des Eaux and they all made fun of him, even Roberto Rosas, who claimed to be his best friend in Paris. They laughed at him because he was dumb, basically, or so they said. They used to say only a complete moron could let himself be fooled more than three times by Polito Garcés, but they were forgetting that Polito had fooled them too. The Christ of the Rue des Eaux. No, I never went to see his place. I know people said horrible things about it, that it was a filthy hole, that the worst junk in Paris piled up there: trash, magazines, newspapers, books he stole from bookstores, and that all of it soon began to smell like the place and then rotted, blossomed, turned all kinds of crazy colors. They said he could spend whole days without eating a thing, months without a visit to the public baths, but I doubt it because I never saw him looking especially dirty. Anyway, I didn't know him well, I wasn't his friend, but one day he came to our attic in Passy and there was no one home, just me, and I was in bad shape, I was depressed, I had been fighting with my boyfriend, things weren't going well for me, when he showed up I was crying in my chambre, the others had gone to the film society or one of their political meetings (they were all activists and revolutionaries), and Ulises Lima walked down the hallway and didn't knock on any of the doors, as if he knew beforehand that no one would be there, and he headed straight for my chambre, where I was sitting alone on the bed, staring at the wall, and he came in (he was clean, he smelled good) and stood there next to me, not saying anything, all he said was hello, Sofía, and he stayed there until I stopped crying. And that's why I remember him fondly.

Simone Darrieux, Rue des Petites Écuries, Paris, September 1977. Ulises Lima showered at my house. I was never thrilled about it. I don't like to use a towel after somebody else, especially if we aren't intimate in some way, physically and even emotionally, but still I let him use my shower, then I would gather up the towels and put them in the machine. It helped that he tried to be neat in my apartment. In his own way, but he tried and that's what counts. After I shower I scrub the bathtub and pick the hair out of the drain. It may seem trivial but it drives me up the wall. I hate to find clumps of hair clogging the drain, especially if it isn't mine. Then I pick up the towels I've used and fold them and leave them on the bidet until I have time to put them in the machine. The first few times he came he even brought his own soap, but I told him he didn't have to, that he should feel free to use my soap and shampoo but that he shouldn't even think about touching my sponge.

He was always very formal. He usually called the day before to ask whether it was a good time for him to come, checking to make sure I wouldn't have guests or plans, then we would set a time, and the next day he would arrive right when he said he would, then we'd talk a little and he would head into the bathroom. Then any number of days might go by before I heard from him again, sometimes a week, sometimes two or even three. In the meantime he must have showered at the public baths.

Once, at the bar on the Rue de la Lune, he told me that he liked the public baths where foreigners went to bathe, black people from Francophone Africa or the Maghreb. I pointed out that poor students went there too. That's true, he said, but especially foreigners. And once, I remember, he asked me whether I had ever been to the public baths in Mexico. Of course I hadn't. They're the real thing, he said. They have saunas, Turkish baths, steam baths. Some of the ones here do too, I told him, but they're more expensive. Not in Mexico, he said. In Mexico they're cheap. I'd never thought twice about Mexican public baths, to be honest. Don't tell me you went to those baths, I said. No, not really, he said. Only once or twice.

He was a strange person. He wrote in the margins of books. I'm glad I never lent him any of mine. Why? Because I don't like people to write in my books. You won't believe this, but he used to shower with a book. I swear. He read in the shower. How do I know? Easy. Almost all his books were wet. At first I thought it was the rain. Ulises was a big walker. He hardly ever took the metro. He walked back and forth across Paris and when it rained he got soaked because he never stopped to wait for it to clear up. So his books, at least the ones he read most often, were always a little warped, sort of stiff, and I thought it was from the rain. But one day I noticed that he went into the bathroom with a dry book and when he came out the book was wet. That day my curiosity got the better of me. I went up to him and pulled the book away from him. Not only was the cover wet, some of the pages were too, and so were the notes in the margins, some maybe even written under the spray, the water making the ink run, and then I said, for God's sake, I can't believe it, you read in the shower! have you gone crazy? and he said he couldn't help it but at least he only read poetry (and I didn't understand why he said he only read poetry, not at the time, but now I do: he meant that he only read two or three pages, not a whole book), and then I started to laugh, I threw myself on the sofa, writhing in laughter, and he started to laugh too, both of us laughed for I don't know how long.

Michel Bulteau, Rue de Téhéran, Paris, January 1978. I don't know how he got my phone number, but one night, it must have been after midnight, he called me at home. He asked for Michel Bulteau. I said: this is Michel Bulteau. He said: this is Ulises Lima. Silence. I said: yes? He said: I'm glad I caught you at home, I hope you weren't asleep. I said: no, no I wasn't asleep. Silence. He said: I'd like to see you. I said: now? He said: all right, yes, now, I can come to your place if you want. I said: where are you? but he misunderstood me, and said: I'm Mexican. Then I remembered, very vaguely, that I had received a magazine from Mexico. Still, the name Ulises Lima didn't ring any bells. I said: have you ever heard of the Question Marks? He said: no, I've never heard them. I said: I think they're Mexican. He said: the Question Marks? Who are the Question Marks? I said: a rock group, of course. He said: do they wear masks when they play? At first I didn't understand what he'd said. Masks? No, of course they don't wear masks. Why would they? Are there rock groups in Mexico that perform in masks? He said: sometimes. I said: it sounds ridiculous, but it might be interesting. Where are you calling me from? Your hotel? He said: no, from the street. I said: do you know how to get to the metro station Miromesnil? He said: sure, no problem. I said: twenty minutes. He said: I'm on my way, and hung up. As I was putting on my jacket I thought: but I don't know what he looks like! What do Mexican poets look like? I don't know a single one! All I've seen is a picture of Octavio Paz! But this poet, I sensed, would definitely not look like Octavio Paz. Then I thought about the Question Marks, and Elliot Murphie, and something Elliot had told me when I was in New York, about the Mexican Death's-Head, a guy they called the Mexican Death's-Head, who I only saw from a distance at a bar on Franklin Street and Broadway. The Mexican Death's-Head was a musician but all I saw was a shadow, and I asked Elliot what it was about the guy he wanted to show me, and Elliot said: he's a kind of worm, he has worm eyes and he talks like a worm. How do worms talk? In doublespeak, said Elliot. All right. Clear enough. And why is he called the Mexican Death's-Head? I asked. But Elliot wasn't listening to me anymore or he was talking to someone else, so I just assumed this guy must be Mexican or have spent time in Mexico at some point in his life, in addition to being as thin as a rail. But I didn't see his face, just his shadow as it crossed the bar. A shadow empty of metaphor, evoking nothing, a shadow that was only a shadow with no wish to be anything else. So I put on my black jacket, combed my hair, and went out thinking about the stranger who had called me and the Mexican Death's-Head I'd seen in New York. It's only a few minutes from Rue Téhéran to the Miromesnil metro station, walking fairly quickly, but you have to cross Boulevard Haussma