The Savage Detectives (48 page)

One morning, just as I'd been hoping, the numbers came back. The sequences didn't make any sense at first, but it didn't take me long to see the logic in them. The secret was to follow their lead. That week I played three soccer pools (with four doubles) and bought two lottery tickets. As you can imagine, I was unsure of my strategy. I won one pool with thirteen matches. The lottery was a bust. The next week I tried again, this time restricting myself to the pools. I matched fourteen and took home fifteen million. Life changes so fast! In a heartbeat, I had more money than I'd ever dreamed of. I bought a bar on Calle del Carmen and sent for my mother and sister. I didn't go in person because all of a sudden I got scared. What if my plane crashed? What if the soldiers in Chile killed me? The truth is, I didn't even have the strength to leave Pensión Amelia, and for a week I didn't go out. I just sat there, waited on hand and foot, chained to the phone, talking very little because I was afraid I'd do something stupid that would land me in a mental hospital. In the end I was spooked by the powers that I myself had called up. My mother's arrival helped me relax. There's nobody like your mother when you're feeling down! Also, my mother hit it off right away with the owner of the boardinghouse and before you knew it, everybody was eating
empanadas de horno
and
pastel de choclo
, which my mother made to spoil me. While she was at it, she spoiled all the castaways holed up there. They were good people, mostly, except for a few bad seeds, sullen types who worked hard and kept a jealous eye on me. But I was the soul of amiability! Then I started to do business. After the bar on Calle del Carmen there was a restaurant on Calle Mallorca, an elegant place where the local office workers came for breakfast and lunch. After a while we started turning a huge profit. With my family there I couldn't keep living in the boardinghouse, so I bought myself an apartment on Sepúlveda and Viladomat and had a big housewarming party. The women from the boardinghouse, who had cried when I left, cried again when I made a speech welcoming them to my new home. My mother couldn't believe it. So much good luck all at once! It was different with my sister. Now that there was money, she gave herself airs she'd never given herself before. Or if she had I never noticed. I put her to work as a cashier at the restaurant on Calle Mallorca, but after a few months I was in the position of having to choose between someone who'd become a hopeless snob and all the rest of my employees, and, even worse, a good slice of my clientele. So I got her out of there and set her up in a salon on Calle Luna, close enough to our place, across Ronda San Antonio. Of course, all of this time I kept searching for the numbers, but it was as if they'd vanished as soon as I came into my fortune. I had money, I had businesses, and above all I had lots of work, so I hardly felt the loss, at least in the first few months. Later, when things began to settle down, when the excitement wore off, and I went back to the streets of Distrito 5, where people went about the real business of life and death, I started to think about the numbers again and I came up with the wildest, most ridiculous hypotheses trying to explain the miracle that I'd called down on myself. But I was thinking about it too much, and that was bad too. Late some nights, I admit, I even scared myself, so whatever you imagine won't be far from the truth.

Part of what I was afraid of, when I had these thoughts, was the possibility of losing, of playing and losing everything that I'd won and held on to by dint of hard work. But what scared me even more, I swear, was poking into the nature of my luck. Like a good Chilean, the desire to get ahead gnawed at me, but like the Mighty Mouse I once was-like the Mighty Mouse I still am, deep down-prudence held me back. A little voice said to me: don't tempt fate, you lucky bastard, be happy with what you've got. One night I dreamed about the church on Calle Balmes, and I saw that little message, which this time I thought I understood:
Tempus
breve est, Ora et labora
. We aren't given much time on this earth. We have to pray and work, not go pushing our luck with soccer pools. That was all. I woke up sure I'd learned my lesson. Then Franco died, and there was the transition, then democracy. This country began to change at a pace that was something to behold, something you could hardly believe your eyes were seeing. It's such a wonderful thing to live in a democracy. I applied for and received Spanish citizenship, traveled abroad to Paris, London, Rome. Always by train. Have you ever been to London? The channel crossing is a joke. That's no channel, not by a long shot. A little rougher, I guess, than the Golfo de Penas. One morning I woke up in Athens and the sight of the Parthenon brought tears to my eyes. There's nothing like traveling to expand your horizons. But also to cultivate your taste. I saw Israel, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco. When I was done traveling I returned convinced of one thing: we're nothing. One day a new cook came to work at my restaurant on Calle Mallorca. She was young for the job and not very good at it, but I hired her right away. Her name was Rosa, and the next thing I knew, I'd married her. I wanted to name my first son Caupolicán, but in the end we named him Jordi. Next was a girl, and we named her Montserrat. When I think about my children I feel like crying with happiness. Women are funny: my mother, who was worried about me getting married, ended up being thick as thieves with Rosita. Now my life was perfectly on track, as they say. The
Napoli
and my first days in Barcelona seemed so far away-never mind my misspent youth in La Cisterna! I had a family, a couple of kids I adored, a wife who was perfect for me (but whom I retired from the kitchen of my restaurant the first chance I got, since you can have too much of a good thing), health, money. If you thought about it, there was nothing I didn't have, and yet still, some nights when I was left alone at the restaurant doing the books, with no one around but some waiter I trusted or the dishwasher, whom I couldn't see but could hear hard at work in the kitchen, starting in on his last stack of dirty dishes, I was struck by the strangest ideas, very Chilean ideas, if that makes sense, and then I felt that something was missing and I started to wonder what it could be and after thinking a lot and turning it over and over in my head I always came to the same conclusion: I missed the numbers, I missed the flash of the numbers behind my eyelids, which is like saying that I was missing a purpose or
the
purpose. Or what amounts to the same thing, at least from my perspective: I wanted to
understand
the phenomenon that had jump-started my fortune, the numbers that hadn't lit up my head for so long, and
accept
that reality like a man.

And it was then that I had a dream, and I started to read nonstop, with no thought for myself or my eyes, like someone half crazed, all kinds of books, from my favorite historical biographies to books of occultism or poetry by Neruda. The dream was very simple. Actually, it was more like words than a dream, words that I heard in my sleep, spoken by a voice that wasn't mine. These were the words:
she's laying thousands of eggs
. What do you think of that? I could have been dreaming about ants or bees. But I know it wasn't ants or bees. So who was laying the thousands of eggs? I don't know. All I know is that
she
was alone when she laid them and that the place they were being laid-I apologize if I sound pedantic-was like Plato's cave, a kind of hell or heaven where there are only shadows (lately I've been reading the Greek philosophers). She's laying thousands of eggs, the voice said, and I knew that it was as if it were saying she's laying millions of eggs. And then I understood that my luck was there, nestled in one of those abandoned eggs-but abandoned hopefully, I mean, with hope-in Plato's cave. And that's when I realized that I was probably never going to understand the true nature of my luck, of the money that had rained down on me from the sky. But like a good Chilean I refused to accept this, that there was anything I couldn't know, and I began to read and read, sometimes I'd stay up all night, I didn't mind. I'd get up early to open my bars, I'd work all day, immersed in the true industriousness that a person breathes day and night in Barcelona (sometimes it seems a little obsessive), and I'd close my bars and go over my accounts, and after I'd finished my accounts, I'd start to read, and many times I'd fall asleep in a chair (as Chileans also have a tendency to do), and wake up early in the morning, when the sky in Barcelona is an almost purplish blue, almost violet, a sky that makes you want to sing and cry just to look at it, and after looking up at the sky I would keep reading, without letting myself rest, as if I were about to die and I didn't want to die before I'd understood what was going on around me and over my head and under my feet.

To put it briefly, I sweated blood, although to be honest I didn't notice a thing. A little later I met you, Belano, and I gave you a job. The dishwasher had gotten sick and I had to hire a replacement. I don't remember now who sent you to me, probably some other Chilean. This was around the time I was staying late at the restaurant pretending to be going over my accounts while really I was daydreaming in my chair. One night I went to say hello to you, remember? and I was impressed by how polite you were. It was obvious that you'd read a lot, and traveled a lot, and that you were going through a hard time. We hit it off, and incredibly enough, it wasn't twenty-four hours before I'd opened up to you in a way I hadn't once opened up to anyone in all these years. I told you about my soccer pools (that was common knowledge), but I also told you about the numbers that hammered in my head, my darkest secret. I invited you home to meet my family, and I offered you a steady job at one of my bars. You accepted the invitation (my mother made
empanadas de horno
), but you wouldn't even hear of coming to work for me. You said you didn't see yourself working at a bar for long, because dealing with the public was a thankless task and the burnout factor was high. Anyway, and despite the friction that always exists between employer and employee, I think we became friends. Although you may not have realized it, that was a critical time for me. I had never come so close to the numbers before, or at least not consciously, seeking them out myself instead of letting them come to me. You would be washing dishes in the kitchen of the Cuerno de Oro, Belano, and I would sit at one of the tables near the door, spread out my account books and novels, and close my eyes. Knowing you were there made me that much more fearless, I think. Maybe it was all foolishness. Have you ever heard the theory of Easter Island? According to the theory, Chile is the real Easter Island. You know: to the east we're bordered by the Andes, to the north by the Atacama Desert, to the south by Antarctica, and to the west by the Pacific Ocean. We were born on Easter Island and our moai are ourselves, the Chileans, looking in bewilderment toward the four points of the compass. One night, while you were washing dishes, Belano, I imagined that I was still on board the cargo ship
Napoli
. You must remember that night. I imagined that I was dying in the bowels of the
Napoli
, forgotten by everyone, and in my final delirium I dreamed I'd made it to Barcelona and I was riding astride the shining numbers and that I made money, enough to bring my family here and indulge myself a little, and my dream included my wife, Rosa, and my children and my bars, and then I thought that if I was dreaming so vividly it must be because I was about to die, because I was dying in the hold of the
Napoli
, in that airless, stinking hold, and then I said to myself open your eyes, Andrés, Mighty Mouse, open your eyes! but I was speaking in a voice I didn't recognize, a voice that scared me, to tell the truth, and I couldn't open my eyes, but with my Mighty Mouse ears I heard you, Belano, washing dishes in the kitchen of my bar, and then I said to myself for fuck's sake, Andrés, you can't go off the rails now, if you're dreaming, just keep dreaming, you bastard, and if you aren't dreaming, open your eyes and don't be afraid. And then I opened my eyes and I was in the Cuerno de Oro and the numbers clattered on the walls like radioactivity, an endless swarm of numbers, as if an atomic bomb had finally fallen on Barcelona. If I'd known they were there, I would have kept my eyes shut a little longer, but I opened my eyes, Belano, and I got up from my chair and I went into the kitchen where you were working and when I saw you I felt like telling you the whole story, remember? I was shaky and sweating like a pig, and no one would've believed that my brain was working the best it ever had, better than now, which is maybe why I didn't say anything. I offered you a better job, I made you a rum and Coke and brought it to you, I asked your opinion about some books, but I didn't tell you what had happened.

From that night on I knew that maybe, with a little luck, I could win the pools again, but I didn't play. She's laying thousands of eggs, said the voice in my dream, and one of the eggs dropped down to me. I've had enough of the pools. Business is good. Now you're going to leave and I'd like it if you went away with a good impression of me. A sad impression, maybe, but a good one. I have your last paycheck here and I've added a month or two of paid vacation. Don't say anything, it's already done. You told me once that you didn't have much patience, but I think you were wrong.

Abel Romero, Café L'Alsatien, Rue de Vaugirard, near the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris, September 1989
. It was at Victor's Café, on Rue St. Sauveur, on September 11 in 1983. A group of masochistic Chileans had gathered to remember that dismal day. There were twenty or thirty of us and we were scattered around inside the café and at the outside tables. Suddenly someone, I don't know who, started to talk about evil, about the crime that had spread its enormous black wing over us. Please! Its enormous black wing! It's clear we Chileans will never learn. Then, as you might expect, an argument broke out and bits of bread even flew from table to table. A mutual friend must have introduced us in the middle of the pandemonium. Or maybe we introduced ourselves, and he seemed to recognize me. Are you a writer? he said. No, I said, I was a policeman under Guatón Hormazábal and now I work for a cooperative, vacuuming offices and cleaning windows. It must be a dangerous job, he said. For people who are afraid of heights it is, I answered, for everyone else it's mostly boring. Then we joined the general conversation. People were talking about evil, about corruption, as I said. Friend Belano made two or three fairly pertinent remarks. I didn't say a word. Everyone drank lots of wine that night, and when we left, without knowing how, I found myself walking with him for several blocks. Then I said what had been going around in my head. Belano, I said, the heart of the matter is knowing whether evil (or sin or crime or whatever you want to call it) is random or purposeful. If it's purposeful, we can fight it, it's hard to defeat, but we have a chance, like two boxers in the same weight class, more or less. If it's random, on the other hand, we're fucked, and we'll just have to hope that God, if He exists, has mercy on us. And that's what it all comes down to.