He showed up around three in the morning. And when he saw me in the hall, in the dark of that long, nasty-smelling hall, he stopped and stood where he was, about twenty feet from me, with his legs braced, like he was expecting me to attack him. But the funny thing was that he was quiet too, he didn't say a word. Holy shit, I thought, old Ulises is pissed and he's going to disemfuckingbowel me right here in this hallway. So I thought it over and stayed where I was. What kind of threat is a shadow on the floor? And I called him by name, Ulises, causita, it's me, Polito, and he says Polito! what the hell are you doing here this time of night, Polito, and then I realized that he hadn't known who I was before and I thought who is this motherfucker expecting? Who did he think I was? And I swear on my mother's grave that right then I was more afraid than before, I don't know why, it must have been how late it was, or that gloomy hall, or my poet's imagination running away with me. Shit, I actually started to shake. I thought I saw another shadow behind Ulises Lima's shadow in the hall. By then, frankly, I was afraid to go down the eight flights of stairs to get out of that spooky place. And yet all I wanted was to run away. But at that moment my fear of being left alone was even stronger. When I got up, one of my legs had a cramp, and I asked Ulises if I could come in. Then he seemed to wake up, and he said of course, Polito, and he opened the door. When we were inside, with the light on, I felt the blood start to circulate in my veins again, and like a heartless bastard, I showed him the books I'd brought. Ulises looked at them one by one and said they were all right, though I know he was dying to have them. I brought them to sell to you, I said. How much do you want for them? he said. I named some crazy sum, to see what would happen.
Ulises looked at me and said all right, then he put his hand in his pocket and paid me, and stood there looking at me without saying anything. All right, man, I said, well, I'm going now. Should I have a delicious meal waiting for you tomorrow? No, he said, don't expect me. But you will come one of these days, won't you? Remember that if you don't eat you'll starve to death, I said. I'm not coming again, Polito, he said. I don't know what was wrong with me. Inside I was scared shitless (the idea of heading out, walking down the hall, going down the stairs, was killing me), but on the outside I started to talk. Fuck, suddenly I was talking, hearing myself talk, like my voice wasn't mine and the bitch had taken off rambling on its own. I said you have no right, Ulises, with the money I've spent on provisions, if you could see all the good things I've bought, and what do I do with them now? do they rot? do I shove everything down my own throat, Ulises? Is that what you want me to do? What if I get indigestion or stomach cramps from stuffing my face? Answer me, pues, Ulises, don't pretend you can't hear me. That kind of thing. No matter that inside of me I was saying to myself shut up, pues, Polito, you're going too far, this could get ugly, don't push it, shithead-on the outside, in the kind of half-asleep state I was in, my face and lips numb, my tongue flapping loose, the words (words that for once I didn't want to speak!) kept coming out and I heard myself say: what kind of friend are you, Ulises? when I spoiled you like you were more than my buddy, like you were my own brother, causita, my little brother, goddamn it, Ulises, and now you turn your back on me like this. Etc., etc. Why go on? All I can say is that I talked and talked, and Ulises, who stood facing me in that room, so small it seemed more like a coffin, never once took his eyes off me, perfectly still, never doing what I assumed he'd do, what I was afraid he'd do, just standing there like he was letting me dig myself into a hole, like he was saying to himself Polito has two minutes left, a minute and a half, one minute, Polito's got fifty seconds left, poor guy, ten seconds. And I swear it was like I was seeing each and every hair on my body, as if while my eyes were open, another pair of eyes, closed eyes, were scanning every inch of my skin and counting up each hair, eyes that could see more when they were closed than my open eyes could see. I know that doesn't make any fucking sense. And then I couldn't take it anymore and I collapsed on the bed like a slut and I said: Ulises, I feel like shit, Ulises, man, my life is a disaster, I don't know what's wrong with me, I try to do things right but everything turns out wrong, I should go back to Peru, this city is fucking killing me, I'm not the same person I used to be, and on and on I went, letting out everything that was torturing me inside, with my face in the blankets, in Ulises's blankets, I have no idea where they came from but they smelled bad, not just the typical unwashed smell of a chambre de bonne, and not like Ulises, but like something else, like death, an ominous smell that suddenly wormed its way into my brain and made me sit up, holy shit, Ulises, where did you get these blankets, causita, from the morgue? And Ulises was still standing there, not moving, listening to me, and then I thought this is my chance to go and I got up and reached out my hand and touched his shoulder. It was like touching a statue.
Roberto Rosas, Rue de Passy, Paris, September 1977. There were twelve rooms in our attic apartment. Eight of them were occupied by Latin Americans: one Chilean, Ricardito Barrientos; one Argentinian couple, Sofía Pellegrini and Miguelito Sabotinski; and the rest of us Peruvians, all poets, all at war with one another.
We liked to call our attic the Passy Commune or Passy Shanty-town.
We were always arguing and our favorite topics, or pretty much our only topics, were politics and literature. Ricardito Barrientos's room had been rented before by Polito Garcés, who was Peruvian and a poet too, but one day, after an emergency meeting, we decided to give him an ultimatum: Either you leave here this very week motherfucker or we'll kick you down the stairs, take a shit in your bed, put rat poison in your wine, or come up with something worse. Luckily Polito listened to us. If he hadn't I don't know what would've happened.
One day he came by, though, shuffling along as always, going into one room after another asking to borrow money (money he would never return), getting somebody to offer him a little coffee here, a drop of maté there (Sofía Pellegrini hated him like the plague), asking to borrow books, saying that he'd seen Bryce Echenique that week, or Julio Ramón Ribeyro, or that he'd had tea with Hinostroza. The first time you might believe him, the second time you might laugh, but after you'd heard the same lies over and over all you felt was disgust, pity, and alarm because it was clear that Polito wasn't right in the head. Who is, when you get right down to it? Still, none of us is as crazy as Polito.
Anyway, one day he came by, some evening when almost all of us happened to be around (I know because I heard him knock on other doors, I heard that voice of his, that unmistakable "how's it, causita"), and after a while his shadow fell across the threshold of my room, like he was afraid to come in without being asked, and then I said-and maybe I said it too abruptly-what do you want, motherfucker? and he laughed his little jackass laugh and said ay, Robertito, it's been a long time, man, I'm glad to see you haven't changed, look, I've got a poet here with me who I want you to meet, a buddy from Mexico.
Only then did I realize that there was someone beside him. A dark, strong, Indian-looking guy. A guy with eyes that seemed sort of liquefied and blurry at the same time, and a doctor's smile, an unusual smile at the Passy Commune, where we all tended to have the smiles of folk musicians or lawyers.