He had long dark hair and a Fu Manchu. He dressed in jeans and pullover jerseys. I saw him in Café La Habana writing, reading, smoking like a fiend. He preferred a table by the windows that framed Avenue Morelos. Near my age—I was twenty-three—he might have been a student. I wasn’t sure. On the path to getting a PhD, I was in Mexico City that summer on a university grant to research and write a paper about Leon Trotsky’s years in Coyoacán. Thanks to the Department Chair, the funds were enough to last six weeks.
I suppose we got used to each other’s presence. Mornings I left my cheap hotel around the corner from the Biblioteca José Vasconcelos and was in Café La Habana’s door around nine. Most days he was in his spot by the windows, a cup of coffee on the table. I never saw a roll or plate of food. Just his notebook, a thin paperback or two, and a pack of Delicados cigarettes. Walking past his table one morning, I noticed he was writing poetry. Which made sense even if I didn’t know a thing about it. Maybe he worked nights and spent his mornings doing that. Much as I had the urge to hear his story, he was so focused I didn’t dare interrupt him.
Yet, it was inevitable that a morning came when the table next to the poet was the only option. I set my coffee down and took out the newspapers. It turned out I wasn’t a distraction. A cigarette hung from his lips as he kept on writing. That day it was prose; I saw with a glance. His ballpoint Bic pen was a millimeter of blue from being useless. It didn’t matter. He kept his head down as he scribbled with a fury, dotting i’s and ending sentences with a single firm poke. It struck me that he was writing a great work. Maybe he was well-known or on his way to that status. The mere thought of it impressed me.
At one point, he turned and said something to me I didn’t catch at first. I must have looked like a zombie staring at him.
“A qué te dedicas?” he repeated.
He looked at the book on my table. I was deep into Bertram Wolfe’s Three Who Made a Revolution. Of course, I was most interested in what he had to say about Trotsky. Anyway, the poet picked it up, examined the cover, then turned it over. Setting it back down, he asked if I was a student. I replied in the affirmative, though I felt the need to mention I was a graduate student from Illinois. Why are you here? was his next question. I told him I was writing a paper on Trotsky. When it was done, it would be published in a journal at my university. He replied with a smile. Then he said he thought Trotsky was an interesting character. That was the word he used—character—as if he were describing a role in a stage play.
As for him, he was a published poet, though he wrote prose he expected to soon be out in the world. That day, he was working on a story set in Chile. It was an important one; he had no qualms telling me that. He was in the country two years earlier, and it was a nightmare. A horrific situation that wasn’t about to get better any time soon.
At the end of that, he became distracted. He looked down at his notebook. Just like that, our conversation was over. I didn’t think it was personal. I assumed a thought had intruded that he wanted to get down before it vanished. Maybe it was due to something I said. Whatever had prompted it, he went back to writing.
I went back to the newspapers. Then I read a chapter in Three Who Made a Revolution. Then it was time to go. I folded the newspapers and slipped them, and Wolfe’s book, into my shoulder bag.
“Ya nos veremos,” I said.
“Estoy aquí mucho,” he said.
The next morning, I had a meeting at the Trotsky Museum in Coyoacán, where I did my research. The morning after that, the poet was in Café La Habana with a friend. Spotting me at the counter, he waved. I carried the tray with my coffee and roll over that way.
“Siéntate con nosotros,” he said. A hand offered me the free area on the table.
I pulled a chair over and sat with them. The introductions and handshakes went around. The poet’s name was Roberto. His friend was Mario. Mario, too, was a poet. “Another poet” was the way he put it, as if there were a surplus of them. And maybe there was. I didn’t know. It wasn’t much longer after that I found out he and Roberto were part of a tight group of writers whose intention was to disrupt the cultural establishment.
It sounded ambitious, even if I wasn’t sure what they meant by it or why they wanted to do it. I wasn’t even sure what the cultural establishment they wanted to disrupt was or who it involved, and I didn’t ask. The group published three magazines.
“Revistas clandestinas,” Roberto said.
“Why of course,” I said, using English.
Roberto reached into his bag and pulled out a copy he had with him. Its name was Elegir, a xeroxed production with a red cover and stapled binding.
“Es para ti,” he said.
I opened it to the table of contents and saw they each had a poem in it.
“Lo leeré en la Biblioteca José Vasconcelos,” I said.
The conversation went on. As it did, Roberto revealed the story he was writing was based on his arrest in Chile on suspicions of being a terrorist. He spent eight days in jail. He was in isolation the whole time. His cell was small, stinking, and infested. He wasn’t harmed, but late in the night he could hear others being tortured and knew it was inevitable that would be his fate. His only distraction was an English-language magazine another prisoner had left behind. Each day he was there, he read it cover to cover. He got lucky when sympathetic prison guards released him early one morning. He fled the country as fast as he could.
I was intrigued, to say the least. It was beyond anything I had ever experienced.
We went to the counter to order another coffee. Back in our seats, we went on for another hour. Stories and ideas flew back and forth at a rapid pace. When the time came to finish up and leave, Roberto invited me to a reading taking place at a space in the Roma Sur district that Saturday night. I was all in, of course. It seemed the perfect thing to do. After our conversation, I knew it would be good.
Then a surprising thing happened. Roberto asked if I wanted to read.
“No soy poetisa,” I said.
“Lea su artículo sobre Trotsky,” Roberto said. “O lo que quieras.”
I’d never done anything like that—read my work in front of people. Down there, out of my element, it was a good time and place to step out of my comfort zone. Without hesitation, I agreed to do it.
Roberto wrote down the address and the fastest and safest way to get there.
Saturday night, I bought a bottle of tequila and rode the subway to the Chilpancingo stop. Fifteen minutes later, I was in the loft of an abstract painter where Roberto and Mario were among a large group of literary enthusiasts. Several rows of folding chairs and a microphone were set up. The air was dense with cigarette smoke. Life-sized paintings of people distorted out of proportion hung on the walls. There was a table by the big industrial windows with bottles of wine and liquor on it. I went over to it, opened the bottle of tequila I brought, and poured a shot into a plastic cup. Looking for someone to talk to, Roberto came over to greet me. Mario was right behind.
“Sabía que estarías aquí,” Roberto said.
Mario asked if I brought my paper. I said I did, and he added my name to a list. Then he and Roberto introduced me around. I had trouble matching names with faces. Who they were and what they did—I didn’t think it mattered. I didn’t think I was the only outsider. I chatted with a few folks, knocked back the tequila, and grabbed a beer from one of the coolers. I chatted some more until an unshaven guy was at the mic. It was time to start, he said.
The fourth reader that night, I admit I was nervous. They were an engaged group. At the mic, I eased out a breath to calm myself. I prefaced what was to follow. Then I went into it for fifteen minutes. When I was done, I received fervent applause. Back in my seat, I couldn’t deny I was involved in something special. Or that was how I felt in the moment.
The night stretched on. The readings continued. Poets and storytellers shared their work. There was a break at one point. I chatted with Roberto and some others. It turned out Roberto was the night’s last reader. Wrapping up the event with a poem titled “On the Edge of a Cliff,” clapping and whistling went on for two full minutes. It might have been eleven-thirty, but the party was just starting. Much of what followed was a blur.
For the remaining weeks I was there, I became a literary enthusiast. I took part in another reading. I went to several more parties. There were more engaging chats in Café La Habana. When my time was up, I went back to Chicago with forty typed pages on Trotsky’s three years in Coyoacán. Published in the winter issue of my university’s journal Past and Present, it was received well enough for me to score a grant the following summer. I used it to go to Turkey to research and write about Trotsky’s time in that country after his 1929 expulsion from the Soviet Union.
And now here I am, a university professor in Pittsburgh where, browsing in my local bookstore one Sunday afternoon, I paused to check out a trade paperback written by a Chilean-born writer. Translated from Spanish, it was titled By Night in Chile. The author’s name was Roberto Bolaño.