How do you start an ending?
I have to admit I did feel a bit of emptiness once I got to that last dotted square. Similar to the Monterroso dinosaur story we read, that square is going to be stuck in my mind for a long time.
So many things happened in a month and a half. I was not expecting any of the events that unfolded in this chapter: them finding Cesarea, Cesarea being murdered, Belano and Lima killing Alberto and the other guy, or even Lupe and Madero sleeping together.
Looking back to the entire book it is really interesting to notice the different spaces that each chapter inhabits. First, we have the city, the night. Second, we could say we have more of a globalized Savage Detectives (we jump across continents, countries, etc). Third, we have the “countryside” (rural?), the day, the desert. Why did Bolaño choose that order?
Throughout the last chapter we can see how each character is going through really intense personal changes in comparison to their identities in the first chapter. In a way, it feels as if the characters, specifically Madero and Lupe are coming out of an intense trance, as if they are remembering what life can/should feel like again. We can see that “waking up” is reflected in the way that most (almost all) actions/events in this last chapter take place during the day. The sun and the sky become characters themselves or witnesses to the adventures of the group.
For instance, there is a day, January 12th, when Madero writes:
“¿Si una sigue a un torero a la larga ese mundo acaba por gustarle?, dijo Lupe. Así parece, dijo Belano. ¿Y si una sale con un policía, el mundo del policía acabará por gustarle? Así parece, dijo Belano. ¿Y si una sale con un padrote, el mundo del padrote acabará por gustarle? Belano no contestó. Raro, porque él siempre procura contestar a todas las preguntas, aunque éstas no necesiten respuesta o no vengan al caso. Lima, por el contrario, cada vez habla menos, limitándose a conducir el Impala con expresión ausente. Creo que no nos hemos dado cuenta, ciegos como estamos, del cambio que Lupe empieza a experimentar.”
“If a woman follows a bullfighter, does that world end up appealing to her in the long run?” Lupe said. “So it seems,” Belano said. “And if she goes out with a cop, does the cop’s world end up appealing to her?” “So it seems,” Belano said. “And if she goes out with a pimp, does the pimp’s world end up appealing to her?” Belano didn’t answer. Strange, because he always tries to answer every question, even when they don’t need answering or aren’t relevant. Lima, on the other hand, speaks less and less, limiting himself to driving the Impala with an absent expression. I think we haven’t noticed, blind as we are, the change that Lupe is beginning to undergo.”
I think places give you an identity, an identity that is hard to get rid of. Maybe, when you have been in a place for too long, they acquire the power to strip you away from your own humanity. The city might be one of those places, or maybe poverty is one of those places. What other places can you think of?
I believe Lupe is shedding away the labels those places put into her, into her body. Lupe at the desert, Lupe at the beach, Lupe at the school teacher house, Lupe at Villaviciosa, Lupe in Lupe’s body. Is she really changing though, or just noticing things that have always been there but did not have the time to think of/notice/feel/see? Questioning. Belano is not answering questions anymore, Madero is not asking them either, and Lima is choosing silence.
Lupe reclaiming agency in Sonora. Extremely ironic given the context of the Sonoran desert.
After 7 years, renowned search collective founder Ceci Flores finds her son’s remains in Sonora
“Cuando regresábamos a Hermosillo tuve la sensación no sólo de haber recorrido ya estas pinches tierras sino de haber nacido aquí.”
Hermosillo and the desert in general becomes a place where the self is altered to the point that it feels like origin. The third chapter has multiple places and one place at a time, places that don’t just hold you, but have the power to remake our hated/loved characters, until they can no longer tell whether they arrived there, or whether, somehow, they were made there all along. Rebirth?
Destiny.
Do you think Bolaño believed in destiny? Why did he decide to kill Cesarea? Why did he make us read chapter 2? Will chapter 1 and 3 make sense without chapter 2?














