386: The Santa Teresa police chief dreams about his twin brother. They’ve gone out to roam the scrub hills and hunt for lizards, and upon their return at dusk, they see lots of trucks with cutesy phrases painted on them. The brothers, of different heights but of otherwise like appearance, have identical movements as they walk back into town. The dream “vanishe[s] little by little in a comfortable yellow haze.”

There’s a feeling of having arrived at a destination when the book begins to describe the crimes.  I’d somehow gotten the impression, having read about 2666 off and on before I tried it myself, that this section was an even drier kind of catalogue, almost without narrative.  It’s not really like that.  There is a catalogue of murders here, and it’s as numbing as advertised, but here’s the thing.  The layering-up and rewriting and twisted, doubled-over reportage mirrors Bolaño’s treatment of other phenomena like books and authors (some of the victims described being real ones, and others, I think, fictional, though I have not looked up every single victim, and perhaps all their names wouldn’t appear on the Internet?  I should welcome intelligence on this point, if we’ve got any.)  In any case, it appears that some of what is being described is real, and some not.  The nature of 2666 invites us to investigate these things for ourselves, gets us thinking about how much of what we’re being told in other writings, other media, is likewise being distorted, exaggerated, invented or just left out completely.

Clearly, we’re meant to be numbed here before we are shocked into consciousness.  The clinical nature of these multiple accounts deadens the attention, too, and deliberately so.  This mirrors the way we are numbed and deadened by all the other real horrors we hear about every day, in faraway places we’ve never been like Baghdad and Mosul and Kabul, or even in places we may have been, like Washington D.C. or Fort Hood or New Orleans.

We might become so numb that we even miss the elusive patterns in the flood of similar horrors described in this novel; many but not all of the victims are tall, are young, have been multiply violated and strangled—but some have been stabbed, or not raped, and sometimes the perpetrator is caught, and turns out to have been involved with the victim for a long time.  There is an evil truth underneath all these incoherent, jumbled accounts, however.  A mass murderer who drives or is driven in a black Peregrino—I’ve never heard of such a make, and Google offers no enlightenment—but I guess it is the same one waiting outside Amalfitano’s house when Fate and Rosa make their escape.

I never met Lily Burk, the 17-year-old girl who was abducted and killed last summer here in Los Angeles, but she was an acquaintance of my daughter’s.  This murder was more along the lines of a botched robbery; the murderer was a recently paroled drug addict who was found just a few hours after killing Lily, high as a kite, we heard, and in possession of her keys and other effects.  Practically everyone I know has some connection with the Burk family through temple, school or work, and for many months we were all laser-focused on this disaster, talked about it constantly, read about it in the papers, learned everything we didn’t already know about the victim and her family.  This is just one lovely child who was killed, the tenderly-raised daughter of a professional family, raised in an atmosphere where all the moms are very concerned together about such things as planning school fundraising events, and we also know how each kid is doing, because we’ve known them all since they were little, and we also have firm ideas about what the “in” appetizer is to bring to a party, and where the best Pilates studio is, and where to buy good dessert wine.  All of which seems simply obscene, or crazy, or both, in the face of the unbelievable shit that goes on.

It will be impossible for any of the victims in Santa Teresa to receive anything like the   kind of attention accorded to the murder of Lily Burk (for what that’s worth, if anything,) or for the perpetrator to be caught and put away so quickly (which is worth something.)  The murder of a young girl doesn’t really shock anyone in Santa Teresa, because it happens once every few days.  They’re even number than we are; they have to be.  The community has no resources for preventing the next murder.  At this stage of the novel, they haven’t really even figured out yet that there is a pattern; the police, even if they are willing, are operating in an absolute circus of disorder, corruption and mismanagement; they are powerless.

I am having a lot of trouble wrapping my head around the idea that this is a real thing, that it started in the early 90s, and that it’s still going on right this minute.

1 — p.353 — Esperanza Gómez Saldaña — 13 yrs — Jan 1993 — found in vacant lot in Colonia Las Flores, strangled, raped
2 — p.354 — Luisa Celina Vázquez — 16 yrs — Jan 1993 — found in apt. in Colonia Mancera, strangled, pregnant
3 — p.355 — Unidentified — about 30 yrs — Feb 1993 — found in alley in city center, stabbed, beaten
4 — p.356 — Isabel Urrea — Mar 1993 — reporter for radio station El Heraldo del Norte, shot
5 — p.357 — Isabel Cansino — Apr 1993 — prostitute, beaten
6 — p.358 — Unidentified — about 35 yrs — May 1993 — found in a dump, worker, pregnant, strangled, raped
7 — p.359 — Guadalupe Rojas — 26 yrs — May 1993 — worker, shot by boyfriend
8 — p.360 — Unidentified — 25 or 26 yrs — May 1993 — found on the slopes of Cerro Estrella, stabbed, raped
9 — p.370a — Father Juan Carrasco — May 1993 — killed by the Penitent
10 — p.370b — Caretaker, church of Nuestro Señor Jesucristo — May 1993 — killed by the Penitent
11 — p.372 — Emilia Mena Mena — June 1993 — found in a dump, raped, stabbed, burned
12 — p.373 — Unidentified — between 23 and 25 yrs — June 1993 — discovered by school janitor, stabbed
13 — p.374 — Margarita López Santos — 16 yrs — June 1993 — body found near a shack, cause of death unknown
14 — p.389 — Unidentified — Sep 1993 — found in an abandoned car, strangled, raped
15 — p.390 — Gabriela Morón — 18 yrs — Sep 1993 — maquiladora worker, killed by her boyfriend
16 — p.391a — Marta Navales Gómez — 20 yrs — Oct 1993 — found in a dump, strangled, raped
17 — p.391b — Elsa Luz Pintado? — found near the highway
18 — p.392a — Andrea Pacheco Martínez — 13 yrs — Nov 1993 — kidnapped from school, strangled, raped
19 — p.392b — Felicidad Jiménez Jiménez — 50 yrs — Dec 1993 — stabbed at home by her son, Ernesto
20 — p.399 — Unidentified — Jan 1994 — found in the desert off the highway to Nogales, stabbed, raped
21 — p.400 — Leticia Contreras Zamudio — 23 yrs — early 1994 — prostitute
22 — p.402 — Penélope Méndez Becerra — 11 yrs — early 1994 –  kidnapped from school, strangled, raped, had a heart attack

Also killed:

p. 397 — The professional, a state judicial police inspector, who tried to kill Pedro Rengifo’s wife, is killed along with a man holding an uzi by Lalo Cura. Anyone else think this hit was orchestrated by Pedro Rengifo himself and was astonished when Lalo Cura “saved” his wife (actually botching the whole operation)?

Most of the women killed are said to have worked (or one can imagine would have worked) at the factories on the outskirts of town. But also two prostitutes are killed, and a male priest and sexton at a church in Santa Teresa. One or two women are killed in domestic violence disputes. One reporter is killed, supposedly because of a burglary, but it is easy to assume she could have been assassinated for covering the murder of women in Santa Teresa. Women who have long, straight, dark hair seem more susceptible to being murdered, who are often from foreign countries. An ominous black Peregrino or MasterRoad car kidnapd two different young girls from outside their schools. Can we guess this is the same black Peregrino that Amalfitano sees outside his home?

The evil.

The murders.

Well, at least the most-hyped part of the novel. Or the part that causes many people to put the book aside.

At first, the narrative seems to be straightforward. A girl is found dead. Then another, then another. But, like all parts of this novel, there is complexity upon complexity layered upon the narrative. There are murder mysteries, stories-within-the-stories, character arcs, allusions, black humor, and irony. The pages are dense with details, names, locations, fragments, and dots waiting to be connected.

This is my second read of the novel and I have to admit that I was not looking forward rereading this part again, to curling up with a nice book about female sexual homicides. Although, I knew that the section is full of deeper meanings that need to be teased out, even if the secret of the world is contained within them, I still found it a little hard to get motivated to start that section.

We are plunged into it. In the first five pages, we read about six different murders. As soon as we read about one, the camera pans away and we’re on to the next one. It’s like walking through a cemetery with a flashlight, trying to make sense of each headstone that your light finds. Who was this person? How did they die? How about this woman, too? Or that  one over there, only 13?

Over the next month, I hope to look more at the real-world Santa Teresa, Ciudad Juárez, and it’s horrible crimes, but one of the sad ironies of both the fictional town and the real town is that women are attracted to the city because of the easy availability of jobs. Most of the murdered women are workers at the maquiladoras around town. These assembly plants require hundreds of workers, most of whom they pay poorly and treat as interchangeable, but on the scale of unemployment to employment, they are shining stars.

The city is rapidly growing and rapidly dying.

After eight murders in seven pages, we move to the story about the church desecrator, the Penitent, who stabs the church sexton and pees on the floor. Police Inspector Juan de Dios Martínez goes to visit the asylum to see if any of the patients match the description of the church desecrator. He doesn’t find the criminal, but he finds the director of the asylum. Why does Bolaño include the story of the Penitent here? The Crimes are not just the femicides—they are murder-as-murder, a desecration of the sacred, a soulcrime, an offense against God in some way.

More to come.

Guadalupe Roncal
A reporter covering the murders in Santa Teresa that Fate meets in the bar of the hotel where most of the other sportswriters are staying (Sonora Resort) (295-296).  She says that investigating the murders is extremely dangerous.  She fears for her life.  Fate agrees to accompany her to visit the chief suspect in the murders.  Rosa Amalfitano accompanies Guadalupe and Fate to the prison to meet the killer (344).

Rosa Amalfitano
Meets Fate at the Fernández/Pickett fight (309).  Fate rescues her from Charly Cruz’s house and brings her back to his hotel (323).  Fate accompanies her to her house where he meets her father, Oscar Amalfitano (342-344).  At the request of her father (343), Fate takes Rosa to the United States so that she can return to Spain (347).

Chucho Flores
A reporter covering the Fernández/Pickett fight.  He and Fate go to a bar after the press event at the Fernández event and meet Charly Cruz and Rosa Méndez (278-279).  Was Rosa Amalfitano’s boyfriend (329-337).

Charly Cruz
Friend of Chucho Flores. Owns three video stores (279).  Tells Fate the story of Robert Rodrigez’s first film (280-281).  Fate meets up with him again at the Fernández/Pickett fight and they (Chucho Flores, Charly Cruz, Rosa Amalfitano, Rosa Méndez, Juan Corona go back to Charly Cruz’s place where he shows Fate the Robert Rodriguez film (320).

Rosa Méndez
She has dated both Charly Cruz and Chucho Flores.  Fate finds her passed out on a bed in Charly Cruz’s house (232).  She appears to be Rosa Amalfitano’s only female friend.  She tells Rosa Amalfitano about sleeping with policemen (“…like being fucked by a mountain in a cave inside the mountain itself…”) and sleeping with narcos (“…like being fucked by the desert air…”) (328-329).

Kahlil
Member of the Mohammedan Brotherhood (292).  Meets with Fate to discuss the Mohammedan Brotherhood.

Ibrahim
Member of the Mohammedan Brotherhood.  Meets with Fate to show the charitable work of the Brotherhood (293).

Juan Corona
Meets Fate at the Fernández/Pickett fight (309).  Appears to be dating Rosa Méndez.  Gets punched out by Fate (324).

The Fourth Man
A mysterious individual that rode with Fate on the way to Charly Cruz’s house (319).  He doesn’t speak.  If I had to guess, I suspect he was part of some kind of plot of Charly Cruz’s to rob/kidnap/murder/etc. the group that Charly Cruz has invited to his house. That would explain the checking of the watch – waiting for accomplices maybe?

p309
Denzel Washington (1954 – ) – African American Actor.  Portrayed Malcolm X in 1992’s Malcolm X.  Won an Academy Award for Best Actor in 2001 for Training Day.

p314
Barry Guardini – Fictional film director

I’ve also compiled an aggregated list of all the vocabulary words through week 6 (page 349).

agua fresca

a combination of either fruits, cereals, or seeds, and sugar and water, blended together to make a refreshing beverage

atrophied

decrease in size or wasting away of a body part or tissue

au revoir

Goodbye till we meet again (french)

bucolic

relating to or typical of rural life

effigy

an image or representation especially of a person

effusively

marked by the expression of great or excessive emotion or enthusiasm

faire l’amour

to make love, to have sex (french)

gesticulating

to make gestures especially when speaking

lethargy

abnormal drowsiness

masochist

a sexual perversion characterized by pleasure in being subjected to pain or humiliation

merci

thank you (french)

narcos

drug dealer

oneiric

of or relating to dreams

paean

a joyous song or hymn of praise, tribute

polyglot

speaking or writing several languages : multilingual

reportage

writing intended to give an account of observed or documented events

sordid

marked by baseness or grossness : vile

surreptitiously

done, made, or acquired by stealth

tacitly

expressed or carried on without words or speech

voulez-vous coucher avec moi

Would you like to sleep with me (french)

zoetrope

a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures

Harlem, New York – Fate meets the Mohammedan Brotherhood here during a pro-Palestine demonstration just after 9/11. (p. 290)

Bronx, New York – Fate has an appointment with Khalil of the Mohammedan Brotherhood. (p. 292)

Mexico City – Guadalupe Roncal works for a newspaper here. (p. 296)

New York University – Fate went to college here. (p. 300)

Sioux City, Iowa – Chuck Campbell went to college here. (p. 300)

Arena del Norte boxing stadium – Fate goes here once in the morning, then again for the fight in the evening. He meets Rosa Amalfitano here. (p. 303, 305)

Veracruz, Mexico – Rosa Méndez asks if Fate has ever been here; “something bad must have happened” to her here. (p. 310)

El Rey del Taco – Fate, Rosa, Rosita, Chucho, Cruz, and Corona eat here after the fight. (p. 312)

Hermosillo – García, one of Merolino’s sparring partners, spent eight years in prison here for killing his sister. (p. 319)

Charly Cruz’s house – Fate & co. end up here the night of the fight. (p. 319)

Fire, Walk With Me – a 24-hour cybercafé in Santa Teresa to which the clerk at Fate’s motel gives him directions. Fate does not go. (p. 339)

Santa Teresa prison – Rosa Amalfitano and Fate go with Guadalupe Roncal here to interview the chief suspect for the murders. (p. 345)

View 2666 Locations in a larger map

Michael Mullen wrote an extraordinary reply to an earlier post, and I’d like to draw attention to it.

****************
Seaman’s sermon I’ve mostly re-read already, because it’s stunning and strange and raises so many questions that I can’t answer, and cuts so far down to the bone of what it is to be a sentient being. The passage about stars [p. 152] alone is so connected with other things that have been talked about already.

This leads to a discussion of metaphor that seems related to things Maria wrote earlier about Plato’s cave. “Metaphors are our ways of losing ourselves in semblances or treading water in a sea of seeming.” Stars are metaphoric reflections of the one real star, the sun of our solar system. And that star is real, why? Because if it weren’t we’d be dead? Because it can burn up astronauts in bad sci-fi movies, but isn’t that treading back toward metaphor? Because it’s the ideal from which other stars and their qualities are extrapolated?

The novel is full of dreams, and dreams within dreams, beneath a dreamlike surface, a swirling narrative. We’re trying to make sense of this all, and hoping to grasp the life jacket that won’t cause us to sink.

The stars that may be dead remind me very much of Amalfitano’s belief that places don’t exist when you leave them. That jet lag comes not from you being tired, but from the place you’ve arrived at working extra hard to constitute itself. As soon as you leave again, it slips back into semblance.

And with all of this sort of metaphysical questioning, I still believe that the novel is pointing toward the realities of injustice and exploitation, as you’ve all discussed above. You can’t go to Santa Teresa and expect not to be implicated in the crimes, or some attempt at their solution.

*****************

This approach to this book, through its poetics rather than through its politics, seems essential. If the novel were only a call to action, demanding that we “do something” about the crimes, it would surely be something quite different, would be a pamphlet in blazing red letters or a call-in radio show. Now that we’re reading something like a police procedural (in the next section,) I’m starting to appreciate the difficulties of the “pragmatic” approach to this subject a lot more. The clarion call alone would not be enough to change anyone’s mind; that kind of writing only separates us from the reality, sets us apart from it. We have to think about what it means to be human in a bigger sense in order to understand both the dream and the waking.  If we could really understand it–maybe only then would we have a shot at changing how the world works.

All this by way of observing that throughout, both Oscars have been grappling with an attempt to make sense of, or to synthesize, the physical and the metaphysical–culminating at the end of this section in the successful rescue of Rosa Amalfitano. Could they have saved her if they’d been “men of action,” openly concerned with the outward manifestations of things in Santa Teresa?  Wouldn’t we have seen some kind of Sam Peckinpah bloodbath if they’d gone in all macho and confrontational?  The very dreaminess of their conduct seems to have disarmed the bad guys, both literally and figuratively.

page 303: Fate and the hotel clerk have an intense discussion about clouds. It just so happens that Fate knows the Greek root of the word cirrus? I thought briefly that this this hotel clerk reminded me of Tim Roth as the hotel clerk in Four Rooms.

page 307: Fate is watching the undercard: a fighter in white shorts versus a fighter wearing “black, purple, and red striped” shorts. This is when he hears his name being called, but can’t see who’s talking to him. Two pages earlier, Fate is at a restaurant that includes a foosball table at the back. One team of the players/figures on the foosball table wear white shorts and the other team wears black/red outfits. The black/red team has small devil horns on their foreheads. When Oscar first heard his name being called in the crowded arena, I was still thinking of Oscar-as-Jonah and that this voice calling him was maybe the devil, tempting him to stay in Santa Teresa. Fate is called over to Chucho and Rosa and Rosita and Charly Cruz and his meandering journey through the underbelly of Santa Teresa takes off from there. (As a side note, we all know that the color red is traditionally associated with representations of the devil, but did you know that so are stripes? Stripes are the devil’s cloth!)

page 317: It someone’s birthday and the Mexicans start to sing Las Mañanitas (Little Mornings), the traditional Mexican birthday song. Fate asks Rosa Amalfitano what’s the connection between King David and birthdays. She doesn’t know because she’s from Spain. The first line of the song is Estas son las mañanitas, que cantaba el Rey David (roughly: This is the morning song that King David used to sing). David was the psalmist and is known for those psalms as songs, so that part’s not that unusual (especially in a mostly Catholic country). But what’s interesting is that Las Mañanitas is also sung at novenas celebrating patron saints—and is traditionally sung to meet the Virgin of Guadalupe on the morning of her feast day:

page 333: Amalfitano mentions “Professor Plateau.” Some googling reveals him to be an interesting character, but I can’t gather much information together about him. Anyone have a historical sketch or more details about him? The “rapid succession of fixed images” described in relation to the zoetrope/moving image calls to mind the dreamer back on page 300 who’s “dreaming at great speed” and thus a connection between dreams and movies.

page 335: Rosa Amalfitano is in the coffee shop reading a book on Mexican painting in the twentieth century and begins to read a chapter on Paalen. This is Wolfgang Paalen, who was born in Austria and grew up in Germany, Italy, and Paris and later moved to Mexico (at the invitation of Frida Kahlo). He’s associated with the surrealists of the period (including Marcel Duchamp). I think a Paalen would make a fine cover image for 2666:

12 — p.292 — Fate is discussing September 11 with the Mohammedan Brotherhood; one member describes the death of Mohamed Atta (and the other hijackers) as part of a Klan conspiracy.

13 — p. 297 — Guadalupe Roncal tells Fate about her predecessor on the story of the femicides; “He was killed, of course. He got in too deep and they killed him. Not here, in Santa Teresa, but in Mexico City. The police said it was a robbery that went wrong.”

14 — p. 319 — Chucho Flores tells Fate about how Merolino’s sparring partner Garcia “went crazy and killed his sister” several years previous, then spent eight years in prison after claiming temporary insanity.