Free The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño Page B

no hope left for me. Besides, how will I explain to my uncle that I crossed the whole city barefoot? I think it was this line of reasoning that roused me, or maybe it was desperation that made me unconsciously pound the door with the back of my head. In any case, I suddenly heard steps inside the little house. A few seconds later, the door opened and a voice asked me in a sleepy whisper what I was doing there.
    It was María.
    "My shoes are gone. If I could find them, I'd go home right now," I said.
    "Come in," said María. "Don't make a sound."
    I followed her with my arms outstretched, like a blind man. All at once I ran into something. It was María's bed. I heard her order me to get in, then I watched her retrace her steps (the girls' house is actually pretty big) and silently close the door, which had been left ajar. I didn't hear her return. The darkness was total now, although after a few seconds-I was sitting on the edge of the bed, not lying down as she had commanded-I could make out the outline of the window through the enormous linen drapes. Then I felt someone get into bed and lie down, and then, how much later I don't know, I felt that person just barely sit up, probably leaning on an elbow, and pull me close. By the feel of her breath I realized that I was only fractions of an inch from María's face. Her fingers ran over my face, from my chin to my eyes, closing my eyes as if inviting me to sleep; her hand, a bony hand, unzipped my pants and felt for my cock. Why I don't know, maybe because I was so nervous, but I said I wasn't sleepy. I know, said María, me neither. Then everything turned into a succession of concrete acts and proper nouns and verbs, or pages from an anatomy manual scattered like flower petals, chaotically linked. I explored María's naked body, María's glorious naked body, in a contained silence, although I could have shouted, rejoicing in each corner, each smooth and interminable space I discovered. María was less reserved. Soon she began to moan, and her maneuvers, at first timid or restrained, became more open (I can't think of another word for it just now), as she guided my hand to places it hadn't reached, whether out of ignorance or negligence. So that was how I learned, in fewer than ten minutes, where a woman's clitoris is and how to massage or fondle or press it, always within the bounds of gentleness, of course, bounds that María, on the other hand, was constantly transgressing, since my cock, treated well in the first forays, soon began to suffer torments in her hands, hands that in the dark and the tangle of the sheets sometimes seemed to me like the talons of a falcon or a falconess, tugging on me so hard that I was afraid they were trying to pull me right off, and at other times like Chinese dwarfs (her fingers were the fucking dwarfs!) investigating and measuring the spaces and ducts that connected my testicles to my cock and each other. Then (but first I had pushed my pants down to my knees) I got on top of her and entered her.
    "Don't come inside of me," said María.
    "I'll try not to," I said.
    "What do you mean you'll
try
, you jerk? Don't come inside!"
    I looked to either side of the bed as María's legs laced and unlaced across my back (I would've been happy to keep going like that until I died). In the distance I glimpsed the shadow of Angélica's bed and the curve of Angélica's hips, like an island observed from another island. Suddenly I felt María's lips sucking my left nipple, almost as if she were biting my heart. I jumped, and pushed in all the way in one thrust, wanting to pin her to the bed (the springs of which began to squeak hideously so that I paused), while at the same time I kissed her hair and forehead with great delicacy and still managed to find the time to wonder how it was possible that the noise we were making hadn't woken Angélica. I didn't even notice when I came. Of course, I pulled out in time; I've always had good reflexes.
    "You didn't