Roberto Bolano - Last Evenings On Earth

Although the Grub was not a curious man, few things escaped his notice. Once he examined the books I was carrying, one by one, as if he could barely read or couldn't read at all. After that he never showed the slightest interest in my books, although I had a new one every morning. Sometimes, perhaps because he considered me a fellow countryman of sorts, we talked about Sonora, which I hardly knew: I had been there only once, for my grandfather's funeral. He would speak of towns like Nacozari, Bacoache, Fronteras, Villa Hildalgo, Bacerac, Bavispe, Agua Prieta, Naco, names that were pure gold to my imagination. He would mention forsaken villages in the districts of Nacori Chico and Ba-cadйhuachi, near the border with Chihuahua state, and then, I don't know why, he would cover his mouth as if he were about to sneeze or yawn. He seemed to have roamed over all the mountain ranges, on foot, camping out: the Sierra Las Palomas and the Sierra La Cieneguita, the Sierra Guijas and the Sierra La Madera, the Sierra San Antonio and the Sierra Cibuta, the Sierra Tumacacori and the Sierra Sierrita right up into Arizona, the Sierra Cuevas and the Sierra Ochi-tahueca in the northeast, near Chihuahua, the Sierra La Pola and the Sierra Las Tablas in the south, toward Sinaloa, the Sierra La Gloria and the Sierra El Pinacate, up northeast, on the way to Baja California. He knew the whole of Sonora, from Huatabampo and Empalme on the Gulf coast to the remote one-horse towns in the desert. He could speak Yaqui and Pбpago (a language that straddles the Sonora-Arizona border) and he understood Seri, Pima, Mayo, and English. His Spanish was dry, with a slightly oratorical tone from time to time, undercut by the look in his eye. Like a soul in torment, I have wandered all over your grandfather's country, may he rest in peace, he said to me once.

We met each morning. Sometimes I tried not to notice him and go back to my solitary walks and matinees, but he was always there, sitting on the same bench in the Alameda, very still, with a Bali cigarette hanging from his lip, and his straw hat half covering his grublike forehead; and inevitably, looking up from the books in the Librerнa de Cristal, I would see him, watch him for a while, and end up going over to sit beside him.

I soon discovered that he always carried a gun. At first I thought maybe he was a policeman or someone was out to get him, but he couldn't have been a policeman (or not any more, if he ever had been) and I have rarely seen anyone so unconcerned by the presence of others; he never looked behind him, or to the side, and he hardly ever looked down. When I asked him why he carried a gun, the Grub said, Habit, and I didn't doubt him for a moment. He carried it in the back of his trousers. Have you used it much? I asked him. Yes, lots of times, he said, as if in a dream. For several days I was obsessed with the Grub's gun. Sometimes he would take it out, remove the clip and hand it to me so I could look at it. It looked old and felt heavy. Generally I gave it back to him after a few seconds and asked him to put it away. Sometimes it made me nervous to be sitting on a bench in the Alameda talking to (or at) a man with a gun, not because of what he might have done to me — I knew from the start that the Grub and I would always be friends — but because I was worried the Mexico City police might see us there, search us, find the Grub's gun, and dump us both in some dark prison cell.

One morning he was sick and that was when he told me about Villaviciosa. I saw him from the Librerнa del Cristal and he looked the same as ever, but when I went over to him, I noticed that his shirt was crumpled, as if he had slept in it. When I sat down beside him I could see that he was trembling. Soon he began to tremble more violently. You've got a fever, I said, you should go to bed. I accompanied him to the boardinghouse where he lived, although he insisted there was no need. Lie down, I said. The Grub took off his shirt, put the pistol under his pillow and seemed to fall asleep immediately, though with his eyes open and fixed on the ceiling. In the room there was a narrow bed, a bedside table, and a decrepit wardrobe. Inside the wardrobe I found three perfectly folded white shirts like the one he had just taken off and two pairs of matching trousers on hangers. Under the bed I noticed a very classy leather suitcase, the sort that has a lock like a safe. I couldn't see a single newspaper or magazine. The room smelled of disinfectant, like the boardinghouse stairs. Give me some money so I can go to the pharmacy and buy you something, I said. He pulled a bundle of bills from his trouser pocket, gave it to me, and lay still again. Every now and then a shudder ran down his body from head to foot as if he were about to die. But only every now and then. For a moment I thought I really should call a doctor, but then I realized that the Grub wouldn't like that. By the time I returned bearing medicine and bottles of Coke, he really had fallen asleep. I gave him a hefty dose of antibiotics and pills to bring his temperature down. Then I made him drink a quart of Coke. I had also bought a pancake, which I left on the bedside table in case he got hungry later on. When I was getting ready to go, he opened his eyes and started talking about Villaviciosa.

For a man of so few words, it was a detailed description. He said the village had seventy houses, no more, two bars and a general store. He said the houses were made of adobe and some had cement patios. He said the patios gave off a bad and sometimes unbearable smell. Unbearable, he said, for anyone with a soul, or even without a soul, even without senses. He said that was why some of the patios had been cemented. He said the village was between two and three thousand years old and its native sons worked as hired killers or security guards. He said a killer never hunted a killer, how could he, it would be like a snake biting its own tail. He said that snakes had been known to bite their own tails. He said that snakes had even been known to swallow themselves whole and if you see a snake in the process of swallowing itself you better run because sooner or later something bad is going to happen, some dislocation of reality. He said the village was near a river, called Rio Negro because its water was black, and as it flowed past the cemetery it spread out in a delta and sank into the dry earth. He said that sometimes the people would stare for hours at the horizon and the sun setting behind a mountain called El Lagarto, and the horizon was the color of flesh, like the back of a dying man. And what do they expect to see coming over the mountain? I asked. The sound of my own voice frightened me. I don't know, he said. Then he said: A shaft. And then: Wind and dust, maybe. Then he calmed down and after a while he seemed to be asleep. I'll come back tomorrow, I murmured, take the medicines and don't get out of bed.

I left quietly.

The next morning, before going to the Grub's boarding-house, I spent a while at the Librerнa de Cristal, as per usual. When I was about to leave, I looked out through the glass shopfront and saw him. He was sitting on the same bench as always, wearing a clean, loose white shirt and a pair of perfectly white trousers, his face half-covered by his straw hat, and a Bali cigarette hanging from his lower lip. He was looking straight ahead, as normal, and he seemed well. At noon, as we were about to say good-bye, he held out several bills with a sullen expression on his face and said something about the trouble he'd caused me the previous day. It was a lot of money. I told him he didn't owe me anything, I would have done the same for any friend. The Grub insisted I take the money. You can use it to buy some books, he said. I've got lots, I replied. Well you can stop stealing them for a while, he said. In the end I took the money. It's a long time ago and I can't remember exactly how much it was, the Mexican peso has been devalued over and over again, but I remember it was enough to buy twenty books and two Doors albums, and for me that was a fortune. The Grub wasn't short of cash.