Roberto Bolaño - The Return

She was eighteen at the time. She had left high school and was studying music at a private academy and drawing with a retired landscape painter, but she wasn’t all that interested in music, or in painting, really: she liked it, but couldn’t get passionate about it. One day I received a letter informing me, in her usual terse fashion, that she was going to take part in a beauty contest. My response, which filled three double-sided pages, was an extravagant paean to her calm beauty, the sweetness of her eyes, the perfection of her figure, etc. The letter was a triumph of bad taste, and when I had finished it, I wondered whether or not I should send it, but in the end I did.

A few weeks went by before I heard from her. I could have called, but I didn’t want to intrude and also at the time I was broke. Clara came second in the contest and was depressed for a week. Surprisingly, she sent me a telegram, which read: SECOND PLACE. STOP. GOT YOUR LETTER. STOP. COME AND SEE ME. The stops were written out.

A week later, I took a train bound for the city where she lived, the first one leaving that day. Before that, of course — I mean after the telegram — we had spoken on the phone, and I had heard the story of the beauty contest a number of times. It had made a big impact on Clara, apparently. So I packed my bags and, as soon as I could, got on a train, and very early the next morning, there I was, in that unfamiliar city. I arrived at Clara’s apartment at nine-thirty, after having a coffee at the station and smoking a few cigarettes to kill some time. A fat woman with messy hair opened the door, and when I said I had come to see Clara, she looked at me as if I were a lamb on its way to the slaughterhouse. For a few minutes (which seemed extraordinarily long at the time, and thinking the whole thing over, later on, I realized that, in fact, they were), I sat in the living room and waited for her, a living room that seemed welcoming, for no special reason, overly cluttered, but welcoming and full of light. When Clara made her entrance it was like the apparition of a goddess. I know it was a stupid thing to think — and is a stupid thing to say — but that’s how it was.

The following days were pleasant and unpleasant. We saw a lot of movies, almost one a day; we made love (I was the first guy Clara had slept with, which seemed incidental or anecdotal, but in the end it would cost me dearly); we walked around; I met Clara’s friends; we went to two horrific parties; and I asked her to come and live with me in Barcelona. Of course, at that stage, I knew what her answer would be. A month later, I took a night train back to Barcelona; I remember it was a terrible trip.

Soon after that, Clara explained in a letter, the longest one she ever sent me, why she couldn’t go on: I was putting her under intolerable pressure (by suggesting that we live together); it was all over. After that we talked three or four times on the phone. I think I also wrote her a letter containing insults and declarations of love. Once when I was traveling to Morocco, I called her from the hotel where I was staying, in Algeciras, and that time we were able to have a civilized conversation. At least she thought it was civilized. Or I did.

Years later Clara told me about the parts of her life I had missed out on. And then, years after that, both she and some of her friends told me her life story all over again, starting from the beginning or from the point where we split up — it didn’t make any difference to them (I was a very minor character, after all), or to me, really, although that wasn’t so easy to admit. Predictably, not long after the end of our engagement (I know “engagement” is hyperbolic, but it’s the best word I can find), Clara got married, and the lucky man was, logically enough, one of the friends I met on my first trip to her city.

But before that, she had psychological problems: she used to dream about rats; at night she would hear them in her bedroom, and for months, the months leading up to her marriage, she had to sleep on the sofa in the living room. I’m guessing those damn rats disappeared after the wedding.

So. Clara got married. And the husband, Clara’s dear husband, surprised everyone, even her. After one or two years, I’m not sure exactly — Clara told me, but I’ve forgotten — they split up. It wasn’t an amicable separation. The guy shouted, Clara shouted, she slapped him, he responded with a punch that dislocated her jaw. Sometimes, when I’m alone and can’t get to sleep, but don’t feel up to switching on the light, I think of Clara, who came in second in that beauty contest, with her jaw hanging out of joint, unable to get it back into place on her own, driving to the nearest hospital with one hand on the wheel, and the other supporting her jawbone. I’d like to find it funny, but I can’t.

What I do find funny is her wedding night. The day before, she’d had an operation, for hemorrhoids, so I guess she was still a bit groggy. Or maybe not. I never asked her if she was able to make love with her husband. I think they’d done it before the operation. Anyway, what does it matter? All these details say more about me than they do about her.

In any case, Clara split up with her husband a year or two after the wedding, and started studying. She hadn’t finished high school, so she couldn’t go to a university, but she tried everything else: photography, painting (I don’t know why, but she always thought she could be a good painter), music, typing, computers, all those one-year diploma courses supposedly leading to job opportunities that desperate young people keep jumping at or falling for. And although Clara was happy to have escaped from a husband who beat her, deep down she was desperate.

The rats came back, and the depression, and the mysterious illnesses. For two or three years she was treated for an ulcer, until the doctors finally realized that there was nothing wrong, at least not in her stomach. Around that time she met Luis, an executive; they became lovers, and he convinced her to study something related to business administration. According to Clara’s friends, she had at last found the love of her life. Before long, they were living together; Clara got a job in an office, a legal firm or some kind of agency — a really fun job, Clara said, without a hint of irony — and her life seemed to be on track, for good this time. Luis was a sensitive guy (he never hit her), and cultured (he was, I believe, one of the two million Spaniards who bought the complete works of Mozart in installments), and patient too (he listened, he listened to her every night and on the weekends). And although Clara didn’t have much to say for herself, she never got tired of saying it. She wasn’t fretting over the beauty contest any more, although she did bring it up from time to time; now it was all about her periods of depression, her mental instability, the pictures she had wanted to paint but hadn’t.

I don’t know why they didn’t have children, maybe they didn’t have time, although, according to Clara, Luis was crazy about kids. But she wasn’t ready. She used her time to study, and listen to music (Mozart, but then other composers too), and take photographs, which she never showed anyone. In her own obscure and futile way, she tried to defend her freedom, tried to learn.

At the age of thirty-one, she slept with a guy from the office. It was just something that happened, not a big deal, at least for the two of them, but Clara made the mistake of telling Luis. The fight was appalling. Luis smashed a chair or a painting he had bought himself, got drunk, and didn’t talk to her for a month. According to Clara, from that day on, nothing was the same, in spite of the reconciliation, in spite of their trip to a town on the coast, a rather sad and dull trip, as it turned out.