Roberto Bolaño - The Return

"I saw you on television, Max, and I thought, That’s my guy.”

(The guy is stubbornly jerking his head, trying to take a deep breath, but he can’t.)

“I saw you with your group. Is that what you call it? Maybe you say gang, or crew, but no, I think you say group: it’s a simple word and you’re a simple man. You’d taken off your tee shirts and you were bare-chested, displaying your young bodies: strong pectorals and biceps, though you’d all like to have more muscle, hairless chests, mostly, but I didn’t actually pay much attention to the other chests or bodies, just yours, something about you struck me, your face, your eyes gazing in the direction of the camera (though you probably didn’t realize you were being filmed and beamed into our living rooms), the depthless look in your eyes, different from the way they look now, infinitely different from the way they will look soon, eyes that were fixed on glory and happiness, satisfied desire and victory, things that can only exist in the kingdom of the future, things it’s better not to hope for because they never come.”

(The guy is jerking his head from left to right, still straining for breath and sweating.)

“In fact, seeing you on television was like an invitation. Imagine for a moment that I’m a princess, waiting. An impatient princess. One night I see you, and the reason I see you is that I have, in a sense, been searching, not for you personally but for the prince you are, and what that prince represents. You and your friends are dancing with your tee shirts tied around your necks or your waists. Tied or perhaps furled, a word that according to cranky old nitpickers refers to sails when they’re rolled up and bound to a yard or a boom, but in my own young and cranky way, I use it to refer to garments rolled up around the neck or chest or waist. The old and I go our separate ways, as you will have guessed by now. But let’s not lose sight of what really interests us. You and your group are young, and all of you are offering your hymns to the night; some of you, the leaders, are brandishing flags. The announcer, poor bastard, is impressed by the tribal dance in which you’re taking part. He points it out to the other newsman. They’re dancing, he says, in his loutish voice, as if we, the viewers at home, in front of our televisions, hadn’t realized. Yes, they’re having fun, says the other newsman. Another lout. They seem to be enjoying your dance, at least. It’s just a conga, really. In the front line there are eight or nine. In the second there are ten. In the third there are seven or eight. In the fourth there are fifteen. United by the team colors and semi-nakedness (tee shirts tied or furled around your waists or necks, or turban-style around your heads) and the dance (if I can call it that) as it moves through the area in which you have been isolated. Your dance is like a lightning bolt in the spring night. The newsman, the newsmen, weary but still able to muster some enthusiasm, salute your initiative. You work your way across the cement steps from the right to the left, and when you reach the wire fence, you go back the other way. The guys at the head of each line are carrying flags, the team flag or the Spanish flag; the rest of you, including the ones at the ends, are waving much smaller flags, or scarves, or the tee shirts you took off earlier. It’s a spring night, but it’s still cold, and in the end that gives your gesture the force you wanted it to have, the force it merits, after all. Then the lines break up, you start to chant your songs, some of you raise your arms and give the Roman salute. Do you know what it means, that salute? You must, and if you don’t, as you raise your arm you can guess. Under my city’s night sky you salute in the direction of the television cameras, and watching at home I see you and decide to offer you my salute, in response to yours.”

(The guy shakes his head, his eyes seem to fill with tears, his shoulders tremble. Is there love in his gaze? Has his body sensed what will certainly happen, while his mind is still lagging behind? Both phenomena, the tears and the trembling, could result from the effort he is making at this moment, in vain, or from a sincere regret tearing at all his nerves.)

“So, I take off my clothes, I take off my pants, I take off my bra, I take a shower, I put on perfume, I put on clean pants, I put on a clean bra, I put on a black silk top, I put on my best pair of jeans, I put on white socks, I put on my boots, I put on a jacket, the best one I own, and I go into the garden, because to get out into the street, first I have to cross that dark garden, which you especially liked. All in less than ten minutes; normally I’m not so quick. Let’s say it’s your dance that is speeding up my movements. While I get dressed you’re dancing. In some other dimension. Another dimension and another time, like a prince and a princess, like the eruptive call of animals coupling in springtime, I get dressed while, inside the television, you dance wildly with your eyes fixed on something that might be eternity or the key to eternity, except that your eyes as you dance are flat and empty and inexpressive.”

(The guy nods repeatedly. What were gestures of denial or desperation are transformed into gestures of affirmation, as if he’d been suddenly seized by an idea, or a new idea had just occurred to him.)

“Finally, even though I haven’t got time to look at myself in the mirror and check that my clothes are exactly right, and in fact I probably wouldn’t want to see my reflection even if I did have time (because what you and I are doing is secret), I go out, leaving just the porch light on, get onto my motorbike and drive through streets where people stranger than you or me are setting out to enjoy their Saturday night, a Saturday to match their expectations, a sad Saturday, in other words, one that will never give life to what they have dreamed and meticulously planned, a Saturday like any other, aggressive and grateful, stocky and affable, perverse and sad. Awful adjectives that aren’t my style at all, they make me baulk, but, as always, in the end, I let them stand, as a farewell gesture. My motorbike and I roll on among those lights, those Christian preparations, those baseless expectations, and we come out in front of the stadium, on the Gran Avenida, which is still empty, and we stop beneath the arches of the bridges that lead to the entrance gates, and this is the really strange part: when we stop, I can feel in my legs that the world is still moving, as I suppose you know it does, the earth is moving under my feet, under the wheels of my motorbike, and for a moment, for a fraction of a second, whether or not I find you doesn’t matter, you can leave with your friends, you can go and get drunk or take a bus back to the city you come from. But the feeling of abandon, as if I were being fucked by an angel, without penetration — or actually no, penetrated to the core — is brief, and just as I begin to doubt or analyze it in amazement, the gates swing open and the people start coming out of the stadium: a flock of vultures, a flock of crows.”

(The guy hangs his head. Lifts it up. His eyes try to smile. His facial muscles are seized by a spasm or a series of spasms that could mean many different things: We’re meant for each other, Think of the future, Life is wonderful, Don’t do anything stupid, I’m innocent, Spain rules.)

“Finding you is a problem. Will you look the same five yards away as you did on TV? Your height is a problem: I don’t know if you’re tall or of medium height (you’re not short, I know that). Your clothes are a problem: by now it’s starting to get cold, and your torso and the torsos of your companions are once again draped in tee shirts or even jackets; some are coming out of the stadium with scarves furled (like sails) around their necks and some are even using their scarves to cover their mouths and cheeks. My footsteps on the cement are lit by vertical moonlight. I search for you patiently, and yet at the same time I am anxious like the princess contemplating the empty frame in which the prince’s smile should be shining. Your friends are a problem compounded: they’re a temptation. I see them and am seen by them, I am desired, I know they’d pull my jeans off without a second thought; some no doubt deserve my attentions at least as much as you do, but in the end I resist, I remain faithful. Finally you appear, surrounded by conga dancers, chanting the words of a hymn that prefigures our meeting, with a serious look on your face, charged with an importance that no one but you can measure and appreciate precisely; you’re tall, quite a lot taller than me, and your arms are long, just as I imagined after seeing you on TV, and when I smile at you, when I say, Hi, Max, you don’t know what to say, at first you don’t know what to say, you just laugh, not quite as stridently as your friends, but you laugh, my prince of the time machine, you laugh and you stop walking.”