Roberto Bolaño - The Return

(The guy jerks his head again, nodding. What is he trying to say? Impossible to tell. His body, or rather his legs, are subject to a curious phenomenon: sometimes they are covered with a sweat as abundant as the sweat on his forehead, especially on the inner sides, sometimes the skin seems to be cold, from the groin to the knees, and takes on a bumpy texture, if not to the touch at least to the eye).

“Your words, I admit, were kind. Nevertheless, I fear that you did not give sufficient thought to what you were saying. And even less to what I was saying. You should always listen carefully, Max, to what women say while they’re being fucked. If they don’t speak, fine, there’s nothing to listen to, and you’ll probably have nothing to think about, but if they do, even if it’s only a murmur, listen to their words and think about them, think about their meanings, think about what they express and leave unexpressed, try to understand what it is they really signify. Women are murdering whores, Max, they’re monkeys stiff with cold watching the horizon from a sick tree, they’re princesses searching for you in the darkness, crying, examining the words that they will never be able to say. In misunderstanding we live and plan the cycles of our life. For your friends, Max, in that stadium, which is shrinking in your memory now like a symbol of the nightmare, I was just some weird kind of hooker, a spectacle after the spectacle, reserved for a few spectators who had danced a conga with their tee shirts furled around their necks or their waists. But for you I was a princess on the Gran Avenida, shattered now by wind and fear (so that in your mind the avenue has become a time tunnel), the trophy reserved specially for you after a night of collective magic. For the police I will be a blank page. No one will ever understand my words of love. And you, Max, do you remember anything I said while you were screwing me?”

(The guy moves his head, clearly signaling assent, and his moist eyes, his tense shoulders, his stomach, his legs that jerk and jerk whenever she looks away, struggling to get free, his throbbing jugular, all say yes.)

“Do you remember I said the wind ? Do you remember I said the underground streets ? Do you remember I said you are the photograph ? No, you really don’t remember, do you? You were too drunk and too busy with my tits and my ass. And you had no idea, otherwise at the first opportunity you’d have been out of here like a shot. You’d like to get out of here now, wouldn’t you, Max? Your image, your double, running across the garden, jumping over the fence, disappearing up the street, striding away like a middle distance runner, still half undressed, humming one of your hymns to bolster your courage, and then, after running for twenty minutes, turning up breathless in the bar where the rest of your group or club or squad or gang or whatever it’s called are waiting for you, drinking a mug of beer and saying, Guys you’re never going to believe what happened to me, I nearly got killed, some fucking whore from the suburbs, from the far side of the city and time, a whore from the fucking beyond who saw me on TV (we were on TV!) and took me home on her motorbike and sucked my dick and spread her legs for me and said words that were mysterious at first but then I understood them, no, I felt them, this whore said words I could feel in my liver and my balls, at first they sounded innocent or like she was hot for me or moaning because I was nailing her hard, but the thing is, guys, after a while they didn’t sound so innocent, what I mean is, she didn’t stop murmuring or whispering while I rode her, and that’s normal, isn’t it, but this wasn’t normal, there was nothing normal about it, a whore who whispers while she’s being fucked, OK, but then I heard what she was saying, I heard her fucking words plowing like a boat through a sea of testosterone, and I’m telling you guys, that supernatural voice made the sea of semen shudder and shrink away, the sea disappeared, leaving the sea floor exposed and the coast all dry, just stones and mountains, cliffs, ranges, dark crevices moist with fear, the boat sailing on over that emptiness, and I saw it with my own two eyes, my own three eyes, and I said, It’s all right, it’s all right, honey, shitting myself, petrified, and then I stood up, trying to look normal, all jittery but trying to hide it, and said I was going to the bathroom to siphon the python or take a dump, and she looked at me like I’d recited John fucking Donne, guys, or Ovid or something, and I walked backward keeping my eyes on her, still seeing that boat sailing on imperturbably through a sea of nothingness and electricity, as if planet Earth was being reborn and I was the only witness to its birth, but who was I witnessing for, the stars I guess, and when I got to the corridor, beyond the range of her gaze and her desire, instead of opening the bathroom door, I crept to the front door and crossed the garden, saying a silent prayer, and jumped the wall and started running up the street like the last runner from Marathon, bringing news not of victory but of defeat, the runner nobody listens to or congratulates or greets with a bowl of water, but he gets there alive, guys, and learns his lesson: Don’t enter that castle, Don’t follow that path, Don’t venture into that territory. Even if you’re singled out. Even if everything is against you.”

(The guy nods his head. It’s clear that he wants to express his agreement. The effort is making his face redden noticeably; his veins are swelling, his eyes are bulging.)

“But you didn’t listen to my words, you couldn’t distinguish them from my moaning, those last words, which might have saved you. I chose you well. Television doesn’t lie, that’s its only virtue (that and the old movies they show in the small hours of the morning), and the sight of your face, against the wire fence, after the conga that everyone cheered, prefigured (and hastened) the inevitable ending. I brought you home on my motorbike, I took off your clothes, I left you unconscious, I tied your hands and feet to an old chair, I put a sticking plaster over your mouth, not because I’m scared that your cries might alert someone, but because I don’t want to hear you beg, I don’t want to hear your pathetic stuttering apologies, your weak insistence that you’re not like that, that it was all a game, that I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong. Maybe it’s all a game. Maybe you’re not like that. But the thing is, Max, no one’s like that. I wasn’t like that either. I’m not going to tell you about my pain, it’s not as if you caused it; on the contrary, you gave me an orgasm. You were the lost prince who gave me an orgasm; you can be proud of yourself. And I gave you an opportunity to escape, but you were also the deaf prince. Now it’s too late, it’s getting light; your legs must be numb and cramped, your wrists are swollen; you shouldn’t have struggled so much, I warned you when we started, Max, this was bound to happen. You’ll have to make the best of it. Now is not the time for crying, or remembering conga lines, threats or beatings; it’s time to look inside yourself and try to understand that sometimes, unexpectedly, people just walk away. You’re naked in my chamber of horrors, Max, and your eyes are following my knife as it swings, as if it were the pendulum of a cuckoo clock. Close your eyes, Max, there’s no need to go on looking; think of something nice, think of it as hard as you can. .”

(His eyes, instead of closing, open wildly, and all his muscles wrench in one last desperate effort: the shock is so violent that the chair to which he is securely tied falls over. He hits his head and his hip on the ground, he loses control of his anal sphincter and bladder; he is seized by spasms; dust and filth from the flagstones stick to his wet skin.)