Roberto Bolaño - The Return

It was the first time I’d spoken since my death. Villeneuve raised his head, quite unsurprised, or at any rate much less surprised than I would have been in his situation, while reaching down with one hand to feel for his glasses on the carpet.

I knew at once that he had heard me. It seemed like a miracle. Suddenly I felt so happy that I forgave him his act of depravity. And yet, like an idiot, I repeated: You should be ashamed. Who’s there? said Villeneuve. It’s me, I said, the ghost of the body you just raped. Villeneuve went pale, and then, almost simultaneously, a blush rose in his cheeks. I was worried that he would have a heart attack or die of fright, although to tell the truth he didn’t look all that frightened.

It’s not a problem, I said in a conciliatory tone, You’re forgiven.

Villeneuve switched on the light and looked in all the corners of the room. I thought he’d gone crazy, because there was clearly no one else there; only a pygmy could have hidden in that room, not even a pygmy, a gnome. But then I realized that, far from being crazy, the designer was displaying nerves of steel: he wasn’t looking for a person but a speaker. As I calmed down, I felt a surge of sympathy for him. There was something admirable about his methodical way of searching the room. Me, I’d have been out of there like a shot.

I’m no speaker, I said. Nor am I a video camera. Please, try to calm down; take a seat and we can talk. And most of all, don’t be afraid of me. I’m not going to do anything to you. That’s what I said; then I kept quiet and watched Villeneuve, who barely hesitated before continuing his search. I let him go ahead. While he messed up the room, I remained seated in one of the comfortable armchairs. Then I had an idea. I suggested that we shut ourselves in a small room (as small as a coffin were my exact words), where no speakers or cameras could possibly have been planted, and I could go on talking to him there and convince him to accept my nature, my new nature, that is. But while he was considering my proposal, it occurred to me that I hadn’t expressed myself very well, since my ghostly state could not be called, in any sense, a “nature.” My nature, however you looked at it, was still that of a living being. And yet it was clear that I was not alive. The thought crossed my mind that it might all be a dream. Summoning some ghostly courage, I told myself that if it was a dream, the best (and the only) thing I could do was to go on dreaming. From experience I know that trying to wrench yourself out of a nightmare is futile and simply adds pain to pain or terror to terror.

So I repeated my proposal, and this time Villeneuve stopped searching and froze (I examined his face, which I’d seen so often in the glossy magazines, and saw the same expression, a solitary, elegant expression, although now there were a few telltale drops of sweat rolling down his forehead and his cheeks). He left the room. I followed him. Halfway down a long corridor, he stopped and said: Are you still with me? His voice was strangely appealing, rich in tones that seemed to be converging on a genuine warmth, though perhaps it was just an illusion.

I’m here, I said.

Villeneuve moved his head in a way I couldn’t interpret and continued to wander through his house, stopping in each room and on each landing to ask if I was still with him, a question to which I replied without fail, trying to make my voice sound relaxed, or at least trying to give it a singular tone (in life it was always an ordinary, run-of-the-mill sort of voice), no doubt influenced by the reedy (sometimes almost whistle-like) yet extremely distinguished voice of the designer. To each reply I also added details about the place where we happened to be, with the aim of achieving greater credibility; for example, if there was a lamp with a tobacco-colored shade and a wrought iron stand, I said so. I’m still here, next to you, and now we’re in a room where the only source of light is a lamp with a tobacco-colored shade and a wrought iron stand. And Villeneuve said yes or corrected me — That’s cast iron — but his eyes were fixed on the ground as he spoke, as if he was afraid that I might suddenly materialize, or didn’t want to embarrass me, and I’d say: Sorry, I didn’t notice, or: That’s what I meant. And Villeneuve moved his head ambivalently, as if accepting my excuses or just getting a clearer idea of the ghost he had to deal with.

And so we went all around the house, and as we moved from place to place, Villeneuve grew or seemed to grow calmer, while I became more nervous, because I’ve never been much good at describing things, especially if they’re not objects in everyday use, or if they happen to be paintings no doubt worth a fortune by contemporary artists I know absolutely nothing about, or sculptures that Villeneuve had collected in the course of his travels (incognito) all around the world.

And so on, until we came to a little room, covered inside with a layer of cement, in which there was nothing, not one piece of furniture, not a single light, and we shut ourselves in that room, in the dark. An embarrassing situation, on the face of it, but for me it was like a second or a third birth; that is, it was like hope beginning and with it the desperate awareness of hope. Villeneuve said: Describe the place where we are now. And I said that it was like death, not like real death but death as we imagine it when we’re alive. And Villeneuve said: Describe it. Everything is dark, I said. It’s like a nuclear bomb shelter. And I added that in a place like that the soul contracts, and I would have gone on spelling out what I felt, the void that had come to inhabit my soul long before I died and of which I’d been unaware until then, but Villeneuve cut me off me, saying, That’s enough, he believed me, and suddenly he opened the door.

I followed him to the main living room, where he poured himself a whiskey and proceeded, in a few well-measured sentences, to ask me to forgive him for what he had done with my body. You’re forgiven, I said. I’m open-minded. To be honest, I’m not sure I know what being open-minded means, but I felt it was my duty to wipe the slate clean and clear our future relationship of any guilt or resentment.

You must be wondering why I do what I do, said Villeneuve.

I assured him that I had no intention of asking for an explanation. Nevertheless, Villeneuve insisted on giving me one. With anyone else, it would have become a very unpleasant evening, but I was listening to Jean-Claude Villeneuve, the greatest designer in France, which is to say the world, and time flew as I was given a brief account of his childhood and teenage years, his youth, his reservations about sex, his experiences with a number of men, and with a number of women, his solitary habits, his morbid dread of harming anyone which may have been a screen to hide his dread of being harmed, his artistic tastes, which I admired (and envied) unreservedly, his chronic insecurity, his conflicts with a number of famous designers, his first jobs for a fashion house, his voyages of initiation, which he declined to recount in detail, his friendships with three of Europe’s finest screen actresses, his association with the pair of pseudo-artists from the morgue, who from time to time provided him with corpses, with which he spent only one night, his fragility, which he compared to an endless demolition in slow motion, and so on, until the first light of dawn began to filter through the curtains of the living room and Villeneuve brought his long exposé to a close.

We remained silent for a long time. I knew that both of us were, if not overwhelmed with joy, at least reasonably happy.

Before long the orderlies arrived. Villeneuve looked at the floor and asked me what he should do. After all, the body they had come for was mine. I thanked him for his thoughtfulness but also assured him that I was now beyond caring about such things. Do what you normally do, I said. Will you go? he asked. I had already made up my mind, and yet I pretended to think for a few seconds before saying no, I wasn’t going to leave. If he didn’t mind, of course. Villeneuve seemed relieved: I don’t mind, on the contrary, he said. Then a bell rang, and Villeneuve switched on the monitors and opened the gates for the rent-a-corpse guys, who came in without saying a word.