Roberto Bolaño - The Return

A week later Pavlov sent me back to the indoor track with a big bunch of red and white carnations that must have cost him an arm and a leg. Natalia took the flowers and asked me to wait for her. We spent the whole day together, downtown for a start (where I bought two novels by Bulgakov, her favorite writer, from a stall in Staraya Basmannaya Street) and then in the little room where she lived. I asked her if she’d had a good time. Her reply completely stunned me, I swear. She said the flowers were self-explanatory. It was just so hard, so cold, you know what I mean: she was Russian and I was Chilean, it was like a chasm was opening in front of me, and I burst into tears right there and then. I often think about that afternoon of crying and how it changed my life. I don’t know how to explain it; all I know is I felt like a child, and I felt all the cold of Moscow for the first time, and it seemed unbearable. That afternoon we made love.

From then on my life was in Natalia’s hands and her life was in the hands of Misha Pavlov. The situation, in itself, seemed simple enough, but knowing Pavlov I knew that by sleeping with Natalia I was risking my neck. Also, as the days went by, the certitude that Natalia was sleeping with Pavlov — and I knew exactly when she was — progressively embittered and depressed me, and led me to take a fatalistic view of my life, and of life in general. I would have liked to talk it over with a friend and get it off my chest. But no way could I tell Pultakov, and Jimmy Fodeba was always really busy; we weren’t seeing each other as often as before. All I could do was put up with it and wait.

And so a year went by.

Life with Pavlov was strange. His life was divided into at least three parts and I had the honor or the misfortune of being acquainted with all three: the life of Pavlov the businessman, continually surrounded by his bodyguards, which gave off a subtle odor of money and blood that unsettled the senses; the life of Pavlov the serial romantic, or lech, as we used to say in Santiago, which tormented me in particular and inflamed my imagination; and the life of Pavlov the private man, with his inquiring mind, a man who spent or wanted to spend his spare time, his “moments of inner repose” as he said, exploring literature and the arts, because Pavlov, though it’s hard to believe, was a keen reader, and, of course, he liked to talk about what he was reading. That was why he used to call on the three people who made up what you might call the cultural or cosmopolitan arm of his gang: Fedor Petrovich Semionov, a novelist; Paulo Ripellino, a genuine Italian, who was studying Russian on a scholarship from the Moscow School of Languages; and me, who he always introduced as his friend Roger Strada, though he sometimes treated me like a dog. Two Russians and two Italians, Pavlov would say, with a little smile on his lips. He did it to slight me in front of Ripellino, but Ripellino was always respectful to me. They were actually fun, those meetings, but sometimes we’d be summoned at midnight; the phone would ring and we’d have to get ourselves pronto to one of the many apartments Pavlov owned around Moscow, and endure the boss’s rants, when all we wanted to do was to go to bed. Pavlov’s tastes were eclectic — that’s the word, isn’t it? The only author I’ve read, to be honest, is Bulgakov, and that was only because I was in love with Natalia; as for the others, I’ve got no idea, I’m not much of a reader, that’s pretty obvious. Semionov, as far as I know, wrote pornographic novels, and Ripellino had a film script that he wanted Pavlov to back for him, something about martial arts and the mafia. The only one who really knew about literature was our host. So Pavlov would start talking about Dostoyevsky, for example, and the rest of us would tag along. The next day I’d take myself to the library and look up information about Dostoyevsky, summaries of his works and his life, so I’d have something to say the next time, but Pavlov hardly ever repeated himself; one week he’d talk about Dostoyevsky, the next about Boris Pilniak, the week after that, Chekhov (who he said was a faggot, I don’t know why), then he’d be onto Gogol or Semionov himself, raving about his pornographic novels. Semionov was quite a character. He must have been my age, maybe a bit older, and he was one of Pavlov’s protégés. I once heard that he’d arranged for his wife to disappear. I didn’t know what to think about that rumor. Semionov seemed capable of anything, except biting the hand that fed him. Ripellino was different, a good kid, and the only one who openly confessed that he hadn’t read a single one of the novelists that our boss used to hold forth about, although he’d read some poetry (Russian poetry, with proper rhymes, easy to remember), which he’d sometimes recite by heart, usually when we were drunk. And who wrote that? Semionov would ask in a booming voice. Pushkin, who else? Ripellino would reply. Then I’d seize the opportunity to say my piece about Dostoyevsky, and Pavlov and Ripellino would recite Pushkin’s poem in unison, and Semionov would get out a little book and pretend to be taking notes for his next novel. Or we’d talk about the Slavic soul and the Latin soul, and once we got onto that subject, of course, Ripellino and I were bound to come off badly. You can’t imagine how long Pavlov could go on about the Slavic soul, how profound and sad he could get. Semionov usually ended up crying, and Ripellino and I backed down at the first sign of trouble. It wasn’t always just the four of us, of course. Sometimes Pavlov sent out for some whores. Sometimes there’d be one or two unfamiliar faces: the editor of a little magazine, an out-of-work actor, a retired army officer who actually knew the complete works of Alexei Tolstoy. Pleasant or unpleasant company, people who were doing deals with Pavlov or hoping for a favor from him. Sometimes the night even turned out to be enjoyable. But it could go the other way too. I’ll never understand the Slavic soul. One night Pavlov showed his guests some photos of what he called his “women’s high-jumping team.” At first I didn’t want to look, but they called me over and I couldn’t refuse. There were photos of the four or five high-jumpers I’d gotten for him. Natalia Chuikova was one of them. I felt ill and I think Pavlov realized; he put his massive arms around me and started singing a drinking song in my ear, something about death and love, the only two things in life that are real. I remember laughing or trying to laugh at Pavlov’s little joke, like I always did, but the laughter died in my throat. Later, when the others were sleeping it off, or had gone, I sat down by the window and looked at the photos again, taking my time. Funny how it is: right then, everything seemed OK, all in order (as my father used to say), I was breathing deeply, calm, free. It also seemed to me that the Slavic soul was not so different from the Latin soul, in fact they were the same, and the same as the African soul, which presumably illuminated the nights of my friend Jimmy Fodeba. Maybe the Slavic soul could withstand more alcohol, but that was the only difference.

So time went by.

Natalia was dropped from the Olympic team because she never managed to jump the required height. She competed in the national trials and wasn’t highly ranked. It was clear that she wouldn’t be breaking any records. Although she didn’t want to admit it, her career was over, and sometimes we talked about the future with a mixture of fear and anticipation. Her relationship with Pavlov had its ups and downs; there were days when he seemed to love her more than anyone in the world and days when he treated her badly. One night when we met her face was covered with bruises. She told me it had happened at training, but I knew it was Pavlov. Sometimes we talked late into the night about travel and other countries. I told her stuff about Chile, a Chile of my own invention, I guess, which sounded a lot like Russia to her, so she couldn’t get excited about it, but she was curious. Once she travelled to Italy and Spain with Pavlov. They didn’t invite me to the send-off, but I was one of the people who went to the airport to welcome them home. Natalia returned looking very tanned and pretty. I gave her a bunch of white roses (the night before, Pavlov had called from Spain and told me to buy them). Thanks, Roger, she said. You’re welcome, Natalia Mijailovna, I said, instead of confessing that it was all thanks to a long-distance phone call from our mutual boss. Right then he was talking with some heavies and didn’t notice the tenderness in my eyes (which have often been compared to the eyes of a rat, even by my mother, God rest her soul). But the fact is that Natalia and I were letting our guard down.