Roberto Bolaño - The Return

“And what had I told him? Come on, let’s hear it.”

“A whole heap of lies, as I found out when I went to see him.”

“You went to see him?”

“That night, after they transferred the other prisoners. Belano was left all on his own, with hours to go before the new lot arrived, and his spirits were about as low as they could get.”

“Even the toughest guys lose it inside.”

“Well, he hadn’t broken down, either, if that’s what you mean.”

“No, but nearly.”

“Nearly, that’s true. Also, a really weird thing happened to him. I think that’s why I remembered him tonight.”

“So what was this weird thing?”

“Well, it happened when he was incommunicado — you know how it was in that station: all it meant was that you starved, because you could send as many messages as you liked to people on the outside. Anyway, Belano was incommunicado, which meant that no one was bringing him any food, and he had no soap, no toothbrush, and no blanket to wrap himself in at night. And after a few days, of course, he was dirty, unshaven, his clothes stank, you know, the usual. The thing is, once a day we used to take all the prisoners to the bathroom, remember?”

“How could I forget?”

“And on the way to the bathroom there was a mirror, not in the bathroom itself, but in a corridor that ran between the bathroom and the gym where the political prisoners were kept, a tiny little mirror, near the records office, you remember, don’t you?”

“I don’t remember that, compadre.”

“Well, there was this mirror, and all the political prisoners would look at themselves in it. We’d taken down the mirror in the showers, so no one would get any stupid ideas, and this was the only chance they got to see how well they’d shaved or how straight their part was, so they all had a look in it, especially when they’d been allowed to shave or the one day of the week when they got to take a shower.”

“OK, I get you, and since Belano was incommunicado he couldn’t even shave or take a shower or anything.”

“Exactly, he didn’t have a razor, or a towel, or soap, or clean clothes, and he never got to take a shower.”

“But I can’t remember him smelling really bad.”

“Everyone stank. You could wash every day and still stink. You stank, too.”

“You leave me out of it, compadre, and watch that embankment.”

“Well, the thing is, when Belano was in the line with the prisoners, he always avoided looking at himself in the mirror. You see? He turned away. Whether he was going from the gym to the bathroom or from the bathroom back to the gym, when he got to the corridor with the mirror, he looked the other way.”

“He was afraid to look at himself.”

“Until one day, after finding out that his old schoolmates were there to get him out of that fix, he felt up to it. He’d been thinking about it all night and all morning. His luck had changed, so he decided to face the mirror and see how he looked.”

“And what happened?”

“He didn’t recognize himself.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all; he didn’t recognize himself. He told me so the night I got a chance to talk with him. I really wasn’t expecting him to come out with that. I’d gone to tell him not to get me wrong, I was really left-wing, I had nothing to do with all the shit that was happening, but he came out with this crap about the mirror and I didn’t know what to say.”

“And what did you say about me?”

“I didn’t say anything at all. He did all the talking. He said it was a simple thing, it didn’t come as a shock at all, if you see what I mean. He was in the line, on the way to the bathroom, and as he passed the mirror, he turned suddenly, looked at his face and saw someone else, but he wasn’t frightened, he didn’t start shaking or get hysterical. I guess you could say that by then, knowing we were there at the station, he had no reason to get hysterical. Anyway, he did what he needed to do in the bathroom, quietly, thinking about the person he’d seen, thinking it over, but not making a big deal of it. And when they went back to the gym, he looked in the mirror again, and sure enough, he said, it wasn’t him, it was someone else, and I said to him, What are you saying, asshole? What do you mean someone else?”

“That’s what I would have said, too. What did he mean?”

“He said, Someone else. And I said, Explain it to me. And he said, A different person, that’s all.”

“And then you thought he’d gone crazy.”

“I don’t know what I thought, but to be honest, I was scared.”

“A Chilean? Scared?”

“You think that’s so unusual?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say it’s usual for you.”

“Whatever you say. I realized straightaway that he wasn’t trying to kid me. I’d taken him to the little room beside the gym, and he started talking about the mirror and the way they had to file past it every morning, and suddenly I realized that all of it was true: him, me, our conversation. And since we weren’t in the gym, and since he’d been a student at our grand old alma mater, it occurred to me that I could take him to the corridor where the mirror was and say, Take another look, with me here beside you this time, take a good calm look, and tell me if it isn’t the same old crazy Belano you see.”

“And did you say that?”

“Of course I did, but to be honest, the thought came a long time before the words. As if an eternity had passed between the idea popping into my head and coming out in a comprehensible form. A little eternity, to make things worse. Because if it had been a big or just a regular eternity, I wouldn’t have realized, if you follow me, but as it was, I did realize, and that intensified my fear.”

“But you went ahead anyway.”

“Of course I did; by then it was too late to turn back. I said, We’re going to do a test; let’s see if the same thing happens with me beside you, and he looked at me warily, but he said, All right, if you insist, like he was doing me a favor, when in fact I was the one doing him a favor, as usual.”

“So you went to the mirror?”

“We went to the mirror. I was taking a big risk because you know what would have happened if they’d caught me walking around the station with a political prisoner at midnight. And to help him calm down and be as objective as possible, I offered him a smoke, so we stood there puffing away and it was only when we’d crushed the butts on the ground that we headed off toward the bathroom, and he was relaxed, I guess he was thinking it couldn’t get any worse (which was bullshit, it could have been much, much worse), and I was kind of on edge, listening for the slightest noise, the sound of a door shutting, but I was careful not to let it show, and when we got to the mirror I said, Look at yourself, and he looked at himself, he stood in front of the mirror and looked at his face, he even ran a hand through his hair, which was really long, you know, the way people wore it in ‘73, and then he glanced aside, stepped away from the mirror and looked at the ground for a while.”

“And?”

“That’s what I said, And? Is it you or isn’t it? And he looked into my eyes and said: It’s someone else, compadre, that’s all there is to it. I could feel something inside me like a muscle or a nerve, I don’t know what it was, I swear, but it was saying: Smile, asshole, smile, and yet however much the muscle strained, I couldn’t smile, the best I could do was twitch, a spasm jerked my cheek up, anyway, he noticed and stood there looking at me, and I ran a hand over my face and gulped, because I was afraid again.”

“We’re almost there.”

“And then I had this idea. I said to him: Listen, I’m going to look in the mirror, and when I look at myself, you’re going to look at me then you’re going to look at my reflection, and you’re going to realize it’s the same, the problem is this filthy mirror and this filthy station and the bad lighting in this corridor. And he didn’t say anything, but I took that as a yes — he could have objected — and I came up to the mirror and leaned forward with my eyes shut.”