Roberto Bolano - The Skating Rink

You can’t have a pact with God and the devil at the same time, the Rookie said to me, his eyes brimming with tears. He’s forty-eight years old, and life has treated him “worse than a rat.” Now that the beaches are almost empty, being there with him is like being in a desert. He’s not collecting bottles and cans anymore. He’s begging. At some mysterious hour he leaves his desert and wanders from bar to bar in the historic center, asking for a contribution or a little drink, before heading back to the beach where, so he says, he is planning to stay forever. One day he turned up at the hotel, while Alex and I were going over the accounts at a table in the empty restaurant. He looked at us from a distance, with pitiful, imploring eyes, and asked for money. We gave him some. The next day he turned up again, at night, at the door of the restaurant, but this time there were clients: a group of elderly Dutch tourists who were celebrating the end of their vacation. A waiter picked him up by his collar and belt and threw him out, just like in the movies. The Rookie offered no resistance; pathetically compliant, he fell in a heap. I saw it all from behind the bar, where I was washing glasses. Later I told the waiter that was no way to treat people, although the Dutch tourists had been heartily amused. The waiter replied that he was only following Alex’s orders. When the party was over, I asked Alex why he had been so hard on a poor beggar who’d done nothing to us. He didn’t know, but he distrusted the Rookie instinctively. He didn’t like him hanging around the hotel. And he didn’t want me seeing him either. What is it you don’t like about him, I asked. His eyes, said Alex: they’re the eyes of a madman. At night, when I go to the beach, I see him sleeping under the metal frames of the ice cream stands. There’s a sweet, rotting smell on the beach, as if inside one of the shacks, closed to the public until next summer, the dead body of a man or a dog had been left among boxes smeared with melted ice cream. We talk, me standing up, him lying on the sand huddled among newspapers and blankets, his face turned to the seawall or hidden by his strange tubular fingers. You must know a better place to sleep, I say. I must know a place, says the Rookie, sobbing. .

One night there was a commotion on the terrace of the bar and the waiter came to fetch the night watchmen. El Carajillo, who was half asleep, said I should go first and see what was happening; he’d come if it was serious and I needed backup. It must have been about three in the morning. When I got to the terrace I saw two huge Germans facing each other, separated only by a table strewn with the remains of a meal and broken glass. It seemed they were about to come to blows, and the few spectators sheltering behind trees and cars were anticipating an outbreak of murderous violence. Both Germans were holding empty beer bottles in their right hands, like gangsters in a movie; but although this fight, or at least the insults and threats, had been going on for some time, oddly they hadn’t yet broken the bottles, as if brandishing them was threatening enough. As I approached, it became clear that both of them were fairly drunk: their hair was messed up, they were foaming at the mouth, their eyes were bulging and their arm muscles were all clenched. They were already absorbed in the fight awaiting them and supremely indifferent to anything else. They were insulting each other unremittingly; although I couldn’t understand a word, the guttural, sarcastic, vicious sounds issuing from their mouths left little room for doubt. Those German words could be heard throughout the campground, against a background of almost perfect silence, marked only by faint, distant-sounding moans of protest from the few campers who were still awake, especially those in tents near the edge of the terrace. The complaints, and for some reason this was disturbing, were as unintelligible as the German insults. The night breeze carried them to me, muted, immaterial and dreamlike, creating, or at least this is how it felt, a kind of dome enclosing the campground and everything in it, whether living or dead. Suddenly, to make things worse, a voice in my head revealed that only one person could break that dome: me. So as I walked across the terrace toward the Germans, knowing that El Carajillo wouldn’t come to back me up, and that none of the witnesses present would step in should the Germans decide, as it seemed more and more likely they would, to warm up for the real fight by hammering me, I sensed that something was going to happen (or maybe that’s just how it seems to me now, maybe then I was just a bit afraid), that with each step I took toward the gesticulating pair I was taking half a step toward myself. Walking toward the Corsican brothers. Toward the definitive No way, mister. I prepared myself to take a beating and see what would happen next, and in that frame of mind I approached the Germans and told them, in a friendly and not very loud voice, to leave the terrace and go to bed. Then what had to happen happened: the Germans turned their mugs toward me, and from the middle of those mugs, their blue eyes swam like pilot fish through the alcoholic haze and fastened first on me, then on the trunks of the trees that were slowly breaking up the terrace, then on the empty tables, then on the lamps hanging from some of the trailers, and finally, as if discovering the key to the scene, on an indefinite point behind my back. I should say that I too was aware of something behind me, something following me, but I chose not to turn around and look. To tell the truth I was pretty nervous, but after a few moments I noticed a change in the Germans’ attitude, as if an inspection of their surroundings had made it instantly clear to them what a serious game it was they were about to play; their eyes retreated into their sockets, moderating the expressive violence that had seemed a natural prelude to blows. One of them, probably the less drunk of the two, stammered out a question. Strange overtones of innocence and purity resonated in his voice. Maybe he asked what the hell was going on. I told them again to go to bed, in English this time. The Germans, however, weren’t looking at me, but at something behind my back. For a moment I thought it might be a trap: if I turned around, that pair of brutes would fall on me howling war cries. Curiosity, however, overcame me: I looked over my shoulder. I was so surprised by what I saw that I dropped the flashlight; it broke open on the cement and the batteries (how could there be so many?) went rolling across the terrace and disappeared into the dark. Caridad was behind me, holding a broad kitchen knife, whose blade seemed to be concentrating the sepia glow of the clouds, filtered through the branches above her. Luckily she gave me a wink; otherwise I would have thought she was intending to plant that knife in me. She looked for all the world like a ghost. With a chilling delicacy, she displayed the knife as if displaying one of her breasts. And the Germans must have seen, because now their gazes seemed to be saying, We don’t want to die, we don’t want to be wounded, we were joking, we don’t want anything to do with this. Go to bed I said, and they did. I watched them walking away through the campground, propping each other up, just a pair of ordinary drunks. When I looked at Caridad again, the knife had disappeared. Gradually, as if emerging from sleep, the campers, who had watched the action from their tents, began to gather in groups, light cigarettes and comment on the performance. Soon they came onto the terrace and offered to buy us drinks. Someone picked up the batteries from my flashlight and gave them to me. Suddenly I found myself drinking wine and eating cockles under the canopy of an enormous tent, like a house, decorated with little paper Catalonian and Andalusian flags. Caridad was beside me, smiling. An old lady was patting me on the arm. Another lady was praising the mettle of Mexicans. It took me a while to realize that she was referring to me. It seemed that no one had seen Caridad’s knife except the Germans and myself. Their sudden departure was being credited to my determination to maintain order in the campground. The dropped flashlight: my anger and haste, as I stepped up to whip their asses. Caridad’s presence: the understandable concern of a girl in love. The events on the terrace had been obscured by the trees and shadows. Perhaps it was better that way. When we got back to reception, El Carajillo was fast asleep, and we sat outside for a while, quietly enjoying the fresh air, watching a restless, orangey light play on the road: it made the place feel a bit like a submarine. A little while later Caridad said she was going to bed. She got up and I saw her walk through that light back into the campground. Given its size, the knife should have made a visible bulge under her shirt, but I couldn’t see anything, and for a moment I thought that the girl with the knife was just a figment of my imagination. .