Roberto Bolaño - By Night in Chile

And there we sat in silence again. Suddenly the General put his hand on my knee, I said to Farewell. A shiver ran down my spine. For a moment my mind was prey to a surging multitude of hands. Why do you think I want to learn about the fundamentals of Marxism? he asked. The better to serve our country, sir.

Exactly, in order to understand Chile’s enemies, to find out how they think, to get an idea of how far they are prepared to go. I know how far I am prepared to go myself, I assure you. But I also want to know how far they are prepared to go. And I’m not afraid of studying. One should aim to learn something new every day. I’m always reading and writing. All the time. Which is more than you could say for Allende or Frei or Alessandri, isn’t it? I nodded three times. So what I’m saying, Father, is that you won’t be wasting your time with me, and I won’t be wasting my time with you, will I? Absolutely not, sir, I said. And when I finished telling this story, Farewell was still staring at me, his half closed eyes like empty bear traps ruined by time and rain and freezing cold. It was as if Chile’s great twentieth-century literary critic were dead. Farewell, I whispered, Did I do the right thing or not? And since there was no reply, I repeated the question: Did I do my duty, or did I go beyond it? And Farewell replied with another question: Was it a necessary or an unnecessary course of action? Necessary, necessary, necessary, I said. That seemed to satisfy him, and me too, at the time. And then we went on eating and talking. And at some point in our conversation, I said to him: Not a word to anyone about what I told you.

It goes without saying, said Farewell, in a tone of voice that reminded me of Colonel Pérez Latouche. Quite different from the rather ungentlemanly tone Mr. Raef and Mr. Etah had used a few days before. In any case, the following week, a rumor began to spread like wildfire around Santiago. Father Ibacache had given the Junta lessons in Marxism. When I found out, my blood ran cold. I saw Farewell, I mean I imagined the scene so clearly I could have been spying on him, sitting in his favorite easy chair or armchair at the club or in the salon of some old crone whose friendship he had been cultivating for decades, holding court, half gaga, surrounded by retired generals who had gone into business, queers in English suits, ladies with illustrious names and one foot in the grave, sitting there blabbing out the story of how I was engaged as the Junta’s private tutor. And the queers and moribund crones and even the retired generals turned business consultants wasted no time in telling the story to others, who told it to others, and so on. Naturally, Farewell claimed he was not the motor or the fuse or the match that had started the gossiping, and as it was I had neither the strength nor the desire to blame him. So I sat down beside the telephone and waited for my friends or my former friends to call, or Mr. Etah, Mr. Raef and Pérez Latouche, to reproach me for being indiscreet, or anonymous callers with axes to grind, or the ecclesiastical authorities ringing to find out just how much truth and how much fabrication there was in the rumors that had spread through Santiago’s literary and artistic circles, if not beyond, but no one called. At first I thought this silence was the result of a concerted decision to ostracize me. Then, to my astonishment, I realized that nobody gave a damn. The country was populated by hieratic figures, heading implacably towards an unfamiliar, gray horizon, where one could barely glimpse a few rays of light, flashes of lightning and clouds of smoke. What lay there? We did not know. No Sordello. That much was clear. No Guido. No leafy trees. No trotting horses. No discussion or research. Perhaps we were heading towards our souls, or the tormented souls of our forefathers, towards the endless plain spread before our sleepy or tearful eyes, our spent or humiliated eyes, by all the good and bad things we and others had done. So it was hardly surprising that nobody cared about my introductory course on Marxism. Sooner or later everyone would get their share of power again. The right, the center and the left, one big happy family. A couple of ethical problems, admittedly. But no aesthetic problems at all. Now we have a socialist president and life is exactly the same. The Communists (who go on as if the Berlin Wall hadn’t come down), the Christian Democrats, the Socialists, the right and the military. Or the other way round. I could just as well say it the other way round! The order of the factors doesn’t alter the product! No problems! Just a little bout of fever! Just three acts of madness! Just an unusually prolonged psychotic episode! Once again I could go out, I could ring people up and no one made any remarks. Throughout those years of steel and silence, many people actually praised me for resolutely continuing to publish my reviews and articles. Many praised my poetry! Several came to ask me for favors! I was generous with letters of recommendation and references, performing various Chilean leg ups of little consequence, which earned me the undying gratitude of my beneficiaries. At the end of the day, we were all reasonable (except for the wizened youth, who at that stage was wandering around God knows where, lost in some black hole or other), we were all Chileans, we were all normal, discreet, logical, balanced, careful, sensible people, we all knew that something had to be done, that certain things were necessary , there’s a time for sacrifice and a time for thinking reasonably. Sometimes, at night, I would sit on a chair in the dark and ask myself what difference there was between fascist and rebel. Just a pair of words. Two words, that’s all. And sometimes either one will do! So I went out into the street and breathed the air of Santiago with the vague conviction that I was living, if not in the best of worlds, at least in a possible world, a real world, and I published a book of poems that struck even me as odd, I mean it was odd that I should have written them, they were odd coming from me, but I published them in the name of freedom, my own and that of my readers, and then I went back to giving classes and lectures, and I published another book in Spain, in Pamplona, and then it was my turn to frequent the airports of the world, mingling with elegant Europeans and serious (and weary-looking) North Americans, mingling with the best-dressed men of Italy, Germany, France and England, gentlemen whom it was a pleasure simply to behold, and there I was, with my cassock fluttering in the air-conditioned breeze or the gusts that issue from automatic doors when they open suddenly, for no logical reason, as if they had a presentiment of God’s presence, and, seeing my humble cassock flapping, people would say, There goes Fr. Sebastián, there goes Fr. Urrutia, that splendid Chilean, and then I returned to Chile, for I always return, how else would I merit the appellation splendid Chilean , and I went on writing reviews for the newspaper, and critical articles crying out for a different approach to culture, as even the most inattentive reader could hardly fail to notice if he scratched the surface a little, critical articles crying out, indeed begging, for a return to the Greek and Latin greats, to the Troubadours, to the dolce stil nuovo and the classics of Spain, France and England, more culture! more culture! read Whitman and Pound and Eliot, read Neruda and Borges and Vallejo, read Victor Hugo, for God’s sake, and Tolstoy, and proudly I cried myself hoarse in the desert, but my vociferations and on occasions my howling could only be heard by those who were able to scratch the surface of my writings with the nails of their index fingers, and they were not many, but enough for me, and life went on and on and on, like a necklace of rice grains, on each grain of which a landscape had been painted, tiny grains and microscopic landscapes, and I knew that everyone was putting that necklace on and wearing it, but no one had the patience or the strength or the courage to take it off and look at it closely and decipher each landscape grain by grain, partly because to do so required the vision of a lynx or an eagle, and partly because the landscapes usually turned out to contain unpleasant surprises like coffins, makeshift cemeteries, ghost towns, the void and the horror, the smallness of being and its ridiculous will, people watching television, people going to football matches, boredom circumnavigating the Chilean imagination like an enormous aircraft carrier. And that’s the truth. We were bored. We read and we got bored. We intellectuals.