Roberto Bolaño - By Night in Chile

When I showed it to Farewell, who was still alive at the time, although he never attended a literary gathering at María Canales’s house, mostly because by then he rarely went out or talked with anyone except his faithful crones, when I showed it to him, he read a couple of lines and said it was frightful, unworthy of a prize even in Bolivia, and then he launched into a bitter lament about the state of Chilean literature, was there one contemporary writer you could seriously compare to Rafael Maluenda, Juan de Armaza or Guillermo Labarca Hubertson? Farewell was sitting in his armchair, and I was sitting opposite him, in the armchair reserved for close friends. I remember shutting my eyes and hanging my head. Who remembers Juan de Armaza now? I thought as night fell with a snakelike hissing. Only Farewell and some old crone with an elephantine memory. A professor of literature in some remote southern town. A crazy grandson, living in a perfect, inexistent past. We have nothing, I murmured.

What did you say? said Farewell. Nothing, I said. Are you feeling all right? asked Farewell. Fine, I said. And then I said or thought: Two conversations. And I said or thought it at Farewell’s house, which was falling apart like its owner, or back in my monkish cell. Because I only had two conversations with María Canales. At her soirées I would usually sit in a corner, near the stairs, beside a large window, next to a table on which there was always an earthenware vase with fresh flowers in it, and I stayed put in that corner, and there I talked with the desperate poet, the feminist novelist and the avant-garde painter, always keeping an eye on the staircase, waiting for the ritual descent of the Mapuche maid and little Sebastián. And sometimes María Canales joined my group. Always so pleasant! Whatever I wanted, nothing was too much trouble. But I suspect she could hardly understand a thing I said. She pretended to understand, but how could she have? And she could hardly understand the poet’s ideas either, although she had a slightly better grasp of the novelist’s concerns, and was positively enthusiastic about the painter’s schemes. For the most part, however, she just listened. That is, at least, when she was in my corner, in my exclusive little clique. In the other groups scattered around that spacious sitting room, she was, as a rule, the one who called the shots. And when she talked politics she was absolutely sure of herself, and her voice rang out clearly, making her opinions known in no uncertain terms. In spite of which she never ceased to be a model hostess: she knew how to ease any tension with a joke or some playful Chilean teasing. On one occasion she came over to me (I was alone, a glass of whiskey in my hand, thinking about little Sebastián and his wan little face) and without any preliminaries began singing the praises of the feminist novelist. The way she writes, it’s quite unique, she said. I replied frankly: many passages in her books were poor translations (I preferred not to speak of plagiarism, which is always a harsh if not an unjust term) of certain French women writers of the fifties. I watched her expression. There was, undeniably, a certain native cunning in that face of hers. She looked at me blankly and then, little by little, almost imperceptibly, a smile, or the irrepressible prelude to a smile, slightly rearranged her features. Nobody else would have picked it for a smile, but I’m a Catholic priest and I knew straightaway. It was harder to tell what kind of smile it was. Perhaps it was a smile of satisfaction, but what was she satisfied about? Perhaps it was a smile of recognition, as if those words had revealed my true face and now she knew (or oh so cunningly thought she did, at least) who I really was, or perhaps it was just an empty smile, the sort of smile that forms mysteriously out of nothing and dissolves away into nothing again. In other words you don’t like her books, she said. The smile disappeared and her face went blank and dull again. Of course I like them, I replied, I’m just critically noting their weaknesses. What an absurd thing to say. That’s what I think now, lying here, confined to this bed, my poor old skeleton propped up on one elbow.

How trivial, how grammatically awkward, how plain stupid. We all have weaknesses, I said. How dreadful. Only works of genius will prove to be unblemished. How ghastly. My elbow is shaking. My bed is shaking. The sheets and the blankets are shaking. Where is the wizened youth? He’s probably finding it all very funny, the story of my bungling. He’s probably laughing his head off at my blunders, my venial and mortal mistakes. Or maybe he got bored and went off leaving me here on a brass bed turning, turning like Sordel, Sordello, which Sordello? Well he can do what he likes. I said: We all have weaknesses, but we have to focus on our strengths. I said: We’re all writers, and in the end we all have to walk a long and rocky road. And from behind her long-suffering half-wit’s face, María Canales looked at me as if she were weighing me up, and then she said: What a lovely thing to say, Father. And I looked back at her in surprise, partly because until then she had always called me Sebastián, like the rest of my literary friends, and partly because just at that moment the Mapuche maid appeared on the staircase holding the little boys. And that double apparition, the maid and little Sebastián along with María Canales’s face and her calling me Father, as if she had suddenly given up the pleasant but trivial role she had been playing and taken on a new, far riskier role, that of penitent, that combination of sights conspired to make me lower my guard momentarily as they say (I suppose) in pugilistic circles, and momentarily enter a state akin to the joyful mysteries, those mysteries in which we all participate, of which we all partake, but which are unnameable, incommunicable, imperceptible from without, a state that brought on a feeling of dizziness, and nausea rising from my stomach, and closely resembled a combination of weeping, perspiration and tachycardia, and after leaving the welcoming home of our hostess it seemed to me this state had been provoked by the vision of the boy, my little namesake, who looked around with unseeing eyes as his hideous nanny carried him downstairs, his lips sealed, his eyes sealed, his innocent little body all sealed up, as if he didn’t want to see or hear or speak, there in the midst of his mother’s weekly party, in the presence of that joyous, carefree band of literati brought together by his mother each week. I don’t know what happened next. I didn’t pass out. I’m sure of that. Perhaps I resolved firmly not to attend any more of María Canales’s soirées. I spoke with Farewell. He had already drifted so far away. Sometimes he talked about Pablo and it was as if Neruda were still alive. Sometimes he talked about Augusto, Augusto this, Augusto that, and hours if not days would pass before it became clear that he was referring to Augusto d’Halmar. To be frank, one could no longer have a conversation with Farewell. Sometimes I sat there looking at him and I thought: You old windbag, you old gossip, you old drunk, how are the mighty fallen. But then I would get up and fetch the things he asked for, trinkets, little silver or iron sculptures, old editions of Blest-Gana or Luis Orrego Luco that he was content simply to fondle. What has become of literature? I asked myself. Could the wizened youth be right? Could he be right after all? I wrote or tried to write a poem. In one line there was a boy with blue eyes looking through a window. Awful, ridiculous. Then I went back to María Canales’s house. Everything was the same as before. The artists laughed, drank and danced, while outside, on the wide, empty avenues of Santiago, the curfew was in force. I didn’t drink or dance. I just smiled beatifically. And thought. I thought how odd it was that, with all the racket and the lights, the house was never visited by a military or police patrol. I thought about María Canales, who by then had won a prize with her rather mediocre story. I thought about Jimmy Thompson, her husband, who was sometimes away for weeks or even months at a time. I thought about the boys, especially my little namesake, who was growing as if against his own will. One night I dreamt of Fr. Antonio, the curate of that church in Burgos, who had died cursing the art of falconry. I was in my house in Santiago, and Fr. Antonio appeared, looking very much alive, wearing a shiny cassock covered with clumsy darning, and without saying a word, he beckoned me to follow him. So I did. We went out into a paved courtyard bathed in moonlight. In the center was a leafless tree of indeterminate species. Fr. Antonio pointed it out to me, urgently, from the portico at the edge of the courtyard. Poor fellow, I thought, he’s so old, but I looked carefully at the tree, and perched on one of its branches I saw a falcon. It’s Rodrigo, it must be! I cried. Old Rodrigo, he looked so well, gallant and proud, elegantly perched on a branch, illuminated by Selene’s rays, majestic and solitary. And then, as I was admiring the falcon, Fr. Antonio tugged at my sleeve and when I turned to look at him, I saw that his eyes were wide open and he was dripping with sweat and his cheeks and chin were trembling. And when he looked at me I realized that big tears were welling from his eyes, tears like cloudy pearls reflecting Selene’s rays, and then Fr. Antonio’s gnarled finger pointed to the portico and the arches on the other side of the courtyard, then to the moon or the moonlight, then the starless night sky, then the tree standing in the middle of that vast courtyard, and then he pointed to his falcon Rodrigo, and although he was trembling all the while, there was a certain method to this pointing. And I stroked his back, upon which a small hump had grown, but otherwise it was still a handsome back, like the back of an adolescent farm laborer or a novice athlete, and I tried to calm him, but no sound would come out of my mouth, and then Fr. Antonio began to cry inconsolably, so inconsolably that I felt a draught of cold air chilling my body and an inexplicable fear creeping into my soul, what was left of Fr. Antonio wept not only with his eyes but also with his forehead and his hands and his feet, hanging his head, a sodden rag under which the skin seemed to be perfectly smooth, and then, lifting his head, looking into my eyes, summoning all his strength, he asked me: Don’t you realize? Realize what? I wondered, as Fr. Antonio melted away. It’s the Judas Tree, he said between hiccups. His affirmation left no room for doubt or equivocation. The Judas Tree! I thought I was going to die right there and then. Everything stopped. Rodrigo was still perched on the branch. The paved courtyard was still illuminated by Selene’s rays. Everything stopped. Then I began to walk towards the Judas Tree. At first I tried to pray, but I had forgotten all the prayers I ever knew. I walked.