Roberto Bolaño - By Night in Chile

But I haven’t the strength. Is there a solution? One day, after Farewell’s death, I went to his old estate, Là-bas, with a few friends, on a sort of sentimental journey, which I realized was a bad idea almost as soon as we got there. I went off for a walk through the fields where I had wandered as a young man. I looked for the farmers, but the sheds where they used to live were empty.

An old woman was waiting to meet the friends who had come with me. I observed her from a distance, and when she headed for the kitchen, I followed and said hello to her from outside, through the window. She didn’t even look at me. Later I found out she was half deaf, but the fact is she didn’t even look at me. Is there a solution? One day, out of sheer boredom, I asked a young left-wing novelist if he knew how María Canales was getting on. The young man told me he had never met her. But you must have, you’ve been to her house, I said. He shook his head several times and changed the subject immediately. Is there a solution?

Sometimes I come across farmers speaking another language. I stop them. I ask how things are on the land. But they tell me they don’t work on the land. They tell me they work in factories or building sites in the city, they have never worked on the land. Is there a solution? Sometimes the earth shakes. The epicenter of the quake is somewhere in the north or the south, but I can hear the earth shaking. Sometimes I feel dizzy. Sometimes the quake goes on for longer than usual, and people take shelter in doorways or under stairs or they rush out into the street. Is there a solution? I see people running in the streets. I see people going into the Metro or into movie theaters. I see people buying newspapers. And sometimes it all shakes and everything stops for a moment. And then I ask myself: Where is the wizened youth? Why has he gone away?

And little by little the truth begins to rise like a dead body. A dead body rising from the bottom of the sea or from the bottom of a gully. I can see its shadow rising. Its flickering shadow. Its shadow rising as if it were climbing a hill on a fossil planet. And then, in the half-light of my sickness, I see his fierce, his gentle face, and I ask myself: Am I that wizened youth? Is that the true, the supreme terror, to discover that I am the wizened youth whose cries no one can hear? And that the poor wizened youth is me? And then faces flash before my eyes at a vertiginous speed, the faces I admired, those I loved, hated, envied and despised. The faces I protected, those I attacked, the faces I hardened myself against and those I sought in vain.

And then the storm of shit begins.

Copyright © 2000 by Roberto Bolaño and Editorial Anagrama

Translation copyright © 2003 by Chris Andrews

Originally published by Editorial Anagrama as Nocturno de Chile in 2000. Published by arrangement with the Harvill Press, London

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published as a New Directions Paperbook (NDP975) in 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bolaño, Roberto.

[Nocturno de Chile. English]

By night in Chile / by Roberto Bolaño ; translated by Chris Andrews.

p. cm.

eISBN 978-0-8112-2051-4

1. Chile — History — 1973–1988 — Fiction. I. Andrews, Chris. II. Title.

PQ8098.412.O43n6313 2003

2003013223

15 14 13 12 11 10 9

New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin

by New Directions Publishing Corporation

80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011

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