Roberto Bolaño - The Third Reich

Later I asked him whether he spoke German and he said no.

At seven in the morning, with the sun already high in the sky, we got in bed. The room was cold and we made love. Then we fell asleep with the windows open and the curtains drawn. But first… first we had to haul Charly to the Costa Brava. He was determined to sing songs that the Wolf and the Lamb whispered in his ear (the two of them were laughing like maniacs and clapping); later, on the way to the hotel, he insisted on swimming for a while. Hanna and I were against it, but the Spaniards backed him up and all three of them went in the water. Poor Hanna hesitated briefly between going in herself or waiting on the shore with us; finally she decided on the latter course.

We hadn’t noticed when El Quemado left the bar, but now we spotted him walking on the beach. He stopped about fifty yards from us, and there he stayed, squatting, looking out to sea.

Hanna explained that she was afraid that something bad would happen to Charly. She was an excellent swimmer and therefore felt that it was her duty to go in with him, but—she said with a crooked smile—she didn’t want to get undressed in front of our new friends.

The sea was as smooth as a rug. The three swimmers kept getting farther away. Soon we couldn’t tell who was who; Charly’s blond head and the dark heads of the Spaniards became indistinguishable.

“Charly is the one who’s farthest out,” said Hanna.

Two of the heads turned back toward the beach. The third kept heading out to sea.

“That’s Charly,” said Hanna.

We had to stop her from undressing and going in after him. Ingeborg looked at me as if I should volunteer, but she didn’t say so. I’m not a strong swimmer, and he was already too far out for me to catch up. The returning swimmers were moving extremely slowly. One of them turned around every few strokes as if to see whether Charly was following. For an instant I thought about what Charly had said to me: that he was afraid of dying. It was ridiculous. Just then I looked over toward where El Quemado had been, and he was gone. To the left of us, halfway between the sea and the Paseo Marítimo, the pedal boats loomed, bathed in a faintly bluish light, and I realized that he was there now, inside his fortress, sleeping or perhaps watching us, and the very idea that he was hidden there was more exciting to me than the swimming display to which we’d been subjected by that idiot Charly.

At last the Wolf and the Lamb reached the shore, where they dropped, exhausted, one next to the other, unable to get up. Hanna, unconcerned by their nakedness, ran to them and began to fire questions at them in German. The Spaniards laughed and said they couldn’t understand a thing. The Wolf tried to tackle her and then splashed water on her. Hanna gave a leap backward (an electric leap) and covered her face with her hands. I thought she would start to cry or hit them, but she didn’t do anything. She came back over to us and sat on the sand, next to the little pile of clothes that Charly had left scattered and that she had gathered and carefully folded.

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered.

Then, with a deep sigh, she got up and began to scan the horizon. Charly was nowhere to be seen. Ingeborg suggested that we call the police. I went over to the Spaniards and asked them how we could get in touch with the police or with some rescue team from the port.

“Not the police,” said the Lamb.

“The kid’s a joker. He’ll be back, no sweat. He’s just messing with us.”

“But don’t call the police,” insisted the Lamb.

I informed Ingeborg and Hanna that we couldn’t count on the Spaniards if we needed to ask for help, which probably wouldn’t be necessary anyway. Really, Charly could show up at any moment.

The Spaniards dressed quickly and joined us. The color of the beach was shifting from blue to reddish and some early-bird tourists were jogging along the Paseo Marítimo. We were all standing except for Hanna, who’d dropped down again next to Charly’s clothes and was squinting, as if the growing light hurt her eyes.

It was the Lamb who spotted him first. Cutting smoothly through the water with perfect, measured strokes, Charly came in to shore some hundred yards from where we stood. With shouts of jubilation, the Spaniards ran to welcome him, not caring that their trousers were getting wet. Meanwhile Hanna burst into tears, clutching Ingeborg, and said that she felt sick. Charly was almost sober when he emerged from the water. He kissed Hanna and Ingeborg and shook hands with the rest of us. There was something unreal about the scene.

We parted in front of the Costa Brava. As Ingeborg and I walked toward our hotel, I spied El Quemado as he came out from under the pedal boats and then began to disassemble them, getting ready for another workday.

It was after three when we woke up. We showered and had a light meal at the hotel restaurant. From the bar we watched the scene on the Paseo Marítimo through the tinted windows. It was like a postcard: old men perched on the wall along the sidewalk, half of them wearing little white hats, and old women with their skirts pulled up over their knees so the sun could lick at their thighs. That was all. We had a soda and went up to the room to put on our bathing suits. Charly and Hanna were in the usual spot near the pedal boats. That morning’s incident was the subject of conversation for a while: Hanna said that when she was twelve her best friend had died of a heart attack while she was swimming; Charly, completely recovered now, told how he and some guy called Hans Krebs used to be the champions of the Oberhausen town pool. They had learned to swim in the river and they believed that anyone who learned to swim in rivers could never drown in the sea. In rivers, he said, you have to swim as hard as you can and keep your mouth closed, especially if the river is radioactive. He was glad he’d shown the Spaniards how far he could go. He said that at a certain point they’d begged him to swim back, or so he thought, at least. Anyway, even if that wasn’t what they’d said, he could tell by the tone of their voices that they were scared. You weren’t scared because you were drunk, said Hanna, kissing him. Charly smiled, showing two rows of big white teeth. No, he said, I wasn’t scared because I know how to swim.

Inevitably we saw El Quemado. He was moving slowly and wore only cutoff jeans. Ingeborg and Hanna waved. He didn’t come over.

“Since when are you friends with that guy?” asked Charly.

El Quemado waved back and headed toward the shore dragging a pedal boat. Hanna asked whether it was true that they called him El Quemado. I said it was. Charly said he hardly remembered him. Why didn’t he come in the water with me? For the same reason that Udo didn’t, said Ingeborg, because he isn’t stupid. Charly shrugged. (I think he loves it when women scold him.) He’s probably a better swimmer than you, said Hanna. I doubt it, said Charly, I’d bet anything he isn’t. Hanna then observed that El Quemado had bigger muscles than either of us, and in fact than anyone on the beach just now. A bodybuilder? Ingeborg and Hanna started to laugh. Then Charly confessed that he didn’t remember a thing about the night before. The trip back from the club, the vomiting, the tears—all had been erased from his memory. And yet he knew more about the Wolf and the Lamb than any of us. One of them worked in a supermarket next to the campground and the other waited tables at a café in the old town. Great guys.

At seven we left the beach and stopped for beers on the terrace of the Andalusia Lodge. The owner was behind the bar talking to a couple of locals, both tiny old men, almost dwarves. He greeted us with a nod. It was nice there. The breeze was soft and cool, and although the tables were full, the patrons hadn’t quite yet devoted themselves entirely to making noise. Like us, they were people on their way back from the beach and they were worn-out from swimming and lying in the sun.