Roberto Bolaño - The Third Reich

We separated without making plans for that night.

When we got back to the hotel, we took a shower and then Ingeborg decided to go lie on the balcony to write postcards and finish reading the Florian Linden novel. I spent a moment scanning my game and then went down to the restaurant to have a beer. After a while I came up for my notebook and I found Ingeborg asleep, wrapped in her black robe, the postcards clutched against her hip. I gave her a kiss and suggested that she get into bed, but she didn’t want to. I think she had a bit of a fever. I decided to go back down to the bar. On the beach, El Quemado repeated his evening ritual. One by one the pedal boats were returned to their places and the hut began to take shape, to rise, if a hut can be said to rise. (A hut can’t; but a fortress can.) Without thinking I raised a hand and waved. He didn’t see me.

Frau Else was at the bar. She asked what I was writing. Nothing important, I said, just the first draft of an essay. Ah, you’re a writer, she said. No, no, I said, my face flushing. To change the subject I asked about her husband, whom I hadn’t had the pleasure of seeing.

“He’s sick.”

She said it with a gentle smile, her eyes on me and at the same time glancing around as if she didn’t want to miss anything that was going on in the bar.

“I’m so sorry.”

“It isn’t anything serious.”

I made some remark about summer illnesses, idiotic, I’m sure. Then I got up and asked if she would let me buy her a drink.

“No, thank you, I’m fine, and I’ve got work to do too. Always busy!”

But she made no move to leave.

“Has it been a long time since you were last in Germany?” I

asked, to say something.

“No, my dear, I was there for a few weeks in January.”

“And how did you find it?” As I said it I realized that it was a stupid thing to say and I blushed again.

“The same as always.”

“Yes, of course,” I murmured.

Frau Else looked at me in a friendly way for the first time and then she left. I watched a waiter stop her, and then a guest, and then a couple of old men, until she disappeared behind the stairs.

Our friendship with Charly and Hanna is beginning to be a burden. Yesterday, after I’d finished writing in my journal and when I thought I would spend a quiet evening alone with Ingeborg, they appeared. It was ten o’clock; Ingeborg had just woken up. I told her I’d rather stay at the hotel, but after talking on the phone with Hanna (Charly and Hanna were at the reception desk), she decided that we should go out. As she changed clothes, we argued. When we came downstairs I was astounded to see the Wolf and the Lamb. The Lamb, leaning on the counter, was whispering something in the receptionist’s ear that made her dissolve in helpless laughter. I was extremely put off. I assumed it was the same girl who had tattled to Frau Else about the misunderstanding with the table, though considering the hour and the possibility that the receptionists worked in two shifts, it could have been someone else. In any case she was very young and silly: when she saw us she gave us a knowing smirk, as if we shared a secret. Everyone else applauded. It was the last straw.

We left town in Charly’s car, with the Wolf sitting up front next to Hanna to show Charly the way. On the drive to the club, if a dump like that deserves the name, I saw huge pottery shops erected in rudimentary fashion alongside the highway. Actually, they were probably warehouses or wholesale showrooms. All night they were lit up by spotlights, and anyone who drove by got a view of endless junk, urns, pots of all sizes, and a few random pieces of statuary behind the fences. Coarse Greek imitations covered in dust. Fake Mediterranean crafts frozen in an in-between moment, neither day nor night. The yards were empty, save for the occasional guard dog.

Almost everything about the night was the same as the night before. The club had no name, though the Lamb said people called it the Crap Club. Like the other club, it was intended more for workers from the surrounding area than for tourists. The music and lighting were terrible; Charly drank and Hanna and Ingeborg danced with the Spaniards. Everything would have ended the same way if it hadn’t been for an incident, the kind of thing that often happened at the club, according to the Wolf, who advised us to leave right away. I’ll try to reconstruct the story. It starts with a guy who was pretending to dance between the tables and along the edge of the dance floor. Apparently he hadn’t paid for his drinks and he was high. This last point, however, is pure supposition. The most distinctive thing about him, which I noticed long before the scuffle began, was a thick rod that he brandished in one hand, though later the Wolf said it was a cane made of pig’s intestines, the blow of which left a scar for life. In any case, the bogus dancer’s behavior was threatening, and soon he was approached by two waiters who didn’t happen to be in uniform and who were indistinguishable from the rest of the clientele, though they were given away by their manner and faces: they were goons. Words were exchanged between them and the man with the rod, and the discussion grew more and more heated.

I could hear the man with the rod say:

“My rapier comes everywhere with me,” referring in that peculiar way to his stick, in response to being forbidden to carry it in the club.

The waiter replied:

“I have something much harder than your rapier.” Straightaway there came a deluge of curses that I didn’t understand, and finally the waiter said: “Do you want to see it?”

The guy with the stick was silent; I’d venture to say that he grew suddenly pale.

Then the waiter raised his forearm, muscular and hairy as a gorilla’s, and said:

“See? This is harder.”

The guy with the stick laughed, not insolently but in relief, though I doubt the waiters registered the difference, and raised his cane, flexing it like a bow. He had a stupid laugh, the laugh of a drunk and a loser. At that moment, as if triggered by a spring, the waiter’s arm shot out and grabbed the stick. It all happened very quickly. Immediately, turning red with the effort, he broke it in two. Applause came from one of the tables.

Just as swiftly, the guy with the stick hurled himself on the waiter, bent his arm behind his back before anyone could stop him, and, in the blink of an eye, broke it. Despite the music, which had continued to play during the whole altercation, I think I heard the sound of bone snapping.

People started to scream. First it was the howls of the waiter whose arm had just been broken, then the shouts of those flinging themselves into a brawl in which, at least from my table, it was impossible to tell who was on which side, and finally the general clamor of all those present, including the ones who didn’t even know what was going on.

We decided to beat a retreat.

On the way back we passed two police cars. The Wolf wasn’t with us. It had been impossible to find him in the crush on the way out, and the Lamb, who had followed us without protest, now felt bad about having left his friend behind and urged us to go back for him. On this point Charly was adamant: if he wanted to go back, he could hitchhike. We agreed to wait for the Wolf at the Andalusia Lodge.

The bar was still open when we got there. I mean open to everyone, the lights on outside, with a big crowd despite the late hour. The kitchen was closed, but at the Lamb’s request the owner brought us a couple of chickens that we accompanied with a bottle of red wine; then, since we were still hungry, we polished off a platter of spicy sausage and cured ham and bread with tomato and olive oil. When the terrace was closed and we were the only ones left inside, along with the owner, who at that time of night devoted himself to his favorite pursuit, which was watching cowboy movies and having a leisurely dinner, the Wolf came in.