Roberto Bolaño - The Third Reich

I found Frau Else on the roof, after blithely ignoring the signs that indicated which areas were for guests and which were reserved for the hotel staff. And yet I must confess that I wasn’t looking for her. It just so happened that Ingeborg was still asleep, the bar made me feel claustrophobic, I didn’t feel like going out again, and I wasn’t sleepy. Frau Else was reading, lying on a sky-blue lounge chair with a glass of juice beside her. She wasn’t surprised to see me. In fact, in her usual calm voice she congratulated me on discovering the entrance to the roof. “The advantages of sleepwalking,” I answered, cocking my head to get a look at the book she was holding. It was a guide to the south of Spain. Then she asked me whether I wanted something to drink. At my inquiring gaze she explained that even on the roof she had a bell to call the staff. Out of curiosity, I accepted. After a while I asked what she’d been up to the day before. I added that I’d been searching for her all over the hotel, to no avail. “You vanish with the rain,” I said.

Frau Else’s face darkened. In a gesture that seemed studied (but I know this is just the way she is, just another part of her spontaneity and verve), she took offher sunglasses and fixed her eyes on me before answering: yesterday she spent all day in her husband’s room. Was he ill, perhaps? The bad weather, the clouds charged with electricity, bothered him; he had terrible headaches that affected his sight and his nerves; a few times he’d been afflicted with temporary blindness. Brain fever, said Frau Else’s perfect lips. (As far as I know, there is no such illness.) Immediately, with the hint of a smile, she made me promise that I wouldn’t come looking for her anymore. We’ll see each other only when fate ordains. And if I refuse? I’ll have to make you promise, whispered Frau Else. At that moment a maid appeared with a glass of juice just like the one in Frau Else’s hand. For a few seconds, dazzled by the sun, the poor girl blinked and didn’t know where to turn, then she set the glass on the table and left.

“I promise,” I said, walking away toward the edge of the roof.

The day was yellow and from everywhere there came a glow of human flesh that made me sick.

I turned toward her and confessed that I hadn’t slept all night. “No need to swear to it,” she answered without lifting her gaze from the book again in her hands. I told her that Charly had hit Hanna. “Some men do that,” was her reply. I laughed. “Clearly you’re no feminist!” Frau Else turned the page without answering me. I told her then what Charly had explained to me about dogs, the dogs that people abandon before or during their vacations. I noticed that Frau Else was listening with interest. When I finished my story I saw a look of alarm in her eye; I was afraid that she was about to get up and come over to me. I was afraid that she would speak the words that at that moment I least wanted to hear. But she made no comment, and shortly afterward I considered it most prudent to retire.

Tonight everything was back to normal. At a club near the campgrounds, Hanna, Charly, Ingeborg, the Wolf, the Lamb, and I all raised our glasses to friendship, wine, beer, Spain, Germany, Real Madrid (the Wolf and the Lamb aren’t Barcelona fans, as Charly assumed, but Real Madrid fans), pretty women, vacations, etc. Peace restored. Hanna and Charly, of course, had made up. Charly was back to being more or less the same ordinary boor we met on August 21, and Hanna had put on her flashiest and lowest-cut dress to celebrate it. Even her bruised cheek gave her a kind of erotic and roguish charm. (While she was sober she hid it under sunglasses, but in the clamor of the club she flaunted it cheerfully, as if she’d rediscovered herself and her raison d’être.) Ingeborg officially forgave Charly, who, in everyone’s presence, kneeled at her feet and praised her virtues, to the delight of all those who could hear and understand German. The Wolf and the Lamb were no laggards in this show of goodwill; we owe to them the discovery of the most authentically Spanish restaurant we’ve been to thus far. A restaurant where, in addition to eating well and cheaply and to drinking even more abundantly and more cheaply, we got to hear a flamenco singer (that is, a singer of typical songs) who turned out to be a transvestite called Andromeda, a close acquaintance of our Spanish friends. After dinner, we spent a long time telling stories, singing, and dancing. Andromeda, sitting with us, showed the women how to clap their hands and then danced a dance called a sevillana with Charly; soon everybody was getting up to join them, even people from other tables, except for me; I refused categorically and a bit brusquely. I would have made a fool of myself. My brusqueness, however, seemed to please the transvestite, who read my palm once the dance was over. I’ll have money, power, love; a full life; a gay son (or grandson)… Andromeda read the future and interpreted it. At first her voice was almost inaudible, a whisper, then gradually it rose, and by the end she was speaking so loudly that everyone could hear and laugh at her witty remarks. Anyone who volunteers for these games becomes the butt of the other patrons’ jokes, but she had nothing unpleasant to say and before we left she gave us each a carnation and invited us to return. Charly left a thousand-peseta tip and swore in the name of his parents that he would. We all agreed that it was a place “worth seeing”; praise was showered on the Wolf and the Lamb. At the club the atmosphere was different, there were more young people and the setting was artificial, but it didn’t take us long to get into the groove. Resignation. There I did dance and I kissed Ingeborg and Hanna and I went looking for the bathroom and I vomited and combed my hair and returned to the dance floor. At one point I grabbed Charly by the lapels and asked: Everything all right? Everything’s amazing, he answered. From behind, Hanna threw her arms around him and pulled him away from me. Charly was trying to tell me something but all I could see were his lips moving and finally just his smile. Ingeborg had also gone back to being the Ingeborg of the night of August 21, the same old Ingeborg. She kissed me, hugged me, begged me to make love to her. So when we got back to our room, at five in the morning, we made love. Ingeborg came quickly; I held out and possessed her for many long minutes afterward. We were both tired. Naked on the sheets, Ingeborg said everything was simple. “Even your miniatures.” She insisted on this term before falling asleep. “Miniatures.” “Everything is simple.” For a long time I lay staring at my game and thinking .

Today’s events are still confused, but I’ll try to set them down in orderly fashion so that I can perhaps discover in them something that has thus far eluded me, a difficult and possibly useless task, since there’s no remedy for what’s happened and little point in nurturing false hopes. But I have to do something to pass the time.

I’ll start with breakfast on the hotel terrace, in our bathing suits, on a cloudless morning tempered by a pleasant breeze blowing from the sea. My original plan was to go back to the room after it had been tidied and spend a few hours immersed in the game, but Ingeborg did her best to change my mind: the morning was too splendid not to leave the hotel. On the beach we found Hanna and Charly lying on a giant mat; they were asleep. The mat, brand-new, still had the price tag in one corner. I remember it with the sharpness of a tattoo: 700 pesetas. It occurred to me then, or maybe it occurs to me now, that the scene was familiar. The same thing often happens when I stay up too late: insignificant details are magnified and linger in my mind. I mean, it was nothing out of the ordinary. And yet it struck me as disturbing. Or it strikes me that way now, in the dark of night.