Roberto Bolaño - The Third Reich

I drank my beer in peace. Frau Else, regrettably, continued to be immersed in conversation with her tablemates and she chose to pretend she didn’t see me. I supposed she had her reasons, and I decided to leave.

In the room I was surprised by the smell of tobacco and stale air. The lamp had been left on, and for an instant I thought that Ingeborg had come back. But the smell, in an almost tangible way, ruled out the possibility of a woman. (Strange: I had never stopped to think about smells.) All of this depressed me, and I resolved to go for a drive.

I circled slowly through the empty streets of the town. A warm breeze swept the sidewalks, scattering paper wrappings and advertising leaflets.

Only every so often did the figures of drunk tourists emerge from the shadows, stumbling blindly toward their hotels.

I don’t know what made me stop on the Paseo Marítimo. But I did, and inevitably I found myself on the dark beach, heading toward the abode of El Quemado.

What did I expect to find there?

The voices stopped me by the time I could see the fortress of pedal boats rising from the sand.

El Quemado had visitors.

With extreme caution, almost crawling, I approached; whoever was there preferred to talk outside. Soon I could make out two shapes: El Quemado and his guest were sitting in the sand with their backs to me, gazing out to sea.

It was the other man who was leading the conversation: a quick series of grunts of which I could catch only stray words like “necessity” and “courage.”

I didn’t dare go any closer.

Then, after a long silence, the wind stopped blowing and a kind of weight of warm stone fell over the beach.

Someone—which of the two I don’t know—was talking in a vague and lighthearted way about some “bet,” something “forgotten and done with.” Then he laughed… Then he got up and walked toward the water’s edge… Then he turned around and said something I couldn’t hear.

For an instant—a mad instant that made my hair stand on end—I thought it was Charly: his profile, his way of letting his head slump as if he had a broken neck, his sudden silences. Good old Charly, escaped from the dirty waters of the Mediterranean in order to… give sibylline advice to El Quemado. A kind of stiffness migrated from my arms to the rest of my body as my sense of logic fought to regain control. All I wanted was to get out of there. Then, as if the rest of the conversation was simply reinforcing the madness, I heard the kind of advice that El Quemado’s visitor was giving him. “How to stop the strikes?” “Don’t worry about the strikes; worry about breaks in the line.” “How to avoid them?” “Reinforce the front line; annihilate any advances of the armored units; always keep an operative reserve.”

Advice on how to beat me in Third Reich !

More concretely, El Quemado was receiving instructions on how to counter what he saw as imminent: the invasion of Russia!

I closed my eyes and tried to pray. I couldn’t. I thought that I’d never get the madness out of my head. I was sweating and the sand stuck to my face. My whole body itched and I was afraid (if I can call it that) that suddenly I’d see Charly’s shining face looming above me. The filthy traitor. The thought jolted my eyes open; there was no one next to the pedal boat shack. They must both be inside, I thought. I was wrong: the shadowy figures were still standing at the water’s edge with the waves licking their ankles. They had their backs to me. In the sky the clouds parted for a moment and the moon shone weakly. El Quemado and his visitor were talking now—as if it were the most pleasant of subjects—about a rape. With some effort I rose to my knees and grew a little calmer. It wasn’t Charly, I told myself a few times. Elementary: El Quemado and his visitor were speaking in Spanish and Charly couldn’t even order a beer in Spanish.

With a feeling of relief, but still numb and trembling, I rose to my feet and left the beach.

At the Del Mar, Frau Else was sitting in a wicker armchair at the end of the hallway that led to the elevator. The lights of the restaurant were all out except for a faint one that illuminated only the shelves of bottles and a section of the bar where a waiter was still laboring away at something I couldn’t make out. When I’d passed the reception desk I’d seen the night watchman with his nose in a sports paper. Not everyone in the hotel was asleep.

I sat down next to Frau Else.

She made some remark about my face. Haggard!

“I’m sure you hardly sleep, and you don’t sleep well. Not a good advertisement for the hotel. I’m worried about your health.”

I nodded. She nodded too. I asked for whom she was waiting. Frau Else shrugged; she smiled; she said: For you. She was lying, of course. I asked her what time it was. Four in the morning.

“You should go back to Germany, Udo,” she said.

I invited her up to my room. She refused. She said: No, I can’t . She gazed into my eyes as she said it. How beautiful she was!

We were quiet for a long time. I would have to liked to say: Don’t worry about me, really, don’t worry. But it was ridiculous, of course. At the end of the hallway, I saw the watchman peer around the corner and then disappear. I concluded that Frau Else’s staff adore her.

I pretended to be tired and stood up. I didn’t want to be there when the person Frau Else was waiting for appeared.

Without rising from the chair, she offered me her hand and we said good night.

I walked to the elevator. Luckily it was stopped at the ground floor and I didn’t have to wait. Once I was inside I went through the farewell ritual again. I said a silent good-bye, only my lips moving. Frau Else held my gaze and my smile until the doors closed with a pneumatic wheeze and I began to rise.

I felt something heavy rolling around in my head.

After taking a hot shower, I got in bed. My hair was wet, and in any case sleep wouldn’t come.

Why, I don’t know, maybe because it was the nearest thing to me, I picked up the Florian Linden book and opened it at random.

“The killer is the owner of the hotel.”

“Are you sure?”

I closed the book.

I dreamed that I was woken by a phone call. It was Mr. Pere, who wanted me to come—he offered to take me—to the Guardia Civil headquarters. They had a body there and they were hoping that I could identify it. So I showered and went out without breakfast. The hotel corridors were achingly bleak; it must have been just after dawn. Mr. Pere’s car was waiting at the front entrance. During the ride to the Guardia Civil headquarters, located on the edge of town, at a crossroads plastered with signs that pointed toward various borders, Mr. Pere unburdened himself by talking about the mutations that the natives underwent when the summer—or rather, the summer season—was over. General depression! Deep down we can’t live without tourists! We get used to them! A pale young Guardia Civil officer led us to a garage where there were several tables set up in rows and, hanging on the walls, a collection of car parts. On a white-veined black slab, next to the metal door where the van that would remove the body was already waiting, there lay a lifeless form in what seemed to me to be a state close to putrefaction. Behind me, Mr. Pere raised a hand to his nose. It wasn’t Charly. He was probably about the same age and he might have been German, but it wasn’t Charly. I said I didn’t know him and we left. As we were going, the Guardia Civil stood to attention. We headed back to town laughing and making plans for next season. The Del Mar still looked like a slumbering thing, but this time I spotted Frau Else through the glass, at the reception desk. I asked Mr. Pere how long it had been since he’d seen Frau Else’s husband.