Roberto Bolaño - The Third Reich

“How do you know?” I say, leaving my notes aside.

“Everyone knows it. He’s been sick for a long time, years. He’s sick but he’s not dying.”

“He feeds it!” I say with a smile.

“Never,” says El Quemado, returning to the tangle of the game, his whole logistical network in ruins.

In the end our farewell follows the usual ritual: we drink the last cans of beer that I’ve bought for the occasion and that I keep in the sink full of cold water, we discuss the match (El Quemado outdoes himself with compliments but he still won’t acknowledge defeat), we take the elevator down together, we say good night at the door to the hotel…

Just then, as El Quemado disappears along the Paseo Marítimo, a voice beside me makes me jump in alarm.

It’s Frau Else, sitting in the shadows, in a corner of the empty terrace scarcely reached by the lights from the hotel and the street.

I admit that as I walked toward her I was angry (at myself, mostly) because of the fright I’d just gotten. When I sat down across from her, I saw that she was crying. Her face, usually full of color and life, glowed with a ghostly pallor that was heightened by the effect of glimpsing her half-hidden under the giant shade of an umbrella that swayed rhythmically in the night breeze. Without hesitating, I took her hands and asked what was wrong. As if by magic a smile appeared on Frau Else’s face. You, always so considerate, she said, forgetting in the heat of the moment to use the informal du. I protested. The speed with which Frau Else’s mood changed was surprising: in less than a minute she went from ghostly mourner to concerned older sister. She wanted to know what I was doing—“but tell me the truth, now”—in my room with El Quemado. She wanted me to promise that I would return soon to Germany, or at least that I would call my bosses at work and Ingeborg. She wanted me to go to bed earlier and spend the mornings lying in the sun—“the little we have left”—on the beach. You’re pasty, it must be months since you took a look in the mirror, she whispered. And she wanted me to swim and eat well, which was an exhortation that went against her best interests, since I ate at her hotel. At this point she started to cry again, but more softly, as if all the advice she had given was a bath that cleansed her of her own suffering, and little by little she grew calmer and more relaxed.

This was the perfect situation, everything I could have asked for, and I hardly noticed the time passing. I think we might have sat across from each other like that all night, our eyes scarcely meeting and her hand clasped in mine, but everything comes to an end, and this time the end arrived in the form of the night watchman, who, after searching for me all over the hotel, appeared on the terrace with the message that I had a long-distance phone call.

Frau Else got up wearily and followed me down the empty corridor to the reception desk. She ordered the watchman to take out the last bags of garbage from the kitchen and we were left alone. The immediate sensation was of being on an island, just the two of us, except for the receiver lying there offthe hook, like a cancerous appendage that I would happily have ripped out and handed to the clerk like another piece of garbage.

It was Conrad. When I heard his voice my disappointment was great, but then I remembered that I’d asked him to call me.

Frau Else sat on the other side of the counter and tried to read a magazine that I suppose the clerk had left behind. She couldn’t. Nor was there much to read because it was almost all photographs. With a mechanical gesture she dropped it on the edge of the desk, where it rested precariously, and pinned her gaze on me. Her blue eyes were the shade of a child’s colored pencil, a cheap and beloved Faber.

I felt like hanging up and making love to her right there. I imagined myself—or maybe I’m imagining it now, which makes it worse—dragging her to her private office, lifting her up on the desk, ripping offher clothes and kissing her, climbing on top of her and kissing her, turning offall the lights again and kissing her…

“Ingeborg is fine. She’s working. She doesn’t plan to call you, but she says that when you get back she wants to talk to you. She asked me to say hello to you,” said Conrad.

“Fine. Thanks. That’s what I wanted to know.”

With her legs crossed, Frau Else was gazing at the tips of her shoes now and seemed immersed in labored and complicated thoughts.

“Listen, your letter never came. It was Ingeborg, this afternoon, who explained everything to me. As far as I can see you’re under no obligation to stay there.”

“Well, when you get my letter, you’ll understand. I can’t explain anything to you now.”

“How’s the match going?”

“I’m screwing him three ways from Thursday,” I said, though maybe the expression was “He’s shafted” or “I’m tearing him a new one” or “He’s getting a good hosing,” I honestly can’t remember now.

Maybe I said: I’m roasting him alive.

Frau Else gave me a soft look that I’d never seen a woman give and smiled at me.

I felt a kind of shiver.

“You haven’t bet anything?”

I heard voices, maybe in German, I couldn’t say for sure, unintelligible conversations and computer sounds, far, very far away.

“Nothing.”

“I’m glad. All afternoon I was worried that you’d bet something. Do you remember our last conversation?”

“Yes, you suggested he was the devil. I’m not senile yet.”

“Don’t get all worked up. I only have your best interests at heart, you know.”

“Of course.”

“I’m glad you haven’t bet anything.”

“What did you think was on the table? My soul?”

I laughed. Frau Else had one tanned and perfect arm raised in the air, ending in a hand with long, slender fingers that closed around the night clerk’s magazine. Only then did I realize that it was pornography. She opened a drawer and put it away.

“The Faust of war games.” Conrad laughed like an echo of my own laugh bouncing back from Stuttgart.

I felt a cold rage rise up my spine from my heels to my neck and shoot into every corner of the room.

“It’s not funny,” I said, but Conrad didn’t hear me. I hadn’t been able to muster more than the faintest of voices.

“What? What?”

Frau Else got up and came over, so close that I thought that she could hear Conrad’s cackling. She put a hand on my head, and immediately she could feel the rage boiling inside me. Poor Udo, she whispered. Then, with a velvety gesture, as if in slow motion, she pointed to the clock indicating that she had to leave. But she didn’t go. Maybe it was the desperation she saw in my face that stopped her.

“Conrad, I don’t feel like kidding around, I’m not in the mood, it’s late. You should be in bed, not up worrying about me.”

“You’re my friend.”

“Listen, at some point the sea will puke up whatever’s left of Charly. Then I’ll pack my bags and come back. To kill time while I’m waiting, just to kill time and get examples for my article, I’m playing Third Reich ; you’d do the same, wouldn’t you? Anyway, the only thing I’m jeopardizing is my job, and you know that’s crap. I could find something better in less than a month. Yes? Or I could devote myself exclusively to writing essays. I might even come out ahead. It might be fate. In fact, being fired might be the best thing that could happen to me.”

“But they don’t want to fire you. And I know you care about the office, or at least the people you work with. When I was there they showed me a postcard you’d sent them.”

“You’re wrong, I don’t give a shit about them.”