Roberto Bolaño - The Third Reich

“Don’t be ridiculous. The bad smell comes from outside. Your sewers aren’t made for the summer season. Ingeborg said so herself: after seven at night the streets reek. The smell comes from the clogged drains!”

“From the Municipal Sewage Treatment Plant. Yes, it’s possible. In any case, I don’t like it when you go up to your room with El Quemado. Do you know what people would say about my hotel if some tourist saw you scurrying along the hallways with that hunk of charred flesh? I don’t care what the staffwhispers. The guests are a different story. I have to be more careful there. I can’t jeopardize the reputation of the hotel just because you’re bored.”

“I’m not bored. Quite the contrary, in fact. If you’d rather, I can bring the board downstairs and set it up in the restaurant. Of course then everyone would see El Quemado and that would be bad for business. And I’d have a hard time concentrating. I don’t like to play in front of too many people.”

“Are you afraid they’d think you were crazy?”

“Well, they spend all afternoon playing cards. My game is more complicated, of course. You’ve got to be a risk taker, you need somebody with a cool and calculating mind. It’s a hard game to master. Every few months new rules and variants are added. People write about it. You wouldn’t understand. I mean, you wouldn’t understand the dedication .”

“Does El Quemado fit the mold?”

“I think he does. He’s coolheaded and not afraid to take risks. Though he’s no strategist.”

“I suspected as much. On the inside he must be a lot like you, I suppose.”

“I don’t think so. I’m a happier person.”

“I don’t see anything happy about shutting yourself up in a room for hours when you could be out at a club or reading on the terrace or watching TV. The idea of you and El Quemado roaming around my hotel sets me on edge. I can’t imagine you sitting still in your room. You’re always moving!”

“We move the counters. And we make mathematical calculations…”

“Meanwhile, the family reputation of my hotel rots like your friend’s body.”

“Whose body?”

“The drowned man, Charly’s.”

“Oh, Charly. What does your husband think of all this?”

“My husband is sick, and if he found out he’d kick you out of the hotel.”

“I think he already knows. In fact, I’m sure he does; he’s no fool, your husband.”

“It would kill him.”

“What’s wrong with him exactly? He’s quite a bit older than you, isn’t he? And he’s tall and thin. And he doesn’t have much hair, does he?”

“I don’t like it when you talk that way.”

“The thing is, I think I’ve seen him.”

“Your parents were very fond of him, I remember.”

“No, I’m talking about this season. A little while ago. When he was supposedly in bed, down with a fever, among other things.”

“At night?”

“Yes.”

“In his pajamas?”

“Wearing a bathrobe, I’d say.”

“Impossible. What color was the bathrobe?”

“Black. Or dark red.”

“Sometimes he gets up and takes a walk around the hotel. Through the kitchen and the service areas. He’s always concerned about quality and making sure that everything is clean.”

“I didn’t see him in the hotel.”

“Then you didn’t see my husband.”

“Does he know that you and I… ?”

“Of course. We tell each other everything… What’s happened between us is only a game, Udo, and I think it’s about time to wrap it up. It could end up becoming as obsessive as this thing you’re playing with El Quemado. By the way, what’s it called?”

“El Quemado?”

“No, the game.”

“ Third Reich .”

“What a horrible name.”

“Perhaps…”

“So who’s winning? You?”

“Germany.”

“What country are you? Germany, of course.”

“Yes, Germany, of course, silly.”

Spring 1941. I don’t know El Quemado’s name. And I don’t care. Just as I don’t care what country he’s from. Wherever it is, it doesn’t matter. He knows Frau Else’s husband and that does matter; it gives El Quemado a previously unsuspected range of movement. Not only does he fraternize with the Wolf and the Lamb, he also has a taste for the more complex (one supposes) conversation of Frau Else’s husband. And yet why do they talk on the beach, in the middle of the night, like two conspirators, rather than meeting at the hotel? The setting seems better suited to plotting than to leisurely conversation. And what do they talk about? The subject of their encounters—I haven’t the slightest doubt—is me. Thus, Frau Else’s husband has news of me from two sources: El Quemado tells him about the match and his wife tells him about our flirtation. I’m the one at a disadvantage; I don’t know anything about him, except that he’s sick. But I can guess a few things. He wants me to leave; he wants me to lose the match; he doesn’t want me to sleep with his wife. The Eastern offensive continues. The armored wedge (four corps) meets and pierces the Russian front in Smolensk, then goes on to take Moscow, which falls in an Exploitation move. In the south I conquer Sevastopol after a bloody battle, and from Rostov– Kharkov I advance toward the Elista–Don line. The Red Army counterattacks all along the Kalinin– Moscow– Tula line, but I manage to fend it off. The defeat of Moscow entails a gain of ten BRP for the Germans—this according to the Beyma variant. Under the old rules I would have raked in fifteen and left El Quemado not on the verge of collapse but utterly routed. In any case, the Russian losses are heavy: in addition to the BRP cost of the Offensive Option to try to retake Moscow, there are the troops defeated in the effort, their quick replacement hampered by a lack of BRP. In sum, on the Central front alone, El Quemado has lost more than fifty BRP. The situation around Leningrad is unchanged; the line holds firm in Tallinn and in hexes G42, G43, and G44. (Questions that I don’t ask El Quemado, though I’d like to: Does Frau Else’s husband visit him every night? What does he know about war games? Has Frau Else’s husband used the hotel master key to come into my bedroom and poke around? Note to self: scatter talcum powder—I don’t have any—around the door, anything to detect intrusions. Is Frau Else’s husband, by chance, a fellow gamer? And what the hell is wrong with him? Does he have AIDS?) On the Western front, Operation Sea Lion is carried out successfully. The second phase—invasion and conquest of the island— will take place in the summer. For now, the hardest work is done: a beachhead has been established in England, protected by a powerful air fleet stationed in Normandy. As expected, the En glish fleet managed to intercept me in the channel. After a long battle in which I gambled the whole German fleet, part of the Italian fleet, and more than half of my airborne units, I managed to disembark in Hex L21. Perhaps too cautiously, I kept my parachute corps in reserve, which means that the beachhead isn’t quite as liquid as I’d like (impossible to route my Strategic Redeployment in that direction), but even so, it’s a favorable position. At the end of the turn, the hexes occupied by the British Army are the following: the Fifth and the Twelfth Infantry in London; the Thirteenth Armored Corps in Southampton– Portsmouth; the Second Infantry in Birmingham; five air factors in Manchester–Sheffield. And replacement units in Rosyth, J25, L23, and Plymouth. The poor English troops can see my units (the Fourth and the Tenth Infantry) from their hex-dunes and their hex-trenches, and they’re frozen in place. The long-anticipated day has come. Paralysis extends through the playing pieces to El Quemado’s fingers: the Seventh Army disembarking in England! I try not to laugh, but I can’t help myself. El Quemado doesn’t take it amiss. Very well planned! he acknowledges, though in his tone I note a hint of mockery. Honestly, I must say that as an opponent he never loses his cool. Completely absorbed in the game, he plays as if overcome by the sadness of real war. And finally, something odd to ponder: before El Quemado left I went out on the balcony to get some fresh air, and whom did I see on the Paseo Marítimo talking to the Wolf and the Lamb, though admittedly escorted by the hotel watchman? Frau Else.