Roberto Bolaño - The Third Reich

The Wolf and the Lamb exchanged glances, whether troubled or uncertain, I can’t say, and then they too sought my approval, but I had eyes only for Clarita, and especially for the smoke, the immense cloud of smoke hanging over Europe, blue and pearly, augmented by the dark lips of the girl, who painstakingly, like a builder, exhaled long, fine tubes of smoke that flattened out over France, Germany, the vast expanses of the East.

“Man, Clarita, pass it back,” complained the Lamb.

As if we were wrenching her from a beautiful and heroic dream, the maid looked at us and without getting up reached out her arm with the joint between her fingers; she had thin arms dotted with small circles lighter than the rest of her skin. I said that maybe she felt sick, maybe she wasn’t used to smoking, maybe it would be better if everyone got back to what they were doing, this last suggestion meant to include the Wolf and the Lamb.

“Nah, she loves it,” said the Wolf, passing me the joint, which this time was soggy and which I smoked with my lips curled inward.

“What do I love?”

“Smoking, cunt,” spat the Lamb.

“It’s not true,” said Clarita, jumping up in a way that was more theatrical than spontaneous.

“Cool it, Clarita, cool it,” said the Wolf in a suddenly honeyed, velvety, even faggotty voice, as he grabbed her by the shoulder and with his other hand tapped her in the ribs. “Don’t knock over the playing pieces, what would our German friend think? That you’re an idiot, right? And you’re no idiot.”

The Lamb winked at me and sat on the bed, behind the maid, miming sex in a way that was doubly silent because even his earto-ear smile was turned not toward me or Clarita’s back but toward… a kind of realm of stone… a silent zone (with raw staring eyes) that had surreptitiously established itself in the middle of my room… say, from the bed to the wall where the photocopies were tacked.

The Wolf’s hand, which only then did I notice was balled into a fist—so the taps could have hurt—opened and closed around one of the maid’s breasts. Clarita’s body seemed to surrender completely, melted by the confidence with which the Wolf explored it. Without getting up from the bed, his torso unnaturally stiffand his arms moving like a mechanical doll’s, the Lamb grabbed the girl’s buttocks with both hands and whispered an obscenity. He said “slut,” or “bitch,” or “cunt.” I thought I was going to witness a rape and I remembered the words of Mr. Pere at the Costa Brava about the town’s rape statistics. Whether rape was their aim or not, they weren’t in a hurry: for an instant the three of them composed a living tableau in which the only jarring element was the voice of Clarita, who every so often said no, each time with different emphasis, as if she wasn’t sure of the most appropriate tone in which to refuse.

“Should we make her more comfortable?” The question was directed at me.

“Yeah, man, that would be better,” said the Lamb.

I nodded, but none of the three moved: the Wolf standing and gripping Clarita by the waist, her muscles and bones seemingly turned to jelly, and the Lamb on the edge of the bed massaging the girl’s ass in a circular, rhythmic motion as if he were shuffling dominoes. Such a lack of dynamism led me to act without thinking. I wondered whether it wasn’t all a performance, a trick to make me look ridiculous, a strange in-joke. I reasoned that if this was the case, the hallway wouldn’t be empty. Since I was the one closest to the door, it was easy to reach out and open it, thus clearing up any doubts. With unnecessary swiftness, that’s what I did. There was no one there. Nevertheless, I left the door open. As if they’d been dashed with a bucket of cold water, the Wolf and the Lamb interrupted their gropings with a leap; the maid, meanwhile, gave me a warm look that I fully appreciated and understood. I ordered her to leave. This instant, no arguments! Obediently, Clarita said goodbye to the Spaniards and went offdown the corridor with the weary step of all hotel maids. Seen from behind she looked vulnerable and not very attractive. Which probably she wasn’t.

When we were left alone, and before the Spaniards had recovered from the surprise, I asked in a tone that admitted of no rejoinders or subterfuge whether Charly had raped anyone. In the moment, I was convinced that my words were divinely inspired. The Wolf and the Lamb exchanged a glance that was equal parts blank and wary. They had no idea what was about to hit them!

“Rape a girl? Poor Charly, may he rest in peace?”

“Yes, Charly, that bastard,” I said.

I think I was prepared to get the truth out of them even if it came to blows. The only one who would make a worthy opponent was the Wolf; the Lamb wasn’t much over five feet tall and he was the scrawny type who could be dropped with a single punch. Though it didn’t pay to trust them, nor was there reason for me to be overly cautious. Strategically, I was ideally situated: I controlled the only exit, which I could block if it seemed convenient or use as a means of escape if things went badly. And I counted on the surprise factor. On the terror of unexpected confessions. On the Wolf’s and the Lamb’s predictable lack of mental agility. To be completely candid, none of this had been planned; it simply happened, like in those thrillers where you see an image over and over again before you realize that it’s the key to the crime.

“Let’s respect the dead, especially since he was a friend, man,” said the Lamb.

“Bullshit,” I yelled.

Both of them were pale and I realized that they weren’t going to fight, they just wanted to get out of the room as quickly as possible.

“Who do you think he raped?”

“That’s what I want to know. Hanna?” I asked.

The Wolf looked at me the way you look at a crazy person or a child:

“Hanna was his girlfriend, how could he have raped her?”

“Did he or didn’t he?”

“No, man, of course not, how can you think such a thing?” said the Lamb.

“Charly didn’t rape anybody,” said the Wolf. “He had a heart of gold.”

“Charly, a heart of gold?”

“I can’t believe that you were his friend and you didn’t realize it.”

“He wasn’t my friend.”

The Wolf laughed a brief, deep, heartfelt laugh and said he had realized that by now, believe it or not, he was no idiot. Then he repeated that Charly was a good person, incapable of forcing anyone, and that if anybody had come close to being fucked, it was Charly himself, on the night when he left Ingeborg and Hanna abandoned on the highway. When he returned to town he got drunk with some strangers; according to the Wolf they must have been foreigners, possibly Germans. From the bar, a group of men— it wasn’t clear how many—headed to the beach. Charly remembered the taunts, not all of them directed at him, the shoves (which might have been poor attempts at humor), and an attempt to pull down his pants.

“He was raped, then?”

“No. He fought offthe guy who was harassing him and got out of there. There weren’t many of them and Charly was strong. But he was pretty upset and he wanted revenge. He came to my place looking for me. When we got back to the beach, no one was there.”

I believed them: the silence of the room, the muffled noise from the Paseo Marítimo, even the sun behind the clouds and the sea veiled by the balcony curtains—everything seemed to stand witness for that pair of deadbeats.

“You think Charly committed suicide, don’t you? Well, he didn’t, Charly never would’ve killed himself. It was an accident.”

The three of us abandoned our aggressive and defensive stances and segued directly into attitudes of sadness (though the description is excessive and imprecise), sitting down on the bed or the floor, the three of us enveloped in a warm mantle of solidarity, as if we really were friends or as if we had just fucked the maid, gravely delivering short speeches that the others celebrated with monosyllables, and enduring the extra presence that throbbed with its powerful back to us at the far end of the room.