Roberto Bolaño - The Third Reich

“Will he rape me?”

“Don’t be an idiot. If that’s what you’re expecting, you’ve got the wrong movie.”

I admit that I was confused.

“What will he do to me, then?”

“What people usually do to Nazi pigs: beat their brains out.

Bleed them to death in the sea! Send you to Valhalla with your friend, the windsurfer!”

“Charly wasn’t a Nazi, as far as I know.”

“And neither are you, but at this point in the war, El Quemado doesn’t care. You’ve laid waste to the En glish Riviera and the wheat fields of the Ukraine, poetically speaking. You can’t expect that now he’ll handle you with kid gloves.”

“Are you the one who came up with this diabolical plan?”

“No, certainly not. But it sounds like fun!”

“It’s partly your fault; without your advice El Quemado would’ve had no chance.”

“You’re wrong! El Quemado has gone beyond my advice. In a way he reminds me of Atahualpa, the Inca prisoner of the Spaniards who learned to play chess in a single afternoon by watching how his captors moved the pieces.”

“Is El Quemado from South America?”

“Warm, warm…”

“And the burns on his body… ?

“Jackpot!”

Giant drops of sweat bathed the sick man’s face when I said good-bye. I would have liked to throw myself into Frau Else’s arms and hear only words of reassurance for the rest of the day. Instead, when I found her, much later and with my spirits considerably lower, all I did was whisper abuse and recriminations. Where did you spend the night? Who were you with? Etc. Frau Else gave me a withering look (at the same time, she didn’t seem surprised at all that I had talked to her husband), but I was numb to everything.

Fall 1943 and a new offensive for El Quemado. I lose Warsaw and Bessarabia. The west and the south of France fall to the Anglo-Americans. It’s possible it’s exhaustion that’s impairing my ability to respond.

“You’re going to win, Quemado,” I say in a low voice.

“Yes, that’s how it looks.”

“And what will we do then?” But fear made me elaborate on the question in order to avoid a concrete response. “Where will we celebrate your initiation as a war games player? I’ll be getting money soon from Germany and we can have a night out on the town, at a club, with girls, champagne, that kind of thing.”

El Quemado, removed from anything but the progress of his two huge steamrollers, answered with a remark to which I later ascribed symbolic meaning: “Keep watch over what you’ve got in Spain.”

Did he mean the three German infantry corps and the one Italian infantry corps that appear to be stranded in Spain and Portugal now that the Allies control the south of France? The truth is that if I wanted to I could evacuate them from the Mediterranean ports during the Strategic Redeployment phase, but I won’t. In fact, maybe I’ll bring in reinforcements to create a threat or a diversion on the enemy’s flank; at least that will slow the Anglo-American march toward the Rhine. This is a strategic possibility that El Quemado must be aware of, if it’s as good as it seems. Or did he mean something else? Something personal? What have I got in Spain? Myself!

“You’re falling asleep, Udo.”

“The sea breeze does me good.”

“You drink too much and you hardly sleep. That’s not good.”

“But you’ve never seen me drunk.”

“Even worse: that means you drink alone. You’re constantly eating and coughing up your own demons.”

“Don’t worry, I have a big big big stomach.”

“There are terrible circles under your eyes and you just keep getting paler, as if you were gradually turning into the Invisible Man.”

“It’s my natural complexion.”

“You look sickly. You don’t listen to what anyone says, you don’t see anyone, you seem resigned to staying here forever.”

“Every day I stay costs me money. No one is making me a gift of anything.”

“This isn’t about money, it’s about your health. If you gave me your parents’ phone number, I would call them to come and get you.”

“I can take care of myself.”

“It doesn’t seem that way. One minute you’re in a state of rage, and the next you lapse into passivity. Yesterday you yelled at me and today you just smile like a moron, sitting at the same table all morning.”

“I can’t tell the mornings and the afternoons apart. I can breathe better here. The weather has changed; it’s humid and oppressive now. This is the only comfortable spot.”

“You should be in bed.”

“If I doze off, don’t worry. It’s because of the sun. It comes and goes. Inside, my resolve is still strong.”

“But you’re talking in your sleep!”

“I’m not asleep, I only look it.”

“I think I’ll have to get a doctor to come and give you a checkup.”

“A friend?”

“A fine German doctor.”

“I don’t want anyone to come. The truth is, I was sitting quietly, enjoying the sea breeze, and you come along to lecture me unintuited, out of the blue, just for kicks.”

“You’re not well, Udo.”

“And you’re a cock tease, all this kissing, all this fooling around, and no more. Half here and half somewhere else.”

“Don’t raise your voice.”

“Now that I’m raising my voice, at least you can see I’m not asleep.”

“We could try to talk like good friends.”

“Go ahead, you know my patience and curiosity are boundless.

Like my love.”

“Do you want to know what the waiters call you? The freak. And you can see why: someone who spends all day on the terrace, huddled under a blanket like an old cripple, nodding off, and who at night turns into a lord of war and welcomes the lowest of the low—disfigured, to make it even more grotesque; it’s not what you’d call ordinary. There are those who think you’re a homosexual and others who say you’re just eccentric.”

“Eccentric! What idiocy. All freaks are eccentric. Did you hear that, or did you make it up just now? The waiters only make fun of things they don’t understand.”

“The waiters hate you. They think you bring bad luck to the hotel. When I hear them talk I think they wouldn’t mind if you drowned like your friend Charly.”

“Fortunately, I don’t do a lot of swimming. The weather is getting worse and worse. In any case, lovely sentiments.”

“It happens every summer. There’s always a guest who rubs everyone the wrong way. But why you?”

“Because I’m losing the match and no one likes a loser.”

“Maybe you haven’t been polite to the staff. Don’t fall asleep, Udo.”

“My armies in the East are collapsing,” I said to El Quemado. “Just the way it really happened, the Romanian flank is crumbling and there are no reserves to contain the wave of Russian tokens advancing on the Carpathians, the Balkans, the Hungarian plain, Austria. This is the end of the Seventeenth Army, the First Panzer Army, the Sixth Army, the Eighth Army.”

“Next turn,” whispers El Quemado, burning like a torch swollen with veins.

“Will I lose in the next turn?”

“Deep down, very deep down, I love you,” says Frau Else. “This is the coldest winter of the war and nothing could possibly go worse. I’m in a deep hole that I may not be able to dig myself out of. Confidence is a poor counselor,” I hear myself say in a neutral voice.

“Where are the photocopies?” asks El Quemado.

“Frau Else gave them to your coach,” I answer, knowing that El Quemado has no coach or anything of the kind. The closest thing might be me, since I taught him to play! But not even.

“I don’t have a coach,” says El Quemado, predictably.