Роберто Боланьо - The Spirit of Science Fiction

I’m always amazed by refrigerators full of food.

I went back to the living room with a glass of milk and sat down, sipping it slowly. I must have looked ridiculous there with my legs crossed and tears in my eyes. But why? Jan’s voice droned on in the background of the Balinese theater. I’ve told you a thousand times, Remo, and you still don’t get it. Fateful figures in an incomprehensible game of chess. All I can see, I said, is the silhouette of a boy… dancing in a room. He must be happy. A boy of thirteen dancing in his bedroom. Now he’s turning, and I can see his face, Boris’s face? And then the room is plunged into darkness, the power is out all over the neighborhood, and all I hear is the sound of his breathing, the sound of his body dancing in silence. I set the glass on a night table. The leg that was crossed over my knee began to jerk as if the Invisible Doctor was checking my reflexes with his little steel hammer. Stop, I said, quiet, come on, Rinti, stop, hee-hee, good boy.

Then came that famous ring at the door, dingdong, ringgg, ttlililinggg, I swear I can’t remember the tones, screeekkkkk, brrrrringggg, lingalingaling, and I jumped up because I sensed or guessed, ronngggdronnggg, that from here to total happiness, ping ping-ping, hhhwhishh, there were just one or two or three million steps, and I set out on the path by making my way to the door, deet-deet-deet, which I opened. It was a girl with brown hair. Behind her: a very disagreeable—and very ugly—boy with hair the same color.

Dear Ursula K. Le Guin:

What can we, the creechies, do when the hour comes? Is our weapon our crushing majority? Is our weapon the ability to see our aggressor as a snake? Is our weapon our capacity to translate the word “death”? Is our weapon our Blind Deaf Mute Faith in survival? Is our weapon audacity? Are our weapons our arrows that fly up toward the helicopters like a dream or like the scattered fragments of a dream? Is our weapon implacability? Are our weapons the Dorados who ride drunk and never stop shooting at the column of tanks? An old Agustín Lara record on the exact border of nothing? Flying saucers that land in the Andes and take off from the Andes? Our creechie identity? The art of swift communication? The art of camouflage? Our explosive anal fixation? Pure fierceness? What will be given to us, and what must we seize in order to fight and triumph? Should we stop gazing at the moon forever and ever? Learn once and for all to stop Guderian’s tanks at the gates of Moscow? Who should we wake with a kiss and break the spell? Madness or Beauty? Madness and Beauty?

“Ah, nights are for dreaming, don’t you think? Young people everywhere with the windows open… It would be so nice not to be working, not to have a job to do…”

“If you want, we can go out on the terrace. A little fresh air won’t do us any harm.”

“No. Let’s continue. But try to be serious. I’m telling you this for your own good, for your artistic future. Everything you say is being recorded.”

“Where were we?”

“No idea.”

“Then let’s go back to the night when Boris Lejeune is watching the enemy movements from the potato field.”

“A nice boy… and a dreamer.”

“Yes, he’s in the habit of talking to himself.”

“Like so many of us. I have a friend on the gossip pages who’s always talking to herself. People think she’s crazy; she’ll probably lose her job. She spends the whole day muttering. Sometimes she rattles off the names of famous fashion designers. To herself or an invisible friend…”

“Boris Lejeune says, attention, attention…”

“Can he hear his own voice, or is he not even aware that his lips are moving, that random words are coming out?”

“Boris Lejeune here, attention, attention, failure of tanks R35, H35, H39, FCM36, D2, B1, FT17, S35, AMR, AMC… Where I’m from, it’s normal to talk to yourself…. The Civil War is unstoppable…. It’s like reciting from memory…. Special message for my lost friends: Vaché and Nizan can finally join ranks with Daudet and Maurras…. God doesn’t exist…. The human race is scum…. Shit fuck cunt… Et cetera… Across the potato field, the lights blink like beings from another planet.”

“I’m cold. This corner is freezing. What happens next?”

“Next, everything speeds up. The girl walks along the outskirts of Santa Bárbara. The caretaker goes for a ride on his bicycle. The machines at the academy work imperturbably, day and night, picking up curses and tantrums. The images begin to fall into place, each ready to be assigned its numbered spot on the map drawn with a firm hand and winged imagination by Dr. Huachofeo in his Paradoxical History of Latin America. Scene number one: A prisoner leaves a Paris jail, destined for a German concentration camp. In a station outbuilding, before he is put on the train, he’s asked his name, for form’s sake. I shit on your dead, the prisoner replies. In Spanish. What? asks the German soldier or the French gendarme. Boris Gutiérrez, says the prisoner. Scene number two: A Spitfire plummets outside Southampton. The staff at the base watch from the ground. Why doesn’t he jump? Who’s flying that plane? They try to make radio contact, but no one replies. Collision is imminent; the plane is in a nosedive. The radio operator keeps trying: Jump, jump, jump, is there anyone in that plane? Suddenly a distant voice answers: Boris McManus here, I’m crashing…. Scene number three: A party of guerrilla soldiers retreat to an area near Užice. In the early-morning hours, they find a comrade wounded in both legs lying next to a dead youth. The wounded soldier explains that the youth brought him here. The guerrillas examine the body. There are multiple wounds to the chest and head. He can’t possibly have brought you here, says the leader. He’s been dead for at least twenty-four hours. I swear, last night he dragged me away from the front line and brought me here! I passed out a couple of times. I was in a lot of pain. We talked. He told me stories to distract me. He told me that he liked horses. And… The guerrillas have to acknowledge that the wounded man could never have made it this far on his own. In the dead youth’s pocket, they find his identification papers: Boris Voilinovic, student at the Sarajevo School of Mechanical Arts and Flight. Employee of the Unknown University.”

Jan’s eyes widened in alarm, as if to ask what the hell was going on. Smiling and trying to keep my voice calm, I explained that it was some friends. That’s obvious, he said as the others began to file into the room one by one, giving him no time to get dressed or gather up the scattered papers, newspaper clippings, science fiction books, maps, and dictionaries that were piled around his mattress like a kind of library dump. This is my friend Jan, I muttered. Only Angélica and Estrellita heard me. When the last person had come in, Jan jumped up, his skinny ass exposed and his balls dangling golden, and in two or three swift movements, his back to the group, he jammed his papers under the mattress and got back into bed; then he smoothed his hair and cast a cold eye over the recent arrivals. I don’t think we’d ever had so many people in our room.

“Jan,” I said, “this is Angélica; this is her sister, Lola; this is Colina; this is Antonio; this is the Señora Estrellita we’ve talked about…”

“Just Estrellita,” said Estrellita.

“Pleased to meet you,” said Jan.

“This is Héctor, this is César and… Laura.”

“Well, well, well,” said Jan.