Роберто Боланьо - The Spirit of Science Fiction

In our room, things were different. They talked in soft voices. They smoked marijuana. They let time go by, checking their watches every so often, until their faces were covered with droplets of sweat. Sometimes they touched each other, everybody touched each other, which was inevitable anyway if we were all sitting on the divan, and the brushing of legs, of arms, could become painful. It wasn’t the pain of sex but of something irretrievably lost or a single small hope wandering, walking, the country of Impossible. If they were people we knew, Laura invited them to undress and come with us into the steam room. They hardly ever accepted. They just wanted to smoke and drink and listen to stories. To rest. After a while, they closed their bag and left. Then, two or three times in the same evening, they came back, and the routine was always the same. If Laura was in the mood, she let them in; if not, she didn’t even bother to tell them through the door to fuck off. Relations were at all times harmonious, except for one or two isolated incidents. I sometimes think they were fond of Laura long before they got to know her.

One night the old man who brought them (this time there were three of them, an old man and two boys) offered us a show. We had never seen one. How much does it cost? I asked. Nothing. Laura said they could come in. The steam room was cold. Laura took off her towel and turned the tap on: the steam began to issue from floor level. I had the feeling that we were in a Nazi bathhouse and we were about to be gassed; this feeling got stronger when the two boys came in, very thin and dark-skinned, and, bringing up the rear, the old pimp in nothing but an indescribably dirty pair of undershorts. Laura laughed. The boys looked at her, a little inhibited, standing in the middle of the room. Then they laughed, too. Between Laura and me, and without taking off his horrible underthings, the old man sat down. Do you want to just watch, or do you want to take part? Watch, I said.

“We’ll see,” said Laura, who liked puns.

Then, as if following a command, the boys knelt and began to soap each other’s sex. Their movements, practiced and mechanical, betrayed weariness and a series of quiet tremors that it was easy to connect to Laura’s presence. A minute went by. The room grew thick with steam again. The actors, still engaged in their initial activity, nevertheless seemed frozen: kneeling face-to-face but in a grotesquely artistic way, masturbating each other with their left hands and keeping their balance with their right. They looked like birds. Tin birds. They must be tired, they can’t get it up, said the old man. It was true, the soaped cocks only pointed timidly upward. Is that the best you can do, boys? asked the old man. Laura laughed again. How are we supposed to concentrate if you keep laughing? said one of the boys. Laura got up, went around them, and leaned on the wall. Now the tired performers were between us. I felt that time, inside of me, was splitting open. The old man whispered something. I looked at him. His eyes were closed, and he seemed to be asleep. We haven’t slept for so long, said one of the boys, letting go of his companion’s penis. Laura smiled at him. Next to me, the old man began to snore. The boys smiled in relief and relaxed into more comfortable positions. I heard their bones creak. Laura slid down the wall until her buttocks touched the tiles. You’re very thin, she said to one of them. Me? So is he and so are you, replied the boy. The whistle of the steam made it hard to hear their voices sometimes, they were so low. Laura’s body, her back against the wall, her knees bent, was covered in sweat: drops rolled down her nose, her neck, ran between her breasts, and even hung from the hairs of her pubis, where they fell onto the hot tiles. We’re melting, I murmured, and immediately I felt sad. Laura nodded. How sweet she looked. Where are we? I wondered. With the back of my hand, I wiped away the droplets that were falling from my eyebrows into my eyes and blinding me. One of the boys sighed. I’m so tired, he said. Sleep, said Laura. It was strange: it seemed as if the lights were fading, growing dim; I was afraid I would pass out; then I guessed that it must be all the steam that was making the colors shade into something darker. (As if we were watching the sunset with no windows, I thought.) Whiskey and pot don’t mix.

“Don’t worry, Remo my love, everything is fine,” Laura said, as if reading my thoughts.

And she smiled again, not a mocking smile, not as if she were amused, but a terminal smile, a smile caught between a sense of beauty and pain, though not ordinary beauty and pain but beauty and pain on a tiny scale, paradoxical dwarfs, roving and elusive dwarfs.

“Relax, my beloved, it’s just the steam.”

The boys, ready to believe that anything Laura said was irrefutable, nodded repeatedly. Then one of them dropped to the tiles, his head on his arm, and fell asleep. I got up, careful not to wake the old man, and I went over to Laura; crouching beside her, I buried my face in her damp, fragrant hair. I felt Laura’s fingers stroking my shoulder. Soon I realized that Laura was playing—very gently, but it was a game: her little finger brushed my shoulder, then her ring finger, and they greeted each other with a kiss; then the thumb appeared, and the two of them, little finger and ring finger, fled down my arm; the thumb was left alone, master of the shoulder, and it fell asleep, even eating some vegetable that grew there, I think, because the thumbnail dug into my flesh, until the little finger and the ring finger returned, accompanied by the middle finger and the index finger, and together they scared away the thumb, which hid behind an ear, spying from above on the bullying fingers, without realizing why it had been kicked out, while the others danced on my shoulder, and drank, and made love, and lost their balance they were so drunk, plummeting down my back, an accident that allowed Laura to hug me and graze my lips with her lips, while the four fingers, bruised and battered, climbed back up, clinging to my vertebrae, and the thumb watched without ever considering leaving his ear, which he’d grown fond of by now. Head to head, we laughed without making a sound. You’re shining, I whispered. Your face is shining. Your eyes. The tips of your nipples. You, too, said Laura. You’re a little pale, maybe, but you’re shining. It’s the steam mixed with sweat. The boy watched us in silence. Do you really love him? he asked. His eyes were big and black. I sat down on the floor, close against Laura. Yes, she said. He must love you like crazy, said the boy. Laura laughed. Yes, I said. He’d have to, said the boy. You’re right, I’d have to, I said. Do you know the taste of steam mixed with sweat? It depends on each person’s particular taste, doesn’t it? The boy lay down next to his companion, on his side, his temple resting directly on the tiles, not closing his eyes. His cock was hard now. His knees touched Laura’s legs. He blinked a few times before he spoke. Let’s fuck a little, he said. If you want to. Laura didn’t answer. The boy seemed to be talking to himself. Do you know what steam mixed with sweat tastes like? What it really tastes like? What does it taste like? The heat was putting us to sleep. The old man had slid down until he was lying on the bench. The sleeping boy had curled into a ball, and one of his arms was around the waist of the one who was talking to us. Laura got up and looked down at us for a long time. I thought that she would turn on the shower, with tragic results for those who were sleeping so peacefully. It’s hot, she said. It’s unbearably hot. If you weren’t here (she meant the trio), I would order a soda from the bar. You can, I said. They won’t come in here, they’ll hand it to you at the door. No, said Laura, it isn’t that. The truth is, I don’t know what I want. Should I turn off the steam? No. The boy, his head turned to the side, stared at my feet. Maybe I want to make love with you, said Laura. Before I could respond, the boy uttered a laconic no, almost without moving his lips. I was joking, said Laura. Then she knelt down beside him, and with one hand she stroked his buttocks. I watched—it was a fleeting and disturbing sight—as drops of the boy’s sweat were transferred to Laura’s body and vice versa. The long fingers of her hand and the boy’s buttocks glistened identically. You must be tired. The old man is crazy. What was he thinking, asking you to fuck here?