Роберто Боланьо - The Spirit of Science Fiction

So that we could watch, I reminded her. Laura didn’t hear me. Her hand slid over the boy’s buttocks. It isn’t his fault, the boy whispered. He’s forgotten what it’s like to sleep in a bed. And what it’s like to put on clean underwear, added Laura with a smile. He’d be better off wearing nothing, like Remo. Yes, I said, it’s more comfortable. Less cramped, said the boy, but it’s wonderful to put on clean white briefs. Tight ones, but not the kind that pinch. Laura and I laughed. The boy scolded us gently: Don’t laugh, I’m serious. His eyes looked blurred, gray eyes like cement in the rain. Laura grabbed his cock with both hands and tugged. I heard myself saying should I turn off the steam? but my voice was faint and distant. Where the fuck does your manager sleep? asked Laura. The boy shrugged. You’re hurting me a little, he whispered. I took Laura by an ankle; with the other hand, I wiped away the sweat that was getting in my eyes. The boy rose to a sitting position, moving carefully, trying not to wake his companion, and kissed Laura. I bent my head to see them better: the boy’s thick lips sucked at Laura’s closed lips, on which there was barely the hint of a smile. I half closed my eyes. I had never seen her smile so peacefully. Suddenly the steam hid her. I felt a kind of distant terror: fear that the steam would kill Laura? When their lips parted, the boy said that he didn’t know where the old man slept. He raised a hand to his neck and made a slicing motion. Then he stroked Laura’s neck and drew her even closer. Laura’s body, elastic, adapted to the new posture. Her gaze was fixed on the wall, what she could see of the wall through the steam, her torso thrust forward, her breasts brushing the boy’s chest or pressing gently against it, the steam hiding or partially obscuring them, turning them silver or submerging them in something like a dream. Finally I couldn’t see her at all. First a shadow on a shadow. Then nothing. The room seemed about to explode. I waited for a few seconds, but nothing changed; in fact, I had the impression that the steam was getting even thicker. (I wondered how the fuck the old man and the other boy could keep sleeping.) I reached out a hand; I touched Laura’s back, arched over what I guessed must be the boy’s body. I got up and took two steps along the wall. I heard Laura calling me. Remo, Remo… What do you want? I asked. I’m drowning. I retraced my steps, less careful than I had been moving forward, and I bent down, feeling around in the spot where I guessed she must be. All I felt were the hot tiles. I thought that I was dreaming or going crazy. Laura? Next to me, I heard the boy’s voice: anybody can tell you that steam tastes different when it’s mixed with sweat. I got up again, this time ready to kick out blindly as long as I hit someone, but I restrained myself. Turn off the steam, said Laura from somewhere. I stumbled to the bench as best I could. When I bent down to find the taps, I heard the old man snoring almost in my ear. He’s still alive, I thought, and I turned off the steam. At first nothing happened. Then, before silhouettes were visible again, someone opened the door and left the steam room. I waited. Whoever it was in the other room was making quite a bit of noise. Laura, I called softly. No one answered. At last I could see the old man, who was still asleep. On the floor were the two performers, one in the fetal position and the other stretched out. The boy who couldn’t sleep before seemed really to be asleep. I jumped over them. In the divan room, Laura was already dressed. She threw me my clothes without saying a word. What’s the matter? I asked. Let’s go, said Laura.

We met the same trio a few more times, once in the same bathhouse and another time at a bathhouse in Azcapotzalco, the bathhouse from hell, as Laura called it, but things were never the same. At most we smoked a cigarette and adiós.

For a long time, we kept coming back to these places. We could have made love elsewhere, but there was something about the bathhouse route that attracted us like a magnet. Crazy things were always happening, of course—men running amok down hallways, a rape attempt, a raid—all of which we were lucky or cunning enough to navigate. The cunning was Laura’s; the luck was the solidarity of bathers. Out of all the bathhouses together, now a jumble that I confuse with Laura’s smiling face, we extracted the certainty of our love. Best of all, maybe because we did it there for the first time, was the Gimnasio Moctezuma, to which we always returned. The worst was a place in Casas Alemán, fittingly called the Wandering Dutchman, which was the closest thing possible to a morgue. A triple morgue: of hygiene, of the proletariat, and of bodies. Though not of desire.

I still have two indelible memories of those days. The first is a series of images of Laura naked (sitting on the bench, in my arms, under the shower, lying on the divan, thinking) until she disappears completely in a growing cloud of steam. The End. Fade to white. The second is the mural at Gimnasio Moctezuma. Moctezuma’s unreadable eyes. Moctezuma’s neck suspended over the surface of the pool. The courtiers (or maybe they weren’t courtiers) laughing and talking, trying with all their might to ignore whatever it is the emperor sees. The flocks of birds and clouds mingling in the background. The color of the stones around the pool, surely the saddest color I saw in the course of our expeditions, comparable only to the color of some gazes, workers in the hallways, whom I no longer remember, but who were surely there.

Roberto Bolaño(1953-2003) was born in Santiago, Chile, and later lived in Mexico, Paris, and Spain. A poet and novelist, he has been acclaimed as "by far the most exciting writer to come from south of the Rio Grande in a long time" ( The Los Angeles Times ), and as "the real thing and the rarest" (Susan Sontag). Among his many prizes are the prestigious Herralde de Novela Award and the Premio Rómulo Gallegos. He is widely considered to be the greatest Latin American writer of his generation. His books include The Savage Detectives , 2666 , By Night in Chile , Distant Star , Last Evenings on Earth , and The Romantic Dogs .

Natasha Wimmeris the translator of eight books by Roberto Bolaño, including The Savage Detectives and 2666 . Her most recent translations are The Dinner Guest , by Gabriela Ybarra, and Sudden Death , by Álvaro Enrigue. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children.

A Little Lumpen Novelita

The Unknown University

Woes of the True Policeman

The Secret of Evil

The Third Reich

Tres

The Insufferable Gaucho

The Return

Antwerp

Monsieur Pain

The Skating Rink

2666

The Romantic Dogs

Nazi Literature in the Americas

The Savage Detectives

Last Evenings on Earth

Amulet

Distant Star

By Night in Chile