The Secret of Evil

by Roberto Bolaño

  When the storekeeper realizes he’s being robbed, he pulls out a pistol and threatens the Mexicans. This gives the colonel’s son a chance to grab a few sweets from the counter and beg Julie to get out of there with him, but Julie has gone back to the raw meat, and as she tears into a steak, she begins to cry and says she doesn’t understand and implores young Reynolds to do something. The Mexicans start brawling with the storekeeper. They pull out their knives and flash them in the bluish light of the food store. They manage to get hold of the storekeeper’s pistol and shoot him. He drops to the floor. One of the Mexicans goes to the counter where the alcoholic drinks are kept and grabs some bottles without bothering to see what kind of liquor they contain. As he passes Julie, she bites him on the arm. The Mexican howls. Julie sinks her teeth in and won’t let go, despite the pleas of the colonel’s son. Another gunshot.

  Someone shouts, C’mon, let’s go. The Mexican manages to pull his arm free and catches up with his companions, crying out in pain. Young Reynolds examines the storekeeper’s body lying on the floor. He’s alive, he says, we have to get him to a hospital. No, says Julie, leave him, the police will take care of him. Their steps, as they walk out of the store, are quick but unsteady. They see a black van parked outside and break into it. Just as young Reynolds manages to get it going, the storekeeper appears and begs them to take him to a hospital. Julie looks at him but doesn’t say a word. The storekeeper’s white shirt is stained with blood. The colonel’s son tells him to get in. When he’s in the van and they’re about to go, they hear the siren of a police car. Then the storekeeper says he wants to get out. Can’t do that, says the colonel’s son, and tears away.

  The chase begins. It doesn’t take long for the police to start shooting. The storekeeper opens the van’s back door and shouts, That’s enough. He’s cut down by a hail of bullets. Julie, who’s sitting in the back seat, turns and peers into the darkness. She hears him crying. The storekeeper is crying for the life that’s slipping away from him, a life of ceaseless work and struggling in a foreign land to give his family a better future. And now it’s all over.

  Then Julie gets out of her seat and goes into the back part of the van. And while the colonel’s son shakes off the police, Julie starts eating the storekeeper’s chest. With a radiant smile on his face, young Reynolds turns to Julie and says, We’ve lost the cops, but she is crouched on all fours in the back, as if she were a tiger or were making love, and her only reaction is to breathe a satisfied sigh, because she’s assuaged her appetite; momentarily, as we shall soon discover. All the colonel’s son can do, of course, is cry out in terror. Then he says: What’ve you done, Julie? How could you do that? It’s clear from his tone of voice, however, that he’s in love, and that although his girl’s a cannibal, she is, in spite of everything, his girl. Julie’s reply is simple: she was hungry.

  At this point, while young Reynolds is mutely venting his exasperation, the police car appears again and the young pair resume their flight through dark, deserted streets. There’s still a surprise in store for us: when the police open fire on the fugitives, the back door of the van opens, and the storekeeper appears, but he’s become a ravenous zombie. First he tears open a cop’s throat, then sets on the guy’s partner, who empties the magazine of his gun at him, in vain, then freezes in horror, before being devoured in turn. Just then two cars from the military base close off the alley, and using two rather strange weapons, like laser guns, neutralize first the storekeeper and then the two zombie policemen. Colonel Reynolds gets out of one of the cars and asks his soldiers if they’ve seen his son. The soldiers reply in the negative. Another car appears in the alley and a woman, Colonel Landovski, gets out. She informs Reynolds that from now on, she’ll be in charge of the operation. Reynolds says he doesn’t give a damn who’s in charge, all he wants is to find his son safe and sound. Your son’s probably been infected by now, says Colonel Landovski. It’s an odd scene: Landovski takes on the role of “father,” prepared to sacrifice the boy, while Reynolds takes on the role of “mother,” prepared to do anything to ensure the survival of his son. A fifth or sixth car pulls up at the corner, but no one gets out. It’s the Mexicans.

  They recognize the van from the food store, the van in which the young lovers fled. One of the Mexicans, the one Julie bit, is pretty sick. He’s running a fever and raving incoherently. He wants to eat. I’m hungry, he keeps telling his friends. He asks them to take him to a hospital. The Mexican girl backs him up. We have to take him to a hospital, she says sensibly. The other two agree, but first they want to find the bitch who bit Chucho and teach her a lesson she’ll never forget.

  Since we forget everything in the end, I’m only guessing that they talk about killing her. They’re spurring each other on to vengeance. They speak of honor, respect, principles, the right thing. Then they start the car and drive off. At no point do the soldiers show any sign of having noticed them, as if this ghostly street were a busy thoroughfare.

  In the following scene Julie and young Reynolds are walking over a bridge. Where can we find a taxi? the boy wonders. Julie announces that she can’t walk any further. On the other side of the bridge is a phone booth. Wait for me here, says young Reynolds, and runs off toward the booth, only to find that there’s no phonebook and that the receiver has been ripped out. Looking back, he sees that Julie has climbed onto the balustrade of the bridge. He shouts, Julie, don’t! and starts running. But Julie jumps and her body disappears into the water, although it soon floats to the surface and is swept away by the current, face down. The colonel’s son goes down a stairway to the river. The water is very shallow: a foot, three feet at the deepest. The river has man-made banks and even the bed has been paved. A homeless black man, hidden among some concrete pillars down the river, is watching young Reynolds. The boy’s search brings him near this man, who tells him to give up, the girl is dead. No, says the colonel’s son, no, and goes on searching, closely followed by the black guy.

  When young Reynolds finds her, the girl is floating in a pool. Julie, Julie, calls her young lover, and the girl, who has been face down in the water for who knows how many minutes, coughs and calls his name. All my fucking life I’ve never seen anything like that, says the black guy.

  Just then, the Mexicans appear (the verb to appear will appear often in this story), fifty yards away. They’ve gotten out of their car and are looking on; one is sitting on the hood, another leaning against a fender, and the girl is up on the roof; only the wounded guy is still inside, watching or trying to watch them through the window. The Mexicans make menacing gestures and threaten them with a litany of punishments, tortures and humiliations. This is getting nasty, says the black guy. Follow me. They enter the city’s system of sewers. The Mexicans follow them. But the labyrinth of tunnels is sufficiently complicated for the black guy and the young couple to lose their pursuers. Finally they reach a refuge that’s almost as welcoming as a nightclub. This is my place, says the black guy. Then he tells them the story of his life. The jobs he’s had to do. The constant presence of the police. The hardbitten life of a North American working man in the twentieth or twenty-first century. My muscles couldn’t take any more, says the black guy.

  His place isn’t bad. He has a bed, where they lay Julie down, and books, which, so he says, he’s picked up over the years in the sewers. Self-help books and books about the revolution and books on technical subjects, like how to repair a lawn mower. There’s also a kind of bathroom, with a primitive shower. This water’s always clean, say
s the black guy. A stream of crystal-clear water falls continually from a hole in the ceiling. We all build our places with whatever we can find, he explains. Then he picks up an iron bar and says that they can rest; he’ll go out and keep watch.

  It’s always night in the sewers, but that night, the last night of peace, is particularly strange. The boy falls asleep in a shabby armchair after making love with Julie. The black guy falls asleep too, mumbling incomprehensibly. The girl is the only one who doesn’t feel sleepy, and she goes into other rooms, because her appetite has begun to rage again. But with a difference: now Julie knows that self-inflicted pain can be a substitute for food. So we see her sticking needles in her face and piercing her nipples with wires.

  At this point the Mexicans reappear and easily overpower first the black guy, then the son of Colonel Reynolds. They look for the girl. They shout threats. If she doesn’t come out of her hiding place, they’ll kill the black guy and her boyfriend. Then a door opens and Julie appears. She has changed a lot. She has become the indisputable queen of piercing. The leader of the Mexicans (the biggest guy) finds her attractive. The sick Mexican is lying on the ground, begging them to take him to a hospital. The Mexican girl is comforting him, but her eyes are fixed on the new Julie. The other Mexican is holding the colonel’s son, who is screaming like a man possessed; the possibility (or the strong probability) that Julie will be raped is more than he can bear. The black guy is lying unconscious on the ground.

  Julie and the Mexican go into in a room and shut the door. No, Julie, no, no, no, sobs young Reynolds. The Mexican’s voice can be heard through the door: That’s it, baby. C’mon, let’s get that off. Holy shit! You really do like those hooks, don’t you? Kneel down baby, yeah, that’s it, that’s it. Lift up your ass, perfect, oh yeah. And more stuff like that until suddenly he starts yelling, and there are blows, as if someone was getting kicked, or thrown against a wall, then picked up and thrown against the opposite wall, and then the yelling stops and there’s only the sound of biting and chewing, until the door opens and Julie appears again with her lips (and in fact the whole of her face) smeared with blood, holding the Mexican’s head in one hand.

  Which makes the other Mexican go crazy; he pulls out a pistol, goes up to Julie and empties it into her, but of course the bullets don’t harm her at all, and she laughs contentedly before grabbing the guy’s shirt, pulling him toward her and tearing his throat open with a single bite. Young Reynolds and the black guy, who has recovered consciousness, are gaping at the scene. The Mexican girl, however, has the presence of mind to try to escape, but Julie catches her as she’s climbing a metal stairway that leads to the mouth of the upper sewer. The girl kicks and curses furiously, but then, yielding to Julie’s greater strength, she lets go and falls. Don’t do it, Julie, the colonel’s son has just enough time to say, before his sweetheart’s teeth destroy the face of the Mexican girl. Then Julie extracts her victim’s heart and eats it.

  At this point, a voice says: So you think you’ve won, you whore. Julie turns around and what we see is the last Mexican, now fully transformed into a zombie. The two of them begin to fight. Julie is helped by the black guy and her boyfriend and for a few seconds it looks like she’s going to win. But Julie’s victims pick themselves up and join in the fight, and zombies, it seems, are ten times stronger than normal humans, which means that the fight inevitably begins to go the Mexicans’ way. So our three heroes flee. The black guy takes them to a room. They barricade the door. The black guy tells them to go; he’ll try, God knows how, to stop the zombies. Julie and young Reynolds don’t have to be told twice, and go off to another room. At one point in their flight, Julie looks her boyfriend in the eye and asks him, just with her gaze or maybe with words, I can’t remember now, how he can still love her. Young Reynolds replies by kissing her on the cheek, then he wipes his lips and kisses her on the mouth. I love you, he says, I love you more than ever.

  Then they hear a yell and they know that the black guy is gone. There’s no way out of the room where they’ve taken refuge; it’s full of old furniture piled up chaotically, but with passages between; it’s like a labyrinth of the transient, of things without the will to last. I have to leave you, says Julie. Young Reynolds doesn’t know what she means. Only when Julie uses her extraordinary strength to throw him under some armchairs and broken-down washing machines and faulty or obsolete television sets does he understand that the girl is prepared to sacrifice herself for him. He hardly has time to react. Julie goes out and fights and loses and the Mexican zombies are coming for him. With tears streaming down his face, young Reynolds tries to make himself invisible, curling up into a ball of flesh under the pile of junk.

  The Mexican zombies, however, find him and try to drag him out of there. Young Reynolds sees their hungry faces, then the hungry face of the black guy and Julie’s face, watching him, showing no sign of emotion. At this point, Colonel Reynolds, escorted by three of his men, kicks down the door and starts blowing away all the zombies with the special gun. All the time he’s firing, the colonel is calling his son’s name. Here I am, Dad, says young Reynolds.

  The nightmare is over.

  The next scene shows the colonel comfortably seated in his office proposing to his son that they go to Alaska for a vacation together. Young Reynolds says he’ll think it over. There’s no rush, son, says the colonel. Then the colonel’s on his own and he begins to smile to himself, as if he can’t quite believe how incredibly lucky he’s been. His son is alive. Meanwhile, young Reynolds has left his father’s office and started walking through the underground passageways at the base. There’s a look of deep uneasiness on his face. Gradually, however, distant noises begin to penetrate his self-absorption. He can hear shouts and howls, the cries of people for whom pain has become a way of life. Barely aware of what he’s doing, he starts walking toward the source of the cries. He doesn’t have to go far. The passage turns a corner and there is a door; it opens onto an enormous laboratory, stretching away before him.

  He is warmly greeted by some military scientists who have known him since he was a boy. He continues on his way. He discovers a series of glass cells. The Mexicans have been placed in them, each in a separate cell. He keeps walking. He finds Julie’s cell. Julie recognizes him. The colonel’s son puts his hand on the glass and Julie puts her hand up to his, as if she were touching it. In a larger cell some scientists are working on the black guy. He could become a great warrior, they say. They are sending electric shocks through his brain. The black guy is full of hatred and resentment. He howls. The colonel’s son hides in a corner. When the scientists go for their coffee break, he gets up and asks the black guy if he recognizes him. Vaguely, says the black guy. All my memories are vague. And fucking strange, too.

  We were friends, says the colonel’s son. We met by the river. I remember an apartment on 30th Street, says the black guy, and a woman laughing, but I don’t know what I was doing there. The boy frees the black guy from his chains. Freed, he walks like a kind of robocop. A zombie robocop. Don’t attack me, says the colonel’s son, I’m your friend. I understand, says the black guy, who goes to a shelf and takes down an assault rifle. When the scientists come back, the black guy greets them with a volley of fire. Meanwhile the boy frees Julie and tells her that they have to flee again. They kiss. The soldiers try to take out the black guy. As Julie and her boyfriend are sneaking away, she frees the Mexicans. More soldiers arrive. The bullets destroy some containers where body parts are kept. Viscera and spinal columns crawl over
the floor of the laboratory. A siren begins to shriek. In this pitched battle it isn’t clear which side has the advantage, or even if there really are sides, not just individuals fighting for their own lives and for the deaths of the others. Over the PA a voice is repeating: Block the passages on level five. My son! shouts Colonel Reynolds and rushes down to level five like a madman.

  Colonel Landovski shoots the black guy to bits and is devoured in turn by the Mexican girl. The soldiers repel an attack mounted by bloody pieces of human flesh. The second attack, however, breaks through their lines of defense and they’re devoured by tiny scraps of raw meat. There are more and more zombies. The battle becomes totally chaotic. The colonel reaches level five. Through a window he sees his son and Julie, and gestures to show that the passage is still open, there is still an escape route. The colonel’s son takes Julie by the hand and they head in the direction that his father indicated. I’m hurting all over, says Julie. Don’t start that again, says the boy, when we get away from here you’ll feel better. Do you believe me? I believe you, says Julie.

  In the passage that hasn’t yet been blocked, Colonel Reynolds appears, unarmed, his shirt drenched with sweat, not only because he hasn’t stopped running but also because the temperature on level five has increased dramatically. Colonel Reynolds’ face has been transfigured. It could be said that his expression resembles that of Abraham. With every cell in his body he calls out his son’s name and repeats how dearly he loves him. His military career, his scientific research, duty, honor and his country are all swept away by the force of love. Here, through here. Follow me. Hurry up. Soon the doors will shut automatically. Come with me and you’ll be able to escape. All he gets in response is the sad gaze of his son, who at this moment, and perhaps for the first time, knows more than his father. The father at one end of the passage. The son at the other end. And suddenly the doors shut and they’re separated forever.