The Spirit of Science Fiction

by Roberto Bolaño

  “No . . .”

  “A dolphin . . . there was a dolphin inside the suit. . . . My hair bristled, and I wanted to cry . . .”

  “But you weren’t even snoring.”

  “It was terrible. . . . It doesn’t seem like it now, but in the dream it was awful, like a knot in my throat. It wasn’t death, you know? It was more like erasure.”

  “The dolphin of Leningrad.”

  “I think it was an omen. . . . You didn’t sleep?”

  “No, I wrote all night.”

  “Are you cold?”

  “Extremely. Fuck, I thought it would never be cold here.”

  “The sun is coming up.”

  Our heads barely fit in the window frame. Jan said he’d thought about Boris. He said it in an offhand way.

  The sunrise said: I’m out of this world. Get used to it. Once every three days, you’ll be seeing me.

  “Jesus, what a sunrise,” said Jan, his eyes wide and his hands in fists.

  I started to do work for the arts supplement of the newspaper La Nación. The supplement’s editor, Rodríguez, an old Andalusian poet who had been a friend of Miguel Hernández, let me write something for each issue. Once a week, in other words. With what I made on four pieces a month, we could get by for eight or nine days. The other twenty-one days, we lived off the articles I wrote for a magazine of pseudohistory run by an Argentinean just as old as Rodríguez, though he had the smoothest, most flawless skin I’d ever seen. People called him “the Doll,” for obvious reasons. The rest was put up by my parents or Jan’s parents. It worked out more or less like this: 30 percent of the money came from La Nación, another 30 percent from our parents, and 40 percent from History and Society, which was the name of the Doll’s misbegotten creation. I could turn out the four assignments for La Nación in a couple of days; they were reviews of poetry books, a few novels, and the occasional essay collection. Rodríguez gave me the books on Saturday mornings, which was when everyone, or almost everyone, who wrote for the supplement gathered in the tiny cubicle that served as the old man’s office, handing in assignments, picking up checks, and proposing ideas that must have been really bad, or if not, maybe Rodríguez had rejected them, because the supplement was always the worst rag. The real reason people came on Saturdays was to talk to their friends and bad-mouth their enemies. They were all poets, they all drank, they were all older than me. It wasn’t much fun, but I never missed a Saturday. When Rodríguez wrapped things up, we went to the cafés and talked until, one by one, the poets went back to their jobs and I was left alone at the table, legs crossed, watching the view through the window: the boys and girls of Mexico City, ecstatic policemen, and a sun that seemed to keep watch over the planet from the rooftops. With the Doll, things were different. First of all, pride—it makes me blush now—led me to refuse to publish any pieces under my own name. When I told the Doll this, he blinked, hurt, but agreed. What do you want to call yourself, kid? He grunted. Without hesitation, I said, Antonio Pérez. I see, said the Doll. You have literary ambitions. No, I swear I don’t, I said, lying. Whether you do or not, I’m going to demand quality work from you, he said. And then, more sadly, to think of all the pretty stories you can write on these topics. My first piece was on Dillinger. The second was on the Naples Camorra. (Antonio Pérez went so far as to quote entire paragraphs from a Conrad story!) Then came the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the life of a poisoner from Walla Walla, the Lindbergh kidnapping, et cetera. The offices of History and Society were in an old building in Colonia Lindavista, and the entire time I was bringing in work, I never saw anyone but the Doll. Our meetings were short: I turned in the pieces, and he gave me new assignments and loaned me reference material, photocopies of magazines that he had published in his native Buenos Aires and photocopies of sister magazines from Spain and Venezuela that I used as sources but also sometimes shamelessly plagiarized. Occasionally the Doll asked about Jan’s parents—they were old friends—and then he sighed. How is the Schrellas’ son? Fine. What’s he doing? Nothing, he’s in school. Ah. And that was all. Jan, it goes without saying, wasn’t in school, though we fed the lie to his parents to keep them quiet. Actually, Jan never left the room. He spent all day there doing God knows what. He did go out to the toilet or the shower that we shared with the other roof tenants, and sometimes he went down to take a walk along Insurgentes, two blocks at most, moving slowly and seeming to sniff around for something, and very soon he was back. Meanwhile I was lonely; I needed to meet other people. The solution came from a poet at La Nación who worked on the sports section. He said: go to the poetry workshop at the Faculty of Literature. He said: you’ll find young people there, people your own age, not shitty drunks and has-beens who just want to be on a payroll somewhere. I smiled. Now the old bastard is going to cry, I thought. He said: poetesses, there are poetesses there, kid, get in on the action. Ah.

  Dear James Hauer:

  I read in a Mexican magazine that you’re planning to form a committee of American science fiction writers in support of Third World countries, especially Latin America. It’s not a bad idea, maybe a little vague, though the magazine’s reporting may be more to blame for that than your proposal. Just so you know, I’m a Latin American science fiction writer. I’m seventeen, and I have yet to see anything I’ve written in print. I did show a few stories to a teacher of mine back home, a decent man, madly in love with Scott Fitzgerald (and, in a calmer way, the Republic of Letters) as only a reader from one of our Latin American countries can be. Think of a pharmacist from the Deep South or someone stuck in a small town in Arizona, a fanatic admirer of Vachel Lindsay, and you’ll get the idea. Or not and just keep reading. Anyway, as I was saying, I delivered my gibberish into the hands of this person, and I waited. When he had read my story, the good man said: dear Jan, I hope you haven’t been smoking. He was referring erroneously to marijuana, which as far as I know doesn’t cause hallucinations, but he meant that he hoped I wasn’t fucking myself up on acid or something. (I have to warn you that in high school I had a reputation as a bright student, though prone to “absentmindedness” and “distraction.”) Sir, I said, it’s a science fiction story. The man thought for a few seconds. But, Jan, he replied, those things are so remote. His index finger drifted upward in a northwesterly direction and then almost straight down south, poor tremor-afflicted soul, or poor mind of mine, which even back then could be rattled and unfocused by Reality. Most respected sir, I argued, if you believe that we can’t write about interplanetary travel, for example, you leave us at the mercy of the dreams—and amusements—of others, in saecula saeculorum; notice, too, that my characters are Russian, which isn’t a random choice at all. Our dream, spluttered my never-too-esteemed teacher, should be 1928 France. Since I didn’t quite know what had happened in Paris that year, I took this to be the end of our conversation. The next day, when we met again at school, I said: teacher, someday you’re going to get fucked up the ass by 1939 France, lock, stock, and barrel. If I’d been able to read the future, such an insult surely would never have passed my lips. My oft-remembered teacher died just a few months later when he went for a walk by the light of the moon after curfew. The stories, meanwhile, were lost. So do you think that we have any hope of writing good science fiction? Will your committee, God bless it, award grants—Hugo grants, Nebula grants—to the Third World natives who do the best job describing robots? Or maybe the group that you head proposes to testify on our behalf—in solidarity, of course—on the political stage? I await your immediate response.

  Affectionately,

  Jan Schrella

  The workshop was led by Jeremías Moreno, prizewinning poet, and it was held in a small room on the third floor of the Faculty of Literature. On one wall, someone had written ALCIRA SOUST SCAFFO WAS HERE in red spray paint, ten inches from the floor, clear but unobtrusive, impossible to see if the visitor didn’t look down. Though at first glance the graffiti seemed completely innocent, after a
few minutes of repeated reading it began to feel like a shout, an agonizing display. Judging by the paint, it wasn’t recent, and I wondered who could have written it, what good fairy had rescued it from the vigilantes of good manners, who this Alcira was who had set up camp a few inches from the floor.

  To make things even more confusing, Jeremías asked me in a whisper what I wanted. I explained, maybe too eagerly, that Colin, the baseball expert at La Nación, had recommended his workshop to me. I used the words “advice” and “suggestion”; I was about to precede them with the adjectives “brilliant” and “happy,” but I was halted by his expression of complete bafflement. It had been only a few seconds, and everyone hated me already.

  “Never heard of the man.”

  “Short, dark . . . big nose,” I stammered.

  “No clue.”

  We were silent for a moment. I think it was the graffiti, the magnetic attraction of those red letters—which for some reason I immediately associated with poverty and kindness—that kept me from fleeing. I can’t remember when exactly Jeremías Moreno asked me to sit down or when he made the obligatory remarks about the country I was from. The members of the workshop had arranged their chairs in a circle, broken only by the door. There were no girls among the apprentice poets, I noted with a surge of discouragement, heightened, if possible, upon scanning their faces and discovering that not a single one of them looked like someone I’d want to get to know.

  Who’s reading first? A skinny kid passed out three copies of a poem. I didn’t get one, but by craning my neck I could read the title on my neighbor’s copy. “The Willow,” said the kid. Heh-heh, it’s metaphysical, kind of. Go on, then. Threatened by a creeping mental fog, I counted twenty lines the way an insomniac counts sheep. Or maybe thirty. Or maybe fifteen kicks planted on the writer’s backside, followed by a silence, and some “hmm”s, some coughs, some faint smiles, some “uh-huh”s. I get the sense, said a fat kid, that you’re trying to con us. The rhythm, I think. No, it’s the gerunds—there should never be two in a row. And why all the “and”s? To make it more powerful. Make the willow more powerful. Fucking college kids, I thought. I learned everything I know from Mariano Pérez, said the author, trapped. (Mariano Pérez, as I later learned, was Jeremías’s buddy and the coordinator of the other workshop, the official Faculty of Literature workshop.) Is that so? said Jeremías resentfully. Well, I still think it sounds bad, said the fat kid. I know for a fact that you’ve done better work. Actually, to me it sounds like Frost, broke in a kid with glasses. Jeremías almost erupted. The only Frost you’ve read is in anthologies, you bonehead. Let me see, read that line again, the one about the willow weeping. T. S. Eliot? Bonifaz Nuño? Mariano? Let’s not implicate Mariano in this crime, please. Interesting the way the lines are arranged, said the kid with glasses. Jeremías grabbed a copy from the poet next to him. If you turn it upside down and look hard at it, it could be a willow. Spatial arrangement, I suppose—Jean-Clarence Lambert? I swear it’s a coincidence. Maybe you’re just a bad reader, said Jeremías, conciliatory and weary of the discussion. Who wants to read it again? You do it, Jeremías, you’re the best reader. All right, then. Ahem, let’s give it a try. Does the willow remember its horizon? Why, yes—crocodile smile—there’s a hint of Mariano here, no doubt about it. That’s because Mariano is my model. I can see that. Look, cut the first twenty lines and keep the ending, it’s really powerful. Who wants to read next?

  The kids shuffled through their papers, reluctant. Jeremías consulted his watch with the professional flourish of a psychoanalyst. I heard shouts from the hall, voices, kids calling good-bye, doors slamming, until another poet, one who had so far opened his mouth only to exhale cigarette smoke, passed out three copies, like the first kid.

  When the reading was over, everyone nodded in the same blissful state. Man, you’re really improving, Márquez, said Jeremías. But try not to bring up love so much—it makes you sound like Horace. I think our friend Márquez is in love. Ha-ha-ha. Nods of agreement were followed by gripes about Márquez’s luck. Nice poem, yes sir. In gratitude, the object of this praise passed around a pack of Camels previously kept under lock and key in the pocket of his sweatshirt. Carefully, I lit a cigarette, and I smiled because everyone was smiling. This kind of workshop, I thought, was like a tiny dance club for shy, boring people, though as I would soon have occasion to learn, I was gravely mistaken. Didn’t you bring in anything else, Márquez? No, that’s all I typed up. Did you really like it? It’s a good poem: unpretentious, epigrammatic, forceful, declared Jeremías. Márquez’s face changed colors, a strange soup of mingled pride and vulnerability.

  What did I think about then? I thought about food, about Jan on the roof, about the Mexican buses that ply their routes through the night, about Boris, about me sitting sadly in this creepy little room. But I didn’t budge, and it was a good thing I didn’t. Because suddenly the door opened and a stranger in grease-stained jeans and black leather boots joined the group, saying hello and standing there, his back to me, as the poets shifted uneasily in their chairs and Jeremías said good evening, José, outwardly deferential, though wishing terrible misfortune on him with eyes and eyebrows. His very black hair fell past his shoulders, and he had a book crammed in the back pocket of his pants like the reactor on a ship. I knew he was a kamikaze. But I also knew that he could be many other things, among them a voyager through the writing workshops springing up around the city, though in them he would clearly be out of place. He was oblivious of the mocking looks that the poets exchanged, possibly amused when everyone hurried to make room for him (between a pensive literature student and me), unruffled when asked whether something had happened to him, whether he’d brought poems, whether he’d been out of town, whether he’d read the latest book by.

  He smiled and said no, he hadn’t been away, hadn’t been in an accident, hadn’t brought in anything written—much less in triplicate—but not to worry, he had a good memory.

  “I’m going to recite something for you. It’s a poem I’m calling ‘Eros and Thanatos.’”

  Then he lay back in his chair, fixed his eyes on the ceiling, and began to speak.

  The caretaker of the academy is an energetic man. He sleeps on the second floor of the academy, and he takes his lunch at a house in town. Whenever he leaves the grain shed, it’s on the BMX. At night, he makes something to eat on the camp stove while broadcasting folk music over the radio. When he’s done eating, he makes a cup of tea and smokes a cigarette. Only then does he sit down in front of the microphone. His live broadcast isn’t very interesting. Lectures on how to double or triple potato crops, how to cook potatoes one hundred ways, how to make potato soup or potato jam, how to store potatoes for five years or even ten, et cetera. His voice is calm, relaxed: he speaks coolly but in the confidence-inspiring tone of a man of reason. I don’t know how many people listen to him. It can’t be more than a few. There are no listener surveys in the region. But anyone who listens carefully will realize, sooner or later, that his voice isn’t just detached or lazy but unmistakably icy. When the program is over, he smokes another cigarette and records his observations of the day in a kind of log. Then he starts the tape recorder. The tape spins silently, and the man falls asleep in his chair or pretends to be asleep.”

  “Are the tapes playing or recording?”

  “I don’t know. The man, I should say, pretends to sleep, but he’s actually listening to sounds. The grain shed creaks endlessly all night long, each gust of wind is answered by a particular faint moan of timbers, and the man’s ear is tuned to the wind and the sounds of the grain shed. Until he gets bored. Sometimes he dreams about Boris.”

  “So he doesn’t listen all night long?”

  “No. He gets bored and goes to sleep. The tape rolls on, of course. When the caretaker wakes up around eight, he turns it off and rewinds. Really, there’s nothing fun about life at the Academy. The scenery is nice and the air is healthy, but it’
s not a fun life, no matter how the caretaker tries to fill his hours with petty pursuits. Among these occupations, let’s single out three: the nightly didactic potato lectures, the silent tape recorder, and the ham radio set. This last activity is even more fruitless than the rest, if possible. Basically, the caretaker searches the airwaves for a message that never comes. But, oh, his patience is infinite, and every day, once every eight hours, he issues his call: ‘HWK, do you receive me? HWK, do you receive me? Academy here, HWK, academy here, academy here . . .’”

  “And no one answers.”

  “No. The man searches, but no one answers. Very occasionally, he picks up distant voices, maybe other ham radio operators, stray words, but mostly all he hears is the buzz of static. Sounds like fun, doesn’t it?”

  “Well . . .”

  “It’s a riot. The poor caretaker has a heavy Chilean accent. Imagine him talking to himself in his high voice: ‘HWK, do you receive me? HWK, do you receive me?’ Ha-ha-ha . . . Straight-faced . . .”

  Dear Forrest J Ackerman:

  I’d been asleep for only half an hour when Thea von Harbou appeared. I opened my eyes and said I’m freezing, I never thought I’d be cold in this part of the world. (Somewhere there was a blanket, but it wasn’t within arm’s reach.) She was standing by the door, next to a poster that Remo brought home a little while ago. I closed my eyes and said to her: tell me where I am, really. Through the window came narrow beams of light, the reflection of distant buildings or maybe the Tecate sign turning on and off all night. Am I alone? I asked, and she smiled without moving from the door, her huge, deep eyes fixed on the corner where I was trying to stop shivering. This went on for a while, I don’t know how long. At some point, I remembered something, and I started to cry. Then I looked her in the face, and I said you see, I’m crying it’s so cold. Where the hell is my blanket? I was so very sad, and I was whimpering. I don’t know what I wanted her to do: open the door and go back to her cloud or come and wipe away my tears. I smiled at her. Her cheekbones gleamed, and she looked like a pillar of salt. Thea von Harbou, I said, tell me where I am, really. Has the war begun yet? Are we all cracked? She didn’t answer, but it didn’t last long. I looked at Remo’s alarm clock: it was three in the morning. (My eye was reflected in the face of the clock.) At three-ten, I woke up and made myself a cup of tea. Now it’s four, and I’m waiting for the sun to rise, writing you this letter. I’ve never read anything by you, Mr. Ackerman, except that horrible preface in which some evil editor calls you Mr. Science Fiction. Maybe you’re dead, too, and at Ace Books, where I’m writing to you, no one even remembers you. But since I’m guessing you still love Thea von Harbou, I’m writing you these lines. What was she like in my dream? She was blond. She had big eyes, and she was wearing a WWI lamé dress. Her skin was luminous, I don’t know, it hurt me. In the dream, I imagined it was skin beyond repair. Honestly, it was hard to stop looking at her.