“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?
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.
About the Author and Translator
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 Wimmer is 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.
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The Spirit of Science Fiction Page 14
