Amulet

by Roberto Bolaño

  And then I stopped looking at myself in the mirror and two or perhaps three tears welled from my eyes. Tears, how many nights have I spent pondering them, to come to such meager conclusions.

  Then I went back to the living room and Coffeen was still there, standing, staring at a point in vacant space, and although when he heard me emerge from the passage (as one might emerge from a spaceship) he turned his head and looked at me, I knew immediately that he wasn't looking so much at me, his unexpected visitor, as at the life of the world outside, the life he had spurned, which, nevertheless, was eating him alive, even though he feigned a regal indifference. And then, more out of stubbornness than desire, I burned the last of my boats, sat down, uninvited, on the battered sofa, and repeated Lilian's words, telling him that she wouldn't be coming home that night, that he shouldn't worry, first thing next morning she'd be back, and I added a few words of my own, which weren't strictly relevant, banal remarks on the home of the poet and the painter, such a nice location, close to the center but in a calm, quiet street, and since I was there, I thought it wouldn't do any harm to inform him of the interest a number of people had expressed in his work; I said that I found his drawings, which his mother had shown me, interesting, an adjective that hardly seems adjectival at all, so varied are its functions, from describing a film that you don't want to admit you found boring to remarking on a woman's pregnancy. But interesting is also or can also be a synonym of mysterious. And I was talking about mystery. That was what I was really talking about. I think Coffeen understood, because after looking at me again with those exile's eyes of his, he took a chair (for a moment I thought he was going to hurl it at my head), and straddled it backward, gripping the bars of the backrest like a minimalist prisoner.

  Then, as if I had heard the shot that signals the beginning of the hunting season, I remember I began to spout whatever came into my head. Until I ran out of words. Sometimes it seemed that Coffeen was about to fall asleep, and sometimes his knuckles clenched as if he was about to burst or as if the backrest of the chair that stood between him and me was about to fly apart, explode, disintegrate. But there came a point, as I said, when I ran out of words.

  I don't think it was long before sunrise.

  Then Coffeen spoke. He asked me if I knew the story of Erigone. No, I don't, but the name's familiar, I said (lying), afraid I was putting my foot in it. For a moment, with a sinking heart, I thought he was going to tell me about an ex-lover. We all have an old love affair to talk about when there's nothing left to say and day is breaking. But it turned out that Erigone was not one of Coffeen's ex-lovers but a figure from Greek mythology, the daughter of Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. That's a story I do know. A story I did know. Agamemnon goes off to Troy and Clytemnestra becomes Aegisthus's mistress. When Agamemnon comes back from Troy, Aegisthus and Clytemnestra kill him, and then get married. Electra and Orestes, the children of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, decide to avenge their father and regain control of the kingdom. This involves killing Aegisthus and their own mother. Horror. I could get that far on my own. But Coffeen Serpas went further. He spoke of the daughter of Clytemnestra and Aegisthus, Erigone, Orestes's half-sister, and said that she was the most beautiful woman in all Greece; her mother's sister, after all, was none other than Helen of Troy. He spoke of Orestes's vengeance. A spiritual hecatomb, he said. Do you know what a hecatomb is? I associated that word with nuclear warfare, so I thought it better not to reply. But Coffeen kept asking. A disaster, I said, a catastrophe? No, said Coffeen, a hecatomb is the sacrifice of a hundred oxen all at once. It comes from the Greek hekaton, which means one hundred, and bous, which means ox. There are even records from classical times of five hundred oxen being slain. Can you imagine that, he asked. Yes, I can imagine anything, I replied. The sacrifice of a hundred or five hundred oxen: you would have been able to smell the stench of blood for miles around. Imagine so much death, all around you; it must have been stupefying. Yes, I imagine it was, I said. Well, the vengeance of Orestes was something like that, said Coffeen. The terror and the irreparability of parricide, the shame and the panic, he said. And in the midst of that terror: Erigone, exquisite, immaculate, observing the intellectual Electra and the eponymous hero Orestes.

  The intellectual Electra and the eponymous hero Orestes? For a moment I thought that Coffeen was pulling my leg.

  But no, not at all. In fact Coffeen was talking as if he were alone: with every word that came out of his mouth I was farther and farther away from that apartment on the Calle República de El Salvador. Although at the same time, however paradoxical it might seem, I was also more present, as an absence, as if the features of the immaculate Erigone were supplanting my invisible or reality-faded features, so that although, in a sense, I was disappearing, in another sense, as I disappeared my shadow took on the features of Erigone, and Erigone was present there, in the decrepit living room of Lilian's apartment, summoned by the words that Coffeen was reeling off, like a gossip or a busybody (as Julio Torri, who liked this sort of story, would have said), oblivious to my worried look, since although I was reluctant to leave him that night, I also realized that the path on which he had set out was perhaps the preamble to a nervous breakdown brought on by the absence of his mother, or by my unexpected presence, which was no compensation.

  But Coffeen went on with his story.

  And so I discovered that after the murder of Aegisthus, Orestes proclaimed himself king, and the followers of Aegisthus had to go into exile. Erigone, however, remained in the kingdom. The still Erigone, said Coffeen. Still under the vacant gaze of Orestes. Nothing but her extraordinary beauty can momentarily placate his homicidal fury. One night Orestes loses control, gets into her bed, and rapes her.

  He wakes up at first light the next day and goes to the window: the lunar landscape of Argos confirms his suspicion. He has fallen in love with Erigone. But someone who has killed his mother is incapable of love, said Coffeen looking me in the eye with a charred smile, and Orestes knows that Erigone is poison to him, as well as being a blood relative of Aegisthus, which is sufficient justification for leading her to slaughter. Over the following days, Orestes's followers persecute and eliminate the followers of Aegisthus. At night, like a drug addict or a wino (Coffeen's similes), Orestes visits Erigone's bedchamber and they make love. In the end, Erigone gets pregnant. Having found out, Electra confronts her brother and explains why this is an unsatisfactory state of affairs. Erigone, says Electra, will give birth to a grandchild of Aegisthus. There is no longer a single man in Argos who is a blood relative of the usurper. Having taken it upon himself to fell that tree, how can Orestes weaken now and allow a new shoot to spring up? But it's my child too, says Orestes. It's the grandchild of Aegisthus, Electra insists. So Orestes accepts his sister's advice and decides to kill Erigone.

  Nevertheless he wants to sleep with her one last time, so he does. She suspects nothing and gives herself to Orestes without fear. Although young, she has quickly learned how to handle the new king's madness. She calls him brother, my brother, she implores him, sometimes she pretends to see him and sometimes she pretends to see only a dark and solitary silhouette taking refuge in a corner of her bedchamber. (Was that Coffeen's idea of erotic ecstasy?) Before dawn, a besotted Orestes reveals his plan. He proposes an alternative. Erigone must leave Argos that very night. Orestes will provide a guide, who will take her out of the city and far away. Horrified, Erigone looks at him in the darkness (they are sitting at opposite ends of the bed), suspecting that Orestes's words conceal her death sentence: the guide that her brother says he is prepared to provide will turn out to be her executioner.

  Seized by fear, she says that she would prefer to stay in the city, close to him.

  Orestes loses his patience. If you stay here, I will kill you, he says. The gods have driven me crazy. Once again, he speaks of his crime; he speaks of the Erinnyes and the life he wants to lead when he can sort things out in his head or even before he gets them sorted out: wandering through Greece
with his friend Pylades, becoming a legend. Hippies, with no ties to hold us, turning our lives into art. But Erigone doesn't understand Orestes's words, and fears that all this is part of a plan hatched by the cerebral Electra, a kind of euthanasia, an exit into darkness that will not stain the young king's hands with blood.

  Twelve

  Orestes was moved by Erigone's misgivings, my friends. Or so Carlos Coffeen Serpas told me. He looked me in the eye and his whispered words emerged through a slit-like aperture, as if they were scalpel-sharp communion wafers. Then he said that it was only from that moment on, that is, after having been moved, that Orestes began to give serious thought to the idea of protecting Erigone from the dangers besetting her in devastated Argos, which consisted, fundamentally, of his own madness, his homicidal fury, his shame and repentance, that is, the components of what he liked to call the destiny of Orestes, a high-sounding name for self-destruction.

  So Orestes spent the whole night talking with Erigone, and in the course of that night he bared his soul as never before; so numerous were his arguments and so skillfully expounded, that, shortly before dawn, Erigone finally yielded, accepting the guide that Orestes had offered. She left the city at first light.

  From a tower, Orestes watched her walking away from the city. Then he shut his eyes and, when he opened them again, Erigone was nowhere to be seen.

  As he said this, Coffeen shut his eyes, and I saw the moon (full, waning, or waxing—what did it matter?) racing at a vertiginous pace to touch every tile in the women's bathroom on the fourth floor of the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature in the unscathed year 1968. And I thought, as I had thought before, as I am thinking now, What shall I do? Make a run for it while his eyes are closed? Escape from that decrepit time-warp of an apartment? Or wait until he opens his eyes, and then ask him what that episode from Greek mythology meant, if anything? Sit quietly and close my own eyes, at the risk of opening them again to see not Coffeen and his dusty paintings but bathroom tiles illuminated by the moonlight that shimmered in that month of September on the campus of the UNAM? Realize that I had been playing with fire for long enough, snap out of it, say good night or good morning, and leave, turning my back on that apartment adrift in a Mexican wilderness of closed eyes? Or stretch out my hand, touch Coffeen's face, act as if I had understood his story (although I hadn't), and then go resolutely to the kitchen and brew some tea or, better still, two cups of lime blossom infusion.

  I could have done any of those things. In the end, I did nothing.

  Coffeen opened his eyes and looked at me. That's all, he said. He tried to smile, but he couldn't. Or maybe that grimace or nervous tic was his way of smiling. The rest of the story is pretty well known, he said. Orestes goes traveling with Pylades. At one point in his travels he meets his sister Iphigenia. He has adventures. He is renowned throughout Greece. At the mention of Iphigenia, I was about to say that Orestes would have done better to keep away from his poisonous sisters, but I didn't. And then Coffeen stood up, as if to make it clear to me that it was very late and that he wanted to get back to work or go to bed or consider the deeds of ancient Greeks on his own in a corner of the living room. The problem was that I had gone on thinking about Erigone and suddenly I realized something about the story that had escaped my notice until then. Something, something, but what?

  Coffeen stood there frozen in a posture that was an invitation to leave, and I remained frozen on the sofa, while my gaze wandered over the floor, the furniture, the walls, even Coffeen's face. I was wearing the expression of someone who is about to remember something, or has a name on the tip of her tongue, a thought beginning to géstate among electrical impulses and currents of blood, but remaining in the shadows, as it were, formless, frightened of itself or of the mechanism it has set in motion, or rather frightened of the effect that it will inevitably have on that mechanism, and yet unable to delay the connection or the revelation, as if by dint of repetition the name Erigone had become a kind of forceps dragging whatever it was from its lair, to an accompaniment of howls, involuntary giggles and sundry atrocities.

  And then, before I knew what it was that I had remembered or thought, Coffeen said that it was very late, and walked nervously across that room encumbered with the objects that in former times had constituted the comfort and luxury of Lilian Serpas's home, avoiding them with an agility which can only be acquired through habit.

  Cronus, I said. I was thinking of the story of Cronus. Do you know it? I asked in a shrill tone of voice, not so much a relic of my Rio de la Plata accent as a self-defense mechanism. The story of Cronus, of course I do, said Coffeen, his eyes filmed with some kind of solvent. I don't know why I thought of it, I said, stalling for time. It doesn't have anything to do with Orestes, said Coffeen. Aha, I replied, without covering my mouth, looking at one of Coffeen's drawings on the wall, hoping it would help me find something to say. The drawing showed a man walking along a path, watched by stars that had eyes. To be frank, it was abysmal. To be frank, it was no spur to eloquence at all. To be frank, I was at a lost for words, and for a moment—as if for the span of a lightning flash I had seen through appearances to the other side—it seemed that Coffeen was Orestes and I was Erigone, which meant that the night would have no end, I would never see the light of day again, I would be incinerated by the black gaze of Lilian's son, and as my speculations ran wild and my fear mounted steadily (although without spreading), assuming the proportions of a birch or an oak, a vast tree in the midst of a vast night, the only tree on a lonely plain, Coffeen opened his eyes, eyes that had seen Erigone disappear in the vastness of time, and looked at me with a gaze that was blank for a moment or perplexed, the sort of gaze that settles on a perfect stranger or a random configuration of shapes, but as he gradually recognized me, perplexity gave way to hatred, rancor, and homicidal fury.

  And then I understood and seized upon what had escaped my notice until then.

  Hold on, I said. Now I remember, I said. The air had been thick with thousands of flying insects, but now it cleared. Coffeen was looking at me. I was looking at an airport devoid of planes and people, from whose shadowless hangars and runways only dreams and visions departed. It was the airport of the drunks and the drug addicts. But then it evaporated and in its place I saw Coffeen's eyes wanting to know what it was that I had remembered. And I said: Nothing. Nothing, just some crazy idea I had. I went to get up, because by then I really did feel it was time to go, but Coffeen put his hand on my shoulder and stopped me. Let God's will be done, I thought. I am not a religious woman, but that was what ran through my mind. And: I shall not see the light of a new day, which, put like that, sounds rather trite, but for me, at that moment, those words had the ring of a mysterious portal, or something. And, strange as it may seem, what I felt was not fear but relief, as if I had been anesthetized by suddenly realizing what I had overlooked in the story of Erigone, and although there was nothing clinical, to say the least, about the living room of Lilian Serpas's apartment, I felt as though I was being wheeled into an operating room. I thought: I am in the women's bathroom in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature and I am the last person left. I was heading for the operating room. I was heading for the birth of History. And since I'm not a complete idiot, I also thought: It's over now, the riot police have left the university, the students have died at Tlatelolco, the university has opened again, but I'm still shut up in the fourth-floor bathroom, as if after all my scratching at the moonlit tiles a door had opened, but not the portal of sadness in the continuum of Time. They have all gone, except me. They have all come back, except me. The second affirmation was hard to accept, because in fact I couldn't see anyone, and if they had all come back I would have been able to see them. In fact, all I could see, strain as I might, were the eyes of Carlos Coffeen Serpas. Still the vague certitude remained, as my trolley was wheeled down the corridor, a forest-green corridor with stretches of camouflage and bottle green, toward an operating room dilating in time, as History announced its birt
h with raucous cries and the doctors diagnosed my anemia in whispers, but how are they going to operate for anemia, I wondered. I barely managed to whisper, Am I going to have a baby, doctor? The doctors looked down at me, wearing their green bank-robber's masks, and said, No, as the trolley accelerated on its way down a corridor that was writhing like a loose vein. I'm not going to have a baby, really? I'm not pregnant? I asked. And the doctors looked at me and said, No, Ma'am, we're just taking you to attend the birth of History. But what's the hurry, doctor? I feel dizzy! And the doctors replied with the patter they use on the dying: The birth of History can't wait, and if we arrive late you won't see anything, only ruins and smoke, an empty landscape, and you'll be alone again forever even if you go out and get drunk with your poet friends every night. Well, let's get a move on, then, I said. The anesthesia was going to my head, overwhelming me as homesickness sometimes does, and I stopped asking questions (for a while). I fixed my gaze on the ceiling and all I could hear were the rubber wheels of the trolley trundling along and the muted cries of other patients, other victims of Pentothal (that's what I thought), and I even felt a pleasant, gentle warmth creeping up my long, frozen bones.

  When we reached the operating room, the vision misted over, cracked, fell and shattered, and then the fragments were pulverized by a bolt of lightning, and a gust of wind blew the dust away to nowhere or spread it through Mexico City.