Amulet

by Roberto Bolaño

  It was time to open my eyes again and say something, anything, to Carlos Coffeen Serpas.

  So I said it was late and that I should go. And Coffeen looked at me as if he too had seen something that can normally be seen only in dreams. He stepped back abruptly. Your mother will be home again tomorrow morning, I said. All right, said Coffeen, looking away.

  He accompanied me to the door. As I was going down the first flight of stairs, I turned around; he was still there on the landing, watching me, with the door open. I lifted my hand to my mouth and started to say something but soon realized that I was pronouncing incoherent syllables. It was as if I had suddenly become demented. So I stood there with my hand over my mouth, looking at him, unable to speak, until Coffeen closed the door with an expression compounded, as far as I could tell, of fear and fatigue in equal parts. For a few seconds I remained there motionless. I was thinking. Then the light in the stairwell went out and I started going slowly down the stairs, in the darkness, holding on to the banister.

  I hailed a taxi on Bolivar.

  As it was taking me to my rooftop room, which at the time was in Colonia Escanden, I started crying. The driver glanced across at me. He looked like an iguana. I think he thought I was a whore going home after a hard night. Don't cry, blondie, he said, it's not worth it, things'll look different tomorrow, you'll see. Instead of philosophizing, I said, Why don't you watch where you're going.

  By the time I got out of the cab, I had stopped crying.

  I made myself a cup of tea, got into bed, and tried to read. I can't remember what. Certainly not Pedro Garfias. Eventually I gave up and drank my tea with the light off. Then day broke once again over the capital of Mexico.

  Thirteen

  Then I realized what was going on and a fragile, tremulous joy came into my days. My nights with the poets of Mexico City left me exhausted, empty, or on the verge of tears. I moved to a new rooftop room. I lived in Colonia Ñapóles and Colonia Roma and Colonia Atenor Salas. I lost my books and I lost my clothes. But soon I came by other books and, eventually, other clothes as well. I picked up odd jobs at the university and lost them again. I was there every day, circumstances permitting, and saw things that no one else was there to see. My beloved Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, with its Florentine feuds and Roman vendettas. From time to time I ran into Lilian Serpas at the Café Quito or some other place on the Avenida Bucareli and, naturally, we said hello, but we never mentioned her beloved son (although some nights I would have given anything to be asked to go to her apartment again and tell him that she wouldn't be coming home), until at some point she stopped turning up in my haunts like a ghost in a storm, and no one asked after her, and I didn't feel like inquiring about her whereabouts, my spirit had become so fragile, I was so devoid of the curiosity that, in former times, had been one of my most salient traits.

  Not long afterward I started sleeping a lot. I never used to sleep much before that. I was the insomniac of Mexican poetry; I read all the poems and praised them all and never missed a gathering. But one day, a few months after having seen Carlos Coffeen Serpas for the first and last time, I fell asleep on a bus to the university and only woke up when someone took me by the shoulders and shook me as if they were trying to get a broken clock going. I woke with a start. It was a boy of about seventeen who had woken me, a student, and when I saw his face I could barely hold back my tears.

  From that day on, sleeping became a vice.

  I didn't want to think about Coffeen or the story of Erigone and Orestes. I didn't want to think about my own story and the years I had left to live.

  So I slept, wherever I happened to be, mainly when I was alone (it was an escape from solitude— as soon as I was on my own, I'd fall asleep), but as time went by the vice became chronic, and I started falling asleep in public, leaning on a table in some bar or sitting on a hard seat at some student play.

  At night the guardian angel of my dreams would come to me and say: Hey, Auxilio, so now you know where they ended up, the kids of Latin America. Shut up, I replied. Shut up. I don't know anything. What do you mean, the kids? I don't know anything at all. Then the voice made a murmuring sound; it said, Mmm, or something like that, as if it found my answer unconvincing. And I said: I'm still in the women's bathroom in the Faculty of Philosophy and Literature, and the moon is melting the tiles on the wall one by one, opening a hole for images to flow through, films about us and the books we read, and the future moving at the speed of light, which we shall not see.

  And then I dreamed of idiotic prophecies.

  And the small voice said, Hey, Auxilio, what can you see?

  The future, I replied. I can see what the future holds for the books of the twentieth century.

  And can you make any prophecies, asked the voice, sounding curious, but not in the least ironic.

  I don't know about prophecies as such, but I can make a prediction or two, I replied with a dreamer's syrupy voice.

  Go on, go on, said the small voice, with unbridled enthusiasm.

  I am in the women's bathroom in the faculty building and I can see the future, I said, in a soprano voice, as if I were being coy.

  I know that, said the dream voice, I know that. You start making your prophecies and I'll note them down.

  Voices, I said in a baritone voice, don't note things down, they don't even listen. Voices only speak.

  You're wrong about that, but it doesn't matter, you say what you have to say, and try to say it loud and clear.

  Then I took a deep breath, hesitated, let my mind go blank and finally said: These are my prophecies.

  Vladimir Mayakovksy shall come back into fashion around the year 2150. James Joyce shall be reincarnated as a Chinese boy in the year 2124. Thomas Mann shall become a Ecuadorian pharmacist in the year 2101.

  For Marcel Proust, a desperate and prolonged period of oblivion shall begin in the year 2033. Ezra Pound shall disappear from certain libraries in the year 2089. Vachel Lindsay shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.

  César Vallejo shall be read underground in the year 2045. Jorge Luis Borges shall be read underground in the year 2045. Vicente Huidobro shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.

  Virginia Woolf shall be reincarnated as an Argentinean fiction writer in the year 2076. Louis-Ferdinand Celine shall enter Purgatory in the year 2094. Paul Eluard shall appeal to the masses in the year 2101.

  Metempsychosis. Poetry shall not disappear. Its non-power shall manifest itself in a different form.

  Cesare Pavese shall become the patron saint of Seers and Lookers in the year 2034. Pier Paolo Pasolini shall become the patron saint of Escapees in the year 2100. Giorgio Bassani shall emerge from his tomb in the year 2167.

  Oliverio Girondo shall come into his own as a children's writer in the year 2099. The complete works of Roberto Arlt shall be adapted for the screen in 2102. The complete works of Adolfo Bioy Casares shall be adapted for the screen in 2105.

  Arno Schmidt shall rise from his ashes in the year 2085. Franz Kafka shall once again be read underground throughout Latin America in the year 2101. Witold Gombrowicz shall enjoy great prestige in the environs of the Río de la Plata around the year 2098.

  Paul Celan shall rise from his ashes in the year 2113. Andre Breton shall return through mirrors in the year 2071. Max Jacob shall cease to be read, that is to say his last reader shall die, in the year 2059.

  Who shall read Jean-Pierre Duprey in the year 2059? Who shall read Gary Snyder? Who shall read Ilarie Voronca? These are the questions I ask myself.

  Who shall read Gilberte Dallas? Who shall read Rodolfo Wilcock? Who shall read Alexandre Unik?

  A statue of Nicanor Parra, however, shall stand in a Chilean square in the year 2059. A statue of Octavio Paz shall stand in a Mexican square in the year 2020. A rather small statue of Ernesto Cardenal shall stand in a Nicaraguan square in the year 2018.

  But all statues tumble eventually, by divine intervention or the power of dynamite, like the statue
of Heine. So let us not place too much trust in statues.

  Carson McCullers, however, shall go on being read in the year 2100. Alejandra Pizarnik shall lose her last reader in the year 2100. Alfonsina Storni shall be reincarnated as a cat or a sea-lion, I can't tell which, in the year 2050.

  The case of Anton Chekhov shall be slightly different: he shall be reincarnated in the year 2003, in the year 2010, and then in the year 2014. He shall appear once more in the year 2081. And never again after that.

  Alice Sheldon shall appeal to the masses in the year 2017. Alfonso Reyes shall be killed once and for all in the year 2058, but in fact it shall be Reyes who kills his killers. Marguerite Duras shall live in the nervous system of thousands of women in the year 2035.

  And the little voice said, How strange, how strange, I haven't read some of those authors you mentioned.

  Which ones? I asked.

  Well, that Alice Sheldon, for example. I have no idea who she is.

  I laughed. I laughed for quite a while. What's so funny, asked the little voice. Having caught you out, you being so cultured and all, I answered.

  Cultured, I don't know if I'm cultured, whatever that means, but I have read a bit. How odd, I said, as if the dream had suddenly swung 180 degrees and I was now in some cold place, populated by multiple Popocatepetls and Ixtacihuatls. What's odd, asked the little voice. The fact that the angel of my dreams is from Buenos Aires when I'm Uruguyuan. Ah, well, that's quite common, actually, she said. Alice Sheldon publishes her books under the pseudonym James Tiptree Jr., I said, shivering from the cold. I haven't read them, said the voice. She writes science fiction, stories and novels, I said. I haven't read them. I haven't read them, said the voice, and I could distinctly hear the sound of chattering teeth. Do you have teeth? I asked incredulously.

  Not real, genuine teeth of my own, no, she replied. But when I'm with you, all your missing teeth chatter for me. My teeth! I thought with some affection but not a trace of nostalgia. This cold is unbearable, don't you think, said my guardian angel. Yes, it's very, very cold, I said. What do you say we get out of this ice-box, the voice proposed. That's a great idea, I said, but I don't know how we'll manage that. You'd have to be a mountain climber to get out of here without smashing your skull.

  For a while we moved across the ice, trying to make out Mexico City in the distance.

  This reminds me of a picture by Caspar David Friedrich, said the little voice. I knew you'd say that, I replied. What do you mean by that, she asked. Nothing, nothing.

  And then, hours or months later, the little voice said, We're going to have to walk out of here, no one is going to come and rescue us. And I said to her, We can't, we'll smash our skulls (or I will). Anyway, I'm starting to get used to the cold and the purity of this air; it's as if we had gone back to live in Dr. Atl's most transparent region, with a vengeance. And the little voice looked at me with a sound as sad and crystalline as Rimbaud's poem about the vowels and said, You've become used to it.

  And then, some months or maybe years of silence later, she said to me, You remember those compatriots of yours who had a plane accident? Which compatriots? I asked, tired of that voice interrupting my dreams of nothing. The ones who crashed in the Andes and everyone had given up hope and they were up in the mountains for something like three months, eating the dead bodies so as not to die of hunger, I think they were soccer players, said the little voice. They were rugby players, I said. Rugby players? That's funny, I thought they were soccer players. Anyway, so you remember them? Yes, I remember them, the rugby-playing cannibals of the Andes. Well, that's what you should do, said the little voice.

  Who am I supposed to eat? I said, looking for her shadow, which sounded as sweet and emphatic as Ruben Darío's "Marcha Triunfal." Not me, you can't eat me, said the little voice. Who can I eat then? I'm alone here. There's you and me and the thousands of Popocatepetls and Ixtaccihuatls and the icy wind and nothing else, I said as I walked through the snow and scanned the horizon for any sign of Latin America's biggest city. But Mexico fucking City was nowhere to be seen and what I really wanted to do was to go back to sleep.

  Then the little voice began to talk about the end of a novel by Julio Cortázar, the one where a character is dreaming that he's in a movie theater and someone comes along and tells him to wake up. And she started talking about Marcel Schwob and Jerzy Andrzejewski and Pitol's translation of Andrzejewski's novel, and I said, Hold it, will you, I know all that already, my problem, if it really is a problem, isn't how to wake up but how to fall asleep again, which is pretty strange, since I have pleasant dreams and no one wants to wake up from a pleasant dream. To which the little voice replied in psychoanalytic jargon, which dispelled any doubts I might have had about her city of origin: definitely Buenos Aires, not Montevideo. Then I said to her, That's funny, my shivers are usually Uruguayan, but the guardian angel of my dreams is Argentinean. To which she replied, in a professorial tone, Indeed she is.

  And then we remained silent, while the wind fitfully whipped up necklaces of ice that hung in the air for a few seconds before disappearing; both of us were scanning the featureless horizon so as not to miss the silhouette of Mexico City should it appear somewhere, although, to tell the truth, we held out little hope.

  Finally the little voice said, Hey, Auxilio, I better get going. Where to, I asked her. To another dream, she said. Which dream, I asked. Any other dream, she said, I'm freezing to death here. And she said this with such heart-felt sincerity that I looked for her face in the snow and when at last I found her little face it sounded just like a poem by Robert Frost about the snow and the cold, and that made me very sad, because the little voice was not lying— it was true that she was freezing, poor thing.

  So I took her in my arms to warm her up and said to her, You go whenever you like, that's absolutely fine. I would have liked to say something more, but those rather uninspired words were all I could muster. And the little voice moved in my arms like the fluff on a weightless angora sweater, and purred like the cats in Remedios Varo's garden. And when she had warmed up I told her, Go on, it's been a pleasure to meet you, go before you start to freeze again. The little voice slipped out of my arms (but it was as if she had come out of my navel) and off she went without saying Goodbye or Ciao or anything, she took French leave, like a good Argentinean guardian angel, and I was left alone, with my thoughts running wild, and the upshot of all that cogitation was, in the end, that the little voice had made me spout utter nonsense. You've made a fool of yourself, I said aloud, or at least I tried to say it aloud.

  I say I tried because that was all I could do: open my mouth and attempt to form those words in the snowbound wilderness, but the cold was so intense that I couldn't even move my jaws. So I suppose I only thought what I was trying to say, although I should add that my thoughts were deafening (or so they seemed to me among those snowy heights), as if the cold, while numbing and killing me, were simultaneously turning me into a kind of yeti, a muscle-bound snow-woman, hirsute and stentorian, although of course I knew that this was all in my imagination, I hadn't acquired bulging muscles or long hair to protect me from the icy blasts or, least of all, a voice resonant as a cathedral, a self-sufficient voice with no function but to articulate a single, vacuous, hollow, insomniac's question—Why? Why?—until the walls of ice began to split and come crashing down with a huge din, while others reared up behind the screen of dust raised by the collapse, so that there was nothing to be done; it was inexorable, hopeless, futile, everything, even crying, because on the snowy heights, as I was astonished to learn, people do not cry, they only ask questions; on the heights of Machu Picchu no one cries, either because their tear ducts have frozen up or because at that altitude even tears are futile, which, however you look at it, is the limit.

  So there I was, cradled in snow and prepared to die, when suddenly I heard something dripping and I said to myself, How can that be? I must be hallucinating again, nothing drips in the high Himalayas, everything is frozen sol
id. That little sound was enough to stop me falling into an everlasting sleep. I opened my eyes and tried to see where it was coming from. I thought, Could the glacier be melting? The darkness seemed almost absolute, but it was just that my eyes were taking some time to adjust, as I soon discovered. Then I saw the still moon reflected in a tile, a single tile, as if it was waiting for me. I was sitting on the floor, resting my back against the wall. I got up. The faucet in one of the sinks in the women's bathroom on the fourth floor was not properly turned off. I turned it on and splashed my face.. Then the moon changed tiles.

  Fourteen

  That was when I decided to come down from the mountains. I decided not to starve to death in the women's bathroom. I decided not to go crazy. I decided not to become a beggar. I decided to tell the truth even if it meant being pointed at. I began my descent. All I can remember is the freezing wind like a blade against my face and the moon glowing. There were rocks and ravines; there were post-nuclear ski slopes. But I didn't let them bother me; I continued my descent. Somewhere in the sky an electric storm was brewing, but I didn't worry too much about that. I was thinking happy thoughts as I continued my descent. I was thinking about Arturito Belano, for example, and how, when he came back to Mexico City, he started hanging out with new friends, kids who were younger than him and the other young poets of Mexico: sixteen, seventeen, eighteen years old. And then he met Ulises Lima and began to laugh at his old friends, including me, forgiving their errant ways, as if he were Dante and had just returned from Hell, what am I saying, as if he were Virgil himself, such a sensitive boy, he started smoking marijuana, commonly known as weed, and messing with substances I would rather not even imagine. But for all that, deep down, he was, I knew, the same sweet kid he had always been. And so, when we happened to meet, by sheer chance because we weren't hanging out with the same crowd anymore, he would say, How's it going, Auxilio, or play on my name, calling out Help, Help! Help!! from the opposite sidewalk on the Avenida Bucareli, leaping around like a monkey with a taco or a slice of pizza in his hand; he was always with Laura Jáuregi, his girlfriend, who was very pretty, but also supremely arrogant, and Ulises Lima and that other young Chilean, Felipe Müller, and sometimes I even plucked up my courage and joined them, but they spoke Gliglish, and although it was clear that they liked me and knew who I was, they talked Gliglish amongst themselves, which made it hard for me to understand the ins and outs of the conversation, so in the end I went back to following my path through the snow.