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by Bolaño, Roberto

  THE REDHEAD

  She was 18 and she was mixed up in the drug trade. Back then I saw her all the time but if I had to make a police sketch of her now, I don’t think I could. I know she had an aquiline nose, and for a few months she was a redhead; I know I saw her laugh once or twice from the window of a restaurant as I was waiting for a taxi or just feeling the rain on my shoulders. She was 18 and once every two weeks she went to bed with a cop from the Narcotics Squad. In my dreams she wears jeans and a black sweater and the few times she turns to look at you she laughs a dumb laugh. Her eyes looking over cats, waves, abandoned buildings, were as cold as when they glazed over and slept. The cop would get her down on all fours and kneel by the outlet. The vibrator’s batteries had died long ago but he’d rigged it to work on electric current. The sun filters through the green of the curtains, she’s asleep with her tights around her ankles, face down, her hair covering her face. In the next scene I see her in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, then she says good morning and smiles. She was a sweet girl, I mean sometimes she might try to cheer you up or loan you a few bucks. The cop had a huge dick, at least three inches longer than the dildo, and he hardly ever fucked her with it. I guess that made him happy. (Never has the word happiness been better suited.) He stared with teary eyes at his erect cock. She watched him from the bed . . . She smoked Camel Lights and maybe at some point she imagined that the furniture in the room and even her lover were empty things that she had to invest with meaning . . . Purple scene: before she pulls down her tights, she tells him about her day . . . “Everything is disgustingly still, frozen somewhere in the air.” Hotel room lamp. A stenciled pattern, dark green. Frayed rug. Girl on all fours moaning as the vibrator enters her cunt. She had long legs and she was 18, in those days she was in the drug trade and she was doing all right: she opened a checking account and bought a motorcycle. It may seem strange but I never wanted to sleep with her. Someone applauds from a dimly lit corner. The policeman would snuggle up beside her and take her hands. Then he would guide them to his crotch and she could spend an hour or two getting him off. That winter she wore a red knee-length wool coat. My voice fades, splinters. She was just a sad girl, I think, lost now among the multitudes. She looked in the mirror and asked “did you do anything nice today?” The man from Narcotics walks away down an avenue of larches. His eyes were cold, sometimes I saw him in my dreams sitting in the waiting room of a bus station. Loneliness is an aspect of natural human egotism. One day the person you love will say she doesn’t love you and you won’t understand. It happened to me. I would’ve liked her to tell me how to endure her absence. She didn’t say anything. Only the inventors survive. In my dream, a skinny old bum comes up to the policeman to ask for a light. When the policeman reaches into his pocket for a lighter the bum sticks him with a knife. The cop falls without a sound. (I’m sitting very still in my room in District V, all that moves is my arm to raise or lower a cigarette from my lips.) Now it’s her turn to be lost. Adolescent faces stream by in the car’s rearview mirror. A nervous tic. Fissure, half saliva, half coffee, in the bottom lip. The redhead walks her motorcycle away down a tree-lined street . . . “Disgustingly still” . . . “Tell the fog: it’s all right, I’m staying with you” . . .

  RAMPAS DE LANZAMIENTO

  En la escena sólo hay cuadrados. Se aguantan durante todo el día, como una fotofija, en la pantalla. Anochece. A lo lejos hay un grupo de chalets de cuyas chimeneas comienza a salir humo. Los chalets están en un valle rodeado de colinas marrones. Se humedecen los cuadrados. De sus rectas brota una especie de sudor cartilaginoso. Ahora es indudable que es de noche; al pie de una de las colinas un labrador entierra un paquete envuelto en periódicos. Podemos ver una noticia: en uno de los suburbios de Barcelona existe un parque infantil tan peligroso como un campo minado. En una de las fotografías que ilustran el artículo se observa un tobogán a pocos metros de un abismo; dos niños, con los pelos erizados, saludan desde lo alto del tobogán; al fondo se recorta una enorme bodega abandonada. Volvamos a los cuadrados. La superficie se ha transformado en algo que vagamente nos recuerda, como los dibujos de Rorschach, oficinas de policía. Desde los escritorios un hombre absolutamente límite mira los cuadrados intentando reconocer los chalets, las colinas, las pisadas del labrador que se pierden en la oscuridad marrón y sepia. Ahora los cuadrados parpadean. Un policía vestido de paisano recorre un pasillo solitario y estrecho. Abre una puerta. Delante de él se extiende un paisaje de rampas de lanzamiento. Las pisadas del policía resuenan en los patios silenciosos. La puerta se cierra.

  LAUNCH RAMPS

  It’s a scene of squares, nothing else. They sit on the screen all day, like a still photograph. It gets dark. In the distance there’s a cluster of houses with smoke beginning to trickle from the chimneys. The houses are in a valley surrounded by brown hills. The squares grow damp. From their edges seeps a kind of cartilaginous sweat. Now it’s definitely night; at the foot of one of the hills a workman buries a package wrapped in newspaper. We can see the article: in a suburb of Barcelona there’s a playground as dangerous as a minefield. In one of the photographs that accompany the story, a slide is visible a few yards from an abyss; two children with goosebumps wave from the top of the slide; behind them, the silhouette of a huge abandoned warehouse. Back to the squares. The surface has changed into something that vaguely reminds us, like Rorschach blots, of offices in a police station. From the desks a man at his absolute limit stares at the squares, trying to recognize the houses, the hills, the footsteps of the workman fading into the brown and sepia darkness. Now the squares flicker. A plainclothes policeman walks down a narrow, deserted hallway. He opens a door. Before him spreads a landscape of launch ramps. The policeman’s footsteps echo in the silent yard. The door closes.

  UN HOSPITAL

  Aquella muchacha ahora pesa 28 kilos. Está en el hospital y parece que se apaga. «Destruye tus frases libres.» No entendí hasta mucho después a qué se refería. Pusieron en duda mi honestidad, mi eficiencia, dijeron que dormía cuando me tocaba guardia. En realidad ellos estaban enjuiciando a otra persona y yo llegué casualmente en el momento menos indicado. La chica pesa ahora 28 kilos y es difícil que salga del hospital con vida. (Alguien aplaude. El pasillo está lleno de gente que abre la boca sin emitir sonido alguno.) ¿Una muchacha que yo conocí? No recuerdo a nadie con ese rostro, dije. En la pantalla se proyecta una calle, un muchacho borracho se dispone a cruzarla, aparece un autobús. ¿El apuntador dijo Sara Bendeman? De todas maneras no entendí nada en ese momento. Sólo me acuerdo de una muchacha flaca, de piernas largas y pecosas, desnudándose al pie de la cama. Fundido en negro. Se abre la escena en un callejón mal iluminado: una mujer de 40 años fuma un cigarrillo negro apoyada en el quicio de una ventana en el cuarto piso. Por las escaleras sube lentamente un poli de paisano, sus facciones son parecidas a las mías. (El único que aplaudió ahora cierra los ojos. En su mente se forma algo que con otro sentido de la vida podría ser un hospital. En uno de los cuartos está acostada la muchacha. Las cortinas permanecen descorridas y la luz se desparrama por toda la habitación.) «Destruye tus frases libres» . . . «Un policía sube por la escalera» . . . «En su mirada no existe el jorobadito, ni la judía, ni el traidor» . . . «Pero aún podemos insistir» . . .

  A HOSPITAL

  The girl weighs 60 pounds now. She’s in the hospital and it seems she’s losing ground. “Destroy your stray phrases.” I didn’t understand what she meant until much later. Doubt was cast on my honesty, my reliability: they said I slept while I was on guard duty. Really, they were after someone else and I happened to show up at the wrong time. The girl we
ighs 60 pounds now and she probably won’t leave the hospital alive. (Someone applauds. The hallway is full of people who open their mouths without a sound.) A girl I knew? I don’t remember anyone with that face, I said. On the screen there’s a street, a drunk kid is about to cross, a bus appears. The prompter said Sara Bendeman? Still, I couldn’t understand anything at the time. All I remember is a skinny girl with long freckled legs, undressing at the foot of the bed. Fade to black. The scene opens in a dimly lit alley: a woman, 40, smokes a cigarette on the fourth floor, leaning on the windowsill. A cop in civilian clothes slowly comes up the stairs, his features like mine. (The sole person who applauded closes his eyes now. In his mind something takes shape, something that might be a hospital if the meaning of life were different. In one of the rooms the girl is in bed. The curtains are open and light spills into the room.) “Destroy your stray phrases” . . . “A policeman climbs the stairs” . . . “In his gaze there is no hunchback, no Jewish girl, no traitor” . . . “But we can still insist” . . .

  GENTE QUE SE ALEJA

  No hay nada estable, los ademanes netamente amorosos del niño se precipitan al vacío. Escribí: «grupo de camareros retornando al trabajo» y «arena barrida por el viento» y «vidrios sucios de septiembre». Ahora puedo darle la espalda. El jorobadito es la estrella de tu camino. Casas blancas desperdigadas a lo largo del atardecer. Carreteras desiertas, chillidos de pájaros provenientes del follaje. Y ¿lo hice todo?, ¿besé cuando nadie esperaba nada? (Bueno, a bastantes kilómetros de aquí la gente aplaude y ése es mi desconsuelo.) Ayer soñé que vivía en el interior de un árbol hueco, al poco rato el árbol empezaba a girar como un carrusel y yo sentía que las paredes se comprimían; desperté con la puerta del bungalow abierta de par en par. La luna ilumina el rostro del jorobadito . . . «Palabras solitarias, gente que se aleja de la cámara y niños como árboles huecos» . . . «Adondequiera que vayas» . . . Me detuve en «palabras solitarias». Escritura sin disciplina. Eran como cuarenta tipos, todos con sueldos de hambre. Cada mañana el andaluz reía estrepitosamente después de leer el periódico. Luna creciente en agosto. En septiembre estaré solo. En octubre y noviembre recogeré piñas.

  PEOPLE WALKING AWAY

  Nothing lasts, the purely loving gestures of children tumble into the void. I wrote: “a group of waiters returning to work” and “windswept sand” and “the dirty windowpanes of September.” Now I can turn my back on him. The hunchback is your guiding light. White houses scattered across the evening. Deserted highways, the screech of birds coming from the trees. And did I do everything? did I kiss her when no one was expecting anything? (Miles from here people are applauding, and that’s why I feel such despair.) Yesterday I dreamed that I lived inside a hollow tree — soon the tree began to spin like a carousel and I felt as if the walls were closing in on me; I woke to find the door of the bungalow ajar. The hunchback’s face shone in the moonlight . . . “Lonely words, people walking away from the camera, and children like hollow trees” . . . “No matter where you go” . . . I stopped at “lonely words.” Undisciplined writing. It was forty men, more or less, all working for starvation wages. Each morning the Andalucian laughed uproariously when he read the paper. Waxing moon in August. In September I’ll be alone. In October and November I’ll pick pineapples.

  TRES AÑOS

  Toda escritura finalmente traicionada por la escena de los hombres retornando al edificio. No existen más reglas que una niña pelirroja observándonos al final de la reja (Bruno lo entendió como yo, sólo que con pasiones distintas). Los polis están cansados, hay escasez de gasolina y miles de jóvenes desempleados dando vueltas por Barcelona. (Bruno está en París, me dicen que tocando el saxo afuera del Pompidou y ya sin la maniática.) Con pasos cartilaginosos se acercan los cuatro o cinco camareros al barracón donde duermen. Uno de ellos escribió poesía, pero de eso hace demasiado tiempo. El autor dijo «no puedo ser pesimista ni optimista, está claro, mis imágenes están determinadas por el compás de espera que se manifiesta en todo lo que llamamos realidad». No puedo ser un escritor de ciencia ficción porque he perdido gran parte de mi inocencia . . . Palabras que nadie dice que nadie está obligado a decir . . . Manos en proceso de fragmentación escritura que se sustrae así como el amor la amistad los patios lluviosos . . . Por momentos tengo la impresión de que todo esto es «interior» . . . Línea a seguir en la frecuencia que califique la computadora (toda línea es soledad total) . . . Tal vez por eso viví solo y durante tres años no hice nada . . . (Je je je, el tipo rara vez se lavaba, no necesitaba escribir a máquina, le bastaba sentarse en un sillón desvencijado para que las cosas huyeran por iniciativa propia) . . . ¿Un atardecer sorpresivo para el jorobadito? ¿Facciones de policía a menos de cinco centímetros de su rostro? ¿La lluvia limpió los vidrios de la ventana?

  THREE YEARS

  In the end, all writing betrayed by the scene of the men going back to the building. The only rule that exists is a redheaded girl watching us from the end of the fence (Bruno understood that the same way I did, he just cared about different things). The cops are tired, there’s a gasoline shortage, and thousands of unemployed youths roam Barcelona. (Bruno is in Paris, playing sax outside the Pompidou, they say, and now without that nag.) With cartilaginous steps, four or five waiters approach the shack where they sleep. One of them used to write poetry, but that was a long time ago. The author said “I can’t be pessimistic or optimistic, clearly my imagery is determined by the beat of hope that manifests itself in all that we call reality.” I can’t be a science fiction writer because my innocence is mostly gone . . . Words that no one speaks that no one is required to speak . . . Hands in the process of geometric fragmentation writing that’s stolen away just like love friendship rainy backyards . . . Sometimes I get the sense that it’s all “internal” . . . Line to be followed at whatever frequency the computer gives (all lines are absolute loneliness) . . . Maybe that’s why I lived alone and did nothing for three years . . . (Ha, ha, ha, the man hardly ever washed, he didn’t need a typewriter, all he had to do was sit in that shabby armchair for things to flee of their own accord) . . . A surprising evening for the hunchback? Policemen’s faces an inch from his nose? Did the rain wash clean the windowpanes?

  LA PISTOLA EN LA BOCA

  Biombo de pelo rubio, detrás el jorobadito dibuja piscinas, ciudades dormitorio, alamedas vacías. La delicadeza estriba en los ademanes adecuados para cada situación. El jorobadito dibuja una persona gentil. «Me quedé bocarriba en la cama, chirriar de grillos y alguien que recitaba a Manrique.» Árboles secos de agosto, escribo para ver qué pasa con la inmovilidad y no para gustar. ¡Una persona gentil! Sea el arte o la aventura de cinco minutos de un muchacho corriendo escaleras arriba. «Escapó al ojo del autor mi despedida.» Un ah y un ay y postales de pueblos blancos. El jorobadito se pasea por la piscina vacía, se sienta en la parte más honda y saca un cigarrillo. Pasa la sombra de una nube, una araña se detiene junto a su uña, expele el humo. «La realidad apesta.» Supongo que todas las películas que he visto de nada me servirán cuando me muera. Escena de ciudades dormitorio vacías, el viento levanta periódicos viejos, costras de polvo en bancos y restaurantes. La guerra la he tenido en mí mismo desde hace tiempo, de ahí que no me afecte interiormente, escribió Klee. ¿Vi por primera vez al jorobadito en México D.F.? ¿Era Gaspar el que contaba historias de policías y ladrones? Le pusieron la pistola en la boca y con dos dedos le taparon la nariz . . . Tuvo que abrir la boca para respirar y entonces empujaron el cañón hacia dentro . . . En el centro del telón negro hay un círculo rojo . . . Creo que el tipo dijo mamá o mierda, no sé . . .

  THE GUN TO HIS MO
UTH

  Screen of blond hair, behind it the hunchback draws swimming pools, commuter towns, empty boulevards. Tact stems from proper behavior in each situation. The hunchback draws a kind person. “I lay there on my back in bed, crickets chirping and someone reciting Manrique.” Parched trees of August, I write to understand stillness, not to please. A kind person! Whether it’s art or a five-minute adventure of a boy running up some stairs. “My departure escaped the author’s eye.” An ah, and an oh, and postcards from white towns. The hunchback strolls down the empty pool, sits in the deep end, and selects a cigarette. The shadow of a cloud passes, a spider pauses next to his fingernail, he expels smoke. “Reality is a drag.” I suppose all the movies I’ve seen will be worthless to me when I die. Scene of an empty commuter town, old newspapers blowing in the wind, dust crusted on benches and restaurants. I have long had this war inside me, which is why it doesn’t affect me internally, wrote Klee. Was it in Mexico City that I saw the hunchback for the first time? Was it Gaspar who told stories about cops and robbers? They put the gun to his mouth and pinched his nose . . . He had to open his mouth to breathe and then they shoved the barrel in . . . In the center of the black curtain there’s a red circle . . . I think the man said mama or shit, I don’t know . . .