The Third Reich

by Roberto Bolaño

  “What else did she do there?”

  “Nothing. I told you: she swept, threw out the spoiled things in the refrigerator . . .”

  “She didn’t go through my files?”

  “Of course not.”

  “What about you? What did you do?”

  “For God’s sake, Udo, the same things.”

  “All right . . . Thanks . . . So you see each other often?”

  “Every day. I think it’s because she doesn’t have anyone to talk to about you. She wanted to call your parents, but I convinced her not to. I don’t think it’s a good idea to worry them.”

  “My parents wouldn’t worry. They know the town . . . and the hotel.”

  “I don’t know. I hardly know your parents, I don’t know how they’d react.”

  “You hardly know Ingeborg either.”

  “True. You’re our connection. Though it seems to me that we’ve gotten to be friends, in a way. These last few days I’ve gotten to know her better and I really like her. She’s not just beautiful, she’s smart and practical too.”

  “I know. The same thing always happens. She’s . . .”

  “What, she’s seduced me?”

  “No, ‘seduced’ isn’t the right word; she’s like ice. She has a calming effect on you. On you and everybody else. Being with her is like being alone, focused exclusively on your own pursuits, in a state of total relaxation.”

  “Don’t talk like that. Ingeborg loves you. Tomorrow I promise I’ll send you the money. Are you coming back?”

  “Not yet.”

  “I don’t understand what’s keeping you there. Is there something you haven’t told me? I’m your best friend . . .”

  “I want to stay a few days longer, that’s all. There’s no mystery. I want to think, write, enjoy the place, now that there’s hardly anybody here.”

  “That’s it? Nothing to do with Ingeborg?”

  “Don’t be silly, of course not.”

  “I’m happy to hear it. How is your match going?”

  “Summer of ’42. I’m winning.”

  “I figured as much. Do you remember that match against Mathias Müller? The one we played a year ago at the Chess Club?”

  “Which match?”

  “A Third Reich. Franz, you, and me against the group from Forced Marches.”

  “Yes, and what happened?”

  “Don’t you remember? We won and Mathias was so angry— he’s a bad loser, you know—that he swung a chair at little Bernd Rahn and broke it.”

  “The chair?”

  “That’s right. The members of the Chess Club kicked him out and he hasn’t shown his face there since. Remember how we laughed that night?”

  “Sure, of course, my memory is still good. It’s just that some things don’t seem so funny to me anymore. But I remember everything.”

  “Of course.”

  “Ask me a question, anything, and you’ll see . . .”

  “I believe you, I do . . .”

  “Ask me. Ask if I remember which parachute divisions were at Anzio.”

  “I’m sure you do . . .”

  “Ask me . . .”

  “All right, which . . .”

  “The First Division: First, Third, and Fourth Regiments; the Second Division: Second, Fifth, and Sixth Regiments; and the Fourth Division: Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfth Regiments.”

  “Very good . . .”

  “Now ask me about the SS Panzer Divisions in Fortress Europa.”

  “All right, what are they?”

  “The First Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler, the Second Das Reich, the Ninth Hohenstaufen, the Tenth Frundsberg, and the Twelfth Hitlerjugend.”

  “Perfect. Your memory is in perfect working order.”

  “What about yours? Do you remember who led the 352nd, Heimito Gerhardt’s Infantry Division?”

  “All right, that’s enough.”

  “Tell me, do you remember or not?”

  “No . . .”

  “It’s very simple, you can check it tonight in Omaha Beachhead or in any book of military history. General Dietrich Kraiss was the division commander and Colonel Meyer was the head of Heimito’s regiment, the 915th.”

  “All right, I’ll look it up. Is that all?”

  “I’ve been thinking about Heimito. He really knows everything. He can recite from memory the complete setup for The Longest Day, down to battalion level.”

  “Of course, since that’s when he was taken prisoner.”

  “Don’t mock him, Heimito is one of a kind. I wonder how he’s doing now?”

  “Fine, why wouldn’t he be?”

  “Because he’s old and everything changes; because people abandon you, Conrad. I’m surprised you don’t know that.”

  “He’s a tough, happy old man. And he isn’t alone. He went to Spain in July with his wife on vacation. He sent me a postcard from Seville.”

  “Yes, I got one too. The truth is I couldn’t read his handwriting. I should have asked to take my vacation in July.”

  “So you could travel with Heimito?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We can still do it in December. For the Paris convention. I got the program a little while ago, it’ll be quite the affair.”

  “It’s not the same. I wasn’t talking about that.”

  “We’ll be able to present our paper. You’ll get to meet Rex Douglas in person. We’ll play World in Flames with real natives. Try to muster a little enthusiasm. It will be fantastic . . .”

  “What do you mean, ‘World in Flames with real natives’?”

  “A team of Germans will play Germany, a team of Brits will play Great Britain, a team of Frenchmen will play France, each group under its own flag.”

  “I had no idea. Who will play the Soviet Union?”

  “That’s a good question. The French, I think, though you never know, there might be some surprises.”

  “And Japan? Will the Japanese come?”

  “I don’t know, maybe. If Rex Douglas comes, why not the Japanese . . . Though maybe we’ll have to play Japan ourselves, or the Belgian delegation can. I’m sure the French organizers have it all worked out.”

  “The Belgians will be ridiculous as the Japanese.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

  “This all sounds ridiculous. I can’t believe it’s true. So the main event of the convention will be World in Flames? Whose idea was that?”

  “Not exactly the main event. It’s just in the program and people are excited about it.”

  “I thought Third Reich would be given a place of honor.”

  “And it will, Udo, during the presentation of papers.”

  “Right, while I’m droning on about multiple strategies everyone will be watching World in Flames.”

  “Not true. Our talk is on the 21st in the afternoon and the match takes place after the lectures each day, from the 20th to the 23rd. And the game was chosen because several teams could play, not for any other reason.”

  “Now I don’t feel like going . . . Of course the French want to play the Soviet Union because they know we’ll wipe them out on the first afternoon . . . Why don’t they play Japan? . . . Out of loyalty to the old alliances, of course . . . They’ll probably monopolize Rex Douglas the minute he lands . . .”

  “You shouldn’t speculate like this, it’s pointless.”

  “And the Cologne gang will be there, of course . . .”

  “That’s right.”

  “All right. Enough. Say hello to Ingeborg.”

  “Come back soon.”

  “I will.”

  “Don’t be depressed.”

  “I’m not depressed. I’m fine here. Happy.”

  “Call me. Remember that Conrad is your best friend.”

  “I know. Conrad is my best friend. Good-bye . . .”

  Summer 1942. El Quemado shows up at eleven. I hear his shouts as I’m lying in bed reading the Florian Linden novel. Udo, Udo Berger, his voice echoes on the empty Paseo Ma
rítimo. My first impulse is to lie still and wait. El Quemado’s call is hoarse and raw as if fire had also scorched his throat. When I open the balcony doors I see him on the sidewalk across the street, sitting on the seawall of the Paseo, waiting for me as if he has all the time in the world, with a big plastic bag at his feet. There’s a familiar air of terror to our greeting, to the way we acknowledge each other, essentially encapsulated in the abruptly silent and absolute manner in which we raise our arms. Between the two of us a stern and mute awareness is established, to galvanizing effect. But this state is brief and lasts only until El Quemado, in the room now, opens the bag to reveal an abundance of beers and sandwiches. Pathetic but sincere cornucopia! (Earlier, when I passed the reception desk, I asked for Frau Else again. She isn’t back yet, said the watchman, avoiding my gaze. Next to him, sitting in a huge white armchair, an old man with a German paper on his knees watches me with a scarcely concealed smile on his fleshless lips. Judging by his appearance one would say he has no more than a year left to live. And yet from beneath that extreme thinness, the cheekbones and temples especially prominent, the old man stares at me with a strange intensity, as if he knows me. How goes the war? asks the watchman, and then the old man’s smile grows more marked. If only I could stretch over the counter and grab the watchman by the shirt and shake him, but the watchman senses something and backs a little farther away. I’m an admirer of Rommel, he explains. The old man nods in agreement. No, you’re a miserable loser, I shoot back. The old man forms a tiny o with his lips and nods again. Maybe, says the watchman. The looks of hatred that we shoot each other are naked and full of real aggression. And you’re scum, I add, wanting to put him over the edge or at least get him to come a few inches closer to the counter. Well, that’s that, then, murmurs the old man in German, and he gets up. He’s very tall, and his arms, like a caveman’s, dangle down almost to his knees. Actually, that’s a false impression, caused by the old man’s stoop. Still, his height is notable: standing upright he must be (or must once have been) well over six feet tall. But it’s in his voice, the voice of a stubborn dying man, that his authority lies. Almost immediately, as if all he’d intended was for me to see him in his full grandeur, he drops back into the armchair and asks: Any further difficulties? No, of course not, the watchman hastens to say. No, none, I say. Perfect, says the old man, infusing the word with malice and virulence—per-fect—and he closes his eyes.

  El Quemado and I eat sitting on the bed, staring at the wall where I’ve pinned up the photocopies. Without needing to put it into words, he understands the degree of defiance in me. The degree of acceptance. Regardless, we eat wrapped in a silence interrupted only by banal observations that are really silences, added by us to the great silence that for something like an hour has fallen over the hotel and the town.

  Finally we wash our hands so that we don’t stain the tokens with oil, and we start to play.

  Later I’ll take London and lose it immediately. I’ll counterattack in the East and be forced to retreat.

  ANZIO. FORTRESS EUROPA. OMAHA BEACHHEAD. SUMMER 1942 .

  I walked the beach when all was Dark, reciting the names of the forgotten, names languishing on dusty shelves, until the sun came out again. But are they forgotten names or only names in waiting? I remembered the player as viewed by Someone from above, just the head, the shoulders, and the backs of the hands, and the board game and counters like a stage set where thousands of beginnings and endings eternally unfold, a kaleidoscopic theater, the only bridge between the player and his memory, a memory that is desire and gaze. How many infantry divisions was it—depleted, untrained— that held the Western front? Which ones halted the advance in Italy, despite treachery? Which armored divisions pierced the French defenses in ’40 and the Russian defenses in ’41 and ’42? And with what key division did Marshal Manstein retake Kharkov and exorcise the disaster? What infantry divisions fought to clear the way for tanks in ’44, in the Ardennes? And how many countless combat groups sacrificed themselves to stall the enemy on all fronts? No one can agree. Only the player’s memory knows. Roaming the beach or curled up in my room, I invoke the names and they come in soothing waves. My favorite counters: the First Parachute in Anzio, the Lehr Panzer and the First SS LAH in Fortress Europa, the eleven counters of the Third Parachute in Omaha Beachhead, the Seventh Armored Division in France ’40, the Third Armored Division in Panzerkrieg, the First SS Armored Corps in Russian Cam-paign, the Fortieth Armored Corps in Russian Front, the First SS LAH in Cobra, the Grossdeutschland Armored Corps in Third Reich, the Twenty-first Armored Division in The Longest Day, the 104th Infantry Regiment in Panzer Armee Afrika . . . Not even reading Sven Hassel aloud at the top of my lungs could be more invigorating . . . (Oh, who was it who read nothing but Sven Hassel? Everyone will say it was M.M.—it sounds like him, it suits him— but it was someone else, someone who resembled his own shadow, someone Conrad and I liked to mock. This kid organized a Role-Playing Festival in Stuttgart in ’85. With the whole city as stage he set up a macrogame about the last days of Berlin, using the reworked rules of Judge Dredd. Describing it now, I can see the interest it sparks in El Quemado, interest that could well be faked to distract me from the match, a legitimate but vain strategy, since I can move my corps with my eyes closed. What the game—dubbed Berlin Bunker—was about, what its objectives were, how victory was achieved, and who achieved it was never quite clear. Twelve people played the ring of soldiers defending Berlin. Six people played the Nation and the Party, and could move only inside the ring. Three people played the Leadership, and their task was to manage the other eighteen so that they weren’t left outside the perimeter when it shrank, as it generally did, and especially to prevent the perimeter from being breached, which was inevitable. There was a final player whose role was murky and secret; he could (and should) move all over the besieged city, but he was the only one who never knew the coordinates of the defensive ring; he could (and did) move all over the city but he was the only one who didn’t know any of the other players; he had the capacity to unseat a member of the Leadership and replace him with a member of the Nation, for example, but he did this blindly, leaving written orders and receiving reports in an agreed-upon spot. His power was as great as his blindness—his innocence, according to Sven Hassel— and his freedom was as great as his constant exposure to danger. He was watched over by a kind of invisible and careful guardian, because his fate determined the ultimate destiny of all. The game, as might have been predicted, ended disastrously, with players lost in the suburbs, cheating, plotting, protesting, sectors of the ring abandoned at nightfall, players who throughout the entire match saw only the referee, etc. Naturally neither Conrad nor I took part, though Conrad went to the trouble of following events from the gymnasium of the School of Industrial Arts where the festival was held and was later able to explain to me the initial dismay and then the moral collapse of Sven Hassel when faced with the evidence of his failure. A few months later Hassel left Stuttgart, and now, according to Conrad, who knows everything, he lives in Paris and has taken up painting. I wouldn’t be surprised to run into him at the convention . . . )

  After midnight, the photocopies tacked to the wall take on a funereal air, little doors to the void.

  “It’s starting to get chilly,” I say.

  El Quemado is wearing a leather jacket, too small, doubtless the gift of some charitable soul. The jacket is old but well made. When he comes over to the game board after eating, he takes it off and sets it on the bed, folding it carefully. His abstracted courtesy is touching. He has a notebook (or maybe a diary, like mine?) in which he jots down the strategic or economic shifts in his alliance, a notebook that he never lets out of his sight . . . It’s as if he’s found, in Third Reich, a satisfactory mode of communication. Here, alongside the map and the Force Pool, he isn’t a monster but rather a thinking being who expresses himself through hundreds of counters . . . He’s a dictator and a creator . . . And he’s having fun . . . If it weren’t for th
e photocopies, I’d say that I’ve done him a favor. But these are like a clear warning, the first signal that I should watch my step.

  “Quemado,” I ask him, “do you like the game?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “And do you think that because you’ve brought me to a standstill you’re going to win?”

  “I don’t know, it’s still too early to tell.”

  As I open the balcony doors to let the night air clear the smoke from the room, El Quemado, like a dog, his head tilted, snuffles with difficulty and says:

  “Tell me which counters are your favorite. Which divisions you think are the most beautiful (yes, literally!) and which battles the most difficult. Talk to me about the games . . .”

  WITH THE WOLF AND THE LAMB

  The Wolf and the Lamb show up at my room. The absence of Frau Else has relaxed the apparently strict rules of the hotel and now anyone is allowed in. As the hot days come to an end, anarchy is quietly settling in at every level. It’s as if people knew how to work only when they were drenched in sweat, or when they saw us, the tourists, drenched in sweat. This might be a good moment to leave without paying, an ignoble act that I would contemplate only if some genie could guarantee that afterward I would see the look on Frau Else’s face, her surprise, her astonishment. Maybe when summer ends and many of the seasonal workers also reach the end of their contracts, discipline grows lax and the inevitable occurs: thefts, poor service, untidiness. Today, for example, no one came up to make the bed. I had to do it myself. And I need clean sheets. When I call the reception desk, no one can give me a convincing explanation. As it happens, the Wolf and the Lamb arrive while I’m waiting for someone from the laundry room to bring up clean sheets.

  “We just had a little free time and we decided to come and see you. We didn’t want you to leave without saying good-bye.”

  I reassured them that I still hadn’t decided when to go.

  “Then we should go out for a few drinks to celebrate.”