By Night in Chile (15 page)

BOOK: By Night in Chile

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Apparently she didn’t own the land, and the owners, Jews who had been in exile for over twenty years, were taking her to court. Since she had no money to hire a good lawyer, she was sure she would lose the case. The Jews were planning to demolish the house and build another from scratch. It’s my house, said María Canales, and there’ll be nothing left to remember it by. I looked at her sadly and said perhaps that was for the best, she was still young, she wasn’t involved in any criminal proceedings, she could start over, with her children, somewhere else. And what about my literary career? she said with a defiant look. Use a nom de plume, a pseudonym, a nickname, for God’s sake. She looked at me as if I had insulted her. Then she smiled: Do you want to see the basement? she said. I could have slapped her face, instead of which I sat there and shook my head several times. I shut my eyes. In a few months’ time it will be too late, she said to me. By the tone of her voice and the warmth of her breath, I could tell she had brought her face very close to mine. I shook my head again. They’re going to knock the house down. They’ll rip out the basement. It’s where one of Jimmy’s men killed the Spanish UNESCO official. It’s where Jimmy killed that Cecilia Sánchez Poblete woman. Sometimes I’d be watching television with the children, and the lights would go out for a while. We never heard anyone yell, the electricity just cut out and then came back. Do you want to go and see the basement? I stood up, took a few steps in that sitting room where our writers and painters, the artisans of our national culture, once used to gather, and shook my head. I must be off, María, I really have to go, I said to her. She burst out laughing uncontrollably. Or maybe I just imagined that.

When we were standing on the porch (night was slowly beginning to fall), she took my hand, as if the thought of being left alone in that condemned house had suddenly scared her. I squeezed her hand and advised her to pray. I was very tired and didn’t manage to put much conviction into my advice. I’m already praying as much as I can, she replied. Try, María, try, do it for your sons. She breathed in the air of outer Santiago, air that is the quintessence of dusk.

Then she looked around, calm, serene, courageous in her own way, she looked at her house, her porch, the place where the cars used to park, the red bicycle, the trees, the garden path, the fence, the windows all shut except for the one I had opened, the stars twinkling far away, and she said, That’s how literature is made in Chile. I nodded and left. While I was driving back into Santiago, I thought about what she had said. That is how literature is made in Chile, but not just in Chile, in Argentina and Mexico too, in Guatemala and Uruguay, in Spain and France and Germany, in green England and carefree Italy. That is how literature is made. Or at least what we call literature, to keep ourselves from falling into the rubbish dump. Then I started singing to myself again: The Judas Tree, the Judas Tree, and my car went back into the tunnel of time, back into time’s giant meat grinder. And I remembered the day Farewell died. His funeral was discreet and orderly, as he would have wished. When I was left alone in his house, looking around the library, which was, in some mysterious way, the incarnation both of his absence and his presence, I asked his spirit (it was, of course, a rhetorical question) why things had turned out as they had for us.

There was no reply. I went over to one of the huge bookcases and touched the spines of the books with my fingertips. There was a movement in a corner of the room. I jumped. But when I looked more closely, I saw that it was one of

Farewell’s faithful old crones who had fallen asleep. We left the house

together, arm in arm. During the funeral procession, as we made our way through the refrigerated streets of Santiago, I asked what had become of Farewell. He’s in the coffin, said some youths who were walking ahead of me. Idiots, I said, but the youths were gone, they had disappeared. Now I am the invalid. My bed is spinning, afloat on a swift-flowing river. If the waters were turbulent I would know that death was near. But the waters are just flowing quickly, so all hope is not yet lost. The wizened youth has been quiet for a long time now. He has given up railing against me and writers generally. Is there a solution? That is how literature is made, that is how the great works of Western literature are made. You better get used to it, I tell him. The wizened youth, or what is left of him, moves his lips, mouthing an inaudible
no
. The power of my thought has stopped him. Or maybe it was history. An individual is no match for history. The wizened youth has always been alone, and I have always been on history’s side. I prop myself up on one elbow and look for him. All I can see are my books, the walls of my bedroom, a window in the midst of shadow and light. I could rise from this bed now and start living again, giving classes, writing reviews. I would like to review a book by one of the new French writers.

But I haven’t the strength. Is there a solution? One day, after Farewell’s death, I went to his old estate, Là-bas, with a few friends, on a sort of sentimental journey, which I realized was a bad idea almost as soon as we got there. I went off for a walk through the fields where I had wandered as a young man. I looked for the farmers, but the sheds where they used to live were empty.

An old woman was waiting to meet the friends who had come with me. I observed her from a distance, and when she headed for the kitchen, I followed and said hello to her from outside, through the window. She didn’t even look at me. Later I found out she was half deaf, but the fact is she didn’t even look at me. Is there a solution? One day, out of sheer boredom, I asked a young left-wing novelist if he knew how María Canales was getting on. The young man told me he had never met her. But you must have, you’ve been to her house, I said. He shook his head several times and changed the subject immediately. Is there a solution?

Sometimes I come across farmers speaking another language. I stop them. I ask how things are on the land. But they tell me they don’t work on the land. They tell me they work in factories or building sites in the city, they have never worked on the land. Is there a solution? Sometimes the earth shakes. The

epicenter of the quake is somewhere in the north or the south, but I can hear the earth shaking. Sometimes I feel dizzy. Sometimes the quake goes on for longer than usual, and people take shelter in doorways or under stairs or they rush out into the street. Is there a solution? I see people running in the streets. I see people going into the Metro or into movie theaters. I see people buying newspapers. And sometimes it all shakes and everything stops for a moment. And then I ask myself: Where is the wizened youth? Why has he gone away?

And little by little the truth begins to rise like a dead body. A dead body rising from the bottom of the sea or from the bottom of a gully. I can see its shadow rising. Its flickering shadow. Its shadow rising as if it were climbing a hill on a fossil planet. And then, in the half-light of my sickness, I see his fierce, his gentle face, and I ask myself: Am I that wizened youth? Is that the true, the supreme terror, to discover that I am the wizened youth whose cries no one can hear? And that the poor wizened youth is me? And then faces flash before my eyes at a vertiginous speed, the faces I admired, those I loved, hated, envied and despised. The faces I protected, those I attacked, the faces I hardened myself against and those I sought in vain.

And then the storm of shit begins.

Originally published by Editorial Anagrama as Nocturno de Chile in 2000. Published by arrangement with the Harvill Press, London

All rights reserved. Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publisher.

Manufactured in the United States of America

First published as a New Directions Paperbook (NDP975) in 2003.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Bolaño, Roberto.

[Nocturno de Chile. English]

By night in Chile / by Roberto Bolaño ; translated by Chris Andrews.

p. cm.

EISBN 978-0-8112-2051-4

1. Chile — History — 1973–1988 — Fiction. I. Andrews, Chris. II. Title.

PQ8098.412.O43N6313 2003

2003013223

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