Roberto Bolano (10 page)

MM:
Have you shed one tear about the widespread criticism you’ve drawn from your enemies?

RB:
Lots and lots. Every time I read that someone has spoken badly of me I begin to cry, I drag myself across the floor, I scratch myself, I stop writing indefinitely, I lose my appetite, I smoke less, I engage
in sport, I go for walks on the edge of the sea, which by the way is less than 30 meters from my house, and I ask the seagulls, whose ancestors ate the fish who ate Ulysses: Why me? Why? I’ve done you no harm.

MM:
With regard to your work, whose opinion do you value most?

RB:
My books are read by Carolina [wife], then [Jorge] Herralde [editor of
Anagrama]
, and then I endeavor to forget them forever.

MM:
What things did you buy with the prize money from the Rómulo Gallegos award?

RB:
Not much, a suitcase as far as I can remember.

MM:
During the time when you lived on literary competitions, was there a prize you couldn’t claim?

RB:
None. Spanish city halls, in this respect, are decent and beyond reproach.

MM:
Were you a good waiter, or a better costume jewelry vendor?

RB:
I have best redeemed myself as the night watchman of a campsite near Barcelona. Nobody ever stole while I was there. I stopped some fights that could have ended badly, and I prevented a lynching—although on second thought, I should have lynched or strangled the guy myself.

MM:
Have you experienced fierce hunger, bone-chilling cold, breathtaking heat?

RB:
As
Vittorio Gassman
says in a film, “Modestly, yes.”

MM:
Have you stolen a book you later didn’t like?

RB:
Never. The good thing about stealing books—unlike safes—is that one can carefully examine their contents before perpetrating the crime.

MM:
Have you ever walked in the middle of the desert?

RB:
Yes, and one of those times on the arm of my grandmother. The elderly woman was tireless, and I didn’t think we would make it.

MM:
Have you seen colorful fish underwater?

RB:
Of course. Without going further than Acapulco, in 1974 or 1975.

MM:
Have you ever burned your skin with a cigarette?

RB:
Never voluntarily.

MM:
Have you ever carved the name of your beloved in the trunk of a tree?

RB:
I have committed greater abuses, but let’s draw the veil at that.

MM:
Have you seen the most beautiful woman in the world?

RB:
Yes, sometime around 1984 when I worked at a store. The store was empty and in came a Hindu woman. She looked like a princess and well could have been one. She bought some hanging costume jewelry from me. I was at the point of fainting. She had copper skin, long red hair, and the rest of her was perfect. A timeless beauty. When I had to charge her, I felt embarrassed. As if saying she understood and not to worry, she smiled at me. Then she disappeared and I have never again seen anyone like her. Sometimes I get the impression that she was the goddess Kali, the patron saint of thieves and goldsmiths, except Kali was also the goddess of murderers, and this Hindu woman was not only the most beautiful woman on earth, but she seemed also to be a good person—very sweet and considerate.

MM:
Do you like dogs or cats?

RB:
Female dogs, but I don’t have any more pets.

MM:
What do you remember of your childhood?

RB:
Everything. I don’t have one bad memory.

MM:
Did you collect figurines?

RB:
Yes, of soccer players and Hollywood actors and actresses.

MM:
Did you have a scooter?

RB:
My parents made the mistake of giving me a pair of roller skates when we lived in Valparaiso, a city made up of hills. The result was disastrous. Every time I put the skates on it was as if I was trying to commit suicide.

MM:
What is your favorite soccer team?

RB:
None right now. The ones who fall to second tier, then third consecutively, then regional until they’ve disappeared. The phantom teams.

MM:
Which historical character would you have liked to resemble?

RB:
Sherlock Holmes. Captain Nemo. Julien Sorel, our father. Prince Mishkin, our uncle. Alicia, our
professor. And Houdini, who is a mix between Alicia, Sorel and Mishkin.

MM:
Did you fall in love with older neighbors when you were young?

RB:
Of course.

MM:
Did the girls in your school pay any attention to you?

RB:
I don’t think so. At least I was convinced they did not.

MM:
What do you owe the women in your life?

RB:
Ever so much. A sense of defiance and high risk. For the sake of decency, I’ll keep quiet about the other things.

MM:
Do they owe you anything?

RB:
Nothing.

MM:
Have you suffered much for love?

RB:
Very much the first time, then I learned to take things with a bit more humor.

MM:
And what about hate?

RB:
Even if I sound somewhat pretentious, I’ve never hated anyone. At least I’m certain I am incapable of sustained hatred. And if the hatred is not sustained, it’s not hatred, is it?

MM:
How did you win the affection of your wife?

RB:
Cooking rice for her. I was very poor at that time and my diet basically consisted of rice, so I learned to cook it in many different ways.

MM:
Describe the day you became a father for the first time.

RB:
It was night, a little before midnight. I was alone, and because you couldn’t smoke in the hospital, I smoked a cigarette virtually perched on the cornice of the fourth floor. No one saw me from the street, only the moon, as
Amado Nervo
would have said. When I came back in, a nurse told me my son had just been born. He was very big, almost all bald, with open eyes as if asking himself who the devil had him in his arms.

MM:
Will Lautaro be a writer?

RB:
I hope only that he’s happy. Thus, it would be better if he were something else. Airplane pilot, for example, plastic surgeon or editor.

MM:
What do you recognize in him as your own?

RB:
Luckily he resembles his mother much more than me.

MM:
Do you worry about the position of your books on bestseller lists?

RB:
Minimally.

MM:
Do you think about your readers?

RB:
Almost never.

MM:
Of all the things your readers have said about your books, what has moved you the most?

RB:
Quite simply, the readers themselves move me—the ones who dare to read Voltaire’s
Philosophical Dictionary
, which is one of the most pleasant and modern works I know. I’m moved by the steely youth who read Cortázar and Parra, just as I read them and intend to continue reading them. I’m moved by those youths who sleep with a book under their head. A book is the best pillow that exists.

MM:
What things have made you angry?

RB:
At this age, getting angry is a waste of time. And, regrettably, time matters at my age.

MM:
Have you ever feared your fans?

RB:
I’ve feared
Leopoldo María Panero’s
fans. On the one hand, he seems to me one of the three best living poets in Spain. During a cycle of readings organized by
Jesús Ferrero
in Pamplona, Panero closed the cycle and as the day of his reading neared, the neighborhood where our hotel was began to fill with freaks who looked like they had recently escaped an insane asylum. But on the other hand, they were the best readership any poet can aspire to reach. The problem was that some didn’t just look crazy but like murderers too. Ferrero and I were afraid that at any moment someone might get up and say they had killed Leopoldo María Panero, then fired four shots at the head of the poet; and while they were at it, one at Ferrero and the last one at me.

MM:
How does it feel to be regarded as the Latin American writer with the most promising future by critics like
Darío Osses?

RB:
It must be a joke. I am the Latin American writer with the least promising future. But on that point, I am the type with the most past, which is what matters anyway.

MM:
Does the critical book being prepared by your compatriot
Patricia Espinosa
arouse your curiosity?

RB:
Not at all. Apart from how I’ll end up in her book, which I don’t suppose will be very good, Espinosa seems to be a very good critic. But her work is necessary in Chile. In fact, the need for new critics—let’s call her that—is urgent all over Latin America.

MM:
And what about the Argentine
Celina Mazoni’s
book?

RB:
I know Celina personally and I’m very fond of her. I dedicated one of the stories from
Putas Asesinas
to her.

MM:
What bores you?

RB:
Empty discourse from the left. I take for granted the empty discourse from the right.

MM:
What entertains you?

RB:
To see my daughter Alexandra play. To eat breakfast at a bar by the sea and to eat a croissant while reading the paper. Borges’ literature. Bioy’s literature.
Bustos Domecq’s
literature. Making love.

MM:
Do you write by hand?

RB:
Poetry, yes. For the rest, I use an old computer from 1993.

MM:
Close your eyes. Out of all the landscapes you’ve come across in Latin America, what comes to mind first?

RB:
Lisa’s lips in 1974. My father’s broken-down bus on a desert road. The tuberculosis wing of a hospital in Cauquenes and my mother telling my sister and I to hold our breath. An excursion to Popocatépetl with Lisa, Mara, Vera and someone else I don’t remember. But I do remember Lisa’s lips, her extraordinary smile.

MM:
What is heaven like?

RB:
Like Venice, I’d hope, a place full of Italian men and women. A place you can use and wear down, a place that knows nothing will endure, including paradise, and knows that in the end at last it doesn’t matter.

MM:
And hell?

RB:
It’s like Ciudad Juárez, our curse and mirror, a disturbing reflection of our frustrations, and our infamous interpretation of liberty and of our desires.

MM:
When did you know you were gravely ill?

RB:
In 1992.

MM:
What change did your illness have on your character?

RB:
None. I knew I wasn’t immortal, which at thirty-eight it was high time I learn.

MM:
What do you wish to do before dying?

RB:
Nothing special. Well, clearly I’d prefer not to die. But sooner or later the distinguished lady arrives. The problem is that sometimes she’s neither a lady nor very distinguished, but, as Nicanor Parra says in a poem, she’s a hot wench who will make your teeth chatter no matter how fancy you think you are.

MM:
Whom would you like to encounter in the hereafter?

RB:
I don’t believe in the hereafter. Were it to exist, I’d be surprised. I’d enroll immediately in some course Pascal would be teaching.

MM:
Have you ever thought about committing suicide?

RB:
Of course. On one occasion I survived precisely because I knew how to kill myself if things got any worse.

MM:
Have you ever believed you were going crazy?

RB:
Of course, but I was always saved by my sense of humor. I’d tell myself stories that made me crazy with laughter. Or I’d remember situations that made me roll on the ground laughing.