2666 (34 page)
Authors: Roberto Bolaño
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary Collections, #Mystery & Detective, #Mexico, #Caribbean & Latin American, #Cold Cases (Criminal Investigation), #Crime, #Literary, #Young Women, #Missing Persons, #General, #Women
Drawing 5
193
And Drawing 6
Drawing 4 was odd. Trendelenburg—it had been years since he
thought about Trendelenburg. Adolf Trendelenburg. Why now, precisely, and why
in the company of Bergson and Heidegger and Nietzsche and Spengler? Drawing 5
was even odder. The appearance of Kolakowski and Vattimo. The presence of
Whitehead, forgotten until now. But especially the unexpected materialization
of poor Guyau, Jean-Marie Guyau, dead at thirty-four in 1888, called the French
Nietzsche by some jokers, with no more than ten disciples in the whole world,
although really there were only six, and Amalfitano knew this because in
Barcelona he had met the only Spanish Guyautist, a professor from Gerona, shy
and a zealot in his own way, whose great quest was to find a text (it might
have been a poem or a philosophical piece or an article, he wasn't sure) that
Guyau had written in English and published in a San Francisco newspaper
sometime around 1886—1887. Finally, Drawing 6 was the oddest of all (and the
least "philosophical"). What said it all was the appearance at
opposite ends of the horizontal axis of Vladimir Smirnov, who disappeared in
Stalin's concentration camps in 1938 (not to be confused with Ivan Nikitich
Smirnov, executed by the Stalinists in 1936 after the first Moscow show trial),
and Suslov, party ideologue, prepared to countenance any atrocity or crime. But
the intersection of the horizontal by two slanted lines, reading Bunge and
Revel above and Harold Bloom and Allan Bloom below, was something like a joke.
And yet it was a joke Amalfitano didn't understand, especially the appearance
of the two Blooms. There had to be something funny about it, but whatever it
might be, he couldn't put his finger on it, no matter how he tried.
That night, as his daughter slept, and after he listened to
the last news broadcast on Santa Teresa's most popular radio station, Voice of
the Border, Amalfitano went out into the yard. He smoked a cigarette, staring
into the deserted street, then he headed for the back, moving hesitantly, if he
feared stepping in a hole or was afraid of the reigning darkness. Dieste's book
was still hanging with the clothes Rosa had washed that day, clothes that
seemed to be made of cement or some very heavy material, because they didn't
move at all, while the fitful breeze swung the book back and forth, as if it
were grudgingly rocking it or trying to detach it from the clothespins holding
it to the line. Amalfitano felt the breeze on his face. He was sweating and the
irregular gusts of air dried the little drops of perspiration and occluded his
soul. As if I were in Trendelenburg's study, he thought, as if I were following
in Whitehead's footsteps along the edge of a canal, as if I were approaching
Guyau's sickbed and asking him for advice. What would his response have been? Be
happy. Live in the moment. Be good. Or rather: Who are you? What are you doing
here? Go away.
Help.
The next day, searching in the university library, he found
more information on Dieste. Born in Rianxo, La Corufia, in 1899. Begins writing
in Galician, although later he switches to Castilian or writes in both. Man of
the theater. Anti-Fascist during the Civil War. After his side's defeat he goes
into exile, ending up in
where he publishes
Viaje, duelo y perdition: tragedia, humorada y comedia,
in
1945, a book made up of three previously published works. Poet. Essayist. In
1958 (Amalfitano is seven), he publishes the aforementioned
Nuevo tratado
As
a short story writer, his most important work is
Historia e invenciones de
Felix Muriel
(1943). Returns to
returns to
Dies in Santiago de Compostela in 1981.
What's the experiment? asked
What experiment? asked Amalfitano. With the hanging book, said
word, said Amalfitano. Why is it there? asked
It occurred to me all of a sudden, said Amalfitano, it's a Duchamp idea,
leaving a geometry book hanging exposed to the elements to see if it learns
something about real life. You're going to destroy it, said
Not me, said Amalfitano, nature. You're getting crazier every day, you know,
said
you do a thing like that to a book, said
It isn't mine, said Amalfitano. It doesn't matter,
but I really don't have the sense it belongs to me, and anyway I'm almost sure
I'm not doing it any harm. Well, pretend it's mine and take it down, said
neighbors: who top their walls with broken glass? They don't even know we
exist,
said Amalfitano, and they're a
thousand times crazier than me. No, not them, said Rosa, the other ones, the
ones who can see exactly what's going on in our yard. Have any of them bothered
you? asked Amalfitano. No, said
it's not a problem, said Amalfitano, it's silly to worry' about it when much
worse things are happening in this city than a book
being hung from a cord. Two wrongs don't make
a right, said
the book alone, pretend it doesn't exist, forget about it, said Amalfitano,
you've never been interested in geometry.
In the mornings, before he left for the university,
Amalfitano would go out the back door to watch the book while he finished his
coffee. No doubt about it: it had been printed on good paper and the binding
was stoically withstanding nature's onslaught. Rafael Dieste's old friends had
chosen good materials for their tribute, a tribute that amounted to an early farewell
from a circle of learned old men (or old men with a patina of learning) to
another learned old man. In any case, nature in northwestern
particularly in his desolate yard, thought Amalfitano, was in short supply. One
morning, as he was waiting for the bus to the university, he made firm plans to
plant grass or a lawn, and also to buy a little tree in some store that sold
that kind of thing, and plant flowers along the fence. Another morning he
thought that any work he did to make the yard nicer would ultimately be
pointless, since he didn't plan to stay long in Santa Teresa. I have to go back
now, he said to himself, but where? And then he asked himself: what made me
come here? Why did I bring my daughter to this cursed city? Because it was one
of the few hellholes in the world I hadn't seen yet? Because I really just want
to die? And then he looked at Dieste's book, the
Testamento geometrico,
hanging
impassively from the line, held there by two clothespins, and he felt the urge
to take it down and wipe off the ocher dust that had begun to cling to it here
and there, but he didn't dare.
Sometimes, after he came home from the
remembered his father, who followed boxing. Amalfitano's father used to say
that all Chileans were faggots. Amalfitano, who was ten, said: but Dad, it's
really the Italians who are faggots, just look at World War II. Amalfitano's
father gave his son a very serious look when he heard him say that. His own
father, Amalfitano's grandfather, was born in
Italian than Chilean. But anyway, he liked to talk about boxing, or rather he
liked to talk about fights that he'd only read about in the usual articles in
boxing magazines or the sports page. So he would talk about the Loayza
brothers, Mario and Ruben, nephews of El Tani, and about Godfrey Stevens, a
stately faggot with no punch, and about Humberto Loayza, also a nephew of El
Tani, who had a good punch but no stamina, about Arturo Godoy, a wily fighter
and martyr, about Luis Vicentini, a powerfully built Italian from Chillan who
was defeated by the sad fate of being born in Chile, and about Estanislao
Loayza, El Tani, who was robbed of the world title in the United States in the
most ridiculous way, when the referee stepped on his foot in the first round
and El Tani fractured his ankle. Can you imagine? Amalfitano's father asked. I
can't imagine, Amalfitano said. Let's give it a try, said Amalfitano's father,
shadowbox around me and I'll step on your foot. I'd rather not, said
Amalfitano. You can trust me, you'll be fine, said Amalfitano's father. Some
other time, said Amalfitano. It has to be now, said his father. Then Amalfitano
put up his fists and moved around his father with surprising agility, throwing
a few jabs with his left and hooks with his right, and suddenly his father
moved in and stepped on his foot and that was the end of it, Amalfitano stood
still or tried to go in for a clinch or pulled away, but in no way fractured
his ankle. I think the referee did it on purpose, said Amalfitano's father. You
can't fuck up somebody's ankle by stomping on his foot. Then came the rant:
Chilean boxers are all faggots, all the people in this shitty country are
faggots, every one of them, happy to be cheated, happy to be bought, happy to
pull down their pants the minute someone asks them to take off their watches.
It was at this point that Amalfitano, who at ten read history Magazines,
especially military history magazines, not sports magazines, answered that the
Italians had already claimed that role, all the way back World War II. His
father was silent then, looking at his son with frank admiration and pride, as
if asking himself where the hell the kid had come from, and then he was silent
for a while longer and afterward he said in a low voice, as if telling a
secret, that Italians were brave individually. In large numbers, he admitted,
they were hopeless. And this, he explained, was precisely what gave a person
hope.
By which you might guess, thought Amalfitano, as he went
out the front door and paused on the porch with his whiskey and then looked out
into the street where a few cars were parked, cars that had been left there for
hours and smelled, or so it seemed to him, of scrap metal and blood, before he
turned and headed around the side of the house to the backyard where the
Testamento
geometrico
was waiting for him in the stillness and the dark, by which you
might guess that he himself, deep down, very deep down, was still a hopeful
person, since he was Italian by blood, as well as an individualist and a
civilized person. And it was even possible that he wasn't a coward. Although he
didn't like boxing. But then Dieste's book fluttered and the black handkerchief
of the breeze dried the sweat beading on his forehead and Amalfitano closed his
eyes and tried to conjure up any image of his father, in vain. When he went
back inside, not through the back door but through the front door, he peered
over the gate and looked both ways down the street. Some nights he had the
feeling he was being spied on.
In the mornings, when Amalfitano came into the kitchen and
left his coffee cup in the sink after his obligatory visit to Dieste's book,
although sometimes, if Amalfitano came in sooner than usual or put off going
into the backyard, he would say goodbye, remind her to take care of herself, or
give her a kiss. One morning he managed only to say goodbye, then he sat at the
table looking out the window at the clothesline. The
Testamento geometrico
was
moving imperceptibly. Suddenly, it stopped. The birds that had been singing in
the neighboring yards were quiet. Everything was plunged into complete silence
for an instant. Amalfitano thought he heard the sound of the gate and his
daughter's footsteps receding. Then he heard a car start. That night, as
Professor Perez and confessed that he was turning into a nervous wreck.
Professor Perez soothed him, told him not to worry so much, all you had to do
was be careful, there was no point giving in to paranoia. She reminded him that
the victims were usually kidnapped in other parts of the city. Amalfitano
listened to her talk and all of a sudden laughed. He told her his nerves were
in tatters. Professor Perez didn't get the joke. Nobody gets anything here,
thought Amalfitano angrily. Then Professor Perez tried to convince him to come
out that weekend, with Rosa and Professor Perez's son. Where to, asked
Amalfitano, almost inaudibly. We could go eat at a
merendero
ten miles
out of the city, she said, a very nice place, with a pool for the kids and lots
of outdoor tables in the shade with a view of the slopes of a quartz mountain,
a silver mountain with black streaks. At the top of the mountain there was a
chapel built of black adobe. The inside was dark, except for the light that
came in through a kind of skylight, and the walls were covered in ex-votos
written by travelers and Indians in the nineteenth century who had risked the
pass between
