By Night in Chile

by Roberto Bolano

Genres: Literary Fiction

Synopsis

A deathbed confession revolving around Opus Dei and Pinochet, By Night in Chile pours out the self-justifying dark memories of the Jesuit priest Father Urrutia.

As through a crack in the wall, By Night in Chile’s single night-long rant provides a terrifying, clandestine view of the strange bedfellows of church and state in Chile. This wild, eerily compact novel—Roberto Bolaño’s first work available in English—recounts the tale of a poor boy who wanted to be a poet but ends up a half-hearted Jesuit priest and conservative literary critic, a sort of lapdog to the rich and powerful cultural elite, in whose villas he encounters Pablo Neruda and Ernst Jünger. Father Urrutia is offered a tour of Europe by agents of Opus Dei to study “the disintegration of the churches”—a journey into realms of the surreal—and, ensnared by this plum, he is next assigned, after the destruction of Allende, the secret never-to-be-disclosed job of teaching Pinochet, at night, all about Marxism, so the junta generals can know their enemy. Soon, searingly, his memories go from bad to worse. Heart-stopping and hypnotic, By Night in Chile marked the American debut of an astonishing writer.

Release date: September 3, 2024

Publisher: Picador

Print pages: 144

Sample

I am dying now, but I still have many things to say. I used to be at peace with myself. Quiet and at peace. But it all blew up unexpectedly. That wizened youth is to blame. I was at peace. I am no longer at peace. There are a couple of points that have to be cleared up. So, propped up on one elbow, I will lift my noble, trembling head, and rummage through my memories to turn up the deeds that shall vindicate me and belie the slanderous rumors the wizened youth spread in a single stormlit night to sully my name. Or so he intended. One has to be responsible, as I have always said. One has a moral obligation to take responsibility for one’s actions, and that includes one’s words and silences, yes, one’s silences, because silences rise to heaven too, and God hears them, and only God understands and judges them, so one must be very careful with one’s silences. I am responsible in every way. My silences are immaculate. Let me make that clear. Clear to God above all. The rest I can forgo. But not God. I don’t know how I got on to this. Sometimes I find myself propped up on one elbow, rambling on and dreaming and trying to make peace with myself. But sometimes I even forget my own name. My name is Sebastián Urrutia Lacroix. I am Chilean. My ancestors on my father’s side came from the Basque country, or Euskadi, as it is now called. On my mother’s side I hail from the gentle land of France, from a village whose name means Man on the Earth or perhaps Standing Man, my French is failing me as the end draws near. But I still have strength enough to remember and rebut the wizened youth’s affronts, flung in my face one day, when without the slightest provocation and quite out of the blue, he appeared at the door of my house and insulted me. Let me make that clear. My aim is not to stir up conflict, it never has been, my aims are peace and responsibility for one’s actions, for one’s words and silences. I am a reasonable man. I have always been a reasonable man. At the age of thirteen I heard God’s call and decided to enter a seminary. My father was opposed to the idea. He was not absolutely inflexible, but he was opposed to the idea. I can still remember his shadow slipping from room to room in our house, as if it were the shadow of a weasel or an eel. And I remember, I don’t know how, but the fact is that I do remember my smile in the midst of the darkness, the smile of the child I was. And I remember a hunting scene on a tapestry. And a metal dish on which a meal was depicted with all the appropriate decorations. My smile and my trembling. And a year later, at the age of fourteen, I entered the seminary, and when I came out again, much later on, my mother kissed my hand and called me Father or I thought I heard her say Father, and when, in my astonishment, I protested, saying Don’t call me Father, mother, I am your son, or maybe I didn’t say Your son but The son, she began to cry or weep and then I thought, or maybe the thought has only occurred to me now, that life is a succession of misunderstandings, leading us on to the final truth, the only truth. And a little earlier or a little later, that is to say a few days before being ordained a priest or a couple of days after taking holy vows, I met Farewell, the famous Fare well, I don’t remember exactly where, probably at his house, I did go to his house, although maybe I made the pilgrimage to the newspaper’s editorial offices or perhaps I saw him for the first time at his club, one melancholy afternoon, like so many April afternoons in Santiago, although in my soul birds were singing and buds were bursting into flower, as the poet says, and there was Farewell, tall, a meter and eighty centimeters, although he seemed two meters tall to me, wearing a gray suit of fine English cloth, handmade shoes, a silk tie, a white shirt as immaculate as my hopes, gold cuff links, a tiepin bearing insignia I did not wish to interpret but whose meaning by no means escaped me, and Farewell invited me to sit down beside him, very close, or perhaps before that he took me into his library or the library of the club, and while we looked over the spines of the books he began to clear his throat, and while he was clearing his throat he may have been watching me out of the corner of his eye, although I can’t be sure, since I kept my eyes fixed on the books, and then he said something I didn’t understand or something my memory has not retained, and after that we sat down again, he in a Chesterfield, I on a chair, and we talked about the books whose spines we had been looking at and caressing, my young fingers fresh from the seminary, Farewell’s thick fingers already rather crooked, not surprisingly given his age and his height, and we spoke about the books and the authors of the books, and Farewell’s voice was like the voice of a large bird of prey soaring over rivers and mountains and valleys and ravines, never at a loss for the appropriate expression, the sentence that fitted his thought like a glove, and when with the naïveté of a fledgling, I said that I wanted to be a literary critic, that I wanted to follow in his footsteps, that for me nothing on earth could be more fulfill ing than to read, and to present the results of my reading in good prose, when I said that, Farewell smiled and put his hand on my shoulder (a hand that felt as heavy as if it were encased in an iron gauntlet or heavier still) and he met my gaze and said it was not an easy path. In this barbaric country, the critic’s path, he said, is not strewn with roses. In this country of estate owners, he said, literature is an oddity and nobody values knowing how to read. And since, in my timidity, I did not reply, he brought his face closer to mine and asked if something had upset or offended me. Perhaps you have an estate or your father does? No, I said. Well, I do, said Farewell, I have an estate near Chillán, with a little vineyard that produces quite passable wine. And without further ado he invited me to spend the following weekend at his estate, which was named after one of Huysmans’s books, I can’t remember which one now, maybe À Rebours or Là-bas, perhaps it was even called L’Oblat, my memory is failing me, I think it was called Là-bas, and that was the name of the wine as well, and after issuing this invitation Farewell fell silent although his blue eyes remained fixed on mine, and I was silent too and, unable to meet Farewell’s penetrating gaze, I modestly lowered my eyes, like a wounded fledgling, and imagined that estate where the critic’s path was indeed strewn with roses, where knowing how to read was valued, and where taste was more important than practical necessities and obligations, and then I looked up again and my seminarist’s eyes met Farewell’s falcon eyes and I said yes, several times, I said yes I would go, it would be an honor to spend the weekend at the estate of Chile’s greatest literary critic. And when the appointed day arrived, my soul was a welter of confusion and uncertainty, I didn’t know what clothes to wear, a cassock or layman’s clothes: if I opted for layman’s clothes, I didn’t know which to choose, and if I opted for the cassock, I was worried about making the wrong impression. Nor did I know what books to take for the train journey there and back, perhaps a History of Italy for the outward journey, perhaps Farewell’s Anthology of Chilean Poetry for the return journey. Or maybe the other way round. And I didn’t know which writers (Farewell always invited writers to his estate) I might meet at Là-bas, perhaps the poet Uribarrena, author of splendid sonnets on religious themes, perhaps Montoya Eyzaguirre, a fine and concise prose stylist, perhaps Baldomero Lizamendi Errázuriz, the celebrated and orotund historian. All three were friends of Farewell. But given the number of Farewell’s friends and enemies speculation was idle. When the appointed day arrived, my heart was heavy as I felt the train pull out of the station, but at the same time I was ready to swallow whatever bitter draughts God in his wisdom had prepared for me. I remember as clearly as if it were today (indeed more clearly still) the Chilean countryside and the Chilean cows with their black splotches (or white ones, depending) grazing beside the railway lines. From time to time the clickety-clack of the train set me dozing. I shut my eyes. I shut them as I am shutting them now. But then I opened them again suddenly, and there before me was the landscape: varied, rich, exultant and melancholy by turns. When the train arrived in Chillán, I took a taxi which dropped me in a village called Querquén, in what I suppose was the main square, although it was not much of a square and showed no signs of human presence. I paid the taxi driver, got out with my suitcase, surveyed my surroundings, and just as I was turning to ask the driver something or get back into the taxi and return forthwith to Chillán and then to Santiago, it sped off without warning, as if the somewhat ominous solitude of the place had unleashed atavistic fears in the driver’s mind. For a moment I too was afraid. I must have been a sorry sight standing there helplessly with my suitcase from the seminary, holding a copy of Farewell’s Anthology in one hand. Some birds flew out from behind a clump of trees. They seemed to be screaming the name of that forsaken village, Querquén, but they also seemed to be enquiring who: quién, quién, quién. I said a hasty prayer and headed for a wooden bench, there to recover a composure more in keeping with what I was, or what at the time I considered myself to be. Our Lady, do not abandon your servant, I murmured, while the black birds, about twenty-five centimeters in length, cried quién, quién, quién, Our Lady of Lourdes, do not abandon your poor priest, I murmured, while other birds, about ten centimeters long, brown in color, or brownish, rather, with white breasts, called out, but not as loudly, quién, quién, quién. Our Lady of Suffering, Our Lady of Insight, Our Lady of Poetry, do not leave your devoted subject at the mercy of the elements, I murmured, while several tiny birds, magenta, black, fuchsia, yellow and blue in color, wailed quién, quién, quién, at which point a cold wind sprang up suddenly, chilling me to the bone. Then, at the end of the dirt road, there appeared a sort of tilbury or cabriolet or carriage pulled by two horses, one cream, one piebald, and, as it drew near, its silhouette looming on the horizon cut a figure I can only describe as ruinous, as if that equipage were coming to take someone away to Hell. When it was only a few meters from me, the driver, a farmer wearing just a smock and a sleeveless vest in spite of the cold, asked me if I was Mr. Urrutia Lacroix. He mangled not only my second name, but the first as well. I said yes, I was the man he was looking for. Then, without a word, the farmer climbed down, put my suitcase in the back of the carriage and invited me to take a seat beside him. Suspicious, and numbed by the icy wind coming down off the slopes of the Cordillera, I asked him if he was from Mr. Farewell’s estate. No I’m not, said the farmer. You’re not from Là-bas? I asked through chattering teeth. Yes I am, but I don’t know any Mr. Farewell, replied the good soul. Then I understood what should have been obvious from the start. Farewell was the critic’s pseudonym. I tried to remember his real name. I knew that his first family name was González, but I could not remember the second, and for a few moments I was in two minds as to whether I should say I was a guest of Mr. González, plain Mr. González, or keep quiet. I decided to keep quiet. I leaned back against the seat and shut my eyes. The farmer asked if I was feeling ill. I heard his voice, faint as a whisper, snatched away immediately by the wind, and just then I remembered Farewell’s second family name: Lamarca. I am a guest of Mr. González Lamarca, I said, heaving a sigh of relief. He is expecting you, said the farmer. As we left Querquén and its birds behind I felt a sense of triumph. Farewell was waiting for me at Là-bas with a young poet whose name was unfamiliar to me. They were both in the living room, although the expression “living room” is woefully inadequate to describe that combination of library and hunting lodge, lined with shelves full of encyclopedias, dictionaries and souvenirs that Farewell had bought on his journeys through Europe and North Africa, as well as at least a dozen mounted heads, including those of a pair of pumas bagged by Farewell’s father, no less. They were talking about poetry, naturally, and although they broke off their conversation when I arrived, as soon as I had been shown to my room on the second floor, they took it up again. I remember that although I wanted to participate, as indeed they kindly invited me to do, I chose to remain silent. As well as being interested in criticism, I also wrote poetry and my intuition told me that to immerse myself in the lively and effervescent conversation Farewell was having with the young poet would be like putting to sea in stormy waters. I remember we drank cognac and at one point, while I was looking over the hefty tomes of Farewell’s library, I felt deeply disconsolate. Every now and then, Farewell burst into excessively sonorous laughter. At each of these guffaws, I looked at him out of the corner of my eye. He looked like the god Pan, or Bacchus in his den, or some demented Spanish conquistador ensconced in a southern fort. The young bard’s laugh, by contrast, was slender as wire, nervous wire, and always followed Farewell’s guffaw, like a dragonfly following a snake. At some point Farewell announced that he was expecting other guests for dinner that night. I turned my head and pricked up my ears, but our host was giving nothing away. Later I went out for a stroll in the gardens of the estate. I must have lost my way. I felt cold. Beyond the gardens lay the country, wilderness, the shadows of the trees that seemed to be calling me. It was unbearably damp. I came across a cabin or maybe it was a shed with a light shining in one of its windows. I went up to it. I heard a man laughing and a woman protesting. The door of the cabin was ajar. I heard a dog barking. I knocked and went in without waiting for a reply. There were three men sitting around a table, three of Farewell’s farmhands, and, beside a wood stove, two women, one old, the other young, who, as soon as they saw me, came and took my hands in theirs. Their hands were rough. How good of you to come, Father, said the older woman, kneeling before me and pressing my hand to her lips. I was afraid and disgusted, but I let her do it. The men had risen from their seats. Sit yourself down, son, I mean Father, said one of them. Only then did I realize with a shudder that I was still wearing the cassock I had traveled in. I could have sworn I had changed when I went up to the room Farewell had set aside for me. Yet although I had intended to change, I had not in fact done so, going back down to join Farewell in the hunting lodge dressed as before. And there in the farmers’ shed I realized there would be no time to change before dinner. And I thought Farewell would form a false impression of me. And I thought the young poet he had in tow would also get the wrong idea. And finally I thought of the surprise guests, who were no doubt important people, and I saw myself wearing a cassock covered with dust from the road and soot from the train and pollen from the paths that lead to Là-bas, sitting cowed in a corner, away from the table, eating my dinner and not daring to look up. And then I heard one of the farmhands inviting me to take a seat. And like a sleepwalker I sat down. And I heard one of the women saying Father, won’t you try some of this or that. And someone was talking to me about a sick child, but with such poor diction I couldn’t tell if the child was sick or dead already. What did they need me for? If the child was dying, they should have called a doctor. If the child had already been dead for some time, they should have been saying novenas. They should have been tending his grave. Getting rid of some of that couch grass that was growing everywhere. They should have been remembering him in their prayers. I couldn’t be everywhere at once, for God’s sake. I simply couldn’t. Is he baptized? I heard myself ask. Yes, Father. Good, all’s in order then. Would you like a piece of bread, Father? I’ll try it, I said. They put a chunk of bread in front of me. Hard bread, peasants’ bread, baked in a clay oven. I lifted a slice to my lips. And then I thought I saw the wizened youth standing in the doorway. But it was just nerves. This was at the end of the fifties and he would only have been five years old, or six maybe, a stranger still to terror, abuse and persecution. Do you like the bread, Father? said one of the farmers. I moistened it with saliva. It’s good, I said, very tasty, very flavorsome, a treat for the palate, veritable ambrosia, pride of our agriculture, hearty staple of our hardworking farm-folk, mmm, nice. And to tell the truth, the bread was not bad at all, and I needed to eat, I needed to put something into my stomach, so I thanked the farmers for their generosity, stood up, made the sign of the cross in the air, said God bless this house, and cleared out. Outside I heard the dog barking again and a rustle of branches, as if an animal hidden in the undergrowth were watching me make my uncertain way back towards Farewell’s house, which I saw soon enough, lit up like an ocean liner in the southern night. When I arrived, the meal had not yet begun. Taking my courage in both hands, I resolved not to change out of my cassock. I killed some time in the hunting lodge leafing through various early editions. On one wall the shelves were stacked with the finest and most distinguished works of Chilean poetry and narrative, each book inscribed to Farewell by the author with an ingenious, courteous, affectionate or conspiratorial phrase. It occurred to me that my host was, without doubt, the estuary in which all of our land’s literary craft, from dinghies to freighters, from odoriferous fishing boats to extravagant battleships, had, for brief or extensive periods, taken shelter. It was no accident that his house had appeared to me shortly before in the guise of an ocean liner! But in fact, I reflected, Farewell’s house was a port. Then I heard a faint sound, as if someone were crawling over the terrace. My curiosity piqued, I opened the French doors and went out. The air was even colder than before, and there was no one on the terrace, but in the garden I could make out an oblong-shaped shadow like a coffin, heading towards a sort of pergola, a Greek folly built to Farewell’s orders, next to a strange equestrian statue, about forty centimeters high, made of bronze, and perched on a porphyry pedestal in such a way that it seemed to be eternally emerging from the pergola. The moon stood out clearly against a cloudless sky. My cassock fluttered in the wind. Boldly I advanced towards the place where the shadowy figure had hidden. There he was, next to Farewell’s equestrian fantasy. His back was turned. He was wearing a velvet jacket and a scarf and a narrow-brimmed hat tipped back on his head, and he was softly intoning words that can only have been meant for the moon. I froze in a posture like that of the statue, with my left foot off the ground. It was Neruda. I don’t know what happened next. There was Neruda and there a few meters behind him was I, and, between us, the night, the moon, the equestrian statue, Chilean plants, Chilean wood, the obscure dignity of our land. I bet the wizened youth has no stories like this to tell. He didn’t meet Neruda. He hasn’t met any of our Republic’s major writers in a setting as elemental as the one I have just described. What does it matter what happened before and after? There was Neruda reciting verses to the moon, addressing the minerals of the earth, and the stars, whose nature we can only know by intuition. There I was, shivering with cold in my cassock, which suddenly felt several sizes too big, like a cathedral in which I was living naked and open-eyed. There was Neruda murmuring words I could not quite understand, but whose essential nature spoke to me deeply from the very first moment. And there was I, tears in my eyes, a poor clergyman lost in the immensity of our land, thirstily drinking in the words of our most sublime poet. And I ask myself now, propped up on my elbow: Has the wizened youth ever had an experience like that? I ask myself seriously: Has he ever in all his days experienced anything like that? I have read his books. In secret and wearing gloves, but I’ve read them. And there is nothing in them to match that scene. There’s aimless wandering, street fights, horrible deaths down back alleys, the obligatory doses of sex, obscenity and indecency, dusk in Japan, not in Chile of course, hell and chaos, hell and chaos, hell and chaos. Oh my poor memory. My poor reputation. Now for the dinner. I cannot remember it. Neruda and his wife. Farewell and the young poet. Myself. Questions. Why was I wearing a cassock? A smile from me. Fresh-faced. I didn’t have time to change. Neruda recites a poem. He and Farewell recall a particularly knotty line from Góngora. Naturally the young poet turns out to be a Nerudian. Neruda recites another poem. The meal is exquisite. Chilean tomato salad, game birds with béarnaise sauce, baked conger eel brought in specially from the coast on Farewell’s orders. Wine from the estate. Compliments. After dinner the talk going on into the small hours, Farewell and Neruda’s wife playing records on a green gramophone that caught the poet’s fancy. Tangos. An awful voice reeling off awful stories. Suddenly, perhaps as a result of having consumed liberal quantities of liquor, I felt sick. I remember I went out on to the terrace and looked for the moon, in which our poet had confided earlier that evening. I steadied myself against an enormous pot of geraniums and fought back the nausea. I heard paces behind me. I turned around. There was Farewell’s Homeric silhouette, facing me, hands on hips. He asked if I felt ill. I said no, it was just a little dizzy spell, the fresh country air would soon set me right. Although he was standing in the shadows, I knew that Farewell had smiled. Faintly, the sound of tango chords and the melodic complaints of a honey-smooth voice. Farewell asked what impression Neruda had made on me. What can I say, I replied, he’s the greatest. For a few moments we stood there in silence. Then Farewell took two steps forward and his face appeared before me, the face of an aging Greek god kept awake by the moon. I blushed intensely. Farewell’s hand came to rest for a moment on my belt. He spoke to me of night in the work of the Italian poets, night in Jacopone da Todi. Night in the work of the Penitents. Have you read them? I stammered. I said that at the seminary I had read a little of Giacomino da Verona and Pietro da Bescapé, Bonvesin de la Riva as well. Then Farewell’s hand squirmed like an earthworm cut in two by a mattock and detached itself from my belt, but the smile remained upon his face. What about Sordello? he said. Which Sordello? The troubadour, said Farewell, Sordel also known as Sordello. No, I said. Look at the moon, said Farewell. I took a quick look at it. Not like that, said Farewell. Turn around and look properly. I turned around. I could hear Farewell murmuring behind me: Sordello, which Sordello? The one who drank with Ricardo de San Bonifacio in Verona and with Ezzelino da Romano in Treviso, which Sordello? (and at this point Farewell’s hand gripped my belt once again!), the one who rode with Raymond Berenger and Charles I of Anjou, Sordello, who was not afraid, who was not afraid, who was not afraid. And I remember thinking then that I was afraid, and yet I chose to go on looking at the moon. The cause of my trepidation was not Farewell’s hand resting on my hip. It was not his hand, it was not the moonlit night or the moon, swifter than the wind sweeping down off the mountains, it was not the sound of the gramophone serving up one awful tango after another, it was not the voice of Neruda or his wife or his devoted disciple, but something else, so what in the name of Our Lady of Carmen was it, I asked myself as I stood there. Sordello, which Sordello? repeated Farewell’s voice sarcastically behind me, Dante’s Sordello, Pound’s Sordello, the Sordello of the Ensenhamens d’onor, the Sordello of the planh on the death of Blacatz, and then Farewell’s hand moved down from my hip towards my buttocks and a flurry of Provençal rogues blustered on to the terrace, making my black cassock flutter, and I thought: The second woe is past, and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly. And I thought: I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea. And I thought: And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me. And I thought: For her sins hath reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. And only then did I hear the voice of Neruda, who was behind Farewell just as Farewell was behind me. And our poet asked Farewell who this Sordello was we were talking about, and who was this Blacatz, and Farewell turned to face Neruda, and I turned around too but all I could see was Farewell’s back burdened with the weight of two, or perhaps three, libraries, and then I heard his voice saying Sordello, which Sordello? and Neruda’s voice saying, That’s precisely what I want to find out, and Farewell’s voice saying, Don’t you know, Pablo? and Neruda’s voice saying, Why do you think I’m asking, dickhead? and Farewell laughing and looking at me, a look of brazen complicity, as if to say to me, Be a poet by all means if that’s what you want to do, but you must write criticism, and for goodness’ sake read widely and deeply, widely and deeply, and Neruda’s voice saying, Well are you going to tell me or not? and Farewell’s voice quoting a few lines from The Divine Comedy, and Neruda’s voice reciting other lines from The Divine Comedy that had nothing to do with Sordello, and what of Blacatz, an invitation to cannibalism, Blacatz’s heart of which we all should eat, and then Neruda and Farewell hugged one another and recited some lines by Rubén Darío, while the young Nerudian and I declared that Neruda was our finest poet and Farewell our finest literary critic and pair after pair of toasts were proposed. Sordello, which Sordello? Sordel, Sordello, which Sordello? Light and refreshing, swift and inquisitive, this little refrain followed me wherever I went, throughout the weekend. The first night at Là-bas I slept like a cherub. The second night I stayed up late reading a History of Italian Literature in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries. On Sunday morning a car arrived with more guests. Neruda, Farewell and even the young Nerudian knew them all, but they were strangers to me, so while the others were busy greeting them effusively, I slipped away with a book into a wood that flanked the lodge on the left-hand side. Near the far side of the wood, but within it still, was a sort of hillock from which one could survey Farewell’s vineyards and his fallow land and his fields of wheat and barley. On a path winding through the fields I could make out two farmers wearing straw hats, who disappeared into some willows. Beyond the willows stood very tall trees that seemed to be drilling into the majestic, cloudless sky. And further off still rose the great mountains. I said the Lord’s Prayer. I shut my eyes. What more could I have wanted? Well, perhaps the murmur of a stream. The pure song of water on stones. As I walked back through the wood “Sordel, Sordello, which Sordello?” was still ringing in my ears, but something within the wood itself darkened the mood of that sprightly refrain. I came out on the wrong side. Before me lay not the lodge but some rather godforsaken-looking orchards. I was not surprised to hear dogs barking, although I could not see them, and as I walked through the orchards, where, under the protective shade of avocado trees, there grew an assortment of fruits and vegetables worthy of Archimboldo, I saw a boy and a girl, who, naked like Adam and Eve, were tilling the same furrow. The boy looked at me: a string of snot hung from his nose down to his chest. I quickly averted my gaze but could not stem an overwhelming nausea. I felt myself falling into the void, an intestinal void, made of stomachs and entrails. When at last I managed to control the retching, the boy and the girl had disappeared. Then I came to a sort of chicken coop. Although the sun was still high in the sky, I saw all the chickens sleeping on their dirty roosts. I heard the dogs barking again and what sounded like a body of considerable size crashing through the branches. It must have been the wind, I thought. Further on, I came to a stable and a pigsty. I went around them. On the far side stood a great araucaria tree. What was such a majestic, beautiful tree doing in that place? It has been set here by the grace of God, I said to myself. I leaned against the araucaria and took a deep breath. And there I stayed a while, until I heard some voices far in the distance. I set off again, sure that the voices were those of Farewell, Neruda and their friends come to look for me. I crossed a ditch where a sluggish stream of muddy water flowed. I saw thistles and all sorts of weeds, and I saw stones disposed in an apparently haphazard fashion, which was nevertheless the result of a human design. Who placed those stones in such a way? I asked myself. I imagined a child wearing a striped woollen sweater, several sizes too big, thoughtfully making his way through the immense solitude that precedes nightfall in the country. I imagined a rat. I imagined a wild boar. I imagined a vulture lying dead in a gully where no human being had ever set foot. Nothing came to sully that sure sense of absolute solitude. Beyond the canal I saw freshly washed clothes hanging from lengths of twine strung from tree to tree, billowing in the wind and giving off an odor of cheap soap. I pushed my way through the sheets and shirts, and there before me, thirty meters away, I saw two women and three men standing bolt upright in an imperfect semicircle, with their hands covering their faces. Just standing there like that. It was hard to believe, but there they were. Covering their faces! And although they did not remain for long in that position, three of them soon started walking towards me, the vision (and everything it conjured up), in spite of its brevity, completely upset my mental and physical equilibrium, that blessed equilibrium granted to me minutes before by the contemplation of nature. I remember I stepped back. I got tangled up in a sheet. I flailed around with my hands and would have fallen backwards had it not been for one of the farmers, who grasped my wrist. I ventured a puzzled, grateful grimace. That is what my memory has retained. My timid half-smile, my timid teeth, my voice breaking the silence of the countryside, saying thank you. The two women asked if I was all right. How do you feel, son, I mean Father? they asked. I was astonished that they had recognized me, because these were not the two peasant women I had seen on the first day, and I had seen no others since. Nor was I wearing my cassock. But news travels quickly, and these women, who did not work at Là-bas but on a neighboring estate, knew of my presence, and it is even possible that they had come to Farewell’s property in the hope of hearing mass, something that Farewell could have organized without great difficulty, since the estate had a chapel, but of course the idea had not crossed Farewell’s mind, largely because the guest of honor happened to be Neruda, who prided himself on being an atheist (although I suspect he was not), and because the pretext for the weekend gathering was literary rather than religious, and on that point I was in complete agreement. Nevertheless the women had come on foot through paddocks, along rough paths, around ploughed fields, just to see me. And there I was. And they looked at me and I looked at them. And what did I see? Rings under their eyes. Parted lips. Shiny skin stretched over cheekbones. A patience that I feared was not Christian resignation. A patience native to some faraway place, or so it seemed. Not a Chilean patience, although those women were Chileans. A patience that had not evolved in our land or anywhere in America, and was not even European, Asian or African (although I know practically nothing about the cultures of the latter continents). A patience that seemed to have come from outer space. And that patience almost wore my own patience out. And their words and their murmuring spread out through the surrounding countryside, among the trees swaying in the wind, among the weeds swaying in the wind, among the fruits of the earth swaying in the wind. And with each passing moment I felt more impatient, since I was expected back at the lodge, and perhaps someone, Farewell or someone else, was wondering why I had been away so long. And the women just smiled, looked severe or feigned surprise, mystery giving way to illumination on their initially blank faces, their expressions tense with mute questions or opening in wordless exclamations, while the two men who had remained behind started to move away, not walking in a straight line, not setting off towards the mountains, but zigzagging, talking to one another, now and then pointing out imperceptible features of the landscape, as if they too were prompted by nature to observe particularities worthy of commentary. And the man who had come forward to meet me with the women, the one whose claw had fastened on to my wrist and held me up, stood still about four meters away from the women and myself, but turned his head and followed the other two men with his eyes as they walked away, as if what they were doing or seeing was suddenly a source of fascination for him, sharpening his gaze so as not to miss the slightest detail. I remember scrutinizing his face. I remember drinking his face down to the last drop trying to elucidate the character, the psychology of such an individual. And yet the only thing about him that has remained in my memory is his ugliness. He was ugly and his neck was extremely short. In fact they were all ugly. The women were ugly and their words were incoherent. The silent man was ugly and his stillness was incoherent. The men who were walking away were ugly and their zigzag paths were incoherent. God have mercy on me and on them. Lost souls in the desert. I turned my back on them and walked away. I smiled at them, said something, asked them the way to the lodge at Là-bas and walked away. One of the women wanted to come with me. I refused. The woman insisted, I will escort you there, Father, she said, and the verb “to escort” sounded so incongruous in her mouth, it sent a wave of hilarity all through my body. You will escort me, will you? I asked. That I will, Father, she said. Or something like that, something a wind from the end of the fifties is still blowing around the innumerable nooks and crannies of a memory that is not mine. In any case I shuddered and shook with suppressed laughter. That won’t be necessary, I said. You have been too kind already, I said. That will be all for today, I said. And I turned my back on them and walked away at a decidedly brisk pace, swinging my arms and wearing a smile that relaxed into unbridled laughter as soon as I passed through the barrier of washing, my walk at that point becoming a trot with a vaguely military rhythm to it.


Copyright © 2000 by Roberto Bolaño and Editorial Anagrama

Copyright © 2003 by Chris Andrews

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