"The Savage Detectives" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bolaño Roberto)8Amadeo Salvatierra, Calle República de Venezuela, near the Palacio de la Inquisición, Mexico City DF, January 1976. I said to them: boys, the Los Suicidas mezcal is gone, that's an undeniable, incontrovertible fact, so why doesn't one of you go down and buy me a bottle of Sauza? and one of them, the Mexican, said: I'll go, Amadeo, and he was already on his way to the door when I stopped him and said wait a minute, you're forgetting the money, my friend, and he looked at me and said don't even think about it, Amadeo, we'll get this one. Such nice boys. I did give him some instructions before he left, though: I told him to head down Venezuela to Brasil, then turn right and walk up to Calle Honduras, to the Plaza de Santa Catarina, and turn left, then walk until he came to Chile and then turn right again and keep on as if he were going to La Lagunilla market, and there, on the left side of the street, he would find the bar La Guerrerense, next to the hardware store El Buen Tono, you couldn't miss it, and at La Guerrerense he should say that I, the scribe Amadeo Salvatierra, had sent him, and he should hurry. Then, as I was going through some papers, the other boy got up from his seat and started to examine my library. In fact, I didn't see him, I just heard him, stepping forward, pulling out a book, putting it back. I heard the noise his finger made as he ran it along the spines of my books! But I couldn't see him. I was sitting down again, I had put my money back in my wallet, and with shaky hands (once you reach a certain age drinking isn't what it used to be), I was going through my old, yellowing papers. My head was bent and my vision was blurred and the Chilean boy moved silently around my library and all I heard was the sound of his index finger or his little finger, such a need that boy had to touch everything, skimming like lightning along the spines of my massive tomes, his finger a buzz of flesh and leather, of skin and pasteboard, a sound pleasing to the ear and sleep inducing, and I must really have fallen asleep because suddenly I closed my eyes (or maybe they'd been closed for a while) and I saw the Plaza de Santo Domingo with its archways, Calle Venezuela, the Palacio de la Inquisición, the Cantina Las Dos Estrellas on Calle Loreto, the Cafetería La Sevillana on Justo Sierra, the Cantina Mi Oficina on Misionero near Pino Suárez, where men in uniform and dogs and women weren't allowed in, with the exception of one woman, the only woman who ever went there, and I saw that woman walking those streets again, down Loreto, down Soledad, down Correo Mayor, down Moneda, I saw her hurry across the Zócalo, ah, what a sight, a woman in her twenties in the 1920s crossing the Zócalo as fast as if she were late to meet a lover or on her way to some little job in one of the stores downtown, a woman modestly dressed in cheap but pretty clothes, her hair jet-black, her back straight, her legs not very long but unutterably graceful like all young women's legs, whether they be skinny, fat, or shapely-sweet, determined little legs, and feet clad in shoes with no heel or the lowest possible heel, cheap but pretty and most of all comfortable, as if they were made for walking fast, for meeting someone or getting to work, although I know she isn't meeting anyone, nor is she expected at any job. So where is she going? Or is she going nowhere at all, and is this the way she always walks? By now the woman has crossed the Zócalo and she's walking along Monte Piedad to Tacuba, where the crowds are thicker and she can't walk as fast anymore, and she turns down Tacuba, slowing, and for an instant the throngs hide her from sight, but then she appears again, there she is, walking toward the Alameda, or maybe she's stopping somewhere nearer by, maybe she's headed to the post office, because now I can clearly see papers in her hands, they could be letters, but she doesn't go into the post office, she crosses the street to the Alameda and stops, as if she's trying to catch her breath, and then she keeps walking, at the same pace, through the gardens, under the trees, and just as there are women who see the future, I see the past, Mexico's past, and I see the back of this woman walking out of my dream, and I say to her: where are you going, Cesárea? where are you going, Cesárea Tinajero? Felipe Müller, Bar Céntrico, Calle Tallers, Barcelona, January 1978. For me, 1977 was the year I moved in with my girlfriend. We had both just turned twenty. We found an apartment on Calle Tallers and went to live there. I was doing proofreading for a publishing house and she had a scholarship at the same school where Arturo Belano's mother was on scholarship. In fact, it was Arturo's mother who introduced us. Nineteen seventy-seven was also the year we traveled to Paris. We stayed in Ulises Lima's Mary Watson, Sutherland Place, London, May 1978. In the summer of 1977 I traveled to France with my friend Hugh Marks. At the time I was reading literature at Oxford and I was living on a tiny scholarship. Hugh was on the dole. We weren't lovers, just friends. The truth is, we left London together that summer because we'd each been through a bad relationship, and we knew nothing like that could ever happen between us. Hugh had been dumped by a horrible Scottish girl. I had been dumped by a boy from university, someone who was always surrounded by girls and whom I thought I was in love with. Our money ran out in Paris, but we weren't ready to go home, so we made our way out of the city somehow and hitched south. Near Orléans we were picked up by a camper van. The driver was German and his name was Hans. He was heading south too, with his wife, a Frenchwoman called Monique, and their little boy. Hans had long hair and a bushy beard. He looked like a blond Rasputin, and he'd been all the way around the world. A little while later we picked up Steve, from Leicester, who worked in a nursery school, and a few miles on we picked up John, from London, who was out of work, like Hugh. It was a big van and there was plenty of room for all of us. Besides-I noticed this immediately-Hans liked to have company, people he could talk to and tell his stories to. Monique didn't seem quite as comfortable having so many strangers around, but she did what Hans told her to do and anyway she was busy taking care of the boy. Just before we got to Carcassonne, Hans told us that he had business in a town in the Roussillon, and that if we wanted he could find good work for all of us. Hugh and I thought this was fantastic and we said yes straightaway. Steve and John asked what kind of work it was. Hans said we'd be picking grapes on land that belonged to one of Monique's uncles. And when we had finished picking her uncle's grapes we could go on our way with plenty of money, since while we were working our food and lodging would be free. When Hans finished we all agreed that it sounded like a good deal and we turned off the main road and made our way through one tiny village after another, all surrounded by vineyards, down rough tracks, a place like a labyrinth, I said to Hugh, a place (and this I didn't say) that in other circumstances would have frightened or repelled me. If, for example, I'd been alone instead of with Hugh, and Steve and John too. But I wasn't alone, luckily. I was with friends. Hugh is like a brother. And Steve and I hit it off right away too. John and Hans were another story. John was a kind of zombie and I didn't like him much. Hans was pure brute force, a megalomaniac, but you could count on him, or that's what I thought at the time. When we got to Monique's uncle's it turned out there wouldn't be any work for a month yet. It must have been midnight when Hans gathered us all inside the van and explained the situation. The news wasn't good, he said, but he had an emergency solution. Let's not split up, he said, let's go to Spain and pick oranges. And if that falls through, we'll wait, but in Spain, where everything's cheaper. We told him we had no money and hardly anything left to eat. There was no way we could last for a month. At most, we had enough for three more days. Then Hans told us not to worry about money. He said he would cover our expenses until we were working. In exchange for what? said John, but Hans didn't answer. Sometimes he pretended that he didn't speak English. To the rest of us it really seemed like something heaven-sent. We told him we liked the idea. It was early August, and none of us wanted to go back to England just yet. That night we slept in an empty house that belonged to Monique's uncle (there were at most thirty houses in the town, according to Hans, and half of them were the uncle's), and the next morning we headed south. Before we reached Perpignan we picked up another hitchhiker, a slightly chubby blond girl from Paris called Erica, and after a few minutes' discussion she decided to join our group. That is, come along to Valencia, work for a month picking oranges, then head back up to the Roussillon village in the middle of nowhere and work in the grape harvest with us. Like us, she didn't have much money, so the German would have to pay her keep too. Once Erica joined us, there was no more space in the van, and Hans told us he wouldn't stop for any more hitchhikers. All day we drove south. Our group was cheerful but after so many hours on the road the main thing we wanted was a bath and a hot meal and nine or ten hours of solid sleep. The only one still going strong was Hans, who never stopped talking and telling stories about things that had happened to him or people he knew. The worst place in the van was the front passenger seat, meaning the seat next to Hans, and we all took turns there. When it was my turn we talked about Berlin, where I had lived the year I was nineteen. In fact, I was the only passenger who spoke some German, and Hans took the chance to speak his native language. We didn't talk about German literature, though, which is a subject I find fascinating, but politics, which always ends up boring me. When we crossed the border Steve took my place and I took one of the back seats, where little Udo was sleeping, and from there I went on listening to Hans's endless talk, his plans to change the world. I think I've never met a stranger who was so generous to me and yet whom I disliked so much. Hans was maddening, and an awful driver too. We got lost a few times, and spent hours driving all over some mountain, not knowing how to get back to the road that would take us to Barcelona. When we finally got there, Hans insisted that we go and see the Sagrada Familia. It was late, and we were all hungry and not in the mood to gaze at cathedrals, beautiful as they might be, but Hans was in charge and after driving in countless circles around the city we got there at last. We all thought it was pretty (except for John, who didn't have much appreciation for any kind of art), although we would certainly rather have stopped at a good restaurant and had something to eat. But Hans said the safest thing to eat in Spain was fruit, and he left us there, sitting on a bench in the plaza looking at the Sagrada Familia, and went off with Monique and their little boy in search of a fruit stall. When he hadn't returned after half an hour, as we watched the pink Barcelona sunset, Hugh said that he was probably lost. Erica said that the chances were just as good that he'd abandoned us. In front of a church, she added, like orphans. John, who didn't say much and when he did usually came out with something stupid, said that it was perfectly possible that at that very moment Hans and Monique were eating a hot meal in a good restaurant. Steve and I didn't say anything, but considering all the possibilities, I think it was John's theory that struck us as closest to the truth. Around nine, when we were beginning to despair, we saw the van appear. Hans and Monique handed us each an apple, a banana, and an orange, and then he told us that he'd been parleying with the natives and in his opinion it was best that we postpone for the moment the trip to Valencia we had planned. If I'm remembering right, he said, there are some fairly reasonable campsites outside of Barcelona. For a modest daily sum we can rest for a few days, swim, sunbathe. It goes without saying that we all agreed, and we begged to go there straightaway. Monique, I remember, never said a word. It still took us three hours to work out how to get out of the city. During that time Hans told us that when he was doing his military service, at a base near Lüneburg, he got lost at the controls of a tank and his superiors almost court-martialed him. Driving a tank, he said, is a lot more complicated than driving a van, I can tell you that, kids. At last we made it out of the city and onto a four-lane highway. The campsites are grouped together in the same area, said Hans, tell me when you see them. The road was dark and all we could see to either side of it were factories and undeveloped land, and, farther back, some very tall, dimly lit buildings, seemingly set there at random and looking as if they were falling into premature ruin. A little later, however, we were in the woods and we spotted the first campsite. But nothing was quite to Hans's liking, and since he was the one paying, we drove on through the woods until we saw a sign with a solitary blue star jutting out from amid some pine branches. I don't remember what time it was. The only thing I know is that it was late, and that all of us, including little Udo, were awake when Hans braked in front of the bar blocking the road. Then we saw somebody, or somebody's shadow, lifting the bar, and Hans got out of the van and went into the campsite office, followed by the man who had let us in. A little while later he came out again and leaned in the driver's window. The news he had to report was that the campsite didn't have tents to rent. We made some rapid calculations. Erica, Steve, and John didn't have a tent. Hugh and I both did. We decided that Erica and I would sleep in one tent and Steve, John, and Hugh would sleep in the other. Hans, Monique, and the boy would sleep in the van. Then Hans went back into the office, signed some papers, and got behind the wheel. The man who had let us in got on a very small bicycle and led us down ghostly streets, flanked by old caravans, to a corner of the campsite. We were so tired that we all went to sleep immediately, not even showering first. The next day we spent on the beach, and that night, after dinner, we went for a drink on the terrace of the campsite bar. When I got there, Hugh and Steve were talking to the watchman we'd seen the night before. I sat next to Monique and Erica and surveyed our surroundings. The bar, faithful reflection of the campsite, was almost empty. Three enormous pines grew out of the cement and in some places the roots had lifted the floor as if it were a rug. For an instant I wondered what I was really doing there. Nothing seemed to make sense. At some point that night Steve and the night watchman started to read poems. Where had Steve found them? Later, some Germans joined us (they bought us a round of drinks) and one did a perfect imitation of Donald Duck. Toward the end of the night, I remember seeing Hans arguing with the watchman. He was speaking in Spanish and seemed increasingly upset. I watched them for a while. At one moment I thought he was going to start crying. The night watchman seemed calm, though, or at least he wasn't waving his arms or making wild gestures. As I was swimming the next day, still not recovered from drinking the night before, I saw him again. He was the only person on the beach, and he was sitting on the sand, fully dressed, reading the paper. As I came out of the water, I waved. He looked up and waved back. He was very pale and his hair was a mess, as if he had just woken up. That night, since we had nothing else to do, we got together at the bar again. John went to choose songs on the jukebox. Erica and Steve sat by themselves at a table some distance away. The Germans from the night before had left and we were the only ones on the terrace. Later the night watchman came. At four in the morning only Hugh, the watchman, and I were left. Then Hugh left and the night watchman and I went off to have sex. The cabin where he spent the night was so small that anyone who wasn't a child or a dwarf couldn't lie down full-length inside it. We tried to make love on our knees, but it was too uncomfortable. Later we tried to do it sitting in a chair. Finally we ended up laughing, not having fucked. When the sun came up he walked me to my tent and then he left. I asked him where he lived. In Barcelona, he said. We have to go to Barcelona together, I said. The next day the night watchman got to the campsite very early, long before his shift began, and we spent some time at the beach together and then we went walking to Castelldefels. That night we all got together on the terrace again, although the bar closed early, probably before ten. We looked like refugees. Hans had gone in the van to buy bread and then Monique made salami sandwiches for everyone. Before the bar closed, we bought beer. Hans gathered us around his table and said that we would move on to Valencia in a few days. I'm doing what I can for the group, he said. This campsite is dying, he added, staring at the night watchman. That night there was no jukebox, so Hans and Monique brought out a cassette player and for a while we listened to their favorite music. Then Hans and the night watchman got into an argument again. They were speaking in Spanish, but every so often Hans would translate what he was saying into German for me, adding remarks about the way the night watchman saw things. The conversation struck me as boring and I left them alone. While I was dancing with Hugh, though, I turned to look at them, and Hans was on the verge of tears again, as he had been the night before. What do you think they're talking about? asked Hugh. Stupid things, probably, I said. Those two hate each other, Hugh said. They hardly know each other, I said, but later I thought about what he had said and I decided that he was right. The next morning, before nine, the night watchman came to get me in my tent and we took the train from Castelldefels to Sitges. We spent the whole day in the town. As we were eating cheese sandwiches on the beach, I told him that the year before I'd written a letter to Graham Greene. He seemed surprised. Why Graham Greene? he said. I like Graham Greene, I said. I would never have thought so, he said, I still have a lot to learn. Don't you like Graham Greene? I said. I haven't read much by him, he said. What did you say to him in your letter? I told him things about my life and Oxford, I said. I haven't read many novels, he said, but I have read lots of poetry. Then he asked me whether Graham Greene had answered my letter. Yes, I said, he wrote me a very short but nice reply. A novelist from the country I'm from lives here in Sitges and I visited him once, he said. Which novelist? I asked, although I might as well have saved myself the trouble because I've read hardly any Latin American novelists. The night watchman said a name I've forgotten and then said that his novelist, like Graham Greene, had been very nice to him. So why did you go to see him? I asked. I don't know, he said, I didn't have anything to say to him and in fact I hardly opened my mouth once. You didn't say anything the whole time you were there? I didn't go alone, he said, I went with a friend, and he talked. But didn't you say anything to your novelist? Didn't you ask him any questions? No, said the night watchman, he seemed depressed and a little bit sick and I didn't want to bother him. I can't believe you didn't ask him anything, I said. He asked me something, the night watchman said, watching me curiously. What? I said. He asked me whether I had seen a film that was made in Mexico of one of his novels. And had you seen it? Actually, I had, he said, it so happened that I had seen it and liked it too. The problem was that I hadn't read the novel, and so I didn't know how faithful the film was to the text. And what did you say to him? I said. I didn't tell him I hadn't read it, he said. But you did tell him that you'd seen the movie, I said. What do you think? he said. Then I imagined him sitting opposite a novelist with Graham Greene's face and I thought he couldn't have said anything. You didn't tell him, I said. I did tell him, he said. Two days later we packed up and left for Valencia. When I said goodbye to the night watchman I thought it would be the last time I saw him. As we drove, when it was my turn to sit next to Hans and talk to him, I asked him what they had argued about. You didn't like him, I said. Why? Hans was silent for a while, which was rare for him, thinking how to answer me. Then he just said he didn't know. We were in Valencia for a week, going back and forth from one place to another, sleeping in the van and looking for work on the orange plantations, but we couldn't find anything. Little Udo got ill and we took him to the hospital. He only had a cold with a slight fever, aggravated by our living conditions. As a result, Monique's mood soured and for the first time I saw her get angry with Hans. One night we talked about leaving the van so that Hans and his family could continue on alone in peace, but Hans told us he couldn't let us go off on our own, and we realized he was right. The problem, as always, was money. When we got back to Castelldefels it was pouring with rain and the campsite was flooded. It was midnight. The night watchman recognized the van and came out to meet us. I was sitting in one of the back seats and I saw how he looked in, trying to find me, and then he asked Hans where Mary was. Next he said that if he let us put the tents up they would probably flood, so he led us to a kind of wood-and-brick cabin at the other end of the site, a cabin built in the most haphazard way, with at least eight rooms, and we spent the night there. To save money, Hans and Monique drove to the beach. The cabin had no electricity and the night watchman went looking for candles in a room that was used to store cleaning supplies. He couldn't find them and we had to use cigarette lighters to see. The next morning he turned up at the cabin with a man in his fifties with wavy white hair, who said hello and then started to talk to the night watchman. Afterward, he told us that he was the owner of the campsite and that he was going to let us stay free for a week. The van appeared that afternoon. Monique was driving, with Udo in one of the back seats. We told her that we were fine and they should come and stay with us, that it was free and there was plenty of room for everyone, but she told us that Hans had talked to her uncle in the south of France on the phone and the best thing would be for us all to go there right away. We asked her where Hans was, and she said he had business in Barcelona to take care of. We spent one more night at the campsite. The next morning Hans turned up and told us that everything was settled, we could stay at one of Monique's uncle's houses until the grape harvest started, doing nothing and getting a tan. Then he pulled Hugh, Steve, and me aside and said that he didn't want John in the group. He's a pervert, he said. To my surprise, Hugh and Steve agreed. I said I couldn't care less whether John stayed with us or not. But who was going to tell him? We'll do it all together, the proper way, said Hans. That was the last straw, as far as I was concerned, and I decided to have no part in it. Before they left I informed them that I was going to stay in Barcelona for a few days with the night watchman, and I would see them a week later, in the town. Hans made no objection but before he left he told me to be careful. He's bad news, he said. The night watchman? In what way? In every way, he said. The next morning I went to Barcelona. The night watchman lived in an enormous apartment on the Gran Vía with his mother and his mother's friend, a man twenty years younger than her. They only used the rooms at either end of the apartment. His mother and her lover lived at the back, in a room overlooking the courtyard, and he lived at the front, in a room with a balcony on the Gran Vía. In between there were at least six empty rooms, where the presence of the former inhabitants could be felt amid the dust and spiderwebs. John spent two nights in one of those rooms. The night watchman had asked me why John hadn't left with the others, and when I told him he looked thoughtful and the next morning he had brought John home with him. Then John took the train to England and the night watchman started to work only at weekends, which meant we had more time to spend together. Those were a nice few days. We got up late, had breakfast in a local bar, a cup of tea for me and coffee or coffee with a shot of brandy for him, and then we spent our time wandering around the city until we were tired and had to come home. Of course, there were difficulties, the main one being that I didn't like him to spend his money on me. One afternoon, when we were in a bookshop, I asked him what he wanted and bought it for him. It was the only present I gave him. He chose a collection by a Spanish poet named De Ory; that name I do remember. Ten days later I left Barcelona. He came to see me off at the station. I gave him my address in London and the address of the town in the Roussillon where we would be working, in case he felt like coming. Still, when we said goodbye I was almost sure I'd never see him again. Alone for the first time in a long while, I found the train journey extremely pleasant. I felt comfortable in my own skin. I had time to think about my life, my plans, what I wanted and didn't want. Almost instantly I realized that being alone was not something that would bother me anymore. From Perpignan I took a bus that dropped me off at a crossroads, and from there I walked to Planèzes, where my traveling companions were presumably waiting for me. I got there a little before sunset, and the sight of the rolling vineyards, an intense greenish brown, made me feel even more at peace, if possible. When I got to Planèzes, however, the looks on people's faces didn't bode well. That night Hugh brought me up to date on everything that had happened while I'd been away. For reasons unknown, Hans had fought with Erica and now they weren't speaking. For a few days Steve and Erica had talked about the possibility of leaving, but then Steve fought with Erica too, and their escape plans were shelved. To top it all off, little Udo had been ill again and Monique and Hans had almost come to blows over him. According to Hugh, she wanted to take him to a hospital in Perpignan, and he was against the idea, arguing that hospitals made more people ill than they cured. The next morning Monique's eyes were swollen from crying, or maybe from Hans hitting her. Little Udo, in any case, had recovered on his own or been cured by the herbal potions his father gave him to drink. As far as Hugh was concerned, he said that he was spending most of his time drunk, since there was lots of wine and it was free. During dinner that night, I didn't notice any alarming signs of tension, and the next day, as if everyone had only been waiting for me, the grape harvest began. Most of us worked cutting grapes. Hans and Hugh worked as porters. Monique drove the car that carried the grapes to a nearby village cooperative's presses. In addition to Hans's group, there were three Spaniards and two French girls with whom I soon became friends. The work was exhausting and possibly the only good thing about it was that after the working day no one felt like fighting. Still, there were plenty of sources of friction. One afternoon Hugh, Steve, and I told Hans that we needed at least two more workers. He agreed but said that it was impossible. When we asked why, he said it was because he had contracted with Monique's uncle to finish the harvest with eleven workers, and not a single person more. In the evenings, after our jobs were done, we usually went to the river to wash. The water was cold, but the river was deep enough to swim in and that was how we warmed up. Then we would soap ourselves, wash our hair, and go home for dinner. The three Spaniards were staying in another house and they led a separate life, except when we invited them to eat with us. The two French girls lived in the next village (where the cooperative was) and every night they rode home on their motorcycles. One was called Marie-Josette and the other was called Marie-France. One night, when we had all had too much to drink, Hans told us that he had lived in a Danish commune, the biggest and best organized commune in the world. I don't know how long he talked. Sometimes he got excited and banged the table, or stood up, and sitting there we watched him grow, stretching to exaggerated heights, like an ogre, an ogre to whom we were bound by his generosity and our lack of money. Another night, when everyone was asleep, I heard him talking to Monique. She and Hans had the room above mine and that night they must have left the window open. Whatever the case, I heard them. They were speaking in French, and Hans was saying that he couldn't help it, that was all, he couldn't help it, and Monique was saying yes, he could, he had to try. I couldn't hear the rest. One afternoon, when we were about to finish work, the night watchman turned up in Planèzes, and I was so happy to see him I told him that I loved him, and that he should be careful. I don't know why I said that, but seeing him walk down the main street, I had the sense that certain danger was looming over all of us. Surprisingly, he said that he loved me too and that he wanted to live with me. He seemed happy. Tired-he'd arrived after hitching around almost the whole That night, during dinner, we all got drunk. I was drunk too, but not as drunk as everyone else. I remember that Hugh was shouting Dionysius, Dionysius. I remember that Erica, who was sitting next to me at the long table, grabbed me by the chin and kissed me on the mouth. I was sure something bad was going to happen. I told the night watchman we should go to bed. He ignored me. He was talking, in his terrible English mixed with French, about a friend who had disappeared in the Roussillon. Nice way to look for your friend, said Hugh, drinking with strangers. You aren't strangers, the night watchman said. Then they all started to sing, Hugh, Erica, Steve, and the night watchman, a Rolling Stones song, I think. A little later the two Spaniards who worked with us turned up. I don't know who had gone to get them. And all this time I was thinking: something bad is going to happen, something bad is going to happen, but I didn't know what it would be or what I could do to prevent it, except drag the night watchman to my room and make love with him or convince him to go to sleep. Then Hans came out of his room (he and Monique had gone to bed early, soon after dinner) and asked us not to make so much noise. I remember this happened several times. Hans would open the door, look at us one by one, and tell us that it was late, that the noise was keeping him up, that we had to work the next day. And I remember that no one paid the slightest bit of attention. When he came out they would say yes, yes, Hans, we'll be quiet now, but when the door closed behind him they would immediately start shouting and laughing again. And then Hans opened the door, his nakedness covered only by a pair of white briefs, his long blond hair wild, and he said that the party was over, that we should get out that instant and go to our rooms. And the night watchman stood up and said: look, Hans, stop being an idiot, or something like that. I remember that Hugh and Steve laughed, whether at the look on Hans's face or at how awkward the sentence was in English. And Hans stopped for an instant, confused, and then roared: how dare you? that was all, and rushed at the night watchman. There was quite a distance between them, and we were all able to watch him in great detail, a seminaked colossus crossing the room at a near run, coming straight at my poor friend. But then something happened that no one expected. The watchman didn't move from where he was sitting, remaining calm as the mass of flesh hurtled across the room toward him, and when Hans was just a few inches away a knife appeared in his right hand (in his delicate right hand, so different from a grape cutter's hand) and the knife rose until it was just under Hans's beard, in fact just barely embedded in its outer fringes, which stopped Hans cold, and Hans said, what is this? What kind of joke is this? in German, and Erica screamed, and the door, the door that Monique and little Udo were behind, opened a crack and Monique's head appeared chastely, Monique herself possibly naked. And then the night watchman started to walk forward in the direction from which Hans had come barreling, and the knife, I could see clearly since I was only a few feet away, slid into Hans's beard, and Hans began to retreat, and although to me it seemed as if they crossed the whole room back to the door behind which Monique was hiding, they actually only took three steps, maybe two, and then they stopped and the night watchman lowered the knife, looked Hans in the eye, and turned his back on him. According to Hugh, that was the moment when Hans should have tackled him and overpowered him, but the truth is he stood still, not even noticing that Steve had come up to him and offered him a glass of wine, although he drank it like someone gulping air. And then the night watchman turned and insulted him. He called him a Nazi, saying what were you trying to do to me, Nazi? And Hans looked him in the eye and muttered something and balled his fists and then we all thought he would lunge at the night watchman, this time nothing would stop him, but he controlled himself, Monique said something, he turned and answered her, Hugh went over to the night watchman and dragged him to a chair, probably poured him more wine. The next thing I remember is that we all left the house and started to walk the streets of Planèzes in search of the moon. We were looking up at the sky: the moon was hidden by big black clouds. But the wind pushed the clouds eastward and the moon appeared (we screamed) and then disappeared again. At some point I thought we seemed like ghosts. I said to the night watchman: let's go home, I want to sleep, I'm tired, but he ignored me. He was talking about someone who had disappeared and he was laughing and making jokes that no one understood. When the last houses were behind us, I thought it was time to go back, that if I didn't go back I wouldn't be able to get up the next day. I went over to the night watchman and gave him a kiss. A good-night kiss. When I got back to the house all the lights were out and it was completely silent. I went over to a window and opened it. No one made a sound. Then I went up to my room, undressed, and got into bed. When I woke up, the night watchman was sleeping beside me. I said goodbye and went to work with everyone else. He didn't respond, lying there as if he were dead. A smell of vomit floated in the room. By the time we got back, at noon, he was gone. I found a note on my bed, in which he apologized for his behavior the night before and said that I should come to Barcelona whenever I wanted, that he would be there waiting for me. That morning Hugh told me what had happened the night before. According to him, after I left, the night watchman went crazy. They were close to the river and he kept saying someone was calling him, a voice on the other side of the river. And no matter how many times Hugh told him no one was there, that the only sound was the noise of the water, and even that was faint, he kept insisting there was someone down below, on the other side of the river, waiting for him. I thought he was joking, said Hugh, but when I wasn't paying attention he went running downhill, in the pitch darkness, toward what he thought was the river, plunging blindly through scrub and brambles. According to Hugh, by then only he and the two Spaniards we had invited to our party were left from the original group. And when he took off downhill all three went after him, but much more slowly, because it was very dark and the slope was so steep that stumbling would have meant a fall and broken bones, so he soon disappeared from sight. Hugh thought he intended to throw himself into the river. But the likeliest thing, he said, was that he would pitch headfirst onto a stone, plentiful as they were, or trip over a fallen branch, or end up tangled in a thornbush. When they reached the bottom they found him sitting in the grass, waiting for them. And here comes the strangest part, said Hugh, as I came up behind him he whirled around and in less than a second I was on the ground, he was on top of me and his hands were around my throat. According to him, it all happened so fast that he didn't even have time to be afraid, but the night watchman really was strangling him and the two Spaniards had gone off somewhere and couldn't see or hear him and anyway, with his hands around his neck (hands so unlike our hands at the time, which were all full of cuts), Hugh couldn't make a sound, wasn't even able to shout for help, was struck dumb. He could've killed me, said Hugh, but the night watchman suddenly realized what he was doing and let him go, saying he was sorry. Hugh could see his face (the moon had come out again) and he realized that it was, in his words, bathed in tears. And here comes the strangest part of his story: when the night watchman let him go and said he was sorry, Hugh started to cry too, because, according to him, he suddenly remembered the girl who had left him, the Scottish girl; he suddenly realized that no one was waiting for him in England (except for his parents); he suddenly understood something he wasn't able to explain to me, or could only explain poorly. Then the Spaniards turned up, smoking a joint, and they asked Hugh and the night watchman why they were crying, and they both started to laugh, and the Spaniards, such decent, normal people, said Hugh, understood everything without having to be told and passed them the joint and then the four of them headed back together. And how do you feel now? I asked him. I feel fine, he said, ready for the harvest to be over and to go home. And what do you think about the night watchman? I asked. I don't know, he said, that's your problem, you're the one who has to think about that. When the work ended, a week later, I went back to England with Hugh. My original idea was to travel south again, to Barcelona, but when the harvest was over I was too tired, too ill, and I decided that the best thing would be to go back to my parents' house in London and maybe visit the doctor. I spent two weeks at home with my parents, two empty weeks, not seeing any of my friends. The doctor said I was "physically exhausted," prescribed some vitamins, and sent me to the optician. He said I needed glasses. A little while later I moved to 25 Cowley Road, Oxford, and I wrote the night watchman several letters. I told him all about everything: how I felt, what the doctor had said, how I wore glasses now, how as soon as I had made some money I was planning to come to Barcelona to visit him, that I loved him. I must have sent six or seven letters in a relatively short period of time. Then term started, I met someone else, and I stopped thinking about him. Alain Lebert, Bar Chez Raoul, Port-Vendres, France, December 1978. Back then I was living like I was in the Resistance. I had my cave and I read In the morning, El Borrado was like a commuter town. Especially in the summer. Every cave had people in it, sometimes four or more, and around ten o'clock everyone would start to come out, saying good morning, Juliette, good morning, Pierrot, and if you stayed in your cave, tucked away in your sleeping bag, you could hear them talking about the sea, the brightness of the sea, and then a noise like the clanking of pans, like somebody boiling water on a camp stove, and you could even hear the click of lighters and a wrinkled pack of Gauloises being passed from hand to hand, and you could hear the ah-ahs and the oh-ohs and the oh-la-las, and of course there was always some idiot talking about the weather. But over it all what you really heard was the noise of the sea, the sound of the waves breaking against the rocks of El Borrado. Then, as summer ended, the caves emptied, and there were only five of us left, then four, and then just three, the Pirate, Mahmoud, and me. And by then the Pirate and I had found work on the In the middle of September we started to go out on the Gulf of Lion and sometimes it was all right and other times it was a bust, which in terms of money meant that on the average day, if we were lucky, we made enough to pay our tab, and on bad days Raoul had to give us our toothpicks on credit. The bad streak got to be so worrisome that one night, out at sea, the skipper said maybe the Pirate was bad luck and everything was his fault. He just came out and said it, the way somebody might say it was raining, or he was hungry. And then the other fishermen said that if that was the way it was, why not throw the Pirate overboard right there, and then say at port that he was so drunk he'd fallen in? We were all talking about it for a while, half joking and half serious. Good thing the Pirate was too drunk to realize what the rest of us were saying. Around that time, too, the gendarmerie bastards came to see me at the cave. I was supposed to stand trial in a town near Albi for having ripped off a supermarket. This had happened two years before and all I'd taken was a loaf of bread, some cheese, and a can of tuna. But you can't outrun the long arm of the law. Every night I'd get drunk with my friends at Raoul's and shoot my mouth off about the police (even if I recognized some gendarme at the next table, drinking his pastis), society, and the way the justice system was always on your back, and I would read articles out loud from the magazine Around four in the morning we said our good nights. The Pirate and I headed for El Borrado. On our way out of Port-Vendres, we walked along quickly, singing as we walked. Then, where the road stops being a road and turns into a path that winds through the rocks to the caves, we slowed down, because even drunk as we were, we both knew one false step in the dark could be fatal with the waves breaking down below. There's usually plenty of noise along that path at night, but on this particular night it was mostly quiet, and for a while all we could hear was the sound of our footsteps and the gentle surf on the rocks. But then I heard a different kind of noise and I don't know why but I got the feeling there was someone behind us. I stopped and turned around, and looked into the dark, but I didn't see anything. A few feet ahead of me, the Pirate had stopped too and was standing there listening. Neither of us spoke, or even moved, and we just waited. From very far away came the whisper of a car and a muffled laugh, as if the driver had lost his mind. And still we didn't hear the noise that I'd heard, which was the sound of footsteps. It must have been a ghost, I heard the Pirate say, and we both started walking again. At the time, it was just him and me in the caves, because Mahmoud's cousin or uncle had come to get him so he could help get ready for the harvest in some village near Montpellier. Before we went to bed the Pirate and I smoked a cigarette, looking out to sea. Then we said good night and went off to our caves. I spent a while thinking about my stuff, the trip I had to make to Albi, the The next morning I found him. He was sitting on a flat rock like a chair, watching the sea and smoking a cigarette. It was the stranger from Raoul's, and when he saw me come out of my cave he got up and offered me his hand. I don't like strangers to touch me before I've washed my face. So I stood there staring at him and tried to follow what he was saying, but all I could catch were stray words: "comfort," "nightmare," "girl." Then I headed off to Madame Francinet's orchard, where there's a well, and he stayed where he was, smoking his cigarette. When I got back he was still smoking (he smoked like a fiend) and when he saw me he got up again and said: Alain, let me buy you breakfast. I didn't remember telling him my name. As we were leaving El Borrado I asked how he'd found the caves, who had told him that there were caves at El Borrado where you could sleep. He said it was Marguerite, he called her the Desnos reader. He said that when the Pirate and I left he stayed behind with Marguerite and François and asked if there was somewhere he could spend the night. And Marguerite had told him that there were some empty caves outside of town where the Pirate and I lived. The rest was simple. He ran and caught up with us and then he chose a cave, and unrolled his sleeping bag, and that was it. When I asked him how he'd made his way across the rocks, where the road is so bad it isn't even a road, he said it hadn't been so hard, we were ahead of him and all he did was follow in our footsteps. That morning we had coffee and croissants for breakfast at Raoul's, and the stranger told me his name was Arturo Belano and he was looking for a friend. I asked who his friend was and why he was looking for him here, in Port-Vendres. He took the last francs out of his pocket, ordered two cognacs, and started to talk. He said his friend had been living with another friend, his friend was waiting for something, a job, maybe, I can't remember, and his friend's friend had kicked his friend out of the house, and then when Belano heard about it he went looking for him. Where does your friend live? I said. He doesn't have a home, he said. And where do you live? I said. In a cave, he said, but he was smiling, like he was kidding. In the end, it turned out that he was staying with a professor at the University of Perpignan, in Collioure, nearby. You can see Collioure from El Borrado. And then I asked him how he'd learned that his friend had been kicked out. And he said: my friend's friend told me. And I asked: the same one who kicked him out? And he said: that's right. And I said: in other words, first he kicks him out and then he tells you? And he said: what happened was, he got scared. And I asked: what was it that scared this so-called friend? And he said: that my friend might kill himself. And I said: so you mean that even though he thought your friend might kill himself, this friend of your friend goes and kicks him out? And he said: that's right, I couldn't have put it better myself. And by then he and I were laughing and half drunk, and when he left, with his little pack over his shoulder, when he left to go hitchhiking around the closest towns, well, by then we were pretty good friends. We'd had lunch together (the Pirate joined us a little later), and I'd told him how unfairly I was being treated by the judges in Albi, and where we worked, and when it started to get dark he left and a week went by before I saw him again. And he still hadn't found his friend, but I think he'd more or less given up on it by then. We bought a bottle of wine and took a stroll around the port and he told me that a year ago he'd worked unloading ships. This time he was only here for a few hours. He was dressed better than before. He asked me how things were going with my case in Albi. He also asked me about the Pirate and the caves. He wanted to know if we were still living there. I told him no, that we'd moved to the boat, not so much because of the cold, which was creeping in, as for financial reasons. We didn't have a franc and on the boat we at least got hot meals. A little while later, he left. According to the Pirate, the guy was in love with me. You're crazy, I said. Why else would he come to Port-Vendres? What does he want here? Halfway through October he showed up again. I was stretched out on my bunk daydreaming when I heard someone outside saying my name. When I went out on deck I saw him sitting on one of the piles. How's it going, Lebert, he said. I went down to say hello and we lit cigarettes. It was a cold morning, there was a light fog, and no one was around. Everybody, I guessed, must be at Raoul's. In the distance you could hear the sound of winches where a boat was being loaded. Let's get some breakfast, he said. All right, let's get some breakfast, I said. But neither of us moved. We saw a person walking toward us from the seawall. Belano smiled. Fuck, he said, it's Ulises Lima. We were quiet, waiting for him, until he got to where we were. Ulises Lima was shorter than Belano but sturdier. He was carrying a little pack over his shoulder like Belano. As soon as they saw each other they started to talk in Spanish, although their greeting, the way they greeted each other, was casual, flat. I told them I was heading over to Raoul's. Belano said all right, we'll come by later, and I left them there, talking. The crew of the That same morning I went to talk to the skipper and I told him I had a new crew member for him, and the skipper said: all right, Lebert, he can take Amidou's bunk, but only for a week. And when I got back to Raoul's there was a bottle of wine on Belano and Lima's table, and then Raoul brought out three plates of fish soup. It was pretty mediocre soup, but Belano and Lima kept going on about how it was French cooking at its best. I don't know if they were making fun of Raoul or themselves or if they were serious. I think they were serious. Then we ate a salad with boiled fish, and it was the same thing all over again, compliments to the chef, what a salad, what a classic Provençal salad, when it was obvious that it was hardly decent for Roussillon. But Raoul was happy and anyway they were paying cash, so what more could he ask? Then François and Marguerite came in and we invited them to sit with us and Belano made everyone eat dessert and then he ordered a bottle of champagne, but Raoul didn't have champagne and he had to settle for another bottle of wine, and a couple of the fishermen from the That night Lima slept on the When it began to get dark we realized the nets were full. We hauled them in and there were more fish in the hold than on all the previous days combined. Suddenly we started to work like crazy. We kept heading northeast and we kept dropping the nets and bringing them in again full of fish. Even the Pirate did his best. We kept it up all night and all morning, not sleeping, following the shoal of fish as it moved toward the eastern end of the gulf. At six in the afternoon on the second day the hold was overflowing, something none of us had ever seen before, although the skipper said that ten years ago he'd seen a catch that was almost as big. When we got back to Port-Vendres, few of us could believe what had happened. We unloaded, slept a little, and went out again. This time we couldn't find the big shoal, but the fishing was very good. Those two weeks you could say we lived more at sea than in port. Afterward everything went back to normal, but we knew that we were rich, because our pay was a percentage of the catch. Then the Mexican said that he was finished, that he had enough money now to do what he needed to do and he was leaving. The Pirate and I asked him what he needed to do. Travel, he said. With what I've earned I can buy a plane ticket to Israel. I bet there's a girl waiting for you there, the Pirate said. More or less, said the Mexican. Then I went with him to talk to the skipper. The skipper didn't have the money yet. The fish-processing plants take a while to pay, especially if it's such a big haul, and Lima had to hang around a few more days. But he didn't want to sleep on the After that, Lima decided he'd rather spend the time until he was paid sleeping in one of the El Borrado caves. The Pirate and I went with him one afternoon and showed him which caves were the best, where the well was, which path he should take at night so he wouldn't fall over the cliff: basically, the secrets of gracious living al fresco. When we weren't at sea we saw him at Raoul's. Lima made friends with Marguerite and François and a German in his forties, Rudolph, who worked in and around Port-Vendres doing odd jobs and who claimed he'd been a soldier in the Wehrmacht when he was ten and been given the Iron Cross. When everyone expressed disbelief, he brought out the medal and showed it to whoever wanted to see it: a blackened, rusty iron cross. And then he spat on it and swore in German and French. He held the medal ten inches from his face and talked to it like it was a dwarf and made faces at it and then he put it down and spat on it with rage or disgust. One night I said to him: if you hate the fucking medal so much why don't you fucking throw it in the fucking ocean? Then Rudolph got quiet, he seemed ashamed, and he put the Iron Cross away in his pocket. And one morning we got our pay at last and that same morning Belano showed up again and we celebrated the Mexican's trip to Israel. Near midnight, the Pirate and I went with them to the station. Lima was taking the twelve o'clock train to Paris and from Paris he'd catch the first flight to Tel Aviv. I swear there wasn't a soul at the station. We sat on a bench outside, and a little while later the Pirate fell asleep. Well, said Belano, I get the feeling this is the last time we'll see each other. We'd been quiet for a long time and his voice startled me. I thought he was talking to me, but when Lima answered him in Spanish, I realized he wasn't. They talked for a while. Then the train came, the train from Cerbère, and Lima got up and said goodbye to me. Thank you for teaching me how to work on a boat, Lebert, that was what he said. He didn't want to wake the Pirate. Belano went with him to the train. I watched them shake hands and then the train left. That night Belano slept at El Borrado and the Pirate and I went to the |
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