Monsieur Pain

by Roberto Bolaño

  It is night, and Michel and Pauline (the blonde girl, whom he has married) are at Michel’s home in Paris. The servants are observing them in silence. Michel’s valet (a youthful version of the old man who, in previous scenes, saw something that we can only assume was terrifying) is making an effort to please his new mistress. “Who is the cook?” asks the girl. “I am,” the valet replies. There is something defiant in his tone. All the other servants look down, ill at ease and perhaps afraid. “But if Madame would like a cook,” the valet adds, “I know a woman who is clean and capable.” “All right,” says Pauline, without clearly indicating what she has decided, while looking at the enormous tapestries hanging on the walls of the salon.

  The following scene takes place in the dimly lit library: Michel and a slightly older friend, perhaps his doctor or his lawyer, are drinking cognac and smoking, but not in a leisurely way; they are tense. In a halting voice, Michel is recounting the details of an unfortunate incident. The sound of a distant explosion. Michel closes his eyes.

  The Spaniard looked at me as if he had never seen me before. He elbowed his companion to alert him to my presence. The companion was slow to react; he was totally absorbed in the scenes unfolding on the screen. When he finally turned his face to me, he simply said:

  “Hello, Pain, how are you?”

  I was at a loss to reply. The years had certainly left their mark, and yet I recognized him instantly.

  “Life is sweet and you’re still young, my friend; pull yourself together.” “Every night is a torment for me, Paul.” “Be brave.” “You can be brave when you know what you’re fighting, but I don’t. My enemies are in the air. No, it’s worse: they’re hidden beneath. They’re crawling through the territory of guilt.” “But you mustn’t let your nightmares destroy you, Michel; remember that most nightmares have no substance.” “My nightmare is the past or memory, and I would have to be somebody else to forget.”

  I was dumbfounded. It was Pleumeur-Bodou. He was smiling, satisfied with the impression he had made.

  “You? Here?”

  The Spaniard looked at me curiously, then he turned to look at Pleumeur-Bodou, as if entirely absorbed in observing our reactions.

  “It’s been ages since we saw each other, hasn’t it? But time can’t erase the memory of a true friend’s mug . . . eh?”

  I nodded. I was lost for words.

  Pleumeur-Bodou observed me with a mixture of delight and arrogance. He was going to continue, but then he changed his mind and addressed himself to the Spaniard:

  “José María, why don’t you let me have your seat, so I won’t have to sit in this awkward position—you’re wedged in between us there—and my friend and I can talk like normal people, without having to inform everyone else in the theater of our affairs. With a little tact and simple good manners we’re sure to be well treated, even in hell . . . eh?”

  After taking a moment to translate Pleumeur-Bodou’s speech, the Spaniard stood up. But Pleumeur-Bodou was too fat, and trying to change seats simultaneously, they got in each other’s way. For a moment they were stuck. Someone behind us complained. From another seat came an irritated Shhh. The theater might have been small and old, but its clients were serious movie-goers. Pleumeur-Bodou sat down again.

  “Look, José María, you get up first and sit down here,” he tapped the leather upholstery of the seat to his left, “and when I have moved here,” he touched the Spaniard’s chest with the tip of his index finger, “then, but only then, you can take my seat.”

  “What are you doing here?” I muttered. “How do you know this man?”

  He winked at me.

  “Just a moment, Pain, be patient.”

  José María had stood up again, but one of Pleumeur-Bodou’s paws forced him back down into his seat. The Spaniard smelt of wet clothing. I looked at the screen: Michel was sleeping on a couch in the library. In the foreground his wife and his friend (who was also his doctor) were observing him and speaking in hushed tones, as if they were afraid of disturbing his sleep. A tragic aura envelops the whole scene. “He was top of his class,” says the friend. Pauline is crying. “One of the country’s rising stars; he had everything . . . he lost everything . . .” Watch carefully now, said Pleumeur-Bodou. The images that appear on the screen, like a dramatization of Michel’s nightmare or an illustration of the doctor’s story, have a different texture, composition and photographic quality, which suggests that they come from another film: a group of young scientists appear before the camera in various situations, first in a spacious laboratory, then strolling through a park. Look carefully, Pain, whispered Pleumeur-Bodou, his voice charged with emotion, one of them is Terzeff.

  “Terzeff,” I said.

  Voices from the rows behind told us again to be quiet.

  “Shut up, you imbeciles!” said Pleumeur-Bodou.

  Terzeff and the young scientists, among whom Michel was not to be seen, flitted about the laboratory, peering into one another’s test tubes, raising the flasks and joyfully proposing toasts, as if they were kids in an elementary chemistry class and the teacher had stepped out of the room. Pleumeur-Bodou stood up, he must have been at least six feet tall, and scanned the shadows for the person who had reprimanded him. He sat down again almost immediately and whispered, his face a foot away from mine:

  “How do you like that? There he is! Our dear friend Terzeff, moving, laughing, younger and more sprightly than either of us! Doesn’t it make you a little jealous? That’s what I call the mystery of art! I mean, he’s alive, isn’t he?” Stoically, the Spaniard endured Pleumeur-Bodou’s flesh spilling over into his seat.

  On the screen the scientists had left the laboratory and they were now posing in the garden, seated on a bench, then around a fountain, and on a staircase, cracking jokes and looking boldly at the camera.

  “I don’t understand. What’s Terzeff doing there?”

  “That was the first laboratory he worked in. It was extremely difficult to get a place; there were hundreds of applicants, and against all the odds Terzeff was one of the few selected. I applied, yes I did, myself no less, and damn it, they rejected me. What do you think of that?”

  “I don’t know. What I’m wondering is how all that was turned into a film. You must admit, Monsieur” (I refused to adopt the familiar tone he was using with me), “that it is extraordinary to find Terzeff and his colleagues appearing in the middle of this dreadful melodrama.”

  “You can’t deny it’s a marvelous document.”

  “That depends on your point of view.” On the screen now night is falling over the buildings of the research institute. A succession of progressively darkening images precedes the end of Michel’s dream: the iron entrance gate decorated with an unreadable sign; enigmatic shadows stealing through a desolate courtyard in which the French flag is flapping; a night watchman walking across the yard with a bunch of keys hanging from his hip; the closed windows of the laboratories; the heavy metal door to the basement; a cat looking at the camera from its vantage point on top of a hedge.

  “Actually, Pain, it’s two different films. That fool” (he was referring to Michel) “is supposed to have studied in a scientific research institute. Now, listen to what the doctor says to his wife.”

  “They’re all dead.” Michel’s friend looks at Pauline as if the confession had torn something inside him. “And yet many questions were left unanswered.” Pauline’s silhouette, her delicate, inquisitive profile trembles next to a huge oil painting in which the naked bodies of angels and demons are tangled.

  “Who?”

  “Listen!”

  “That’s enough, be quiet, damn you.” The protest came from three rows back and the voice in which it had been issued seemed genuinely cross.

  “All of them?” “Yes, all of them, except for Michel, who was indisposed and unable to attend.” “But how? What kind of accident could have . . . ?” “An explosion, an explosion that was caused by something in Michel’s laboratory.” “My god!” “
Twenty rising stars, twenty of the nation’s best young scientists, wiped out just like that.” “But what was Michel working on?” “I don’t know. Nobody knows. His notes were destroyed in the explosion and he has always refused to talk about it; all I can say is that it was related to radioactivity.” “Then he gave up his career and the nightmares began; now I understand.” “You are the only one who can help him, my dear.”

  The doctor takes Pauline’s hand while she looks into his eyes as if he were her captor and she were in his thrall.

  “That moron’s wife is cheating on him with his best friend.”

  “Are you going to be quiet or not?”

  Pleumeur-Bodou stood up menacingly.

  “Why don’t you just clear off, boy?” Pleumeur-Bodou rested his clenched paws on his hips, looking like Mussolini in the newsreels.

  The Spaniard had turned around and was quietly looking at the boy sitting behind us, no doubt a movie buff or a student with time on his hands, or both. Somehow the boy sensed that it would be better not to pursue the dispute, and slumped down in his seat. Even seated, the Spaniard seemed far more dangerous than Pleumeur-Bodou’s precariously balanced mass of humanity.

  “There’s always some ass-wipe.”

  “I had no idea that Terzeff had been an actor,” I said, just to change the subject. I was convinced that the rest of the people in the theater were watching our peculiar three-man show with as much interest as the film.

  “He wasn’t. The director of Actualité—an amusing title, don’t you think?—worked in that research institute in the twenties and shot a sort of promotional documentary, but it was never shown. Years later he incorporated some of the footage into the dream sequences of his feature.”

  “When was this movie made?”

  “Actualité? Four years ago, at least that was when I first saw it. The scenes with Terzeff were shot in 1923, before sound; you can tell, can’t you?”

  I had to calm down, recover my composure, step back, escape from the sensation of unreality that was infiltrating everything. I thought: an innocent man is caught up in this. I thought: the South American is going to pay for everyone.

  On the screen, Michel says a fond farewell to his parents. A motorcar drives into the forest. “Life is not all that important.” An audience of old men is quietly watching Michel. He rubs his eyes, more and more vigorously. The gesture is a throwback to infancy. He drinks a glass of water. There are pronounced rings around his eyes. Pauline is sleeping alone in the canopied bed. “No one can blame me, no one else knows, and I am innocent.” The doctor boards a train leaving Paris. Michel’s valet watches the dusk through an oblong attic window. In the clean and tidy room behind him, an old photo of a footman hangs on the wall, presumably his father or a close relative, since the physical resemblance is striking, but whereas the valet has a look of melancholic resignation not without a certain charm, his father’s face betrays a pure and simple terror. A man’s hands break a breadstick. Bolts of lightning flash from the clouds in the far distance. Slumped in an armchair in the library, Michel covers his eyes.

  “I was speaking with Monsieur Rivette not long ago; he said you were living in Spain.”

  “Ah, dear old Rivette, a very fine mind, without a doubt . . . Spain is beautiful, yes, and it’s only the beginning . . . But Paris is my true love . . . Look now, what did I tell you, that miserable doctor is trying to steal the twit’s wife.”

  “I need to talk with you. Let’s go outside.”

  “I believe my presence is no longer necessary,” said the Spaniard.

  “All right, José María, we’ll see each other later on.” It was evident from Pleumeur-Bodou’s tone that he was accustomed to giving orders, and yet in the way he addressed the Spaniard there was also a certain respect, a deference bordering on trepidation, of which he was probably not aware himself.

  The Spaniard hopped nimbly over my knees and reached the aisle in a matter of seconds. He was thin and his clothes seemed to hang loosely about him. He did not say good-bye.

  “I’ve only been in Paris for two days,” explained Pleumeur-Bodou. “You might say I came specially to see this film. I don’t know if you remember that Terzeff was my best friend.”

  “Yes, I also remember that he hanged himself. As it happens, a few nights ago Monsieur Rivette was kind enough to refresh my memory.” The screen shows a dark backstreet; a tramp is sleeping among trash cans; there are cats on top of the cans; the street, in fact, is infested with cats of all shapes and sizes.

  Pauline and a mysterious-looking stranger appear in the foreground. “I need to talk to you,” says the man. “What do you want? Who are you?” “You have to trust me. For your own good.” Pauline tries to flee, but the man does not let her. For a moment their faces almost touch. “I am a police detective, we have good reason to suspect that your husband planned the explosion that killed all the staff at the research institute.” “You’re out of your mind, that was an accident.” “We have evidence to suggest that it was a premeditated mass murder.” Pauline tries to look sarcastic. “You have no idea what Michel was like after the accident.” “How was he? You tell me.” “A psychological wreck; he completely lost his taste for life. The memory of that nightmare was with him every moment of the day.”

  “Well, well, so you’ve been talking with Monsieur Rivette . . . I should visit the old fellow before I leave.”

  The detective smiles: “Perhaps he’s pretending . . .”

  A kind of white wave, a wave made of irresistible light, sweeps over Pauline’s astonished face.

  “What a sneaky devil! He’s trying to get off with her, the son of a bitch!”

  “Incidentally, he told me about Terzeff and Irène Curie.”

  “He’s a wise old man, very wise, but don’t go thinking he knows everything.”

  When they say good-bye, the detective holds onto Pauline’s hand for longer than normal. Pauline looks down. Michel appears on the rooftop terrace of his house, armed with a pair of binoculars, and scans the horizon, where dark clouds are massing. Beside him stands an artifact that resembles nothing so much as an Aztec sacrificial stone. Behind him, his valet is waiting, stiffly posed.

  “He didn’t even know Irène. All sorts of things were said at the time; there was a lot of exaggeration.”

  “Let’s go for a walk or find a café, anywhere. I want to talk with you. Please, I have no time to lose.”

  “All right. I’ve already seen the part that interested me anyway. I’ll come back again tomorrow.”

  Outside it was raining.

  We went into a bar on Rue D’Amsterdam; Pleumeur-Bodou ordered a rum punch and I ordered a mint cordial. We must have seemed an odd pair, because we immediately attracted the attention of the few clients, who turned, somewhat indiscreetly, to look at us. Or perhaps it was Pleumeur-Bodou’s loud and peremptory manner.

  “So, what did you want to talk about?”

  “Terzeff, and your Spanish friend.”

  He glanced scornfully at my tie and lit a cigarette with a resigned gesture.

  “I don’t see the connection, but fire away.”

  I told him everything I knew about the Spaniard, from the encounter on the stairs outside my apartment and then at the Clinique Arago to the extraordinary bribe at the Café Victor.

  “Well,” said Pleumeur-Bodou mockingly, “you had a perfect opportunity to return the money, and you didn’t.”

  I tried to object. I could feel myself blushing.

  “Do you know why he wanted to keep me away from Vallejo?”

  “Frankly, Pierre, I have no idea.”

  “But he’s your friend, and I dare say you know the other Spaniard too.”

  “Indeed. But that, in itself, means little. I have many Spanish friends; I am deeply attached to some of them, others are simply companions with whom I share certain of life’s pleasures. José María falls into the second category. Incidentally I should inform you that he is the great-nephew of one of our major poet
s, Heredia, as well as possessing a considerable income and a generous soul. But there’s no more to it than that. Don’t let coincidences fool you. Do you remember what Bergson said about chance? Do you?”

  “No.”

  “He was talking about criminal chance, chance as the ultimate killer, or something like that, what does it matter, to hell with Bergson . . . You were following him and you found me. So? All the better. You’d be surprised to know how many people I run into every day. And in much stranger places than a banal movie theater. As to the bribe, my guess is that the whole thing was a joke. José María found out, from your patient’s wife herself, I presume, or from some friend of hers, that you would be called upon to treat the man. Perhaps there was a bet involved—Spaniards love betting—or perhaps it was just a joke at your expense. You must remember that José María is a doctor, and so belongs to an enlightened sector of the Spanish population, which prides itself on a positivism that we find incomprehensible. Besides, as you know, wealthy foreigners are often somewhat extravagant, especially if, as in this case, they have an artistic temperament. Really, Pierre, I’m amazed that you can’t tell the difference between a joke, though it was a little heavy-handed, I admit, and a serious genuine threat. I think you let your nerves get the better of you, my dear friend. Here speaks a man, I remind you, who was at the front just a few days ago.”

  “Yes,” I murmured absently, “I heard that you had become a fascist.”

  Pleumeur-Bodou smiled contentedly. He ordered another rum punch at the top of his voice. His vigor and conviviality disgusted me. Even his thirst was repulsive.

  “Of course, Monsieur Rivette, he’s your source, I presume . . . Well, yes,” he seemed to remember something important, “things are coming along.”

  We remained silent. Time flowed around us as if we weren’t there; the other clients smoked and drank, disparate sounds drifted in from the street, the waiter wiped glasses, chunks of wood crackled in the fireplace; behind the bar someone slammed a door violently. Or perhaps it was the wind.