Monsieur Pain

by Roberto Bolaño

  Before long it was clear that whatever had been played out there was not over yet. In the strip of darkness under the arcade facing me, I saw the glow of a cigarette and guessed that the smoker was sitting on the bench that ran along the wall. I think he had been there all along and I think they had known or intuited that he was nearby; the fat man, at least, must have known, must have seen him, and probably even gave him a light, fawning and fearful, his body blocking the match’s flame from my view.

  I tried to tell myself that the targets of my surveillance were of no interest and certainly no concern to me; I tried. Then the cigarette traced a parabolic arc through the night air and the man showed himself, entering the lighted part of the courtyard with his hands in his pockets and the unhurried air of an insomniac out for a walk.

  It was fairly obvious that he had seen me. At first he seemed to be following the others, but then he stopped and looked straight up at my window. I think he knew I was watching him, and saw my fright, and maybe my bewilderment and sadness too. In any case, there was nothing in his stance to suggest more than the mildest interest. As if he were observing a madman, I thought (two images passed through my mind like a pair of canoes: the nurse who had barred my way into the clinic, and myself in a straightjacket). Suddenly I realized that my hands were trying in vain to open the window. After the initial surprise (I had formed no such intention) I accepted the idea, and my fingers went on feeling their way around the frame. It was useless; the window had no bolt, no sash; there was no way to open it. The man was still there in the middle of the courtyard, looking at me. I rapped on the glass with my knuckles. If he heard me, he gave no sign of it. I looked for a switch, impelled by an irrational desire to light up the room and reveal myself. To confirm my presence beyond all doubt, my attendance, my humble but punctual spectatorship. The light was not working either; I had ended up in the only room where everything was broken. When I went back to the window, almost groaning, the man was still there, looking up, as if I had never left that frame, as if the room, the walls, the Clinique Arago and my body were so many transparent, ineffective obstacles to his vision, which was searching the dark sky and the stars beyond.

  We stared at each other for a moment longer. Then he continued unhurriedly on his way, with muffled steps, and disappeared from my view. Once he had gone I realized the magnitude of my weariness. I looked up: a glass roof, supported by an iron frame, separated the courtyard from the night outside. Without the slightest hesitation, as if something of the stranger’s self-assurance had rubbed off on me, I lay down on one of the beds and fell into a deep sleep. I woke after midnight and left, taking no precautions to avoid being seen; no one stopped me or said anything.

  Over the following days my life seemed to return to its normal course. Pure and simple despair alternated with depressive episodes (which may have been religious in origin, since I regarded them as inevitable, without for a moment considering suicide, and accepted the sorrow, drinking it down to the lees), setting the tone for days of renewed lucidity, calm in spite of everything.

  I did not, of course, forget Vallejo, but at the same time I understood that my small part in his story was over; there was no place in his reality for me. Madame Reynaud, who had been the bridge between our worlds, was gone, and any possibility of contact had disappeared with her.

  So, from the eleventh of April on, I passed the time rereading Schwob’s Imaginary Lives and The Children’s Crusade, which never fail to soothe my soul, and certain pages of Renard and Alain-Fournier, which made me nostalgic for a countryside in which I have never lived, but I also went wandering around the city, and visited two good friends, with the secret intention of recounting my recent adventures, although in both cases I was unable to do so, not knowing where to start and feeling that the end of the story, or what I took to be its end, was less than convincing.

  On two occasions I also tried, unsuccessfully, to reach Madame Reynaud by telephone. One afternoon, perhaps the afternoon of Thursday the fourteenth, more out of melancholy than stubbornness, I sat myself down in the same café as before, opposite the Clinique Arago, and waited there for a few hours, keeping a desultory watch by the window, in case Madame Reynaud happened to appear.

  The proof of the misfortune that I had begun to intuit, the confirmation of my creeping sense that I was alone, perhaps for good, was to come on the twentieth of April when by chance I ran into Madame Reynaud on Rue de Rivoli. She was accompanied by a tall handsome man holding an umbrella. Madame Reynaud introduced him as Jean Blockman, her fiancé.

  Not knowing what to say—I had no umbrella, I was getting wet and wanted to be gone—I told her about the unfortunate incident with the nurse. Her face lit up as she listened. How beautiful she is, I thought, and how wretched I am. She told me that she had come back from Lille on Sunday the seventeenth, with Monsieur Blockman, who had suffered an accident, nothing serious, as it turned out—that was why she had rushed to Lille (Blockman smiled and looked at her adoringly)—and the first thing she had done on her return was to visit Madame Vallejo, who had informed her that I had not kept my appointment.

  After conferring with Blockman, she remarks that what has happened to me, the whole business, is really very strange.

  “I have no idea why they kept me out,” I say.

  Then Blockman reminds her of the time, and Madame Reynaud says, with a fleeting smile, that they are running late.

  “Of course,” I manage to murmur with tainted courtesy.

  I don’t know if she realizes what I am feeling. Monsieur Blockman holds out his hand and says he hopes to see me again, Marcelle has spoken very highly of me. Suddenly Madame Reynaud says:

  “But perhaps you don’t know . . .”

  I tilt my head. I feel dizzy. There were so many things I would like to know about: old Madame Reynaud, for example, why she didn’t answer the telephone, shadows gliding through the Paris nights, the future.

  Madame Reynaud’s face is glowing; rain suits her. Blockman, at her side, is happy, looking at her all the time. Then Madame Reynaud asks if I have heard that Vallejo is dead and indeed already laid to rest; she attended the burial, it was very sad, there were speeches.

  “No,” I say. “I had no idea.”

  “A very sad occasion,” Blockman chimes in; he went to the cemetery too. “Aragon made a speech.”

  “Aragon?” I murmur.

  “Yes,” says Madame Reynaud. “Monsieur Vallejo was a poet.”

  “I had no idea. You never mentioned it to me.”

  “Well, he was,” affirms Madame Reynaud. “He was a poet, although not at all well known, and very poor,” she adds.

  “Now he’ll become famous,” says Monsieur Blockman with a knowing smile, looking at his watch.

  EPILOGUE FOR VOICES:

  THE ELEPHANT TRACK

  PAUL RIVETTE

  Avignon, 1858–Paris, 1940

  “Even before opening the door, I knew how I would find the old man, which corner of the room he would be sitting in, what his face would try to hide. I sat down in front of him and said my piece without beating around the bush. Naturally he pretended not to understand at all, he tried to make light of it; finally he stood up grumbling, his features hanging slack, as if they were about to fall away from his bones. A face destroyed by hesitation. And perhaps by cowardice and circumspection. I told him it wasn’t important, it didn’t matter whether he understood or was prepared to give me any practical help, and then he seemed to calm down. There was a moment when I thought: You selfish, scared old man. Then I felt alone, submerged by the great black wave, and I was glad he was there, grateful even for the company of a man who would not commit himself in any way. I never saw him again. He died the day the Germans marched into Paris. He was found when the downstairs neighbors could no longer bear the stench coming from his room.”

  MOHAMMED SAGRERI

  Marrakech, 1910–Paris, 1945

  “On the other side of the Venetian blinds, his face wore what seemed t
o be a fixed expression, which might be labelled: contemplation of the void.”

  Having worked as a doorman at the Les Archers cabaret, near the Porte de Clichy, in 1938 and 1939, he spent his subsequent years in various poorly remunerated jobs, fulfilling his duties with diligence and a certain distance, as if he were already no longer there.

  “Now we see him sleeping on a camp bed, his left hand hanging out, his face buried among the blankets, legs apart like a woman in the act of giving birth. His perfectly folded new clothes are hanging over the back of a chair. The sun is pouring in through the open windows of the room.”

  ALPHONSE LEDUC

  Paris, 1918–Paris, 1940

  CHARLES LEDUC

  Paris, 1918–Vancouver, 1980

  “The Leduc brothers, real little snakes in the grass; if you weren’t careful, before you knew it they’d be at your throat.”

  The inventors of the miniature fish-tank disasters were to follow diverging paths. Shortly after Guderian and Kleist’s panzer divisions broke through the front, Alphonse went out into the street and put a bullet through his head. In fact, during the Phoney War, that is, from October 1939 to April 1940, he had threatened to kill himself dozens of times. Why did he not act on those threats? Perhaps because the situation was not yet sufficiently desperate to make him pull the trigger. His twin brother tried to dissuade him but knew deep down that whatever he said, Alphonse would not be deterred. In 1947, Charles Leduc was able to board a ship bound for Buenos Aires, where, as in Paris, his fish tanks were completely ignored by the public. From then on his life was one long, slow migration, with halts that sometimes lasted longer than he would have liked, toward the magnetic, icy, tranquil north. He spent his last years in Vancouver, dealing in furniture and antiquarian books.

  JULES SAUTREAU

  Lyons, 1895–Montpellier, 1960

  From his daughter Lola’s notebook: “Dad was sweet, but intelligent too, or perhaps not exactly intelligent, but you could ask him anything you liked, and he was always ready to listen, as well as knowing twice or three times as much as you did, I don’t mean encyclopedic knowledge, he wasn’t some kind of D’Alembert, in fact he didn’t read much at all, sports magazines, that sort of thing, but what he was really good at was sensing what you liked or found interesting, for example, when my sisters and I were students, we’d be going on about Camus, and Dad would join in enthusiastically, with a telling remark, or a critical comment, or suggestions for further reading, and it wasn’t till years later that I found out that he’d never read a word of Camus, what he really liked was having people on . . .”

  JEAN BLOCKMAN

  Colmar, 1908–Arras, 1940

  When Jean Blockman was called up for active service in 1939, he complied reluctantly. In April 1940, all the talk in his company was about the best way to desert. No one did; they almost all surrendered. But not Blockman, who wandered around the outskirts of Arras with a few fellow soldiers, searching in vain for an escape route back to Paris. When confronted with the enemy, he was surprised to find himself fighting tenaciously and even with a certain enthusiasm. He realized he was courageous, but above all he realized he was lucky: he had come through without a single wound. Since all the officers were dead or had disappeared, he was tacitly appointed leader by the remaining men. Remembering stories he had read in his teenage years, Blockman decided that they should sleep during the day and march at night. During the first night they came across a dozen discalced Carmelites wandering in the dark. The following night, a delegation from the Arras chamber of commerce. On the third night they met with a British patrol (consisting of three exhausted men) and after a discussion in sign language about the relative merits of heading north or west, the two groups went their separate ways with a friendly good-bye, wishing each other the best of luck. The following day, while sleeping in a ditch, Blockman and his men were machine-gunned by a German patrol.

  MARCELLE REYNAUD

  Chateauroux, 1915–Paris, 1985

  Madame Reynaud endured the war and the death of Jean Blockman with surprising fortitude. In 1944 she was employed as a secretary by the women’s clothing manufacturer Dupleix and Brothers, where she met her second husband, one of the firm’s designers. They were married in 1947. They did not have children. Her life, however, was full and happy. In 1955 she became a widow for the second time. There were no more husbands after that, although there were occasional lovers. Until she reached retirement age, she worked at Dupleix and Brothers, where she was highly respected and made many friends. Sometimes when she remembered her youth she burst into tears, the tears of an old woman befuddled by a stream of incomprehensible images: her first husband’s face, the rain, the sun, the cafés of the Latin Quarter, Pierre Pain, a poet whose work she had never read, not a line, the lasting tender friendship of women, the gaps in any story, gaps that slowly close as years go by, narrowing, becoming less significant, not so much gaps as blanks. She died of a heart attack while reading a travel book. Her Portuguese housecleaner found her three hours later.

  MAURICE FEVAL, also known as ALOYSIUS PLEUMEUR-BODOU

  Amiens, 1895–Tarragona, 1964

  “A French gentleman, all the ladies in my group of friends adored him; he was suave, and he had a truly outrageous accent, which was the principal source of his charm, although to be frank, it’s odd that he never lost it in all those years of living here, I don’t know, maybe he put it on a bit. No, he never got married, maybe in France, but I don’t think so. He was the classic bachelor type. According to the rumors, he came to Cataluña with the nationalist army; what can I say? I really don’t know. Then he left and years later he came back to our city. At the start he knew hardly anyone, but he was friends or at least he seemed to be on friendly terms with the Movement’s main players in Cataluña and Valencia. With time he gradually won over the respectable crowd. Although some of them always kept their distance. The sort of man who likes to preserve a certain air of mystery, if you see what I mean. There was a rumor that if he went back to his country he’d have to face a death sentence or a prison term. What had he done to deserve that kind of punishment? Some claimed that he’d collaborated with the Germans, others said he’d killed a child or a number of children, dreadful stories, you know how people love to gossip, and a bit of spite makes it all the more fun. But they ended up accepting him completely. A charming gentleman. How did he earn his living? He gave French lessons. Funny, isn’t it? I mean considering how easy it would have been for him to set up a proper business, something more lucrative than a two-bit language school. It’s not as if he didn’t have money and contacts when he came, I know he did. Maybe it’s just that he wasn’t intending to stay for so long, who knows?”

  GUILLAUME TERZEFF

  Paris, 1897–Paris, 1925

  “I don’t know if I was the first to see him, all I can say for sure is that I was the first to alert the police. It was before six in the morning, and still dark, the only light on the bridge was from the lamps, and that was feeble; I’m used to it, I cross that bridge every day, morning and night, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t believe in ghosts. It was pretty cold that morning. A bit more than normal, yes, in fact, it was fucking freezing, if you’ll pardon my language. Anyway, when I was already more than half way across the bridge I noticed something strange. I mean, it would have been obvious to anyone, that’s why I said I didn’t know if I was the first to see it. But at that time of day people are often still half asleep, aren’t they? Anyhow, there was a rope tied to the balustrade, so I just went to the edge and looked over and saw a body hanging there, two yards below. I crossed myself a couple of times, although I’m not a believer. It was the body of a tall thin young man with long uncombed hair. I knew straight away he was dead. He wasn’t moving at all. I mean, the breeze blowing under the bridge was moving the body a bit, but that was all.”

  PIERRE PAIN

  Paris, 1894–Paris, 1949

  “He earned his living reading palms and tarot cards in a cabaret
called The House of the Old Companions. That’s where I met him and he taught me a part of what I know about the trade. The other part we learned together, Monsieur Pain and I, from the great magician and lord of the night Chu Wei Ku, also known as Daniel Rabinowicz, the quickest pair of hands in all of Europe, the pride of the profession. Tarot, palmistry, Cabalistic mysteries, the enigma of the pyramids, the Chinese horoscope, red magic and black magic, telepathy, reincarnation, Rosicrucianism, numerology, pure rock crystal pyramids, amulets, voodoo, trees of life, we dabbled in every kind of esoteric practice and all of them attracted clients. Even though it was a terrible time in the entertainment business: diabolical years they were, literally diabolical. How did Monsieur Pain come to work there? I guess it was after he lost his war veteran’s pension, at the beginning of the Occupation. So it must have been in September, October, or November 1940 that he turned up at the House of the Old Companions looking absolutely pitiful, as if he’d gone for a month without eating so much as a mouthful of bread; Gandhi was plump by comparison. I was fifteen at the time and working as the cabaret’s errand boy. A poor orphan with no prospects, starved of affection. I don’t know how or why, but before I knew it, the three of us were friends: Chu Wei Ku, who was the star of the show, along with Lita Hoelle, Monsieur Pain and me. Ah, Lita Hoelle! In all my teenage years I never saw a lovelier pair of legs, but most of all she was joyful; she had a true inner joy; when she laughed, it came from her soul, and she made everyone else happy. She must be a grandmother by now; she retired a while back. I bet her grandchildren adore her. Yes, for a while Lita was Chu Wei Ku’s lover, but she never knew what we were doing. I guess Chu didn’t want to put her at risk, or he didn’t trust her, who knows what his reasons were. The group was made up of Chu Wei Ku, Monsieur Pain and myself. No one else. A contact and support group. It was pretty much the same kind of thing as I did for The House of the Old Companions, running errands from A to B. Chu Wei Ku would receive the envelopes and parcels, don’t ask me how, and then we shared them out among the three of us, depending on the neighborhood, the time, the nature and the size of the item to be delivered. Quite a pleasant life, really, given the circumstances. Toward the end of 1943, that was when they arrested Chu. Not because of his Resistance work, they never found out about that, but because some pig went and told them that the Chinaman’s disguise concealed Daniel Rabinowicz, the Jew. Bad blood and bad luck. In March 1945, at the age of thirty-four, Chu died in a German concentration camp. Some of his numbers will live on in the memories of night owls, revelers, and show-business people, like the fifty disappearing doves reappearing as a hundred, plus another fifty shared among four tables chosen at random. Or the fifteen-year-old boy transformed into an angel, who would then fly away never to be seen again. To cut a long story short, Monsieur Pain and I were left on our own, not knowing what to do, or where to turn in the chaotic struggle against fascism. At first we hoped the Resistance would get in touch with us, but no, nothing, not a word; for the Resistance, or whoever had been sending the messages to Chu Wei Ku, we had ceased to exist. We had no choice but to limit ourselves to the work we were paid to do: Monsieur Pain went on conscientiously reading palms, palms stained with blood, the palms of killers and sinister whores, of spongers and black marketeers, and I went on running errands. By this stage we had no one but each other. When the war was over, we went to work at the Cabaret Panama; the House of the Old Companions was shut down and the owner was jailed for collaboration. Monsieur Pain and I put on some of Chu Wei Ku’s old numbers. Then we were at the Carousel, and the Bonnani brothers’ circus. That must have been in 47. In any case, a busy routine would have been too much for Monsieur Pain. He tried to get his veteran’s pension back, but everything was such a mess in those years; it was hopeless. So we went on working in cabarets and circuses on the outskirts of Paris. Until one day his lungs gave out and he collapsed. He died in my arms, in the manager’s office at the Cabaret Madame Doré.”