The Third Reich

by Roberto Bolaño

  Nothing has changed. That’s what surprises me. This morning it was impossible to navigate the hotel corridors because of all the people leaving, but this afternoon, on the terrace, I’ve already spotted the pale and enthusiastic faces of a new influx. The temperature has gone up, as if we were back in July, and the evening breeze that cooled the sweltering town streets has vanished. A sticky sweat makes clothes cling to the body, and going out for a walk is torture. I saw the Wolf and the Lamb about three hours after Hanna left, at the Andalusia Lodge. At first they pretended not to see me; then they came over, looking stricken, and proceeded to ask me the obligatory questions. I answered that there was nothing new to tell and that Hanna was on her way back to Germany. With this last bit of news, their expressions and demeanor changed notably. They grew more relaxed and friendlier; after a few minutes I realized that I wasn’t about to get rid of them anytime soon: the conversation continued along the usual lines, in the same code that they had used with Charly, except that instead of Charly, there I was, and instead of Hanna, there was Ingeborg!

  Later I asked Ingeborg what she’d meant when she said that everybody handled Hanna. Her answer put an end to my speculations, at least in part. It was a generalization, Hanna as the victim of men, an unlucky woman, in perpetual search of balance and happiness, etc. . . . The possibility of a Hanna raped by the Spaniards was absurd; in fact, Ingeborg hardly gave them a second thought: she spoke of them as if they were invisible. Two average kids, not very hardworking, to judge by their schedules, who liked to have a good time; she liked to go clubbing too and even do crazy things once in a while. Crazy like what? I wondered. Staying out late, drinking too much, singing in the street. Craziness— Ingeborg’s—of the mildest variety. Healthy crazy, she explained. So there was no reason to avoid the Spaniards or be angry at them, beyond the obvious reasons. This was how things stood when, at ten o’clock, the Wolf and the Lamb appeared once more on the scene. The conversation, really a spurned invitation to go out, proceeded in highly tasteless fashion, with us sitting on the hotel terrace (all the tables were full and crowded with ice cream dishes and empty glasses) and the two of them standing on the sidewalk, separated from us by the iron railing, the boundary between the terrace and the mass of passersby who at that time of night, suffocated by the heat, were strolling along the Paseo Marítimo. At first neither of them made anything but the tamest of remarks. The one who talked (and gestured) more was the Lamb, and what he said managed to draw a smile or two from Ingeborg, even before I translated. The Wolf’s contributions, meanwhile, were careful and deliberate, as if he were feeling out the territory, expressing himself in an English superior to his education, the manifestation of a steely will, a desire to poke his nose into a world whose outline he could only imagine. Never had the Wolf’s nickname so truly suited him; Ingeborg’s face—bright, fresh, tanned—attracted his gaze as the moon attracts werewolves in old horror movies. Seeing that we were reluctant to go, he insisted, and his voice grew hoarse. He promised clubs worthy of the trip, he assured us that our weariness would vanish the minute we stepped into one of his famous dives . . . All for nothing. Our refusal was irrevocable and issued two feet over their heads, because the sidewalk is lower than the terrace. The Spaniards didn’t insist. Imperceptibly, as a prelude to their farewell, they began to reminisce about Charly. The capital-F Friend. Anyone would think they really did miss him. Then they shook hands with us and walked offtoward the old town. Their figures, soon lost in the crowd, struck me as unbearably sad, and I said so to Ingeborg. She stared at me for a few seconds and said she didn’t understand me:

  “A minute ago you thought they’d raped Hanna. Now you feel sorry for them. The truth is, those morons are nothing but a couple of pathetic Latin lovers.”

  Neither of us could stop laughing until Ingeborg suggested that for once we go to bed early. I agreed.

  After making love, I sat down to write in the room while Ingeborg immersed herself in the Florian Linden novel. She still hasn’t figured out who the killer is, and from the way she reads one would think she doesn’t care. She seems tired; these last few days haven’t been pleasant. I don’t know why, but I found myself thinking about Hanna in the car, before she left, giving me advice in her broken voice . . .

  “Do you think Hanna’s gotten to Oberhausen yet?”

  “I don’t know. She’ll call tomorrow,” says Ingeborg.

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “You mean what if she forgets about us?”

  No, of course, she wouldn’t forget Ingeborg. Or me. Suddenly I was afraid. Afraid and a little excited. But what was I afraid of? I remembered Conrad’s words: “Play on your own turf and you’ll always win.” But what is my turf? I asked. Conrad laughed in a peculiar way, without taking his eyes off me. The side that calls to your blood. I answered that playing like that was no guarantee of winning; for example, if in Destruction of the Central Army Group I chose the Germans, the most I could hope for was to win one time out of every three. Unless I was playing a complete idiot. You don’t understand, said Conrad. You have to use the Grand Strategy. You have to be more cunning than a fox. Was this a dream? The truth is I’ve never heard of a game called Destruction of the Central Army Group!

  Otherwise, it’s been a boring and unproductive day. I spent a while lying patiently on the beach in the sun, trying unsuccessfully to think clearly and rationally. Images from a decade ago drifted through my mind: my parents playing cards on the hotel balcony, my brother floating twenty yards offshore with his arms outstretched, Spanish boys (Gypsies?) roaming the beach armed with sticks, the staffdorm room, smelly and full of bunk beds, a strip of nightclubs, one after the other, running down to the sea, a black sand beach fronting a sea of black water where the only note of color, suddenly, was El Quemado’s fortress of pedal boats . . . My article awaits. The books I pledged to read await. And yet the hours and days speed by, as if time were running downhill. But that’s impossible.

  SEPTEMBER 2

  The police . . . I told Frau Else that we were leaving tomorrow. Unexpectedly, the news surprised her; her face betrayed a faint hint of regret that she hurried to hide under a professional cheeriness. The day had begun badly: my head hurt and I was sweating copiously despite the three aspirins and the cold shower I’d taken. Frau Else asked me whether a satisfactory conclusion had been reached. To what? Our vacation. I shrugged, and she took my arm and led me to a little office tucked behind the reception desk. She wanted to know everything about Charly’s disappearance. In a monotone, I gave her a summary of what had happened. It came out pretty well. In proper chronological order.

  “I spoke today to Mr. Pere, the manager of the Costa Brava. He thinks you’re an idiot.”

  “Me? What do I have to do with anything?”

  “Nothing, I suppose. But it would be a good idea to prepare yourself . . . The police want to question you.”

  I turned white. Me! Frau Else’s hand patted me on the knee.

  “There’s nothing to worry about. They just want to know why the girl went back to Germany. It was a rather odd thing to do, don’t you think?”

  “What girl?”

  “The girlfriend of the dead man.”

  “I just told you. She was tired of all the chaos; she has personal problems; there were plenty of reasons.”

  “All right, but it was her boyfriend. The least she could do was wait until they had finished the search.”

  “Tell that to her, not me . . . So I have to stay here until the police turn up?”

  “No, do whatever you want. If I were you I’d go to the beach. When they get here I’ll send a staffperson to find you.”

  “Does Ingeborg have to be here too?”

  “No, one of you is enough.”

  I did as Frau Else suggested, and we were at the beach until six when a messenger came to get us. The messenger, a boy of about twelve, was dressed like a beggar and it was hard to see how he had been hired to work at a hotel. Ingeborg insisted on
coming with me. The beach was a deep golden color and it seemed frozen in time; really, I would’ve been happy to stay there. The policemen were in uniform and they were at the bar, talking to a waiter. Frau Else pointed them out to us from the reception desk, though there was no need. I remember that, as we approached them, I thought they would never turn around to face us and I would have to tap one on the back the way a person knocks at the door. But they must have sensed that we’d come in by the glance of the waiter or some other sign I didn’t notice, and before we got to them they stood up and saluted us, which had an unsettling effect on me. We sat at a secluded table and they got straight to the point: did Hanna know what she was doing when she left Spain? (we didn’t know whether Hanna knew), what ties bound her to Charly? (friendship), why had she left? (we didn’t know), what was her address in Germany? (we didn’t know—a lie, Ingeborg has it written down—but they could get it from the German consulate in Barcelona, where Hanna had, we presumed, left all her personal information), did Hanna think or did we think that Charly had committed suicide? (we certainly didn’t think so; who knew what Hanna thought), and so on, more pointless questions until the interview was over. The policemen were nothing but polite, and when they left they gave us another military salute. Ingeborg smiled at them although when we were alone she said that she couldn’t wait to be in Stuttgart, far away from this sad, corrupt town. When I asked her what she meant by “corrupt,” she got up and left me alone in the dining room. Just as she was leaving, Frau Else came out from behind the reception desk and headed toward us. Neither of the two of them stopped, but Frau Else smiled as she passed Ingeborg; Ingeborg, I’m sure, didn’t smile back. In any case, Frau Else gave no sign that she’d noticed. When she reached me she wanted to know how the interrogation had gone. I admitted that Hanna had made things worse by leaving. According to Frau Else, the Spanish police were charming. I didn’t argue. For a moment neither of us spoke, though the silence was charged. Then Frau Else took me by the arm as she’d done before and led me down a series of corridors; the entire way she opened her mouth only to say, “You shouldn’t let this get you down”; I think I nodded. We stopped at a room near the kitchen. It seemed to serve as the hotel’s laundry. Through a window was a cement-paved inner courtyard full of wooden baskets and covered by a huge green tarp through which the evening light barely filtered. In the un-airconditioned kitchen a girl and an old man were still washing the lunch dishes. Then, without warning, Frau Else kissed me. The truth is, it didn’t take me by surprise. I wanted it and I was hoping for it. But to be honest, I didn’t think it was likely. Naturally, her kiss got the passionate response called for under the circumstances. Though we didn’t do anything untoward. From the kitchen the dishwashers could have seen us. After five minutes we pulled apart; we were both shaken and we returned to the dining room without saying a word. There Frau Else shook my hand and left me. I can still hardly believe it happened.

  The rest of the afternoon I spent with El Quemado. First I went up to the room, but Ingeborg wasn’t there. I supposed she had gone out shopping. The beach was half deserted and El Quemado didn’t have much work. I found him sitting next to the pedal boats, for once lined up and facing the sea, with his gaze fixed on the only pedal boat that had been rented, which seemed to be very far from shore. I sat down next to him as if he were an old friend and soon I was drawing a map in the sand of the Battle of the Ardennes (one of my specialties), or the Battle of the Bulge, as the Americans call it, and I gave a detailed explanation of battle plans, the order in which units would appear, highways to use, river crossings, the demolition and construction of bridges, the offensive activation of the Fifteenth Army, real and simulated advances of Battle Group Peiper, etc. Then I erased the map with my foot, smoothed the sand, and drew a map of the area around Smolensk. There, I pointed out, Guderian’s panzer group had fought an important battle in ’41, a crucial battle. I had always won it. For the Germans, of course. I erased the map again, smoothed the sand, drew a face. Only then did El Quemado smile, without diverting his attention for long from the pedal boat still lost in the distance. A slight shiver ran through me. The flesh of his cheek, two or three poorly healed scars, bristled, and for a second I was afraid that with this optical effect—there was nothing else it could be—he could hypnotize me and ruin my life forever. I was rescued by El Quemado’s own voice. As if speaking from an insurmountable distance, he said: do you think we get along well? I nodded several times, happy to be able to escape the spell cast by his deformed cheek. The face that I had drawn was still there, barely a sketch (though I should say that I’m not bad at drawing), until suddenly I realized with horror that it was a portrait of Charly. The realization left me speechless. It was as if someone had guided my hand. I hurried to erase it and immediately I drew a map of Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East, and with the aid of many arrows and circles I illustrated my decisive strategy to win at Third Reich. I’m afraid El Quemado didn’t understand a thing.

  The big news of the night is that Hanna called. She had telephoned twice before, but neither Ingeborg nor I was at the hotel. When I arrived, the receptionist gave me the message and I wasn’t happy to get it. I didn’t want to talk to Hanna and I prayed that Ingeborg would show up before the third call came. My mood thus altered, I went up to wait in the room. When Ingeborg got back we decided to change our plan, which had been to eat at a restaurant near the port, and to stay and wait at the Del Mar. It was the right choice. Hanna called just as we were about to dig into our frugal dinner: toasted ham and cheese sandwiches and french fries. I remember that a waiter came to find us and as we got up from the table Ingeborg said it wasn’t necessary for both of us to go. I said it didn’t matter, the food wouldn’t get cold anyway. Frau Else was at the reception desk. She was wearing a different dress from the one she’d been wearing that afternoon and she seemed to have just stepped out of the shower. We smiled and tried to carry on a conversation as Ingeborg, with her back to us, as far away as she could get, whispered things like “Why?” “I can’t believe it,” “Disgusting,” “For God’s sake,” “The pigs,” and “Why didn’t you tell me before?” which I couldn’t help hearing and that wore on my nerves. I also noticed that with each exclamation Ingeborg hunched over a little more until she looked like a snail. I felt sorry for her; she was scared. Meanwhile, Frau Else, with her elbows firmly planted on the counter and her face aglow, began to resemble a Greek statue: only her lips moved when she spoke plainly about what had happened hours before in the laundry room. (I think she asked me not to harbor false hopes; I can’t say for sure.) As Frau Else talked, I smiled, but all of my senses were focused on what Ingeborg was saying. The phone cord seemed about to wind itself around her neck.

  The conversation with Hanna was interminable. After she hung up, Ingeborg said:

  “Good thing we’re leaving tomorrow.”

  We went back to the dining room but we didn’t touch our plates. Cruelly, Ingeborg remarked that Frau Else, without makeup, reminded her of a witch. Then she said that Hanna was crazy, that she didn’t understand her at all. She avoided my eyes and tapped the table with her fork. From a distance, I thought, a stranger would have taken her for no more than sixteen. An overwhelming tenderness for her rose from the pit of my stomach. Then her voice rose to a scream: How could this happen, how could this happen? Startled, I feared that she would make a scene in front of the people left in the dining room, but Ingeborg, as if reading my mind, suddenly smiled and said she’d never see Hanna again. I asked her what Hanna had said. Anticipating her response, I said that it was logical that Hanna should still be a little offbalance. Ingeborg shook her head. I was wrong. Hanna was much smarter than I thought. Her voice was icy. In silence we finished our dessert and went up to the room.

  SEPTEMBER 3

  I accompanied Ingeborg to the station; for half an hour we sat on a bench waiting for the arrival of the train to Cerbère. We hardly said a thing. Wandering around on the platform were crowds of
tourists whose vacations were almost over and who still fought for a place in the sun. Only the elderly sat on benches in the shade. Between those who were leaving and me an abyss yawned. Ingeborg, however, didn’t strike me as out of place on that crowded train. We wasted our last few minutes giving directions: many people didn’t know where to go and the station employees hardly offered much guidance. People are like sheep. After showing one or two the exact spot to catch the train (not difficult to figure out, after all: there are only four tracks), we were accosted by German and English tourists wanting to check their information with us. From the train window Ingeborg asked whether she’d see me soon in Stuttgart. Very soon, I said. The face that Ingeborg made, a slight pursing of the lips and a quiver of the tip of the nose, suggested she didn’t believe me. I don’t care!