2666 by Roberto Bolaño

Author:Roberto Bolaño
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Literary, Thrillers, General, Fiction, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 9780330447430
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2009-09-17T10:00:00+00:00

5. THE PART ABOUT ARCHIMBOLDI

His mother was blind in one eye. She had blond hair and was blind in one eye. Her good eye was sky blue and placid, which made her seem slow but sweet natured, truly good. His father was lame. He had lost his leg in the war and spent a month in a military hospital near Düren, thinking he was done for and watching as the patients who could move (he couldn’t!) stole cigarettes from the others. When they tried to steal his cigarettes, though, he grabbed the thief by the neck, a freckled boy with broad cheekbones and broad hips, and said: halt! a soldier’s tobacco is sacred! Then the freckled boy went away and night fell and he had the sense that someone was watching him.

In the next bed there was a mummy. He had black eyes like two deep wells.

“Do you want a smoke?” the man with one leg asked.

The mummy didn’t answer.

“It’s good to have a smoke,” said the man with one leg, and he lit a cigarette and tried to find the mummy’s mouth among the bandages.

The mummy shuddered. Maybe he doesn’t smoke, thought the man, and he took the cigarette away. The moon illuminated the end of the cigarette, which was stained with a kind of white mold. Then he put it back between the mummy’s lips, saying: smoke, smoke, forget all about it. The mummy’s eyes remained fixed on him, maybe, he thought, it’s a comrade from the battalion and he’s recognized me. But why doesn’t he say anything? Maybe he can’t talk, he thought. Suddenly, smoke began to filter out between the bandages. He’s boiling, he thought, boiling, boiling.

Smoke came out of the mummy’s ears, his throat, his forehead, his eyes, which remained fixed on the man with one leg, until the man plucked the cigarette from the mummy’s lips and blew, and kept blowing for a while on the mummy’s bandaged head until the smoke had disappeared. Then he stubbed the cigarette out on the floor and fell asleep.

When he woke, the mummy was no longer there. Where’s the mummy? he asked. He died this morning, said someone from a different bed. Then he lit a cigarette and settled down to wait for breakfast. When he was released he went stumping toward the city of Düren. There he boarded a train that brought him to another city.

In this city he waited twenty-four hours in the station, eating army soup. The man distributing the soup was a one-legged sergeant like himself. They talked for a while, as the sergeant ladled soup into the soldiers’ tin plates and he ate, sitting on a nearby wooden bench like a carpenter’s. According to the sergeant, everything was about to change. The war was coming to an end and a new era was about to begin. He answered, as he ate, that nothing would ever change. Not even the two of them had changed, and each had lost a leg.

Whenever he spoke, the sergeant laughed.

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