Monsieur Pain by Roberto Bolano

Author:Roberto Bolano
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Norton
Published: 2012-06-11T20:00:00+00:00

At five to three in the afternoon, I reached the Clinique Arago. The rules of the institution stipulate that, before passing through the double doors that lead into the depths of the building, visitors must leave their name and the name of the patient they have come to visit, or at least the patient’s room number. Having satisfied this requirement and begun to walk away, I heard the nurse’s voice calling me to a halt.

“You can’t go in,” I was informed.

At first I thought that I had heard incorrectly or that there had been a misunderstanding, so I gave my name again and that of Monsieur Vallejo, adding that I had already visited him the previous day and was returning in compliance with a specific request from his wife. I stressed the specific request. The nurse seemed to hesitate for a moment and then looked at me curiously. She took a manila form from a drawer and read it twice; then she put it straight back into the same drawer, gently shaking her head.

“No one is allowed to see Monsieur Vallejo,” she said, lying. “Those are the orders.”

“But they are expecting me.”

“Come back another day,” she suggested, rather uncertainly.

“Madame Vallejo specifically asked me to come. She must be in the room now, with her husband. Tell her that I’m here. I can’t leave without seeing her. Please . . . I beg you to make an exception.”

The nurse wavered for a moment, moved perhaps by my appeal. But she soon reaffirmed her ruling.

“It’s impossible, those are the doctor’s orders,” she said, as if they had been handed down from God.

“Which doctor?”

“I don’t know, it doesn’t say here, but orders of this kind can only be given by a doctor, as I’m sure you understand.”

I raised my hands in exasperation.

“Will you let me see the form?”

A weasel-like smile came over her face and I understood that she was not going to let me pass.

“I’m afraid not, it’s against the rules, the orders are confidential, but if you think I’m lying . . .”

I weighed up the possibility of walking down that corridor with or without authorization, but the absurdity of the situation, and sheer surprise, held me there at the reception counter with the force of a magnet. I tried another approach:

“May I send for Madame Vallejo? I will wait for her here.”

“I already told you. It’s out of my hands, there’s nothing to be done.” Her face was growing pale, taking on a milky quality, as if to match her uniform.

I insisted.

For a moment I was prey to the deluded belief that I had convinced her. She asked me to wait, opened a camouflaged door in the wall behind her, which I had not noticed until then, and vanished so quickly I could only glimpse a rectangle of reddish darkness, as if the adjoining space were a photographer’s darkroom. When she came out, she was accompanied by a tall aide with blond hair and the melancholy jaw of a boxer.

The nurse now seemed to have taken on the role she’d been waiting to play all her life.

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