The Insufferable Gaucho by Roberto Bolano

Author:Roberto Bolano [Bolano, Roberto]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780811217163
Amazon: 0811219062
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2010-08-30T04:00:00+00:00

Two Catholic Tales

I. The Vocation

1. I was seventeen years old and my days, and I mean all of them, were a continual shuddering. I had no distractions; nothing could dissipate the anxiety that kept building up inside me. I was living like an interloping extra in scenes from the passion of St. Vincent. St. Vincent—deacon to Bishop Valero, tortured by the governor Dacian in the year 304—have pity on me! 2. Sometimes I talked with Juanito. Not just sometimes. Often. We sat in armchairs at his place and talked about movies. Juanito liked Gary Cooper. Elegance, temperance, integrity, courage, he used to say. Temperance? Courage? I knew what lay behind his certitudes, and would have liked to spit them back in his face, but instead I dug my fingernails into the armrests and bit my lip when he wasn’t looking and even closed my eyes and pretended to be meditating on his words. But I wasn’t meditating. Not at all: images of the martyrdom of St. Vincent were flashing in my mind like magic lantern slides. 3. First he is tied to an X-shaped wooden cross and they tear at his flesh with hooks and dislocate his limbs. Then he is subjected to torture by fire, roasted on a grill over hot coals. And then he’s a captive in a dungeon where the ground is covered with shards of glass and pottery. And then a crow keeps watch over the martyr’s corpse, abandoned in a wasteland, and fends off a ravening wolf. And then the saint’s body is cast into the sea from a boat, a millstone tied around his neck. And then the waves wash the body up on the coast, and there it is piously buried by a matron and other Christians. 4. Sometimes I used to feel dizzy. Nauseous. Juanito would talk about the last film we had seen and I would nod and realize that I was drowning, as if the armchairs were at the bottom of a very deep lake. I could remember the movie theater, I could remember buying the tickets, but I simply couldn’t remember the scenes that my friend (my one and only friend!) was talking about, as if the lake-floor darkness had infiltrated everything. If I open my mouth, water will come in. If I breathe, water will come in. If I stay alive, water will come in and flood my lungs forever and ever. 5. Sometimes Juanito’s mother would come into the room and ask me personal questions. How my studies were going, what book I was reading, if I’d been to the circus that had just set up on the outskirts of the city. Juanito’s mother was always very elegantly dressed, and, like us, she was addicted to the movies. 6. Once I dreamed of her, once I opened the door of her bedroom, and instead of seeing a bed, a dresser and a closet, I saw an empty room with a red brick floor, and that

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