53. WORKINGCLASS NEIGHBORHOODS
The nameless girl wanders the workingclass neighborhoods of Barcelona. A girl born in France, to Spanish parents? The beach stretches in a straight line to the next town. She opened the window, it was overcast but hot. She went back into the bathroom. She gazed curiously at the buildings along the street. All of this is paranoia, she thought. She's eighteen but she doesn't exist. she was born in an industrial city of France and her name is Rosario or María Dolores, but she can't exist because I'm still here. The guard is asleep? She checked her watch. Returning to the window, she lit a cigarette. Through the curtains the boys dozed amid the shadows on the street. Intermittent forms, the sound of barely audible voices. She stared at the moon that hung over the building across the street. From the street came the words "ship," "Olympia," "restaurant." The girl sat on the terrace of a "restaurant" and asked for a glass of white wine. Over her head was the green awning, and, above that, the summer. Like the moon peeping over the building and her gazing at it, thinking about the motorcyclists and the name of the month: July. Born in France to Spanish parents, blond hair, very far away from the restaurant and the words with which they try to distract her. "I woke up because you were lost in the shadows of the bedroom"… "A powerful explosion—… "I was deaf for the rest of the day"… She dreamed of empty cars in lots as black as coal. There are no more towns or workingclass neighborhoods for this actor. Eighteen years old, so far away. She goes back into the bathroom. Girl kaput.
54. THE ELEMENTS
Movies under the pines at the Estrella de Mar campground. The spectators watch the screen and slap at mosquitoes. A yellow face suddenly appears among the rocks and asks: are you, too, being chased by Colan Yar? (Yellow face crisscrossed with broad dark scars, burned trees, white plastic chairs left in front of the bungalows, a bicycle in the weeds.) Colan Yar, of course, and plaques faintly lit by the the moon. I left my post; with slow steps I headed to the restaurant, which was still open at this late hour. "Colan Yar after me, right on my heels," I heard people saying behind my back. When turned all I could see were the shapes of trees and dark tents. In the movie one of the actors said "we're being chased by a volcano." Another character, a woman, at some point observed: "it's no easy thing to become a major in the English army." Chased by the Nagas, diabolical warriors in black leather helmets, worshippers of the volcano, maybe priests, not warriors; in any case, soon wiped out. The actress: "I'm tired of fighting these awful creatures." An actor says: "Do you want me to carry you to the plane?" Five figures flee through a valley in flames. An Armada icebreaker waiting for them at 20:30 hours, not a minute later. The captain: "If we stay, we won't be able to get out later." The captain's hair is completely white and he's wearing a blue winter uniform. He enunciates slowly: "We won't be able to get out." I glanced away from the screen. From the distance the tennis court lights made it look like a secret airfield. Back there, the person fleeing Colan Yar writes a letter sitting on a bench outside. Secret airfield. Mirrors. Other elements.
55. NAGAS
Movies in the woods? The projectionist naps on a lounge chair in the backyard of his bungalow. The nameless girl disappeared as meekly as the first time I saw her. I walked forward unafraid, leaving faint footprints in the dust. It was midnight and I saw police cars pulled over on the highway. I didn't answer Mara's last letter. The girl walked back to her tent and no one could say whether she'd come out or not. The next morning she was gone. "I've written all I
can"… "A tenyearold girl is the only one left, she waves to me whenever she sees me"… "She sat alone on the terrace of the bar, next to the dance floor, and she wasn't hard to find"… On the screen, the Nagas appear. Spectators and a cloud of mosquitoes. I glanced to the right: distant lights of the tennis courts. I felt like falling asleep right there. These are the elements: "impassivity," "perseverance," "blond hair." The next morning she was no longer in her tent. Along the deathdoomed European highways her parents' car glides. On the way to Lyon, Geneva, Bruges? On the way to Antwerp? He looked around wearily: waxing moon, the crowns of pine trees silhouetted against the sky, the sound of sirens in the distance. But I'm safe here, he said, the killer didn't recognize me and he's gone. Blackandwhite scene of a man who heads into the woods after the screening. Final images of adults napping as a strange car moves to encounter a greater brightness.
56. POSTSCRIPT
Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I'm at the end of my strength. (Significant, said the foreigner.) Odes to the human and the divine. Let my writing be like the verses by Leopardi that Daniel Biga recited on a Nordic bridge to gird himself with courage.
BARCELONA 1980
ABOUT THE AUTHOR AND THE TRANSLATOR
Roberto Bolaño
"Never less than mesmerizing." — The Los Angeles Times
"Bolaño has proven that literature can do anything." — Jonathan Lethem, The New York Times
As Ignacio Echevarría, Bolaño's friend and literary executor, once suggested, Antwerp can be viewed as the Big Bang of Bolaño's fictional universe: all the elements are here, highly compressed, at the moment that his talent explodes. Bolaño chose to publish Antwerp in 2002, twentytwo years after he'd written it: "I wrote this book for myself, and even that I can't be sure of."
In 54 sections, the novel's fractured narration moves in multiple directions, splicing together an experimental crime novel. Antwerp is, in Bolaño's words, radical and solitary. "Of what is lost, irretrievably lost, all I wish to recover is the daily availability of my writing, lines capable of grasping me by the hair and lifting me up when I'm at the end of my strength."
Born in Chile and raised in Mexico before going abroad and writing most of his books in Spain, Roberto Bolaño (1953 2003), has been acclaimed as "funny, furious and frightening" (The London TLS), "the real thing and the rarest" (Susan Sontag), and "exceptionally entertaining" (Michael Dirda, The Washington Post).