Bolano.thereturn

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STORY 65

S T O R Y

Ihave good news and badnews. The good news is thatthere is life (of a kind) afterthis life. The bad news isthat Jean-Claude Villeneuveis a necrophiliac.

Death caught up with mein a Paris disco at four in themorning. My doctor had

warned me, but some thingsare stronger than reason. Iwas convinced, mistakenly(and even now its somethingI regret), that drinking anddancing were not the mosthazardous of my passions.Another reason I kept goingout every night to whateverwas happening in Paris wasmy routine as a middle man-ager at FRACSA; I was afterwhat I couldnt nd at work

or in what people call theinner life: the buzz you getfrom a certain excess.

But Id rather not talkabout that, or only as much as I haveto. When my death occurred, I wasrecently divorced and thirty-four years

old. I hardly realized what was goingon. A sudden sharp pain in the chest,her face, the face of Ccile Lamballe,the woman of my dreams, imperturb-able as ever, the dance oor spinningin a brutal whirl, sucking in the danc-ers and the shadows, and then a briefmoment of darkness.

What happened next was like what

you sometimes see in movies, and

thats something Id like tosay a few words about.

In life I wasnt especiallyintelligent. Im still not(though Ive learned a lot).When I say intelligent, what Ireally mean is thoughtful. ButI have a certain energy and acertain taste. What I mean is,

Im not a philistine. It couldntbe said, objectively, that Idever behaved like a philistine.Its true that I graduated inbusiness studies, but thatdidnt stop me from reading agood book or seeing a playevery now and then, or beinga keener moviegoer thanmost. Some of the movies Iwas pressured to see by myex-wife. But the others I sawfor love of the seventh art.

Like just about everyoneelse, I went to see Ghost, Idont know if you rememberit, a box-ofce hit, with Demi

Moore and Whoopi Goldberg, theone where Patrick Swayze gets killedand his body is left lying on a Man-hattan street, or in an alley, maybe,on dirty pavement, anyway, while ina special-effects extravaganza (specialfor the time, anyway) his soul comesout of his body and stares at it in as-tonishment. Well, apart from the spe-

cial effects, I thought it was idiotic. A

Roberto Bolao, whose novels include 2666and The Savage Detectives, died in 2003at the age of fty. The story presented here isincluded in The Return, available in July

from New Directions. Chris Andrews wasawarded the Premio Valle Incln Prize for

his translation of Bolaos Distant Star.

THE RETURNBy Roberto Bolao

Translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews

Illustration by Simon Pemberton


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punishment, and I had a panic at-tack, but that bout of irrational fearwas soon over. And slowly I wasstarting to feel better.

Throughout the day new bodieskept arriving, but never accompaniedby ghosts, and at about four in the

afternoon a nearsighted young manperformed an autopsy on me and es-tablished the causes of my accidentaldeath. I have to admit I didnt havethe stomach to watch them open meup. But I went to the autopsy room tolisten as the coroner and his assistant,quite a pretty girl, performed their taskefficiently and quicklyif only allpublic servants worked like thatwhile I waited with my back turned,looking at the ivory-colored tiles onthe wall. Then they washed me and

sewed me up and an orderly took meback to the morgue again.

I stayed there until eleven at night,sitting on the oor in front of my re-frigerated niche, and although at onepoint I thought I was going to doze off,I no longer had the need to sleep orany way of falling asleep, so what I didwas just go on thinking about my pastlife and the enigmatic future (to giveit a name of some kind) that lay beforeme. After ten oclock, the comings andgoings, which during the day had been

like a constant but barely discernibledrip, stopped or diminished consider-ably. At ve past eleven the youngguys with the hexagonal earrings reap-peared. I was startled when theyopened the door. But I was beginningto get used to my ghostly state and,having recognized them, I remainedseated on the oor, thinking of thedistance separating me from CcileLamballe, which was innitely greaterthan the distance between us when Iwas still alive. Realizations always

come too late. In life I was afraid ofbeing a toy (or less than a toy) forCcile, and now that I was dead, thatfate, once the cause of my insomniaand pervasive insecurity, seemedsweet, and not without a certain graceand weight: the solidity of the real.

But I was talking about the hipsterorderlies. I saw them come into themorgue and although I noticed some-thing cautious in their bearing that satoddly with that oily, feline manner oftheirs, like wannabe artists out club-

bing, I paid no attention to their

STORY 67

F R A N K L I NS Q UA R E

P R E S S

SOLUTION TOTHE MARCHPUZZLE

NOTESFOR PERFECTSETTINGS:

Puzzle editing by Dan Asimov. Note: * indicates an anagram.

The quotation is Diamonds Are a Girls Best Friend(Carol) Channing. The peripheral

names are famous diamonds: CULLINAN, HOPE, KOH-I-NOOR, and SHAH.

ACROSS: 1. chads, cha(D[ickens])s; 2. astir*; 3. cheat*; 4. stems, two mngs.; 5. strop, rev.;6. point, alternate letters; 7. ponds, two mngs.; 8. U.S.-age; 9. r-ages; 10. crone, C-(r[ouge])-one; 11.tense*; 12. P.(ale)R.; 13. ag-ile; 14. sin-AI; 15. elder, two mngs.; 16. steal, (steel); 17. Tours, twomngs.; 18. scrub, two mngs.; 19. curs-(bon)e; 20. e(as)es (rev.); 21. h(a)unt; 22. eld*;

23. R.(ave)N.; 24. iron-y, pun; 25. e(rod)e; 26. nidus, hidden; 27. d-iced; 28. clo(U)d; 29.ni(rev.)-hi-L; 30. a-Vail; 31. tin(n)y; 32. tenth, rst letters; 33. ho(I)st; 34. punch, two mngs.;35. kugel, l-e.g.UK, rev.

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68 HARPERS MAGAZINE / APRIL 2010

movements and their whispering, un-til one of them opened the nichewhere my body was lying.

Then I got up and started watchingthem. Moving like seasoned profes-sionals, they placed my body on a trol-ley. Then they rolled the trolley out of

the morgue and along a long corridor,sloping gently upward, that eventuallyled into the buildings parking garage.For a moment I thought they werestealing my body. In my delirium Iimagined Ccile Lamballe, the milk-white face of Ccile Lamballe; I imag-ined her emerging from the darknessof the parking lot to give the pseudo-artists the sum they had demanded forthe rescue of my body. But there wasno one in the garage, which showsthat I was still a long way from recov-

ering my powers of reasoning or evenmy composure. To tell the truth Id been re-

ally hoping for a quiet night.

For a few moments, as I followedthe orderlies between the unwelcom-ing rows of cars with a certain trepi-dation and disquiet, I experiencedthe dizziness I had felt in my rst fewminutes as a ghost. They put mybody in the trunk of a gray Renaultcovered with little dents, and we

emerged from the belly of that build-ing, which I was already beginningto think of as home, into the utterfreedom of the Paris night.

I cant remember now which ave-nues and streets we took. The order-lies were high, as I was able to ascer-tain from closer observation, andthey were talking about people wellbeyond their social reach. My firstimpression was soon conrmed: theywere pathetic losers, but there wassomething in their attitude, some-

thing, I thought at rst, like hope,and then it seemed like innocence,which made me feel close to themsomehow. Deep down, we were simi-lar, not now and not in the momentsleading up to my death, but theywere similar to how I imagined my-self at twenty-two or twenty-five,when I was still a student and stillbelieved that one day the world wasgoing to fall at my feet.

The Renault pulled up in front of amansion in one of the most exclusive

neighborhoods of Paris. Thats how it

seemed to me, anyway. One of thepseudo-artists got out of the car andrang a bell. After a while, a voicefrom the darkness told him to move,no, suggested that he move a little tothe right and lift his chin. The orderlydid as he was told and lifted his head.

The other one looked out the windowof the car and waved in the directionof a security camera that was observ-ing us from atop the gate. The voicemade a throat-clearing sound (at thatpoint I knew that I would soon meet aman of the utmost reserve) and saidthat we could enter.

Straightaway the gate opened witha faint squeaking sound and the cardrove in along a paved drive thatmoved through a garden full of treesand shrubs, with a slightly overgrown

look that owed more to whim thanto neglect. We stopped beside one ofthe wings of the house. While theorderlies were removing my bodyfrom the trunk, I looked at the build-ing in dismay and awe. Never in allmy life had I been inside a house likethat. It looked old. It must have beenworth a fortune. I couldnt say anymore without stretching my knowl-edge of architecture.

We went in through one of theservice entrances. We crossed the

kitchen, which was spotless and coldlike the kitchen in a restaurant thathas been closed for many years, andthen we followed a dim corridor, at theend of which we took an elevatordown to the basement. When thedoors of the elevator opened, therewas Jean-Claude Villeneuve. I recog-nized him immediately. The longwhite hair, the thick glasses, the graygaze that seemed to belong to a help-less child while the rm narrow lipsdenoted, on the contrary, a man who

knew very well what he wanted. Hewas wearing jeans and a white short-sleeved shirt. I was shocked, becausein the photos of Villeneuve that I hadseen, his clothes had always been el-egant. Discreet, yes, but elegant. TheVilleneuve before me now, by contrast,looked like an old rock star sufferingfrom insomnia. His gait, however, wasunmistakable; he moved with thesame unsteadiness I had seen so oftenon television, when he stepped uponto the catwalk at the end of his fall-

winter or spring-summer show, almost

as if it were a chore, hauled out by hisfavorite models to receive the publicsunanimous applause. The orderlies putmy body on a dark green sofa and tooka few steps back, waiting for Ville-neuves verdict. He approached mybody, uncovered my face, and then

without saying a word went over to alittle desk made (I assume) of finewood, from which he extracted anenvelope. The orderlies took the en-velope, which almost certainly con-tained a considerable sum of cash,though neither of them bothered tocount it, and then one of them saidthat they would come back at seventhe next morning to pick me up, andthey left. Villeneuve ignored his part-ing words. The orderlies went out theway wed come in; I heard the sound

of the elevator and then silence. Pay-ing no attention to my body, Ville-neuve switched on a television moni-tor. I looked over his shoulder. Thepseudo-artists were at the gate, waitingfor Villeneuve to let them out. Thenthe car drove off into the streets ofthat highly exclusive neighborhoodand the metal gate shut with a briefsqueaking noise.

From that moment on, everythingin my new supernatural life began tochange, in accelerating phases that

were perfectly distinct from eachother in spite of their rapid succes-sion. Villeneuve went over to whatlooked like an ordinary hotel mini-bar and took out an apple juice. Heremoved the cap, began to drinkstraight from the bottle, andswitched off the security monitor. Ashe drank, he put on some music. Mu-sic I had never heard, or maybe Ihad, but when I listened carefully itdidnt seem familiar: electric guitars,a piano, a saxophone, a sorrowful

and melancholic piece, but strong aswell, as if the composers spirit wasdetermined not to yield. I went overto the stereo hoping to see the nameon the cover of the CD, but Icouldnt see anything. Only Ville-neuves face, which looked strange inthe semidarkness, as if being on hisown again and drinking the applejuice had given him a hot ush. I no-ticed a drop of sweat in the middle ofhis cheek. A tiny drop rolling slowlydown toward his chin. I also thought

I could see him trembling slightly.


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STORY 69

Then Villeneuve put the glassdown beside the CD player and ap-proached my body. For a while helooked at me as if he didnt knowwhat to do, though he did, or as if hewas attempting to guess what hopesand desires had once agitated the

contents of that plastic body bag,which were now at his disposal. Hestayed like that for some time. Ididnt know what his intentionswereIve always been an innocent.If Id known, I would have been ner-vous. But I didnt, so I sat down inone of the comfortable leather arm-chairs in the room and waited.

With extreme care, Villeneuve un-wrapped the parcel containing mybody, rucking the bag up under mylegs, and then (after two or three

endless minutes) he removed it en-tirely and left my corpse naked onthe sofa, which was upholstered withgreen leather. He stood up straight-awayhed been kneelingtook offhis shirt and paused, but kept hiseyes on me, and that was when Istood up too, came a little closer, andsaw my naked body, slightly fatterthan I would have liked, but not toobadeyes closed, an absent expres-sion on my faceand I saw Ville-neuves torso, a sight very few people

have seen, since the great designer isrenowned among many other quali-ties for his discretion (the press, forexample, has never published photosof him at the beach), and I tried toread his expression and guess whatwould happen next, but all I couldsee in his face was diffidence; helooked more diffident than in thephotos, infinitely more diffident infact than he looked in the photos inthe fashion and gossip magazines.

Villeneuve removed his trousers

and socks and lay down beside mybody. Well, at that point I didrealizewhat was going on, and I was dumb-struck. Its easy enough to imaginewhat came next, but it wasnt whatyoud call bacchanalian. Villeneuvehugged me, caressed me, kissed mechastely on the lips. He massaged mypenis and testicles with something ofthe delicacy once lavished on me byCcile Lamballe, the woman of mydreams, and after a quarter of anhour of cuddling in the semidarkness

I noticed that he had an erection.

My God, I thought, now hes goingto sodomize me. But thats not whathappened. To my surprise, the de-signer rubbed himself against one ofmy thighs till he came. I would haveliked to shut my eyes at that pointbut I couldnt. My reactions were

contradictory; I felt disgusted bywhat I was seeing, grateful for nothaving been sodomized, surprised todiscover Villeneuves secret, angry atthe orderlies for having rented outmy body, and even attered to haveserved, unwillingly, as an object of desire for one of the most famous men in France.

After coming, Villeneuve closedhis eyes and sighed. In that sigh Ithought I could detect a hint of dis-

gust. He sat up quickly and stayedthere on the sofa with his back to mybody for a few seconds while hewiped his dripping member with hishand. You should be ashamed, I said.

It was the first time Id spokensince my death. Villeneuve raised hishead, quite unsurprised, or at anyrate much less surprised than I wouldhave been in his situation, whilereaching down with one hand to feelfor his glasses on the carpet.

I knew at once that he had heard

me. It seemed like a miracle. Sud-denly I felt so happy that I forgavehim his act of depravity. And yet,like an idiot, I repeated: You shouldbe ashamed. Whos there? said Ville-neuve. Its me, I said, the ghost ofthe body you just raped. Villeneuvewent pale, and then, almost simulta-neously, a blush rose in his cheeks. Iwas worried that he would have aheart attack or die of fright, al-though to tell the truth he didntlook all that frightened.

Its not a problem, I said in a con-ciliatory tone, Youre forgiven.Villeneuve switched on the light

and looked in all the corners of theroom. I thought hed gone crazy, be-cause there was clearly no one elsethere; only a pygmy could have hid-den in that room, not even a pygmy,a gnome. But then I realized that, farfrom being crazy, the designer wasdisplaying nerves of steel: he waslooking not for a person but for aspeaker. As I calmed down, I felt a

surge of sympathy for him. There was

something admirable about his me-thodical way of moving through theroom. Me, Id have been out of therelike a shot.

Im no speaker, I said. Nor am I avideo camera. Please, try to calmdown; take a seat and we can talk.

And most of all, dont be afraid ofme. Im not going to do anything toyou. Thats what I said; then I keptquiet and watched Villeneuve, whobarely hesitated before continuinghis search. I let him go ahead. Whilehe messed up the room, I remainedseated in one of the comfortablearmchairs. Then I had an idea. I sug-gested that we shut ourselves in asmall room (as small as a cofn weremy exact words), where no speakersor cameras could possibly have been

planted, and I could go on talking tohim there and convince him to ac-cept my nature, my new nature, thatis. But while he was considering myproposal, it occurred to me that Ihadnt expressed myself very well,since my ghostly state could not becalled, in any sense, a nature. Mynature, however you looked at it, wasstill that of a living being. And yet itwas clear that I was not alive. Thethought crossed my mind that itmight all be a dream. Summoning a

ghostly courage, I told myself that ifit was a dream, the best (and theonly) thing I could do was to go ondreaming. From experience I knewthat trying to wrench yourself out ofa nightmare is futile and simply addspain to pain or terror to terror.

So I repeated my proposal, andthis time Villeneuve stopped search-ing and froze (I examined his face,which Id seen so often in the glossymagazines, and saw the same expres-sion, a solitary, elegant expression,

although now there were a few tell-tale drops of sweat rolling down hisforehead and his cheeks). He left theroom. I followed him. Halfway downa long corridor, he stopped and said:Are you still with me? His voice wasstrangely appealing, rich in tonesthat seemed to be converging on agenuine warmth, though perhaps itwas just an illusion.

Im here, I said.Villeneuve moved his head in a way

I couldnt interpret and continued to

wander through his house, stopping in


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70 HARPERS MAGAZINE / APRIL 2010

each room and on each landing to askif I was still with him, a question towhich I replied without fail, trying tomake my voice sound relaxed, or atleast trying to give it a singular tone(in life it was always an ordinary, run-of-the-mill sort of voice), no doubt

inuenced by the reedy (sometimesalmost whistle-like) yet extremely dis-tinguished voice of the designer. Toeach reply I also added details aboutthe place where we happened to be,with the aim of achieving greater cred-ibility; for example, if there was a lampwith a tobacco-colored shade and awrought-iron stand, I said so. Im stillhere, next to you, and now were in aroom where the only source of light isa lamp with a tobacco-colored shadeand a wrought-iron stand. And Ville-

neuve said yes or corrected meThatscast ironbut his eyes were xed onthe ground as he spoke, as if he wasafraid that I might suddenly material-ize, or didnt want to embarrass me,and Id say: Sorry, I didnt notice, or:Thats what I meant. And Villeneuvemoved his head ambivalently, as ifaccepting my excuses or just getting a clearer idea of the ghost

hed ended up with.

And so we went all around thehouse, and as we moved from placeto place, Villeneuve grew or seemedto grow calmer, while I became morenervous, because Ive never beenmuch good at describing things, es-pecially if theyre not objects in ev-eryday use, or if they happen to bepaintings no doubt worth a fortuneby contemporary artists I know abso-lutely nothing about, or sculpturesthat Villeneuve had collected in thecourse of his travels (incognito) allaround the world.

And so on, until we came to a lit-tle room, covered inside with a layerof concrete, in which there was noth-ing, not one piece of furniture, not asingle light, and we shut ourselves inthat room, in the dark. An embar-rassing situation, on the face of it, butfor me it was like a second or a thirdbirth; that is, it was like hope begin-ning and with it the desperate aware-ness of hope. Villeneuve said: De-scribe the place where we are now.And I said that it was like death, not

like real death but death as we imag-

ine it when were alive. And Ville-neuve said: Describe it. Everything isdark, I said. Its like a nuclear bombshelter. And I added that in a placelike that the soul contracts, and Iwould have gone on spelling out whatI felt, the void that had come to in-

habit my soul long before I died andof which Id been unaware until then,but Villeneuve cut me off, saying,Thats enough, he believed me, andsuddenly he opened the door.

I followed him to the main livingroom, where he poured himself a whis-ky and proceeded, in a few well-measured sentences, to ask me to for-give him for what he had done withmy body. Youre forgiven, I said. Imopen-minded. To be honest, Im notsure I know what being open-minded

means, but I felt it was my duty to wipethe slate clean and clear our future re-lationship of any guilt or resentment.

You must be wondering why I dowhat I do, said Villeneuve.

I assured him that I had no inten-tion of asking for an explanation. Nev-ertheless, Villeneuve insisted on giv-ing me one. With anyone else, it wouldhave become a very unpleasant eve-ning, but I was listening to Jean-Claude Villeneuve, the greatest de-signer in France, which is to say the

world, and time ew as I was given abrief account of his childhood andteenage years, his youth, his reserva-tions about sex, his experiences witha number of men, and with a numberof women, his solitary habits, his mor-bid dread of harming anyone, whichmay have been a screen to hide hisdread of being harmed, his artistictastes, which I admired (and envied)unreservedly, his chronic insecurity,his conicts with a number of famousdesigners, his rst jobs for a fashion

house, his voyages of initiation, whichhe declined to recount in detail, hisfriendships with three of Europes n-est screen actresses, his associationwith the pair of pseudo-artists fromthe morgue, who from time to timeprovided him with corpses, with whichhe spent only one night, his fragility,which he compared to an endless de-molition in slow motion, and so on,until the rst light of dawn began tolter through the curtains of the livingroom and Villeneuve brought his long

expos to a close.

We remained silent for a longtime. I knew that both of us were, ifnot overwhelmed with joy, at leastreasonably happy.

Before long the orderlies arrived.Villeneuve looked at the oor andasked me what he should do. After

all, the body they had come for wasmine. I thanked him for his thought-fulness but also assured him that Iwas now beyond caring about suchthings. Do what you normally do, Isaid. Will you go? he asked. I had al-ready made up my mind, and yet Ipretended to think for a few secondsbefore saying no, I wasnt going toleave. If he didnt mind, of course.Villeneuve seemed relieved: I dontmindon the contrary, he said.Then a bell rang, and Villeneuve

switched on the monitors andopened the gates for the rent-a-corpse guys, who came in withoutsaying a word.

Exhausted by the nights events,Villeneuve didnt get up from thesofa. The pseudo-artists greeted him,and it seemed to me that one of themwas in the mood for a chat, but theother one gave him a nudge and theywent down to get my body withoutfurther ado. Villeneuve had his eyesclosed and seemed to be asleep. I fol-

lowed the orderlies down to the base-ment. My body was lying there halfcovered by the body bag from themorgue. I watched them put my bodyback in the bag and carry it up andplace it in the trunk of the car. Iimagined it waiting there, in the coldmorgue, until a relative or my ex-wifecame to claim it. But I mustnt givein to sentimentality, I thought, andwhen the orderlies car left the gar-den and vanished down that elegant,tree-lined drive, I didnt feel the

slightest twinge of nostalgia or sad-ness or melancholy.When I returned to the living

room, Villeneuve was still in thearmchair, with his arms crossed,shivering with cold, and he was talk-ing to himself (though I soon real-ized that he thought he was talkingto me). I sat on a chair in front ofhim, a chair of carved wood with asatin backrest, facing the windowand the garden and the beautifulmorning light, and I let him go on

talking as long as he liked.

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