Authors: Roberto Bolaño
Tags: #Fiction, #Literary Collections, #Mystery & Detective, #Mexico, #Caribbean & Latin American, #Cold Cases (Criminal Investigation), #Crime, #Literary, #Young Women, #Missing Persons, #General, #Women
On this trip, possibly due to the many American movies they had
seen together, it occurred to them that they should hire a detective. They
visited one in
former
English-German dictionary, then he came running back and picked up the
conversation without a break. And he wasn't out to get their money, because
from the start he warned them that looking for a naturalized American citizen
after so much time was like looking for a needle in a haystack.
"He
might even have changed his name," he said.
But
they wanted to try and they paid a month's fee and the detective agreed to send
the results of his inquiries to
When the month was up a big envelope arrived in
his expenses and gave an account of the investigation.
Sum total: nothing.
He had managed to find a man who'd known Klaus (the landlord of
the building where Klaus lived), which led him to another man, someone Klaus
had worked for, but when Klaus left Atlanta he didn't tell either of the two
where he planned to go. The detective suggested other lines of inquiry, but to
pursue them he needed more money, and Werner and Lotte decided to thank him for
his trouble and end the arrangement, at least for now.
A few years later Werner died of heart disease and Lotte was left
alone. Any other woman in her situation might well have been devastated, but Lotte
didn't let herself be overcome by fate, and instead of sitting idle she doubled
and tripled her daily activities. Not only did she keep her investments
profitable and the shop in good order but with her remaining capital she got
into other businesses and was successful.
Work, a surfeit of
work, seemed to rejuvenate her. She was always poking her nose into things, she
was never still, some of her employees grew to hate her, but she didn't care.
On her vacations, never longer than a week or a week and a half, she sought the
warmth of
with casual acquaintances, but usually she left the hotel alone and crossed the
street to the beach, where she paid a boy to set up a lounge chair and an
umbrella. There she took off the top of her bikini or pulled her suit down
around her waist, not caring that her breasts weren't what they used to be, and
slept in the sun. When she woke she adjusted the umbrella and went back to her
book. Sometimes the boy who rented the lounge chairs and umbrellas came by and
Lotte gave him money to bring her a rum and Coke or a little pitcher of sangria
with lots of ice from the hotel. Sometimes, at night, she sat out on the
terrace at the hotel or went to the club, which was on the ground floor and was
frequented by German, English, and Dutch men and women more or less her age,
and she spent a while watching the couples dance or listening to the orchestra,
which occasionally played songs from the early sixties. Seen from the distance,
she looked like a lady with a pretty face, someone a little plump, aloof, with
a touch of elegance and a certain indefinable sadness. From up close, when a
widower or a divorce asked her to dance or to come for a walk along the beach
and Lotte smiled and said no, thank you, she became a country girl again and
the refinement vanished and only the sadness was left.
In 1995 she received a telegram
from
from a place called Santa Teresa, in which she was informed that Klaus was in
prison. The sender was Isabel Santolaya, Klaus's lawyer. Lotte suffered such a
shock that she had to leave her office, go upstairs, and get into bed, although
of course she couldn't sleep. Klaus was alive. That was all that mattered to
her. She answered the telegram, including her phone number, and four days
later, after two operators had asked her whether she would accept the collect
call, she heard the voice of a woman speaking to her in English, very slowly,
enunciating each syllable, though she still didn't understand anything because
she didn't know English. At last the woman's voice said, in a kind of German:
"Klaus fine." And: "Translator." And something else that
sounded German, or that sounded German to Isabel Santolaya and that Lotte
didn't understand. And a phone number, which Isabel Santolaya dictated in
English, several times, and which Lotte wrote down on a piece of paper, because
everyone knew the numbers in English.
That day Lotte didn't work. She
called a secretarial school and said she wanted to hire a girl who spoke
perfect English and Spanish, although more than one mechanic at the shop knew
English and could have helped her. At the school they told her they had the
girl she was looking for and asked when she was needed. Right away, Lotte said.
Three hours later a girl of about twenty-five appeared at the shop. She had
straight brown hair, was wearing jeans, and joked with the mechanics before she
made her way up to Lotte's office.
The girl's name was Ingrid and Lotte explained that her son was in
prison in
and Spanish. After Lotte finished she thought she would have to explain it all
again, but Ingrid was a sharp girl and it wasn't necessary. She picked up the
phone and called a public information line to find out the time difference with
Then she called the lawyer and spent almost fifteen minutes talking to her in
Spanish, although occasionally she switched to English to clarify certain
terms, and as she was talking she took notes. Finally she said: we'll call you
back, and hung up.
Lotte was sitting at her desk and when Ingrid hung up she prepared
herself for the worst.
"Klaus is in prison in Santa Teresa, which is a city in the
north of
border with the
States
good health and he hasn't suffered any physical injuries."
Before Lotte could ask what he was in prison for, Ingrid suggested
they have tea or coffee. Lotte made two cups of tea and as she moved about the
kitchen she watched Ingrid go over her notes.
"He's accused of killing several women," said the girl
after two sips of tea.
"Klaus
would never do that," said Lotte.
Ingrid
nodded and then said that the lawyer, Isabel Santolaya, needed money.
That night Lotte dreamed for the first time in a long time about
her brother. She saw Archimboldi walking in the desert, dressed in shorts and a
little straw hat, and everything around him was sand, one dune after another
all the way to the horizon. She shouted something to him, she said stop,
there's nowhere to go, but Archimboldi kept moving farther away, as if he
wanted to lose himself forever in that unfathomable and hostile land.
"It's unfathomable
and
hostile," she told him,
and only then did she realize that she was a girl again, a girl who lived in a
Prussian village between the forest and the sea.
"No,"
said Archimboldi, and he seemed to whisper in her ear, "it's just boring,
boring, boring ..."
When
she woke she knew she had to go to
minute. Ingrid arrived at noon. Lotte watched her through the office window. As
was her way, before she came up, Ingrid joked with a few of the mechanics. Her
laughter, muffled by the glass, struck Lotte as fresh and carefree. When she
was with Lotte, however, Ingrid was much more serious. Before she called the
lawyer they had tea with biscuits. For the last twenty-four hours Lotte hadn't
had a bite to eat and the biscuits did her good. Ingrid's presence was
comforting, too: she was a sensible, unassuming girl, who knew when to joke and
when to be serious.
When
they called the lawyer, Lotte instructed Ingrid to tell her that she would come
in person to Santa Teresa to handle whatever needed to be handled. The lawyer,
who seemed sleepy, as if they had got her out of bed, gave Ingrid a few
addresses and then they hung up. That afternoon Lotte visited her lawyer and
explained the situation. Her lawyer made a few phone calls and then told her to
be careful, one couldn't trust Mexican lawyers.
"I know
that," Lotte said firmly.
He
also advised her on the best way of withdrawing money abroad. That night she
called Ingrid at home and asked if she'd like to come with her to
"I'll pay you,
of course," she said.
"As a
translator?" asked Ingrid.
"As
a translator, an interpreter, a lady's companion, whatever you want to call
it," Lotte said crossly.
"I'll
come," said Ingrid.
Four
days later they were on a plane to
where they caught a connecting flight to
and from
thing he said was that she looked older, which embarrassed her.
It's been a long
time, she would have liked to say, but she couldn't speak through her tears.
The four of them, she, Klaus, the lawyer, and Ingrid, were in a cement-walled
room. The floor was cement too, with damp patches, and there was a plastic
table made to look like wood bolted to the floor and two wooden-slat benches
also bolted to the floor. She, Ingrid, and the lawyer were sitting on one bench
and Klaus on the other. He wasn't handcuffed, nor did he show signs of
mistreatment. Lotte noticed that he had gained weight since the last time she
saw him, but that was many years ago and Klaus was only a boy then. When the
lawyer listed all the murders he was accused of, Lotte thought these people
must have gone mad. No one in his right mind could kill so many women, she
said.
The lawyer smiled and said that in Santa Teresa there was someone,
probably not in his right mind, who had.
The lawyer's office was in the upper part of the city, in the same
apartment where she lived. There were two entrances, but it was the same
apartment, with three or four extra walls.
"I live in a place like this too," said Lotte, and the
lawyer didn't understand, so Ingrid had to explain about the repair shop and
the flat above the shop.
In Santa Teresa, on the lawyer's recommendation, they stayed at
the best hotel in the city, Las Dunas, although in Santa Teresa there were no
dunes of any kind, as Ingrid informed Lotte, whether nearby or fifty miles
around. At first Lotte planned to ask for two rooms, but Ingrid convinced her
to get just one, which was cheaper. It had been a long time since Lotte shared
a room with anyone, and the first few nights she had a hard time falling
asleep. To pass the time she turned on the TV, without sound, and watched it
from bed: people talking and gesticulating and trying to convince other people
of something that was probably important.
At night there were many televangelist shows. The Mexican televangelists
were easy to identify: they were dark-skinned and sweated a lot and their suits
and ties looked as if they'd been bought secondhand, although they were
probably new. Also: their sermons were more dramatic, more showy, with more
audience participation, though the audiences seemed drugged and utterly
destitute, unlike the audiences of the American televangelists, who were just
as poorly dressed but at least seemed to have steady jobs.
Maybe I think that, thought Lotte at night on the Mexican border,
just because they're white, some of them perhaps with German or Dutch roots and
therefore closer to me.
When she fell
asleep at last, with the TV on, she dreamed about Archimboldi. She saw him
sitting on a huge volcanic slab, dressed in rags and with an ax in one hand,
looking at her sadly. Maybe my brother is dead, thought Lotte in the dream, but
my son is alive.
The
second day she saw Klaus she told him, trying to be gentle, that Werner had
died some time ago. Klaus listened and nodded with no change of expression. He
was a good man, he said, but he said it with the same detachment with which he
might speak of a cell mate.
The
third day, while Ingrid discreetly read a book in a corner of the room, Klaus
asked about his uncle. I don't know what's become of him, said Lotte. But
Klaus's question surprised her, and she couldn't help telling him that since
she got to Santa Teresa she'd been having dreams about her brother. Klaus asked
her to describe a dream. After Lotte did he confessed that for a long time he'd
had dreams about his uncle too, and they weren't good dreams.
"What kind of dreams
were they?" Lotte asked him.
"Bad
dreams," said Klaus.
Then he smiled and
they went on to talk about other things.
When
visiting hours were over, Lotte and Ingrid would go for drives around the city
and once they went to the market and bought Indian crafts. According to Lotte,
the crafts had probably been made in
but Ingrid liked them and she bought three little baked clay figures,
unvarnished and unpainted, three crude, powerful images of a father, a mother,
and a son, and she gave them to Lotte, telling her they would bring her good
luck. One morning they went to
to the German consulate. They had planned to drive, but the lawyer recommended
they take the once-a-day flight between the two cities. In
quarter, noisy and full of people who didn't look like tourists, in Lotte's
opinion, and that same morning she managed to speak to the consul and explain
her son's case. The consul, to Lotte's surprise, was already aware of everything
and, as he explained, a consular officer had gone to visit Klaus, something the
lawyer had roundly denied.