Read Online The Return by Roberto Bolaño - Free Book Online Page B

abuse you when you were little or something? She said no, but if
she was going to read that sort of thing, she preferred Valerie Solanas. I was
surprised to learn that her favorite author was not a woman but an Englishman,
David Cooper, one of R. D. Laing’s associates. I ended up reading Valerie
Solanas and David Cooper and even Laing (his sonnets). One of the things that
impressed me most about Cooper was that during his time in Argentina (although
I’m not sure now whether Cooper was ever really in Argentina, maybe I’m getting
mixed up) he used hallucinogenic drugs to treat left-wing activists. These were
people who were cracking up because they knew they could die at any moment,
people who might not have the experience of growing old in real life, but they
could have it with the drugs, and they got better. Sofia used drugs too,
sometimes. She took LSD and amphetamines and Rohypnol, pills to speed up and
pills to slow down and pills to steady her hands on the steering wheel. I rarely
accepted the offer of a lift in her car. We didn’t go out much, in fact. I went
on with my life, she went on with hers, and at night, in her room or in mine,
our bodies locked in a relentless struggle that lasted till daybreak and left us
wrung out.
    One afternoon Emilio came to see her and she introduced me to him. He
was tall, he had a wonderful smile, and you could tell he was fond of Sofia. His
girlfriend was called Nuria; she was Catalan and worked as a high school
teacher, like Emilio and Sofia. You couldn’t have imagined two women more
different. Nuria was blonde, blue-eyed, tall and rather plump. Sofia had dark
hair and brown eyes so dark they seemed black; she was short and slim as a
marathon runner. In spite of everything they seemed to be good friends. As I
found out later on, it was Emilio who had ended the marriage, although the
separation had been amicable. Sometimes, when we’d been sitting there for a long
time without talking, Nuria looked North American to me and Sofia looked
Vietnamese. But Emilio just looked like Emilio, a chemistry or biology teacher
from Aragon, who’d been an anti-Franco activist and a political prisoner, a
decent sort of guy though not very interesting. One night Sofia told me about
the man she was in love with. He was called Juan and he was a member of the
Communist Party like our comrade. He worked in the same school as her, so they
saw each other every day. He was married and had a son. So where do you do it? In my car, said Sofia, or his. We go out in our cars and follow each other
through the streets of Barcelona, sometimes all the way to Tibidabo or Sant
Cugat. Sometimes we just park in a dark street and he gets into my car or I get
into his. Not long after she told me this, Sofia got sick and had to stay in
bed. At that stage there were only three of us in the apartment: Sofia, the
Communist and me. The Communist was only around at night so I had to look after
Sofia and go to the pharmacy. One night she said we should go traveling. Where? I asked. Portugal, she said. I liked the idea, so one morning we set off for
Portugal, hitchhiking. (I thought we would go in her car but Sofia was scared of
driving.) It was a long and complicated trip. We stopped in Zaragoza, where
Sofia still had her best friends, then at her sister’s place in Madrid, then in
Extremadura . . .
    I got the feeling Sofia was visiting all her ex-lovers. I got the
feeling she was saying goodbye to them one by one, but not in a calm or resigned
sort of way. When we made love she seemed absent at first, as if it had nothing
to do with her, but after a while she let herself go and ended up coming over
and over. Then she started crying and I asked her why. Because I’m such an
animal; even though I’m miles away, I can’t help coming. Don’t be so hard on
yourself, I said, and we went on making love. Her face wet with tears was
delicious to kiss. Her whole body burned and flexed like a red-hot piece of
metal, but her