Read Online The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño - Free Book Online Page B

made me laugh and even double
up with laughter sometimes, which left me feeling inwardly calm, or lucid at
least, something I hadn’t felt for a long time. We never talked about love, or
even implied that what we did from four to seven had anything to do with love.
She had gone out with a boy from Barcelona and often mentioned him. She spoke of
him in a curious, distant way, as if his ghost was wandering about in the
vicinity. She extolled his athletic virtues, the hours he spent at the gym, his
absolute dedication. I often thought she still loved him. Some afternoons the
hotel room was like a crater about to erupt. According to Alex it’s impossible
to maintain a relationship in the space of a room; sooner or later, one or the
other is going to get bored. I agreed, but what could I do? Whenever I suggested
going out, she said no; in the evening she was too tired, or something, and I
didn’t really feel like doing the rounds of the discos either. One night,
though, about two weeks after we met, we did go out, and it was great. A brief
but joyful excursion. When I was taking her back to her place (she never invited
me in), I said that I found her beauty unnerving. A rash confession, because I
knew it was something she didn’t like to talk about. In retrospect her reply
stands out as the most significant moment of that night. (We spent the rest of
it laughing continuously.) In a vehement tone of voice that banished all doubt,
she said that the most beautiful woman she had ever met was an East German
skater, the world champion, Marianne something. That was all, but it took me
aback. Nuria was obviously a girl who knew exactly what she wanted. Another
afternoon she asked me, with what I took to be genuine curiosity, what I was
doing in Z, a backwater without a bookshop or a decent cinema. I said it was
because of my businesses (an abject lie). Your business is literature, and
that’s why you should be living in Barcelona or Madrid. But then I wouldn’t see
you any more, I replied. That was going to happen anyway, she told me, because
hopefully she’d soon be back on the Olympic skating team and have her grant
again. And what will you do if that doesn’t work out? Nuria looked at me as if I
was a child, and shrugged her shoulders. Finish my course at the Institute,
maybe, give skating classes in some big city in Europe or at a North American
university; but deep down she was sure she would get back on the team. That’s
what I’m working toward, she said, that’s why I’m training
hard . . .

Gaspar Heredia:
    The music was the “Fire Dance”
    The music was the “Fire Dance,” by Manuel de Falla, and I could
see the skater’s torso moving in time with it as she lifted her arms, doing
a clumsy yet somehow affecting imitation of a devotee offering a gift to a
tiny invisible deity. The rest—the ice, the girl’s legs, her silver
skates—were mainly hidden by piles of packing cases left there to block the
way and make the place look like an amphitheater when viewed from the rink,
although as I made my way around them, they seemed to form something more
like a miniature labyrinth. For a start all I could see was the girl’s back,
her arms curved in an ethereal embrace and the spotlights shining onto the
ice, which reminded me of the lights around a boxing ring in Tijuana. The
floor was made of cement, sloping down slightly towards the center, and the
walls had been built on a foundation of irregularly shaped rocks, black with
smoke. I threaded my way among the packing cases, some of which still had
the dispatch documents on them, until I could find a better observation
post. At the edge of the illuminated area, a fat guy was sitting on a
multicolored beach chair, busily reading documents and annotating them with
a felt-tip pen; at his feet was a cassette player, with the volume turned
up, broadcasting the notes of the “Fire Dance” to every corner of the shed.
The fat guy seemed very absorbed in what he was doing,