The Third Reich Read online

  ALSO BY ROBERTO BOLAÑO

  The Secret of Evil

  Between Parentheses

  The Return

  The Insufferable Gaucho

  Antwerp

  Monsieur Pain

  The Skating Rink

  2666

  Nazi Literature in the Americas

  Distant Star

  The Savage Detectives

  Amulet

  By Night in Chile

  Last Evenings on Earth

  The Romantic Dogs

  THE THIRD REICH

  The

  THIRD

  REICH

  ROBERTO

  BOLAÑO

  TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH

  BY NATASHA WIMMER

  HAMISH HAMILTON CANADA

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Published in Hamish Hamilton Canada hardcover by Penguin Group (Canada), a division of Pearson Canada Inc., 2011.

  Simultaneously published in the U.S.A. by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 18 West 18th Street,

  New York 10011, New York.

  Originally published in 2010 by Editorial Anagrama, Spain, as El Tercer Reich.

  This book was serialized, in slightly different form, in The Paris Review.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

  Copyright © the heirs of Roberto Bolaño, 2011

  Translation copyright © Natasha Wimmer, 2011

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Publisher’s note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Designed by Jonathan D. Kippincott

  Manufactured in the U.S.A.

  * * *

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Bolaño, Roberto, 1953–2003

  The Third Reich / Roberto Bolaño ; translated by Natasha Wimmer.

  Translation of: El Tercer Reich.

  ISBN 978-0-670-06400-7

  I. Wimmer, Natasha II. Title.

  PQ8098.12.O38T4713 2011 863’.64 C2011-906181-3

  * * *

  American Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data available

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  For Carolina López

  Sometimes we played with traveling salesmen, other times with vacationers, and two months ago we were even able to condemn a German general to twenty years of imprisonment. He happened by with his wife, and only my wiles saved him from the gallows.

  —Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Traps

  THE THIRD REICH

  AUGUST 20

  Through the window comes the murmur of the sea mingled with the laughter of the night’s last revelers, a sound that might be the waiters clearing the tables on the terrace, an occasional car driving slowly along the Paseo Marítimo, and a low and unidentifiable hum from the other rooms in the hotel. Ingeborg is asleep, her face placid as an angel’s. On the night table stands an untouched glass of milk that by now must be warm, and next to her pillow, half hidden under the sheet, a Florian Linden detective novel of which she read only a few pages before falling asleep. The heat and exhaustion have had the opposite effect on me: I’m wide-awake. I usually sleep well, seven or eight hours a night, though I hardly ever go to bed tired. In the mornings I wake up ready to go and I can keep going for eight or ten hours straight. As far as I know, it’s always been like that; it’s how I was made. No one taught me to be this way, it’s just how I am, and by that I don’t mean to suggest that I’m better or worse than anybody else, than Ingeborg herself, for example, who on Saturdays and Sundays doesn’t get up until after noon and who during the week needs two cups of coffee—and a cigarette—before she manages to really wake up and get offto work. Tonight, though, I’m too hot and tired to sleep. Also, the urge to write, to set down the events of the day, keeps me from getting into bed and turning out the light.

  The trip came off without any mishaps worth mentioning. We stopped in Strasbourg, a pretty town, though I’d been there before. We ate at a kind of roadside market. At the border, despite what we’d been told to expect, we didn’t have to stand in line or wait more than ten minutes to cross over. Everything was quick and efficient. After that I drove because Ingeborg doesn’t trust the drivers here, I think because she had a bad experience on a Spanish highway years ago when she was a girl on vacation with her parents. Also, she was tired, as is only natural.

  At the hotel reception desk we were helped by a very young girl who spoke decent German, and there was no problem finding our reservations. Everything was in order, and as we were on our way up I spotted Frau Else in the dining room; I recognized her right away. She was setting a table as she made some remark to a waiter who stood next to her holding a tray full of salt shakers. She was wearing a green suit, and pinned on her chest was a metal brooch with the hotel logo.

  The years had scarcely touched her.

  The sight of Frau Else brought back my adolescence, its dark and bright moments: my parents and my brother at breakfast on the hotel terrace, the music that at seven in the evening began to drift across the main floor from the restaurant speakers, the idle laughter of the waiters, and the plans made by the kids my age to go night swimming or out to the clubs. What was my favorite song back then? Each summer there was a new one, resembling in some way the songs from previous summers, hummed and whistled constantly and played at the end of the night by all the clubs in town. My brother, who has always been particular when it comes to music, would carefully choose what tapes to bring along on vacation; I preferred to pick up some new tune at random, inevitably the song of the summer. I had only to hear it two or three times, purely by chance, in order for its notes to follow me through sunny days and the new friendships that enlivened our vacations. Fleeting friendships, when I look back today, existing only to banish the faintest hint of boredom. Of all those faces only a few linger in memory. First, that of Frau Else, who won me over from the start, which made me the butt of jokes and teasing by my parents, who even made fun of me in front of Frau Else and her husband, a Spaniard whose name I can’t recall, with references to my supposed jealousy and the precocity of youth that made me blush to the roots of my hair and that inspi
red in Frau Else an affectionate sense of camaraderie. After that I thought she showed a special warmth in her treatment of me. Also, although it is a very different case, there was José (was that his name?), a boy my age who worked at the hotel and who took us, my brother and me, to places where we’d never have gone without him. When we said good-bye for the last time, possibly guessing that we wouldn’t spend the next summer at the Del Mar, my brother gave him a couple of rock tapes and I gave him an old pair of jeans. Ten years have gone by and I still remember the tears that filled José’s eyes as he clutched the folded jeans in one hand and the tapes in the other, not knowing what to do or say, murmuring (in an English that my brother was always making fun of): Good-bye, dear friends, good-bye, dear friends, etc., while we told him in Spanish—a language that we spoke with some fluency; not for nothing had our parents vacationed in Spain for years—not to worry, the next summer we’d be like the Three Musketeers again, and that he should stop crying. We got two postcards from José. I answered the first one in my name and my brother’s. Then we forgot about José and never heard from him again. There was also a boy from Heilbronn called Erich, the best swimmer of the season, and Charlotte, who liked to lie on the beach with me although it was my brother who was crazy about her. Then there was poor Aunt Giselle, my mother’s youngest sister, who came with us on the second-to-last summer we spent at the Del Mar. More than anything else, Aunt Giselle loved bullfighting, and she couldn’t get enough of the fights. Indelible memory: my brother driving my father’s car with complete impunity and me sitting next to him, smoking, without a word from anyone, and Aunt Giselle in the backseat staring in ecstasy at the foamsplashed cliffs and the deep green of the sea beneath us with a smile of satisfaction on her pale lips and three posters, three treasures, on her lap, proof that she, my brother, and I had rubbed shoulders with the bullfighting greats at the Plaza de Toros in Barcelona. I know my parents disapproved of many of the activities that Aunt Giselle pursued with such passion, just as they weren’t pleased by the freedoms she permitted us, excessive for children, as they saw it, although by then I was nearly fourteen. At the same time, I’ve always suspected that it was we who looked after Aunt Giselle, a task my mother assigned us without anyone realizing, surreptitiously and with great trepidation. In any case, Aunt Giselle was with us for only one summer, the summer before the last we spent at the Del Mar.

  That’s almost all I remember. I haven’t forgotten the laughter at the tables on the terrace, the galleons of beer that were emptied as I looked on in astonishment, the dark, sweaty waiters crouched in a corner of the bar talking in low voices. Random images. My father’s happy smile and approving nods, a shop where we rented bicycles, the beach at nine thirty at night, still with a faint glow of sunlight. The room we had then was different from the one we’re in now; whether better or worse I can’t say, different, on a lower floor, and bigger, big enough to fit four beds, and with a large balcony facing the sea, where my parents would settle in the afternoons after lunch to play infinite card games. I’m not sure whether we had a private bathroom or not. Probably some summers we did and others we didn’t. Our room now does have its own bathroom and also a nice big closet, and a huge bed, and rugs, and a marble table on the terrace, and green curtains of a fabric silky to the touch, and white wooden shutters, very modern, and direct and indirect lights, and some well-concealed speakers that play soft music at the touch of a button . . . No doubt about it, the Del Mar has come up in the world. The competition, to judge from the quick glance I got from the car as we were driving along the Paseo Marítimo, hasn’t been left behind either. There are hotels that I don’t remember, and apartment buildings have sprung up on once vacant lots. But this is all speculation. Tomorrow I’ll try to talk to Frau Else and I’ll take a walk around town.

  Have I come up in the world too? Absolutely. Back then I hadn’t met Ingeborg and today we’re a couple; my friendships are more interesting and deeper (with Conrad, for example, who is like a second brother to me and who will read what’s written here); I know what I want and I have a better sense of perspective; I’m financially independent; I’m never bored now, which wasn’t true in my adolescence. According to Conrad, the true test of health is lack of boredom, which means that I must be in excellent health. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that my life has never been better.

  Most of the credit goes to Ingeborg. Meeting her was the best thing that ever happened to me. Her sweetness, her charm, her soft gaze, put everything else—my own daily struggles and the backstabbing of those who envy me—into perspective, allowing me to face facts and rise above them. Where will our relationship lead? I ask this because relationships between young people today are so fragile. I’d rather not give it too much thought. Better to focus on the positive: loving her and taking care of her. Of course, if we end up getting married, so much the better. A life at Ingeborg’s side: could I ask for anything more in matters of the heart?

  Time will tell. For now her love is . . . But not to wax poetic. These vacation days will also be workdays. I have to ask Frau Else for a bigger table, or two small tables, to set up the game. Just thinking about the possibilities of my new opening strategy and all the various outcomes makes me want to get the game out right now and test it. But I won’t. I have the energy only to write a little more. The trip was long and yesterday I hardly slept, partly because it was Ingeborg’s and my first trip together and partly because it would be my first time back at the Del Mar in ten years.

  Tomorrow we’ll have breakfast on the terrace. When? Ingeborg will probably get up late. Was there a set time for breakfast? I can’t remember; I don’t think so. In any case we could also have breakfast at a certain café in town, an old place that always used to be full of fishermen and tourists. When I was here with my parents we always ate there or at the Del Mar. Will it have closed? Anything can happen in ten years. I hope it’s still open.

  AUGUST 21

  Twice I’ve talked to Frau Else. Our encounters haven’t been all I hoped. The first took place around eleven in the morning. I had just left Ingeborg at the beach and come back to the hotel to arrange a few things. I found Frau Else at the reception desk helping a few Danes who seemed to be checking out, judging by their luggage and their ostentatiously perfect tans. Their children were hauling enormous Mexican sombreros across the reception hall. Once they’d said their good-byes and promised to return without fail the following year, I introduced myself. Udo Berger, I said, extending my hand with an admiring smile, well deserved, because at that instant, viewed from up close, Frau Else seemed even more beautiful and at least as enigmatic as I remembered her from my adolescence. And yet she didn’t recognize me. It took me five minutes to explain who I was, who my parents were, how many summers we’d spent at the hotel. I even dredged up some rather evocative incidents that I would have preferred to keep to myself. All of this while standing at the reception desk as clients came and went in bathing suits (I myself was wearing only shorts and sandals), constantly interrupting my efforts to nudge her memory. Finally she said she did remember us: the Berger family, from Munich? No, from Reutlingen, I corrected her, though now I live in Stuttgart. Of course, she said, your mother was a lovely person; she also remembered my father and even Aunt Giselle. You’ve grown so much, you’re a real man now, she said in a tone that seemed to betray a hint of shyness, and that unsettled me, though I can’t really say why. She asked how long I planned to stay and whether I found the town much changed. I answered that I hadn’t had time to walk around yet, I had arrived the night before, quite late, and I planned to be in town for two weeks, here, at the Del Mar, of course. She smiled and that was the end of our conversation. I went right up to my room, feeling slightly agitated without knowing quite why. From there I called and had a table brought up; I made it very clear that it should be at least five feet long. As I was waiting I read the first pages of this journal. Not bad, especially for a beginner. I think Conrad is right. The daily practice, compulso
ry or near compulsory, of setting down one’s ideas and the day’s events in a diary allows a virtual autodidact like myself to learn how to reflect, how to exercise the memory by focusing deliberately rather than randomly on images, and especially how to cultivate certain aspects of the sensibility that may seem fully formed but that in reality are only seeds that may or may not develop into character. The initial reason for the diary, however, was much more practical in nature: to exercise my prose so that in the future no clumsiness of expression or defective syntax will detract from the insights offered by my articles, which are being published in an increasing number of specialized journals and have lately been subjected to all sorts of criticism, in the form of either comments in Readers Respond columns or else of cuts and revisions by the magazines’ editors. And no matter how I protest or how many championships I win, I continue to be blatantly censored based solely on claims of faulty grammar (as if they wrote so well). In the interest of honesty, I should point out that this is happily not always the case; there are magazines that receive a piece of mine and in response send a polite little note, offering perhaps two or three respectful comments, and after a while my text appears in print, as written. Others fall all over themselves with compliments; they’re the ones Conrad calls Bergerian publications. Really, my only problems are with a fraction of the Stuttgart group and some pompous asses from Cologne; I creamed them once and they still haven’t forgiven me. In Stuttgart there are three magazines and I’ve published in all of them; my problems there are all in the family, as they say. In Cologne there’s only one journal, but it’s better designed and distributed nationally, and—last but not least—it pays its writers. It even allows itself the luxury of employing a small but professional stable of regular contributers, who receive a respectable monthly stipend for doing just what they like. Whether they do it well or badly— and I would say they do it badly—is another question. I’ve published two articles in Cologne. The first, “How to Win in the Bulge,” was translated into Italian and published in a Milanese journal, which impressed my circle of friends and put me in direct contact with the gamers of Milan. The two articles were published, as I said, although I noticed that slight revisions or small changes had been made to each, everything from whole sentences eliminated on the pretext of lack of space—though all the illustrations that I requested were included!—or corrections for style, this last a task performed by some nobody whom I never had the pleasure of meeting, even by phone, and regarding whose real existence I have grave doubts. (His name doesn’t appear anywhere in the magazine. I have no doubt that this apocryphal copy chief is used as camouflage by the contributing editors in their sins against writers.) The last straw came when I turned in the third article: they simply refused to publish it despite the fact that they had specifically assigned it to me. My patience has limits; a few short hours after receiving the rejection letter I telephoned the editor in chief to express my astonishment at the decision and my anger at the editorial board for wasting my time—although this was a lie. The time I use to solve gaming problems is never wasted, much less when the campaign I’m thinking and writing about is of particular interest. To my surprise the editor responded with a barrage of insults and threats that minutes before I couldn’t have imagined coming from his prissy little duck’s beak of a mouth. Before I hung up on him—although in the end it was he who hung up on me—I promised that if we ever met I would kick his ass. Among the many insults I had to endure, perhaps the one that stung most concerned the alleged clumsiness of my writing. If I think about it calmly it’s clear that the poor man was mistaken, because if he wasn’t, why do other German magazines, and some foreign ones, keep publishing my articles? Why do I get letters from Rex Douglas, Nicky Palmer, and Dave Rossi? Is it just because I’m the champ? At this point, which I refuse to call a crisis point, Conrad told me exactly what I needed to hear: he advised me to forget the Cologne crowd (the only one of them worth anything there is Heimito, and he has nothing to do with the magazine) and to start keeping a journal, because it’s never a bad idea to have a place to set down the events of the day and develop ideas for future articles, which is exactly what I plan to do.