By Night in Chile Page 4

  Salvador, as he nodded in agreement once again, by this stage understanding only snatches of Jünger’s oblivious disquisition in French, glimpsed or thought he glimpsed a part of the truth, and in that tiny part of the truth he could see the Guatemalan in Paris, the war already underway or about to begin, the

  Guatemalan already accustomed to spending long, dead (or dying) hours in front of his only window, contemplating the landscape of Paris, and Landscape: Mexico City an hour before dawn emerging from that contemplation, from a Guatemalan’s sleepless contemplation of Paris, and in its own way the painting was an altar for human sacrifice, and in its own way the painting was an

  expression of supreme boredom, and in its own way the painting was an

  acknowledgement of defeat, not the defeat of Paris or the defeat of European culture bravely determined to burn itself down, not the political defeat of certain ideals that the painter tepidly espoused, but his personal defeat, the defeat of an obscure, poor Guatemalan, who had come to the City of Light

  determined to make his name in its artistic circles, and the way in which the Guatemalan accepted his defeat, with a clear-sightedness reaching far beyond the realm of the particular and the anecdotal, made the hair on our diplomat’s arms stand up, or, in vulgar parlance, gave him goose bumps. And then, in a single draught, Don Salvador drained what was left of his cognac and started listening to Jünger again, who all this time had been holding forth imperturbably, while he, that is to say our writer, had become entangled in a spiderweb of futile thoughts, and the Guatemalan, predictably, remained slumped beside the window, his life seeping away in the obsessive and sterile contemplation of Paris. And having grasped the drift of the monologue without too much difficulty (or so he thought), Don Salvador was able to insert a word edgeways into that parade of ideas, which would have intimidated the great Pablo himself, if not for the modest tone, the unpretentious manner in which the German set out his creed in matters relating to the fine arts. And then the officer of the Wehrmacht and the Chilean diplomat left the attic room together, and as they went down the

  interminable, precipitous stairs to the street, Jünger said he did not think the Guatemalan would live until the following winter, an odd remark for him to make, since by then it was obvious to everyone that many thousands of people were not going to live until the following winter, most of them much healthier than the Guatemalan, most of them happier, most of them unmistakably endowed with a stronger will to live, but Jünger made the remark all the same, perhaps without thinking, or not wishing to confuse separate issues, and Don Salvador agreed once again, although, having known and visited the painter over a longer period, he was not so sure the Guatemalan would die, nevertheless he agreed: Of course, Quite so, or perhaps he just made that diplomatic hmm hmm noise that can mean absolutely anything. And a little while later Ernst Jünger went to dine at the house of Salvador Reyes, and this time the cognac was served in proper cognac glasses and they discussed literature sitting in comfortable armchairs and the meal was, well, it was balanced, as meals in Paris ought to be, in gastronomic as well as intellectual terms, and when the German was leaving, Don Salvador gave him one of his books translated into French, perhaps the only one, I don’t know, according to the wizened youth no one in Paris has even the vaguest memory of Don Salvador Reyes, he’s probably saying that to annoy me, it might be true that no one remembers Salvador Reyes in Paris, indeed even in Chile few people remember him and fewer still read his books, but that is not the point, the point is that when the German went home that night, in one of his suit pockets there was a book by Salvador Reyes, and there can be no doubt that he

  subsequently read the book, because he mentions it, in quite positive terms, in his memoirs. And that is all Salvador Reyes told us about his years in Paris during the Second World War. But one thing is certain and it is something to be proud of: in his entire memoirs, Jünger mentions only one Chilean, and that is Salvador Reyes. Not a single Chilean to be found, even darting timidly across the background of the German’s writings, except for Don Salvador Reyes. Not a single Chilean exists, as a human being or as the author of a book, in the dark, rich years of Jünger’s chronicle, except for Don Salvador Reyes. And that night as I returned from the house of our storyteller and diplomat, walking with Farewell’s dissolute shadow down a street lined with lime trees, I had a vision of torrential grace, burnished like the dreams of heroes, and, being young and impulsive, I told Farewell about it straightaway, but he was only interested in finding the quickest way to a restaurant whose cook had been highly recommended to him, I told Farewell that for an instant, as we were walking down that quiet street lined with lime trees, I had seen myself writing a poem in praise of a writer or his golden shadow asleep inside a spaceship, like a young bird in a nest of smoking, twisted iron wreckage, and the writer who had set out for immortality was Jünger, and the spaceship had crashed in the Andes, and the immaculate body of the hero among the wreckage would be preserved by the

  everlasting snows, while the writings of the heroes together with the scribes who serve those writings would compose a hymn to the glory of God and

  civilization. And Farewell, who was getting hungrier by the minute and walking as fast as his bulk would allow, looked at me over his shoulder as if he were thinking, What a windbag, and graced me with a mocking smile. And he said that Don Salvador’s words seemed to have made quite an impression on me. Not a good thing. It’s good to love. It’s bad to be impressionable. All the while Farewell kept on walking. And then he said that the literature of heroism was vast. So vast that two people with diametrically opposed tastes and ideas could dip into it at random without any likelihood of hitting on the same thing. And then he fell silent, as if the effort of walking were killing him, and after a while he said: Jeepers I’m hungry, an expression I had never heard him use before and never heard him use again, and then he didn’t say a word until we were seated in a rather squalid restaurant, where, as he proceeded to wolf down a rich and varied Chilean repast, he told me the story of Heroes’ Hill or Heldenberg, a hill situated somewhere in Central Europe, perhaps in Austria or Hungary.

  Naïvely I imagined that the story Farewell was about to tell would have

  something to do with Jünger or with what, in a fit of enthusiasm, I had been saying about Jünger and the spaceship wrecked in the Cordillera, and the heroes setting out for immortality armed only with their writings. But what Farewell told me was the story of a shoemaker, a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Emperor, a merchant who had made a fortune importing shoes from somewhere and selling them somewhere else and then manufacturing shoes in Vienna to sell to the elegant inhabitants of Vienna and Budapest and Prague, and also to the elegant inhabitants of Sofia and Belgrade and Zagreb and Bucharest. An entrepreneur who had started with nothing, or maybe a precarious family business, which he had set on a firm footing and gradually built up, making the brand famous, for this manufacturer’s shoes were prized by all those who wore them both for their exquisite appearance and their remarkably comfortable feel, and that, after all, was the idea, to marry beauty and comfort, a brand of shoes, and boots (both high and ankle), even slippers and mules, that were extremely long-wearing and resistant, shoes that, in a word, you could be sure would never give out on you halfway from A to B, and you could also be sure, no small merit in a shoe, that they would not produce calluses or aggravate existing ones, and as those who have had occasion to visit a podiatrist know, this is no laughing matter, a brand of shoes, in short, that stood as a guarantee of elegance and comfort. And among the clients of the shoemaker in question, the shoemaker of Vienna, was the Austro-Hungarian Emperor himself, and the shoemaker was invited or managed to get himself invited to receptions, at some of which the Emperor was present, along with his ministers and the field marshals or generals of the Imperial army, a number of whom were bound to arrive wearing riding boots or shoes from the workshops of the shoemaker, with whom
they deigned to exchange a few words, a few insignificant but always polite phrases, reserved and discreet, tinged with the gentle, almost imperceptible melancholy of autumn palaces, which, according to Farewell, was characteristically Austro-Hungarian, while the Russians, for example, endured a winter-palace melancholy, and the Spaniards, although here I feel he was stretching the analogy somewhat, were afflicted with the melancholy of summer palaces and raging fires, and the shoemaker,

  encouraged, some say, by those marks of respect, or driven, according to others, by the needs of his disturbed psyche, began to cherish an idea that had

  germinated in his mind, and when, after careful cultivation, this idea was ready, he did not hesitate to propose it to the Emperor himself, although to gain an audience he had to mobilize every one of his military and political connections, as well as his acquaintances at the Imperial court. And when all the strings had been pulled, the doors began to open and the shoemaker crossed thresholds and passed through vestibules, entering rooms each darker and more magnificent than the one before, although it was a satin darkness, a regal darkness, in which footsteps did not echo, first because of the quality and thickness of the carpets, and secondly because of the quality and suppleness of the shoemaker’s footwear, and when he was led into the final room, there, on an absolutely everyday chair, was the Emperor, accompanied by a number of his advisers, and although these advisers cast a cool and even perplexed gaze upon the shoemaker, as if they were thinking, What on earth is that individual doing here, what bee has got into his bonnet, what crazy plan has hatched in his mind and prompted him to request and obtain an audience with the sovereign of all Austro-Hungarians, the Emperor himself, by contrast, welcomed him with

  expressions of affection, as a father welcomes his son, and spoke of shoes and shoemakers, Lefebvre of Lyon, whose fine shoes were inferior to those of his dear friend, Duncan & Segal of London, whose excellent shoes were inferior to those of his loyal subject, and Niederle, based in a small German village whose name the Emperor could not remember (Fürth, the shoemaker reminded him), whose shoes were extremely comfortable but nevertheless inferior to those of his enterprising compatriot, and then they spoke of the hunt and hunting boots and riding boots and various kinds of leather and ladies’ shoes, at which point the Emperor firmly steered the conversation towards more wholesome topics, saying, Gentlemen, Gentlemen, a little restraint, as if he had not brought up the subject himself and his advisers were to blame, which imputation they and the shoemaker were only too glad to accept, apologizing profusely, until finally they got down to the real reason for the audience, and while each of those present helped himself to another cup of tea or coffee or refilled his glass with cognac, all eyes turned expectantly towards the shoemaker, who, taking a deep breath, intensely aware of the moment’s gravity, and moving his hands as if caressing the whorled petals of an inexistent but imaginable, indeed a probable, flower, began to explain his idea to the sovereign. And the idea was Heldenberg or Heroes’ Hill. In a valley known to the shoemaker, between one village and another, there rose a hill, a limestone hill, with oaks and larches growing on its slopes and all sorts of bushes on the higher, craggier parts, a green and black hill, although in spring it put on colors worthy of the most exuberant painter’s palette, a hill that was a joy to behold from the valley floor and a sight to meditate upon when viewed from the high ground on either side of the valley, a hill that seemed to have been transported from another world and set down there as a reminder to man, to steady the heart, to soothe the soul, to delight the senses. Unfortunately the hill had an owner, the Count of H., a large landholder in the region, but the shoemaker had already solved that problem by negotiating with the count, who had initially been unwilling to sell even an unproductive piece of his land, it went against his proprietary

  instincts, explained the shoemaker with a modest smile, as if he could see it from the other man’s point of view, but finally, after a considerable sum had been offered, the poor count came around to the idea. The shoemaker’s plan was to buy the hill and convert it into a monument dedicated to the heroes of the Empire. Not just the heroes of the past and the heroes of the present, but also the heroes of the future. In other words the hill would serve both as a cemetery and as a museum. How would it serve as a museum? Well, each hero the Empire had produced would have his life-size statue erected on the hill, and there would even be statues of certain foreign heroes, but only in very special cases. How would it serve as a cemetery? Well, that was simple: it would be the burial place for the heroes of the Fatherland, as nominated by a committee of army officers, historians and lawyers, all of whose decisions would have to be approved by the Emperor. So the heroes of the past, whose skeletons, or ashes rather, were in all likelihood irrecoverably lost, would rest in peace forever on that hill, represented by statues, which would reflect as accurately as possible what was known about their physical characteristics from history or legends or oral traditions or novels, along with contemporary and future heroes, whose bodies could be got hold of, so to speak, by the civil servants of the Empire. What did the shoemaker ask of the Emperor? First of all, his consent and blessing, a sign that the project met with his approval, secondly, the financial support of the state, since on his own he could not meet all the costs involved in such a pharaonic enterprise. In short, the shoemaker was prepared to pay from his own pocket for the acquisition of Heroes’ Hill, its conversion into a cemetery, the fence that would surround it, the paths that would give every visitor access to its furthest corners, and even the statues of certain heroes who were very dear to his patriotic heart, as well as providing for three gamekeepers already employed on one of his country properties, who could work as cemetery guards and gardeners, single, strong men one could rely on to dig a grave or drive away nocturnal tomb raiders. The rest, that is to say, the hiring of sculptors, the purchase of stone, marble and bronze, the ongoing

  administration, permits and publicity, shifting the statues, the road connecting Heroes’ Hill to the main Vienna road, the ceremonies that would be have to be organized at the site, transport for families of the deceased and mourners, the construction of a small (or not so small) church, etc., etc., all this was to be paid for by the state. And then the shoemaker expatiated on the beneficial moral effects of such a monument and spoke of the old values, what remained when all else fled, the twilight of human endeavor, thought flickering before the onset of darkness, and when he had finished speaking, the Emperor, with tears in his eyes, took the shoemaker’s hands, leaned close to his ear, and, in a voice that was choked with emotion yet firm, whispered words that nobody else could hear, then he looked into the shoemaker’s eyes with a gaze it was not easy to meet, but the shoemaker, also on the brink of tears, met it without blinking, and then the Emperor nodded his head several times, reaffirming his assent, and looking at his advisers, said, Bravo, perfect, excellent, to which they replied, Bravo, bravo. So that was that, and the shoemaker left the palace rubbing his hands, beaming joyfully. Just a few days later the sale of Heroes’ Hill was sealed, and the impetuous shoemaker, without waiting for an official confirmation, gave the go-ahead for a team of laborers to undertake the first stages of the project, supervising them personally, having found humble lodgings in the nearest hamlet or village, without a thought for his personal comfort, deeply absorbed in his work as only an artist can be, regardless of the weather, oblivious to the rain that often flooded the fields in that part of the country and the storms that traversed the steel-gray skies of Austria or Hungary, marching inexorably westwards, storms like hurricanes drawn towards the shadowy masses of the Alps, and the shoemaker watched them pass, water dripping from his overcoat and dripping from his trousers, his shoes sinking into the mud but not leaking at all, an absolutely magnificent pair of shoes, to which no praise or rather only the praise of a true artist could do justice, a pair of shoes for dancing or running or working in the mud, a pair of shoes that would never leave their owner in the lu
rch or let him down, and to which, sadly, the shoemaker paid scant attention (his assistant, having brushed off the mud, polished them every night, he or the young potboy at the inn, while the shoemaker lay exhausted, sprawled on the rumpled sheets, sometimes not even properly undressed), absorbed as he was in his obsessional dream, marching on through his nightmares, on the far side of which Heroes’ Hill awaited him always, grave and quiet, dark and noble, his project, the work of which only fragments are known to us, the work we sometimes think we know but which in fact we hardly know at all, the mystery we carry in our hearts and which in a moment of rapture we set in the center of a metal tray inscribed with Mycenaean characters, characters that stammer out our history and our hopes, but what they stammer out in fact is nothing more than our defeat, the joust in which we have fallen although we do not know it, and we have set our heart in the middle of that cold tray, our heart, our heart, and the shoemaker shivered in his bed and went on repeating the word

  heart and also the word gleam and it seemed he was drowning and his assistant came into the room at that cold inn and spoke to him in comforting words, Wake up, Sir, it’s only a dream, Sir, and when the

  shoemaker opened his eyes, eyes which a few seconds before had beheld his heart still beating in the middle of a tray, his assistant offered him a cup of warm milk, to which his only reply was a half-hearted swipe, as if the shoemaker were attempting to brush away his nightmares, and then, looking at his assistant as if he hardly recognized him, the shoemaker told him to stop fooling around with milk and bring him a glass of cognac or some eau-de-vie. And so he went on, day after day and night after night, in fair weather and foul, digging deep into his own funds, since the Emperor, after having wept and cried, Bravo, excellent, had not said another word, and his ministers too had opted for silence, likewise the most enthusiastic of the advisers, generals and colonels, and although without investors the project could not go ahead, the shoemaker had got it going all the same, and now it was too late to stop it. He was hardly to be seen in Vienna any more, and only when engaged in fruitless petitioning, for he spent every minute he could at Heroes’ Hill, supervising the work of his ever less numerous