By Night in Chile Read online

  Several poets came to see me and asked what was wrong. Several priests came to see me and asked what was troubling my spirit. I went to confession and prayed.

  But the rings under my eyes gave me away. And indeed at the time I was getting very little sleep, sometimes three hours, sometimes two. In the mornings I would walk from the rectory to the vacant lots, from the vacant lots to the

  shantytowns, from the shantytowns back to the center of Santiago. One afternoon two thugs attacked me. I swear I have no money, lads, I said to them. Don’t you now, Father Ass`hole, replied the muggers. I ended up handing over my wallet and praying for them, but not much. My boredom had taken on a fierce intensity. And my exhaustion had grown in proportion. From that day on, however, I changed the route of my daily walk. I chose less dangerous parts of town, I chose parts of town from which I could contemplate the magnificence of the Cordillera, this was when it was still possible to see the Cordillera at any time of year, before it was hidden by a blanket of smog. I wandered and wandered and sometimes I caught a bus and went on wandering with my head against the window and sometimes I took a taxi and went on wandering through the abominable yellow and the abominable luminous blue of my boredom, from the city center to the rectory, from the rectory to Las Condes, from Las Condes to Providencia, from Providencia to Plaza Italia and the Parque Forestal and from there back to the center and back to the rectory, my cassock flapping in the wind, my cassock like a shadow, my black flag, my prim and proper music, clean, dark cloth, a well in which the sins of Chile sank without a trace. But all that flitting around was to no avail. The boredom did not abate, indeed sometimes in the middle of the day it became unbearable and filled my head with ludicrous ideas. Sometimes, trembling with cold, I would go to a soda fountain and order a Bilz. I would sit on a bar stool and gaze all misty-eyed at the droplets running down the surface of the bottle, while somewhere inside me, a bitter voice was preparing me for the unlikely spectacle of a droplet climbing up the glass, against the laws of nature, all the way up to the mouth of the bottle. Then I shut my eyes and prayed or tried to pray while my body was seized with shuddering, and children and adolescents ran back and forth across the Plaza de Armas, spurred on by the summer sun, and the sounds of stifled laughter coming from all directions composed an all too pertinent commentary on my defeat. Then I took a few sips of iced Bilz and resumed my wandering. It was around that time that I met Mr. Raef and, a little later, Mr. Etah. Both were employed by a certain foreign

  gentleman, whom I never had the pleasure of meeting, to run an import-export business. I think they had a clam-tinning plant and shipped the tinned clams to Germany and France. I first encountered Mr. Raef (or Mr. Raef first encountered me) in a yellow street. I was walking along half frozen to death when I heard someone calling my name. I turned around and saw him: a middle-aged man, of average height, neither skinny nor slim, with a nondescript face, just slightly more indigenous than European in its features, wearing a light-colored suit and a most elegant hat, waving to me in the middle of the yellow street, not too far away, while behind him the earth was reflected in sheet upon sheet of glass or plastic. I had never seen him before, but it was as if he had known me all his life. He said he had heard about me from Fr. García Errázuriz and Fr. Muñoz Laguía, whom I held in high esteem and whose favor I enjoyed, and those wise men, he said, had recommended me warmly and without reservations for a delicate mission in Europe, no doubt thinking that an extended trip to the old continent would be just the thing to restore some of the cheerfulness and energy I had lost and was visibly still losing, as from the sort of wound that, refusing to heal, eventually causes the spiritual if not the physical death of the afflicted person. At first I was puzzled and reluctant, since Mr. Raef’s line of business could not have been further removed from my own, but in the end I got into his car and let him drive me to a restaurant in the Calle Banderas, a place that had seen better days, called My Office, where Mr. Raef, without giving anything away concerning his real reasons for tracking me down, spoke instead of people I knew, Farewell among others, and various poets of the younger generation whom I was seeing frequently at the time, just to let me know that he was keeping tabs on the circles I moved in, not only my ecclesiastical colleagues but also the writers with whom I felt an affinity and even my professional contacts, since he also mentioned the chief editor of the newspaper in which I published my column.

  Nevertheless it was obvious that he didn’t know any of those people well. Then Mr. Raef exchanged some words with the owner of My Office and shortly afterwards we made a hurried exit for reasons that remain unclear to me, and arm in arm we walked through the neighboring streets until we came to another restaurant, much smaller and less gloomy, where Mr. Raef was welcomed almost as if he were the owner, and there we ate our fill, although it was very hot outside, hardly the ideal weather for the consumption of such a copious and varied repast. For coffee he insisted we go to the Haiti, a repulsive place that collects the scum of the city offices, the middle management, vice-this, assistant-that and deputy-the-other-thing, who consider it good form to drink standing up at the bar or in bunches scattered about the establishment’s barnlike space, fronted, as I remember it, by two large glass windows, from the ceiling almost down to the floor, so that the clients standing inside, with a coffee cup in one hand and a battered ring binder or briefcase in the other, provide a spectacle for the passersby, who simply cannot resist looking in, albeit from the corner of an eye, at the mass of bodies crowded there in legendary discomfort. And I was dragged along to this sordid place, a man like me, with a name, indeed with two names, and a reputation to think of, and a certain number of enemies and a great many friends, and although I tried to protest, to refuse, Mr. Raef could be persuasive when he wished. And while I stood in a corner with my back to the wall, unable to take my eyes off the front windows, waiting for Mr. Raef to come back from the bar with two steaming coffees, the best in Santiago according to the plebs, I began to wonder just what kind of business the said gentleman was going to propose. He made his way back to me and we began to drink our coffee, standing up. I remember he talked. He talked and smiled, but I couldn’t hear a thing he was saying because the voices of the assistant-deputy-whatnots were making such a racket, they were so thick in the air of the Haiti that not a cranny was left for even one more voice. I could have leaned forward, I could have put my ear to the lips of my interlocutor, as the rest of the clients were doing, but I preferred not to do so. I pretended to understand and let my gaze wander about that chairless space. A few men returned my gaze. In some of those countenances I felt I could read signs of an immense pain. Pigs suffer too, I said to myself. And immediately I regretted that thought. Pigs suffer, it is true, and their pain purifies and ennobles them. A lantern came alight inside my head or perhaps inside my piety: pigs too are a hymn to the glory of the Lord, or if not a hymn, for that is perhaps an exaggeration, a carol, a ballad, a round in celebration of all living things. I tried to eavesdrop on other

  conversations. It was impossible. I could only hear the odd word, that Chilean intonation, words that meant nothing yet conveyed the infinite vulgarity and hopelessness of my compatriots. Then Mr. Raef took me by the arm and before I knew what was happening I was out in the street again, walking beside him. I’m going to introduce you to my associate, Mr. Etah, he said. There was a buzzing in my ears. I felt as if I were hearing it for the first time. We were walking along a yellow street. There were not many people about, although, from time to time, a man in dark glasses or a woman wearing a headscarf would disappear into a doorway. The import-export office was on the fourth floor. The elevator was out of order. A little exercise won’t do us any harm, it’s good for the

  digestion, observed Mr. Raef. I followed him. There was nobody at the reception desk. The secretary has gone to lunch, said Mr. Raef. I stood there puffing and panting, saying nothing, while my Maecenas tapped on the frosted glass window of his associate’
s office with the second joint of his middle finger. A shrill voice cried, Come in. After you, said Mr. Raef. Mr. Etah was sitting behind a metal desk, and when he heard my name, he got up, came around and greeted me effusively. He was slim, with fair hair and pale skin, and his cheeks were ruddy, as if he rubbed lavender water into them at regular intervals. He did not smell of lavender, however. He offered us each a seat and after looking me up and down went back to his place behind the table. My name is Etah, he said, with an h at the end. Understood, I said. And you are Father Urrutia

  Lacroix. The very same, I said. Beside me, Mr. Raef was smiling and nodding without a word. Urrutia is a Basque name, isn’t it? It is indeed, I said.

  Lacroix, of course, is French. Mr. Raef and I nodded in time. Do you know where the name Etah comes from? I have no idea, I said. Take a guess, he said.

  Albania? You’re cold, he said. I have no idea, I said. Finland, he said. It’s half Finnish, half Lithuanian. Quite, quite, said Mr. Raef. In times long gone there was a good deal of commerce between the Finns and the Lithuanians, for them the Baltic Sea was like a bridge, or a river, a stream crossed by

  innumerable black bridges, imagine that. I am, I said. And Mr. Etah smiled.

  You’re imagining it, are you? Yes, I’m imagining it. Black bridges, oh yes, murmured Mr. Raef beside me. And streams of little Finns and Lithuanians going back and forth across them endlessly, said Mr. Etah. Day and night. By the light of the moon or the feeble light of torches. Plunged in darkness, guided by memory. Not feeling the cold that cuts to the bone up there near the Arctic Circle, feeling nothing, just alive and moving. Not even feeling alive: just moving, inured to the routine of crossing the Baltic in one direction or the other. A normal part of life. A normal part of life? I nodded once again. Mr.

  Raef took out a box of cigarettes. Mr. Etah explained that he had given up smoking for good about ten years before. I refused the cigarette that Mr. Raef offered me. I asked about the job they were proposing and what it would entail.

  It’s not so much a job as a fellowship, said Mr. Etah. We’re mainly an

  import-export firm, but we’re branching out into other areas, said Mr. Raef. To be precise, at the moment we’re working for the Archiepiscopal College. They have a problem, and we’re looking for the ideal person to solve their problem, said Mr. Etah. They need someone to undertake a study, and it’s our job to find the person who fits the bill. We meet a need, we look for solutions. And do I fit the bill, I asked? No one is better suited to the task than you, Father, said Mr. Etah. Perhaps you might explain just what this task consists of, I said. Mr. Raef looked at me in surprise. Before he could protest, I told him I would like to hear the proposal again, but this time from Mr. Etah. Mr. Etah needed no further prompting. The Archiepiscopal College wanted someone to write a report on the preservation of churches. Naturally no one in Chile knew

  anything about the subject. In Europe, on the other hand, a good deal of

  research had been undertaken, and in some quarters there was talk of definitive solutions putting a stop to the deterioration of God’s houses on earth. My task would be to go and see, to visit the churches at the forefront of the battle against dilapidation, to evaluate the various methods, to write a report and come home. How long would it take? I could spend up to a year traveling around various European countries. If my work was not completed within a year, an extension of six months could be granted. I would receive my full salary each month, plus an allowance to cover travel and living expenses in Europe. I could stay in hotels or in the parish hospices scattered the length and breadth of the old continent. Need I say it was as if the job had been designed especially for me. I accepted. During the following days I had frequent meetings with Mr. Etah and Mr. Raef, who were taking care of all the paperwork for my trip to Europe. I wouldn’t say I warmed to them, however. They were efficient, that was clear from the start, but they were also sadly lacking in tact. And they knew nothing about literature, except for a couple of Neruda’s early poems, which they could recite from memory and often did. Still, they knew how to solve what to me seemed insuperable administrative problems and did whatever was required to smooth the way to my new destiny. As the day of my departure approached, I became more and more nervous. I spent a good while saying goodbye to my friends, who couldn’t believe my luck. I made an arrangement with the newspaper whereby I would go on sending reviews and installments of my column back from Europe. One morning I said goodbye to my elderly mother and took the train to Valparaíso, where I embarked on the Donizetti, a ship that plied between Valparaíso and Genoa under the Italian flag. The voyage was slow and refreshing and enlivened by friendships that have lasted right up to the present, if only in the most colorless and polite form, namely the punctual exchange of Christmas greetings by post. The first port of call was Arica, where, from the deck, I took a photograph of our heroic headland, then El Callao, then Guayaquil (when we crossed the equator I had the pleasure of saying mass for all the passengers), then Buenaventura, where, as the ship lay at anchor among the stars, I recited José Asunción Silva’s Nocturno by way of an homage to Colombian

  letters, and was warmly applauded, even by the Italian officers, who, in spite of their imperfect grasp of Spanish, were able to appreciate the profoundly musical strains of the bard who died by his own hand, then Panama, the wasplike waist of the Americas, then Cristóbal and Colón, the divided city, where some rascals tried unsuccessfully to rob me, then industrious Maracaibo, redolent of oil, and then we crossed the Atlantic Ocean, where, by popular demand, I

  celebrated another mass for all the passengers, many of whom wanted to confess their sins during three days of storms and heavy weather, and then we stopped in Lisbon, where I got off the boat and prayed in the first church in the port, and then the Donizetti put ashore in Malaga and Barcelona, and finally, one winter morning, we arrived in Genoa, where I said goodbye to my new friends, and said mass for a few of them in the ship’s reading room, a room with oak

  floorboards and teak-paneled walls and a large crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling and soft armchairs in which I had spent so many happy hours,

  absorbed in the works of the classic Greek authors and the classic Latin authors and my Chilean contemporaries, having at last regained my passion for reading, my literary instincts, completely cured, while the ship went on parting the waves, faring on through ocean twilight and bottomless Atlantic night, and, comfortably seated in that room with its fine wood, its smell of the sea and strong liquor, its smell of books and solitude, I went on happily reading well into the night, when no one ventured on to the decks of the Donizetti, except for sinful shadows who were careful not to interrupt me, careful not to disturb my reading, happiness, happiness, passion regained, genuine devotion, my prayers rising up and up through the clouds to the realm of pure music, to what for want of a better name we call the choir of the angels, a non-human space but undoubtedly the only imaginable space we humans can truly inhabit, an

  uninhabitable space but the only one worth inhabiting, a space in which we shall cease to be but the only space in which we can be what we truly are, and then I stepped on to dry land, on to Italian soil, and I said goodbye to the

  Donizetti and set off on the roads of Europe, determined to do a good job, lighthearted, full of confidence, resolution and faith. The first church I visited was the church of St. Mary of Perpetual Suffering in Pistoia. I was expecting to find an old parish priest, so I was more than a little

  surprised to be welcomed by a clergyman not even thirty years old. Fr. Pietro, as he was called, explained to me that Mr. Raef had written to inform him of my visit, and went on to say that in Pistoia the principal threat to the major examples of Romanesque and Gothic architecture was pollution caused not by humans but by animals, specifically pigeon shit, the numbers of pigeons in Pistoia, as in many other European cities and villages, having increased

/>   exponentially. A radical solution to this problem had been found, a weapon that was still undergoing tests, as he was to show me the following day. That night, I remember, I slept in a room that opened off the sacristy, and I kept waking up suddenly, not knowing if I was on the boat or still in Chile, and supposing I was in Chile, was it our family home or the dormitory at school or a friend’s house, and although I sometimes realized I was in a room adjoining the sacristy of a European church, I didn’t quite know which European country that room was in and what I was doing there. In the morning I was woken by a woman who worked for the parish. Her name was Antonia and she said: Father, Fr. Pietro is waiting for you, get up quickly or you’ll incur his wrath. Her very words. So I