By Night in Chile

  Boldly I advanced towards the place where the shadowy figure had hidden. There he was, next to Farewell’s equestrian fantasy. His back was turned. He was wearing a velvet jacket and a scarf and a narrow-brimmed hat tipped back on his head, and he was softly intoning words that can only have been meant for the moon. I froze in a posture like that of the statue, with my left foot off the ground. It was Neruda. I don’t know what happened next. There was Neruda and there a few meters behind him was I, and, between us, the night, the moon, the equestrian statue, Chilean plants, Chilean wood, the obscure dignity of our land. I bet the wizened youth has no stories like this to tell. He didn’t meet Neruda. He hasn’t met any of our Republic’s major writers in a setting as elemental as the one I have just described. What does it matter what happened before and after? There was Neruda reciting verses to the moon, addressing the minerals of the earth, and the stars, whose nature we can only know by

  intuition. There I was, shivering with cold in my cassock, which suddenly felt several sizes too big, like a cathedral in which I was living naked and

  open-eyed. There was Neruda murmuring words I could not quite understand, but whose essential nature spoke to me deeply from the very first moment. And there was I, tears in my eyes, a poor clergyman lost in the immensity of our land, thirstily drinking in the words of our most sublime poet. And I ask myself now, propped up on my elbow: Has the wizened youth ever had an experience like that?

  I ask myself seriously: Has he ever in all his days experienced anything like that? I have read his books. In secret and wearing gloves, but I’ve read them.

  And there is nothing in them to match that scene. There’s aimless wandering, street fights, horrible deaths down back alleys, the obligatory doses of sex, obscenity and indecency, dusk in Japan, not in Chile of course, hell and chaos, hell and chaos, hell and chaos. Oh my poor memory. My poor reputation. Now for the dinner. I cannot remember it. Neruda and his wife. Farewell and the young poet. Myself. Questions. Why was I wearing a cassock? A smile from me.

  Fresh-faced. I didn’t have time to change. Neruda recites a poem. He and

  Farewell recall a particularly knotty line from Góngora. Naturally the young poet turns out to be a Nerudian. Neruda recites another poem. The meal is exquisite. Chilean tomato salad, game birds with béarnaise sauce, baked conger eel brought in specially from the coast on Farewell’s orders. Wine from the estate. Compliments. After dinner the talk going on into the small hours, Farewell and Neruda’s wife playing records on a green gramophone that caught the poet’s fancy. Tangos. An awful voice reeling off awful stories. Suddenly, perhaps as a result of having consumed liberal quantities of liquor, I felt sick. I remember I went out on to the terrace and looked for the moon, in which our poet had confided earlier that evening. I steadied myself against an

  enormous pot of geraniums and fought back the nausea. I heard paces behind me. I turned around. There was Farewell’s Homeric silhouette, facing me, hands on hips. He asked if I felt ill. I said no, it was just a little dizzy spell, the fresh country air would soon set me right. Although he was standing in the shadows, I knew that Farewell had smiled. Faintly, the sound of tango chords and the melodic complaints of a honey-smooth voice. Farewell asked what impression Neruda had made on me. What can I say, I replied, he’s the greatest. For a few moments we stood there in silence. Then Farewell took two steps forward and his face appeared before me, the face of an aging Greek god kept awake by the moon.

  I blushed intensely. Farewell’s hand came to rest for a moment on my belt. He spoke to me of night in the work of the Italian poets, night in Jacopone da Todi. Night in the work of the Penitents. Have you read them? I stammered. I said that at the seminary I had read a little of Giacomino da Verona and Pietro da Bescapé, Bonvesin de la Riva as well. Then Farewell’s hand squirmed like an earthworm cut in two by a mattock and detached itself from my belt, but the smile remained upon his face. What about Sordello? he said. Which Sordello? The troubadour, said Farewell, Sordel also known as Sordello. No, I said. Look at the moon, said Farewell. I took a quick look at it. Not like that, said

  Farewell. Turn around and look properly. I turned around. I could hear Farewell murmuring behind me: Sordello, which Sordello? The one who drank with Ricardo de San Bonifacio in Verona and with Ezzelino da Romano in Treviso, which Sordello?

  (and at this point Farewell’s hand gripped my belt once again!), the one who rode with Raymond Berenger and Charles I of Anjou, Sordello, who was not afraid, who was not afraid, who was not afraid. And I remember thinking then that I was afraid, and yet I chose to go on looking at the moon. The cause of my

  trepidation was not Farewell’s hand resting on my hip. It was not his hand, it was not the moonlit night or the moon, swifter than the wind sweeping down off the mountains, it was not the sound of the gramophone serving up one awful tango after another, it was not the voice of Neruda or his wife or his devoted

  disciple, but something else, so what in the name of Our Lady of Carmen was it, I asked myself as I stood there. Sordello, which Sordello? repeated Farewell’s voice sarcastically behind me, Dante’s Sordello, Pound’s Sordello, the Sordello of the Ensenhamens d’onor, the Sordello of the planh on the death of Blacatz, and then Farewell’s hand moved down from my hip towards my buttocks and a flurry of Provençal rogues blustered on to the terrace, making my black cassock flutter, and I thought: The second woe is past, and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly. And I thought: I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea. And I thought: And there came one of the seven angels which had the seven vials, and talked with me. And I thought: For her sins hath reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities. And only then did I hear the voice of Neruda, who was behind Farewell just as Farewell was behind me. And our poet asked Farewell who this Sordello was we were talking about, and who was this Blacatz, and Farewell turned to face Neruda, and I turned around too but all I could see was Farewell’s back burdened with the weight of two, or perhaps three, libraries, and then I heard his voice saying Sordello, which Sordello? and Neruda’s voice saying, That’s precisely what I want to find out, and Farewell’s voice saying, Don’t you know, Pablo? and Neruda’s voice saying, Why do you think I’m asking, dickhead? and Farewell laughing and looking at me, a look of brazen complicity, as if to say to me, Be a poet by all means if that’s what you want to do, but you must write criticism, and for goodness’ sake read widely and deeply, widely and deeply, and Neruda’s voice saying, Well are you going to tell me or not? and Farewell’s voice quoting a few lines from The Divine Comedy, and Neruda’s voice reciting other lines from The Divine Comedy that had nothing to do with Sordello, and what of Blacatz, an invitation to cannibalism, Blacatz’s heart of which we all should eat, and then Neruda and Farewell hugged one another and recited some lines by Rubén Darío, while the young Nerudian and I declared that Neruda was our finest poet and Farewell our finest literary critic and pair after pair of toasts were proposed. Sordello, which Sordello? Sordel, Sordello, which

  Sordello? Light and refreshing, swift and inquisitive, this little refrain followed me wherever I went, throughout the weekend. The first night at Là-bas I slept like a cherub. The second night I stayed up late reading a History of Italian Literature in the Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Fifteenth

  Centuries. On Sunday morning a car arrived with more guests. Neruda, Farewell and even the young Nerudian knew them all, but they were strangers to me, so while the others were busy greeting them effusively, I slipped away with a book into a wood that flanked the lodge on the left-hand side. Near the far side of the wood, but within it still, was a sort of hillock from which one could survey Farewell’s vineyards and his fallow land and his fields of wheat and barley. On a path winding through the fields I could make out two farmers wearing straw hats, who disappeared into some willows. Beyond the willows stood very tall trees that seemed to be drilling into the majest
ic, cloudless sky. And further off still rose the great mountains. I said the Lord’s Prayer. I shut my eyes. What more could I have wanted? Well, perhaps the murmur of a stream. The pure song of water on stones. As I walked back through the wood “Sordel,

  Sordello, which Sordello?” was still ringing in my ears, but something within the wood itself darkened the mood of that sprightly refrain. I came out on the wrong side. Before me lay not the lodge but some rather godforsaken-looking orchards. I was not surprised to hear dogs barking, although I could not see them, and as I walked through the orchards, where, under the protective shade of avocado trees, there grew an assortment of fruits and vegetables worthy of Archimboldo, I saw a boy and a girl, who, naked like Adam and Eve, were tilling the same furrow. The boy looked at me: a string of snot hung from his nose down to his chest. I quickly averted my gaze but could not stem an overwhelming nausea. I felt myself falling into the void, an intestinal void, made of

  stomachs and entrails. When at last I managed to control the retching, the boy and the girl had disappeared. Then I came to a sort of chicken coop. Although the sun was still high in the sky, I saw all the chickens sleeping on their dirty roosts. I heard the dogs barking again and what sounded like a body of considerable size crashing through the branches. It must have been the wind, I thought. Further on, I came to a stable and a pigsty. I went around them. On the far side stood a great araucaria tree. What was such a majestic, beautiful tree doing in that place? It has been set here by the grace of God, I said to myself.

  I leaned against the araucaria and took a deep breath. And there I stayed a while, until I heard some voices far in the distance. I set off again, sure that the voices were those of Farewell, Neruda and their friends come to look for me.

  I crossed a ditch where a sluggish stream of muddy water flowed. I saw thistles and all sorts of weeds, and I saw stones disposed in an apparently haphazard fashion, which was nevertheless the result of a human design. Who placed those stones in such a way? I asked myself. I imagined a child wearing a striped woollen sweater, several sizes too big, thoughtfully making his way through the immense solitude that precedes nightfall in the country. I imagined a rat. I imagined a wild boar. I imagined a vulture lying dead in a gully where no human being had ever set foot. Nothing came to sully that sure sense of absolute solitude. Beyond the canal I saw freshly washed clothes hanging from lengths of twine strung from tree to tree, billowing in the wind and giving off an odor of cheap soap. I pushed my way through the sheets and shirts, and there before me, thirty meters away, I saw two women and three men standing bolt upright in an imperfect semicircle, with their hands covering their faces. Just standing there like that. It was hard to believe, but there they were. Covering their faces!

  And although they did not remain for long in that position, three of them soon started walking towards me, the vision (and everything it conjured up), in spite of its brevity, completely upset my mental and physical equilibrium, that blessed equilibrium granted to me minutes before by the contemplation of nature.

  I remember I stepped back. I got tangled up in a sheet. I flailed around with my hands and would have fallen backwards had it not been for one of the farmers, who grasped my wrist. I ventured a puzzled, grateful grimace. That is what my memory has retained. My timid half-smile, my timid teeth, my voice breaking the silence of the countryside, saying thank you. The two women asked if I was all right. How do you feel, son, I mean Father? they asked. I was astonished that they had recognized me, because these were not the two peasant women I had seen on the first day, and I had seen no others since. Nor was I wearing my cassock.

  But news travels quickly, and these women, who did not work at Là-bas but on a neighboring estate, knew of my presence, and it is even possible that they had come to Farewell’s property in the hope of hearing mass, something that Farewell could have organized without great difficulty, since the estate had a chapel, but of course the idea had not crossed Farewell’s mind, largely because the guest of honor happened to be Neruda, who prided himself on being an atheist (although I suspect he was not), and because the pretext for the weekend

  gathering was literary rather than religious, and on that point I was in

  complete agreement. Nevertheless the women had come on foot through paddocks, along rough paths, around ploughed fields, just to see me. And there I was. And they looked at me and I looked at them. And what did I see? Rings under their eyes. Parted lips. Shiny skin stretched over cheekbones. A patience that I feared was not Christian resignation. A patience native to some faraway place, or so it seemed. Not a Chilean patience, although those women were Chileans. A patience that had not evolved in our land or anywhere in America, and was not even European, Asian or African (although I know practically nothing about the cultures of the latter continents). A patience that seemed to have come from outer space. And that patience almost wore my own patience out. And their words and their murmuring spread out through the surrounding countryside, among the trees swaying in the wind, among the weeds swaying in the wind, among the fruits of the earth swaying in the wind. And with each passing moment I felt more impatient, since I was expected back at the lodge, and perhaps someone, Farewell or someone else, was wondering why I had been away so long. And the women just smiled, looked severe or feigned surprise, mystery giving way to illumination on their initially blank faces, their expressions tense with mute questions or opening in wordless exclamations, while the two men who had remained behind started to move away, not walking in a straight line, not setting off towards the mountains, but zigzagging, talking to one another, now and then pointing out imperceptible features of the landscape, as if they too were prompted by nature to observe particularities worthy of commentary. And the man who had come forward to meet me with the women, the one whose claw had fastened on to my wrist and held me up, stood still about four meters away from the women and myself, but turned his head and followed the other two men with his eyes as they walked away, as if what they were doing or seeing was suddenly a source of fascination for him, sharpening his gaze so as not to miss the slightest detail.

  I remember scrutinizing his face. I remember drinking his face down to the last drop trying to elucidate the character, the psychology of such an individual.

  And yet the only thing about him that has remained in my memory is his ugliness.

  He was ugly and his neck was extremely short. In fact they were all ugly. The women were ugly and their words were incoherent. The silent man was ugly and his stillness was incoherent. The men who were walking away were ugly and their zigzag paths were incoherent. God have mercy on me and on them. Lost souls in the desert. I turned my back on them and walked away. I smiled at them, said something, asked them the way to the lodge at Là-bas and walked away. One of the women wanted to come with me. I refused. The woman insisted, I will escort you there, Father, she said, and the verb “to escort” sounded so incongruous in her mouth, it sent a wave of hilarity all through my body. You will escort me, will you? I asked. That I will, Father, she said. Or something like that, something a wind from the end of the fifties is still blowing around the innumerable nooks and crannies of a memory that is not mine. In any case I shuddered and shook with suppressed laughter. That won’t be necessary, I said. You have been too kind already, I said. That will be all for today, I said. And I turned my back on them and walked away at a decidedly brisk pace, swinging my arms and wearing a smile that relaxed into unbridled laughter as soon as I passed through the barrier of washing, my walk at that point becoming a trot with a vaguely

  military rhythm to it. In the garden at Là-bas, beside a pergola built of fine timber, Farewell’s guests were listening to Neruda recite. I approached quietly and stood beside his young disciple, who was smoking with a rather unpleasant frown of concentration on his face, while the words of the great man burrowed down through the various layers of the earth’s crust and rose up to the

  pergola
’s carved crossbeams and beyond, to the Baudelairean clouds on their solitary voyages through the clear skies of Chile. At six that evening my first visit to Là-bas came to an end. A car belonging to one of Farewell’s guests dropped me at Chillán, just in time to catch the train, which took me back to Santiago. My literary baptism had reached its conclusion. During the nights that followed, so many varied and often contradictory images crowded in on me, inhabiting my thoughts and my sleeplessness! Again and again I would see

  Farewell’s black, rotund silhouette in an enormous doorway. His hands were in his pockets and he seemed to be intently watching time go by. I also saw

  Farewell sitting in a chair at his club, with his legs crossed, speaking of literary immortality. Ah, literary immortality. At times I could make out a group of figures joined at the waist, as if they were dancing the conga, up and down, back and forth in a salon whose walls were crammed with paintings.

  Somebody I could not see was saying, Dance, Father. I can’t, I replied, it is contrary to my vows. With one hand I was holding a little notebook in which, with the other, I was drafting a book review. The book was called As Time Goes By. As time goes by, as time goes by, the whipcrack of the years, the precipice of illusions, the ravine that swallows up all human endeavor except the struggle to survive. The syncopated serpent of the conga line kept moving steadily towards my corner, lifting first its left legs all at once, then the right ones, and then I spotted Farewell among the dancers, Farewell with his hands on the hips of a woman who moved in the most exclusive circles of Chilean society at the time, a woman with a Basque surname, which unfortunately I have forgotten, while Farewell’s hips in turn were gripped by an old man whose body was perilously frail, more dead than alive, but who beamed a smile at all and sundry and seemed to be having as much fun as anyone in the conga line.