2666 by Roberto Bolaño Page A

window and glanced at the engines and dearly wished he was back
in Madrid.
    For a while Pelletier and Espinoza didn't
call each other. Pelletier called Norton occasionally, although their
conversations were increasingly, how to put it, stilted, as if good manners
were the only thing sustaining their relationship, and he called Morini just as
frequently as ever, for with him nothing had changed.
    It was the same for Espinoza, although it
took him a little longer to realize that Norton meant what she said. Naturally,
Morini noticed something wrong, but out of discretion or laziness, the awkward
and sometimes painful laziness that gripped him now and then, he preferred to
behave as if he hadn't noticed, for which Pelletier and Espinoza were grateful.
    Even Borchmeyer, who in some ways feared
the tandem of Espinoza and Pelletier, noticed something new in the
correspondence he maintained with each, veiled insinuations, tiny retractions,
the faintest of doubts (all extremely eloquent, naturally, coming from them)
about the methodology they had previously shared.
    Then came an assembly of Germanists in
Berlin
, a twentieth-century German literature congress in
Stuttgart
, a symposium on German literature in
Hamburg
, and a conference on the future of German
literature in
Mainz
.
Norton, Morini, Pelletier, and Espinoza attended the
Berlin
assembly, but for one reason or
another all four of them were able to meet only once, at breakfast, where they
were surrounded by other Germanists fighting doggedly over the butter and jam.
Pelletier, Espinoza, and Norton attended the congress, and just as Pelletier
managed to speak to Norton alone (while Espinoza was exchanging views with Schwarz),
when it was Espinoza's turn to talk to Norton, Pelletier went off discreetly
with Dieter Hellfeld.
    This time Norton noticed that her friends
were doing their best not to speak to each other, sometimes even avoiding each
other's company, which couldn't help affecting her since she felt in some way
responsible for the rift between them.
    Only Espinoza and Morini attended the
symposium, and since they were in
Hamburg
anyway and killing time they went to visit the Bubis publishing house and paid
their compliments to Schnell, but they couldn't see Mrs. Bubis, for whom they'd
brought a bouquet of roses, since she was on a trip to
Moscow
. That woman, Schnell said to them, I
don't know where she gets her energy, and then he gave a pleased laugh that
Espinoza and Morini thought was a bit much. Before they left the publishing
house they gave the roses to Schnell.
    Only Pelletier and Espinoza attended the
conference, and this time they had no choice but to meet and lay their cards on
the table. At first, as was natural, they tried to avoid each other, politely
most of the time or brusquely on a few occasions, but in the end there was
nothing to do but talk. This event took place at the hotel bar, late at night,
when only one waiter was left, the youngest one, a tall, blond, sleepy boy.
    Pelletier was sitting at one end of the
bar and Espinoza at the other. Then the bar began gradually to empty, and when
only the two of them were left Pelletier got up and sat down next to Espinoza.
They tried to discuss the conference, but after a few minutes it came to seem
ridiculous going on, or pretending to go on, in that vein. Once again it was
Pelletier, better versed in the art of conciliation and confidences, who took
the first step. He asked how Norton was. Espinoza confessed he didn't know.
Then he said that he called her sometimes and it was like talking to a
stranger. This last part Pelletier inferred, because Espinoza, who at times
expressed himself in unintelligible ellipses, didn't call Norton a stranger but
used the word busy, then the word distracted. For a while, the phone in
Norton's apartment floated in their conversation. A white telephone in the
grasp of a white hand, the white forearm of a stranger. But she wasn't a
stranger. Not insofar as both had slept