The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño Page B

looked very thin. In
others she was skating arm in arm with a muscular, long-haired boy, and they
were smiling demonstratively: gleaming teeth, a focused look, but all the same
they did seem genuinely happy. Overwhelmed by the whirl of photos, I suddenly
felt tired and sad. When will Nuria be back? I asked. There was a plaintive
sound to my voice. Later on, after training, said Laia. I hadn’t noticed her
mother reach for the needles, but now she was knitting with a contented look on
her face, as if she had found out all she needed to know. Training? In
Barcelona? Laia smiled confidentially: No, in Z, skating or jogging or playing
tennis. Skating? Like I said,
skating
, Laia replied. She always comes
home late. And then, after checking that her mother wasn’t paying attention, she
whispered in my ear: With Enric. Ah, I sighed. Do you know Enric? asked Laia. I
said yes, I knew him. So she trains with Enric every day? Every day! shouted
Laia, Even Sunday . . .

Gaspar Heredia:
    I’m a rookie in this hell-hole of a town, said the Rookie
    I’m a rookie in this hell-hole of a town, said the Rookie when I
asked him how he got his name. A rookie, a newbie at the age of forty-eight, a
hick who doesn’t know his way around the traps, and has no friends to help him
out. He earned a bit of money salvaging stuff from dumpsters, and spent the rest
of the day hanging around bars away from the beach, on the edges of Z, where the
tourists don’t go, or clinging like a limpet to the ever-unpredictable Carmen.
She had dubbed him the Rookie, and it sounded best coming from her: Rookie, do
this; Rookie, do that; Tell me your woes, Rookie; Time for a drink, Rookie. When
Carmen said “Rookie,” you could hear the background music of an Andalusian
street, full of poor draftees on leave, looking for a cheap rooming house or a
train to save them from the disaster foreseen in recurring dreams. Her lazy,
luminous intonation, which, by the way, made the Rookie swoon with delight, had
something of the men’s shower room about it, with a little hole in the roof for
the Field Marshall’s young daughter to peep through each morning and see the
soldiers suffering under the cold showers. Right then, a cold shower was a
tempting thought—the air was thick with heat, and for hours at a time it was
hard to do more than feel resentful and gasp for breath—but the cold shower in
Carmen’s voice was terrible. Terrible, yes, but desirable, and systematically
marvelous. The Rookie worked the dumpsters, or scavenged cardboard boxes
directly from shops and warehouses; then he sold his stock to Z’s one and only
recycler, a greedy little son of a bitch, and that was the end of his working
day. He tried to spend the rest of his time with Carmen, though he didn’t always
succeed. It was, incidentally, his first visit to Z, although his friendship
with the singer dated back to their meeting in Barcelona, a year or two before.
She’s the reason I washed up in this heartless town, he explained to whoever
would listen. I came here one stormy night, my friend, following that fickle
woman, and often she won’t even spend the night with me. To which Carmen replied
that she valued nothing more highly than her independence; the Rookie, she felt,
should emulate the forbearance of the Catalans, the civilized practice of biding
one’s time. Don’t you know there are things we’re not meant to know, Rookie?
Don’t you know it’s crass to ask too many questions? The Rookie moved his head
and hands in desperate assent, but he was clearly not convinced by the singer’s
explanations. His greatest fear was that a separation, however short, would lead
to death, a sudden death for both of them one night. The worst thing about dying
alone, he used to say, is not being able to say good-bye. And why would you want
to say good-bye when you’re dying, Rookie? Better to think of the people you
love and say good-bye to them in your imagination. They often talked about
death,