Vienna and the shadow of a woman
Text: Roberto Bolaño
Translated by Zhu Jingdong
I don't know what is the most important thing in Vienna: is it Vienna or Carmen Paulosha? The whole world knows that Vienna is a very beautiful, culturally developed city, the capital of a country that dances neo-fascism (and the situation of the dance may go to the point of putting it into action). But in Spain, few people know who Peliota is. The earliest news I ever received about her was that she was a woman of great beauty, and that the lyric poets of Mexico had lost their minds to her. Carmen Ballosa had not yet written a novel, but was a lyric poet in Mexico. I don't know what to think, but I think it's incredible that so many poets are madly in love with a female poet. What's more, all those who were desperate for Carmen (or for themselves) turned out to be friends, or they had long been, and they had formed a salon or club to spend one day a week or month in the bars of the Federal District or in Coyoacán and pour dirt on the women they had once loved.
Soon I learned, through a third party, that Carmen had set up a salon or club, or a writers' death squad, and did what their male opponents did in the same secret.
One day, in a history of contemporary Mexican literature, I saw a photograph of her. Undoubtedly, she was a very beautiful woman, with a dark complexion, a slender figure, large eyes, and long hair that hung down to her waist. I thought she was very charming, but I thought she must have been like many imitators, writing about the magical realism that was invented to promote the sorcery of resurrection.
When I read what she wrote, my opinion changed: Polarisa had nothing to do with the imitators, and nothing to do with the imitators of the imitators. I've only read a few pages, but I love it. That's it. Until I received an invitation letter from Vienna. When I get there, maybe I can read with her.
One of the benefits of going to Vienna is that you can travel by plane piloted by the mysterious pilot of Lauda Airlines Line 1. The flight attendants on this plane are dressed in overalls, like car drivers on a high-speed loop. Also, the meals on the plane were good. With good luck or bad luck, the plane was always flown by Niki Lauda himself. It doesn't take you the time to recite the Lord's Prayer three times and you'll be in Vienna. Hop on a taxi and if you're lucky, you'll even be able to stay at the Gravi Hotel. It was a small restaurant in the Dorrot street, next to the large classroom of Saint-Esteban, that is, in the city centre, although the most important aspect of Gravi was not its location, but the fact that Max Brod and Franz Kafka had stayed there when they went to Vienna.
There was a big bronze plaque with the name of the restaurant written on it in front of the hotel, but I arrived late and didn't see it. When the receptionist told me that he was going to give me the room where Brod or Kafka had stayed (I'm not sure whose room) I was in, I understood that he was going to recommend me to read the works of these two Prague writers. Considering the political situation in this country, I feel that this is too opportune. Later, I mustered up the courage to ask him if Mrs. or Miss Paulosha had already come to the store. The receptionist referred to Paulosha as Bolosa, which made me think that although Carmen is Mexican and I am Chilean, we are both of Galician origin. His answer frustrated me: Madame Borosa was not in the hotel, she had not booked a room, and he did not know anything about her.
So I paced around the area, and then to Via Gravi (strangely enough, the hotel I was staying in was called Gravei, but not on Via Gravi), to the Piazza de Steffen Cathedral, Casa Figaro, the Franciscan Church, the Hotel Schubert, the places where my friend Mario Santiago had secretly visited at night. After that, I went back to bed and spent a strange night in the room as if there was really one person: Kafka or Broder, or one of the thousands of dead guests who had stayed at the Gravi Hotel.
The next morning, I met a young Austrian novelist named Leopold Federmeier. I walked around the city with him, visiting the same cafés that Bernhard had been to when he was in Vienna, and a café very close to my hotel, which I remember not remembering at Robkowitzplatz or Augustinian Cathedral. Then we went to the Café Havica, opposite the hotel where I was staying, and the hostess of the café, the little old woman of the Middle Ages, brought me a few small breads that I said were free, but charged for it afterwards. After that, we continued to wander around and went to a few other cafes, until I was reading, wondering if I would recognize Carmen Boryosha if she was not in the reading room. Maybe she's gone.
We arrived very late in the reading room because Federmeier had lost his way twice, and she was still there. I had no trouble recognizing her, even though she herself was much more beautiful than in the photos. She seems timid, but she is smart and kind. A cannonball is embedded in one of the walls of a restaurant that is being held during a festival, which was fired by the Turkish army, a sign of the humor between the honest and the bad guys among the Viennese. When the event was over, there were only the two of us left. So she told me that the church of San Esteban was secretly dedicated to the devil. Then she told me about her life. We talked about Juan Pascoé, who was her first publisher in Mexico and my first publisher there. We also talked about Trotsky's great-granddaughter, Veronica Volkov, about Mario Santiago, who had come to her house several times, about our respective sons and daughters.
After dropping her off at her hotel, I walked back to the Gravi Hotel. That night, Kafka or Broder came to see me, or I dreamed that they came to see me. I saw them, one in my room and one in the next room, and they were packing or unpacking their belongings while they were blowing a pleasant little song in their mouths. The next morning, I also played a little song.
Our next hike was to the Danube, and we took the metro to get there. We went to the Hungarian side. Ballosa was even more beautiful than the night before. Along the way, we saw two skaters, a woman sitting watching the river, a woman standing and crying silently, and several peculiar ducks, some black and some bright brown, each black duck and a bright brown duck were a pair. This can't help but make Ballota think of opposites attract, unless the black duck is the father and the bright brown duck is its child.
What happened couldn't have been better. Kafka and Brod left the hotel. Helmut Niederer, a distinguished Viennese, told me the story of a famous shoemaker in Vienna, whom I included in my work. Pellosha and I had dinner at the Mexican embassy. The kind female ambassador – at Paulosha's request, I presumably – treated me as if I were a Mexican. I said that I had inadvertently scolded a Nazi for not daring to enter the church of San Esteban. I got to know La Barca, a brilliant Chilean novelist, and two Latin American girls who hold the Beat Generation Festival in Vienna every year. In particular, I walked with Carmen Ballosa, a great Mexican female writer, and talked to her for a long time until I was exhausted.
Vienna, 25 August 2000
Roberto Bolano (1953-2003), born in Santiago and died in Barcelona, Spain, is a famous Chilean writer whose important works include "Distant Star", "Telephone", "Romantic Dog", "Wilderness Detective" and so on.