Applause

She said she loved busy days. I looked at the sky. “Busy days”, as well as clouds and cats that slipped away between the bushes. Those flowers that I left in the field are my proof of love for you. Later I came back with a net to look for butterflies. The girl said: “disaster”, “horses”, “rockets” and patted me on the back. Her back spoke. Like crickets squealing in the afternoons of lonely villas. I closed my eyes, breaks squealed and the police quickly got out of their cars. “Don’t stop looking out the window.” Without speaking two of them reached the door and said “police”, the rest I could hardly hear. I closed my eyes, the boys died on the beach. Bodies full of holes. There’s something obscene in all of this, said the nurse when no one was listening. “Busy days, I looked at the sky, cats”, surely I won’t return to the open air, not with flowers, not with a net, nor with a damned book to pass the afternoon. The mouth opened but the author couldn’t hear anything. He thought in silence and later thought “it doesn’t exist”, “horses”, “a waning moon in August”. Cast in black. Someone applauded from the void. I suppose this is happiness.

Roberto Bolano, Tr. Tim Pilcher