2666 by Roberto Bolaño Page A

cultural offerings and beauty. Morini showed up
loaded with books and papers to grade, as if the
Salzburg
meeting had caught him at one of his
busiest moments.
    All four were put up at the same hotel.
Morini and Norton were on the third floor, in rooms 305 and 311, respectively.
Espinoza was on the fifth floor, in room 509. And Pelletier was on the sixth
floor, in room 602. The hotel was literally overrun by a German orchestra and a
Russian choir, and there was a constant musical hubbub in the hallways and on
the stairs, sometimes louder and sometimes softer, as if the musicians never
stopped humming overtures or as if a mental (and musical) static had settled
over the hotel. Espinoza and Pelletier weren't bothered in the least by it, and
Morini seemed not to notice, but this was just the sort of thing, Norton
exclaimed, one of many others she wouldn't mention, that made
Salzburg
such a shithole.
    Naturally, neither Pelletier nor Espinoza
visited Norton in her room a single time. Instead, the room that Espinoza
visited (once) was Pelletier's, and the room that Pelletier visited (twice) was
Espinoza's, the two of them as excited as children at the news spreading like
wildfire, like a nuclear conflagration, along the hallways and through the
symposium gatherings in petit comité, to
wit, that Archimboldi was a candidate for the Nobel that year, not only cause
for great joy among Archimboldians everywhere but also a triumph and a
vindication, so much so that in Salzburg, at the Red Bull beer hall, on a night
of many toasts, peace was declared between the two main factions of Archimboldi
scholars, that is, between Pelletier and Espinoza and Borchmeyer, Pohl, and
Schwarz, who from then on decided, with respect for each other's differences
and methods of interpretation, to pool their efforts and forswear sabotage,
which in practical terms meant that Pelletier would no longer veto the
publication of Schwarz's essays in the journals where he held sway, and Schwarz
would no longer veto the publication of Pelletier's studies in the journals
where he, Schwarz, was held in godlike esteem.
     
    Morini, less excited than Pelletier and
Espinoza, was the first to point out that until now, at least as far as he
knew, Archimboldi had never received an important prize in Germany, no
booksellers' award, or critics' award, or readers' award, or publishers' award,
assuming there was such a thing, which meant that one might reasonably expect
that, knowing Archimboldi was up for the biggest prize in world literature, his
fellow Germans, even if only to play it safe, would offer him a national award
or a symbolic award or an honorary award or at least an hour-long television
interview, none of which happened, incensing the Archimboldians (united this
time), who, rather than being disheartened by the poor treatment that
Archimboldi continued to receive, redoubled their efforts, galvanized in their
frustration and spurred on by the injustice with which a civilized state was
treating not only—in their opinion—the best living writer in Germany, but the
best living writer in Europe, and this triggered an avalanche of literary and
even biographical studies of Archimboldi (about whom so little was known that
it might as well be nothing at all), which in turn drew more readers, most
captivated not by the German's work but by the life or nonlife of such a
singular figure, which in turn translated into a word-of-mouth movement that
increased sales considerably in Germany (a phenomenon not unrelated to the
presence of Dieter Hellfeld, the latest acquisition of the Schwarz, Borchmeyer,
and Pohl group), which in turn gave new impetus to the translations and the
reissues of the old translations, none of which made Archimboldi a bestseller
but did boost him, for two weeks, to ninth place on the bestseller list in
Italy, and to twelfth place in France, also for two weeks, and although it
never made the lists in Spain, a publishing house there bought the rights