2666 by Roberto Bolaño Page B

to
the few novels that still belonged to other Spanish publishers and the rights
to all of the writer's books that had yet to be translated into Spanish, and in
this way a kind of Archimboldi Library was begun, which wasn't a bad business.
    In the
British Isles
,
it must be said, Archimboldi remained a decidedly marginal writer.
    In these heady days, Pelletier happened on
a piece written by the Swabian whom they'd had the pleasure of meeting in
Amsterdam
. In the piece
the Swabian basically repeated what he'd already told them about Archimboldi's
visit to the Frisian town and the dinner afterward with the lady who had
traveled to
Buenos Aires
.
The piece was published in the Reutlingen
Morning News and differed from the Swabian's original account in that it
reproduced an exchange between the lady and Archimboldi, pitched in a key of sardonic
humor. The conversation began with her asking him where he was from.
Archimboldi replied that he was Prussian. The lady asked whether his was a
noble name, of the Prussian landed gentry. Archimboldi replied that it probably
was. Then the lady murmured the name Benno von Archimboldi, as if biting a gold
coin to test it. Immediately she said it didn't sound familiar and she
mentioned a few other names, to see whether Archimboldi recognized them. He
said he didn't, all he'd known of
Prussia
were its forests.
    "And yet your name is of Italian
origin," said the lady.
    "French," replied Archimboldi.
"It's Huguenot."
    At this, the lady laughed. She had once
been very beautiful, said the Swabian. Even then, in the dim light of the
tavern, she looked beautiful, although when she laughed her false teeth slipped
and she had to adjust them with her hand. Still, the operation was not
ungraceful, as performed by her. The lady was so easy and natural with the
fishermen and peasants that she inspired only respect and affection. She had
been a widow for a long time. Sometimes she would go out riding on the dunes.
Other times she would wander down side roads buffeted by the wind off the
North Sea
.
    When Pelletier discussed the Swabian's
article with his three friends one morning as they were having breakfast at the
hotel before going out into
Salzburg
,
opinions and interpretations varied considerably.
    According to Espinoza and Pelletier, the
Swabian had probably been the lady's lover at the time when Archimboldi came to
give his reading. According to Norton, the Swabian had a different version of
events depending on his mood and his audience, and it was possible that he
himself didn't even remember anymore what was really said and what had really
happened on that momentous occasion. According to Morini, the Swabian was a
grotesque double of Archimboldi, his twin, the negative image of a developed
photograph that keeps looming larger, becoming more powerful, more oppressive,
without ever losing its link to the negative (which undergoes the reverse
process, gradually altered by time and fate), the two images somehow still the
same: both young men in the years of terror and barbarism under Hitler, both
World War II veterans, both writers, both citizens of a bankrupt nation, both poor
bastards adrift at the moment when they meet and (in their grotesque fashion)
recognize each other, Archimboldi as a struggling writer, the Swabian as
"cultural promoter" in a town where culture was hardly a serious
concern.
    Was it even conceivable that the miserable
and (why not?) contemptible Swabian was really Archimboldi? It wasn't Morini
who asked this question, but Norton. And the answer was no, since the Swabian,
to begin with, was short and of delicate constitution, which didn't match
Archimboldi's physical description at all. Pelletier's and Espinoza's
explanation was much more plausible: the Swabian as the noble lady's lover,
even though she could have been his grandmother. The Swabian trudging each
afternoon to the house of the lady who had traveled to
Buenos Aires
, to fill his belly with
charcuterie and biscuits