The Return by Roberto Bolaño

Arancibia! And it was
like he was making a huge effort, because five years is a long time and a lot of
things had
happened to him since he’d left Chile, plus what was happening
now he’d come back, and he just couldn’t place you, he could remember the faces
of fifteen-year-olds, not twenty-year-olds, and anyway you
were never one of his close friends.”
    “He was friends with everyone, but he used to hang out with the tough
kids.”
    “You were never one of his close friends.”
    “I would’ve liked to be, though, I have to admit.”
    “And then he said, Arancibia, yeah, of course, Arancibia, and this is
the funny bit, isn’t it?”
    “It depends. My partner wasn’t amused at all.”
    “He grabbed you by the shoulders and gave you a thump in the chest
that sent you flying back at least three yards.”
    “A yard and a half, just like the old days.”
    “And your partner jumped on him, of course, thinking the poor jerk had
gone crazy.”
    “Or was trying to escape. We were so cocky back then we didn’t take
our guns off to do the roll call.”
    “In other words, your partner thought he was after your gun, so he
jumped on him.”
    “And he would have laid into him, but I said he was a friend.”
    “And then you started slapping Belano on the back and said relax and
told him what a good time we were having.”
    “I only told him about the whores; Jesus, we were
green.”
    “You said, I get to screw a whore in the cells every
night.”
    “No, I said we organized raids and then fucked until the sun came up,
but only when we were on duty, of course.”
    “And he must have said, Fantastic, Arancibia, fantastic, glad to see
you’re keeping up the good work.”
    “Something like that; watch this curve.”
    “And you said to him, What are you doing here, Belano? Didn’t you go
to live in Mexico? And he told you he’d come back, and, of course, he said he
was as innocent as the next man in the street.”
    “He asked me to do him a favor and let him make a phone call.”
    “And you let him use the phone.”
    “The same afternoon.”
    “And you told him about me.”
    “I said: Contreras is here, too. And he thought you were a
prisoner.”
    “Shut up in a cell, screaming at three in the morning, like Chubby
Martinazzo.”
    “Who was Martinazzo? I can’t remember now.”
    “We had him there for a while. Belano would have heard him yelling
every night, unless he was a heavy sleeper.”
    “But I said, No, compadre, Contreras is a detective too, and I
whispered in his ear: But he’s left-wing, don’t go telling.”
    “That was bad; you shouldn’t have said that.”
    “I wasn’t going to hang you out to dry.”
    “And what did Belano say?”
    “He looked like he didn’t believe me. He looked like he didn’t know
who the hell Contreras was. He looked like he thought this fucking cop is going
to take me to the slaughterhouse.”
    “Though he was a trusting sort of kid.”
    “Everyone’s trusting at fifteen.”
    “I didn’t even trust my own mother.”
    “What do you mean you didn’t trust your own mother? You can’t fool
your mother.”
    “Exactly, that’s why.”
    “And then I said to him: You’ll see Contreras this morning, when they
take you to the john, watch out for him, he’ll give you a signal. And Belano
said OK, but he wanted me to set up the phone call. That was all he cared
about.”
    “So he could get someone to bring him food.”
    “Anyway, he was happy when I left him. Sometimes I think if we’d met
in the street he mightn’t even have said hello. It’s a funny world.”
    “He wouldn’t have recognized you. You weren’t one of his friends at
high school.”
    “Neither were you.”
    “But he did recognize me. When they took them out around eleven, all
the political prisoners in single file, I went over near the corridor that led
to the bathroom and gave him a nod. He was the youngest of the prisoners and he
wasn’t looking too good.”
    “But did he recognize