Read Online Amulet by Roberto Bolaño - Free Book Online Page A

rookie journalist who wrote for the culture pages of a Mexico City newspaper, and I had just bought a drawing from Lilian Serpas, who, after making the sale, had smiled her most enigmatic smile (though the word enigmatic cannot even adumbrate that abyss of darkness) and disappeared into the night, and I was telling the journalist who Lilian Serpas was; I was telling him that the drawing was the work of her son; I was telling him the little I knew about that woman who used to make fleeting appearances in the bars and cafés along the Avenida Bucareli. And then, as I was talking, as Arturo contemplated putative whirpools in his tequila at the next table, Ernesto San Epifanio walked across from the bar and sat down next to him, and for a moment I could see only their heads, their mops of shoulder-length hair (Arturo's was curly while Ernesto's was straight and much darker), and they talked for a while as the last night owls gradually vacated the Encrucidada Veracruzana, some suddenly in a hurry to be gone, shouting, Viva Mexico! from the doorway, and some so drunk they could hardly get up out of their seats.
    Then I got up and went and stood beside them like the crystal statue I wanted to be when I was a girl, and I listened as Ernesto San Epifanio told a terrible story about the King of the Rent Boys in Colonia Guerrero, a guy known as the King, who had a monopoly on male prostitution in that picturesque and indeed charming neighborhood of the capital. The King had bought Ernesto's body, which meant, so our friend told us, that he now belonged to that monarch body and soul (which is what happens if you're reckless enough to let yourself be bought), and if he did not accede to his new owner's demands, the judgment and the wrath of the King would fall upon him and upon his family. Arturito listened to what Ernesto was telling him, and from time to time he lifted his head from the maelstrom of his tequila and looked into his friend's eyes as if wondering how Ernesto could have made such a dumb mistake, how he could have got himself into that mess. And as if Ernesto had read his mind, he said there comes a time in the life of every gay man in Mexico when he goes and makes an irredeemably dumb-ass mistake, and then he said that he had no one to help him, and that if things went on the way they were going he'd end up being a slave to the King of the Rent Boys in Colonia Guerrero. Then Arturito, the kid I had met when he was seventeen, said, And you want me to help you get out of this fucking mess? And Ernesto San Epifanio said, There's no fucking way out of it, but I wouldn't say no to some help. And Arturo said, What do you want me to do? Kill the King of the Rent Boys? And Ernesto San Epifanio said, I don't want you to kill anyone, I just want you to come with me and tell him to leave me alone, for good. And Arturo said, Why the fuck don't you tell him yourself? And Ernesto said, If I go on my own and tell him, all the King's heavies will beat me to a pulp and throw my body to the dogs. And Arturo said, What a fuck-up. And Ernesto San Epifanio said, But nobody fucks with you. And Arturo said, Don't fucking push it. And Ernesto said, Well I'm fucked already, my poems will go down in the martyrology of Mexican poetry. If you don't want to come with me, fine. In the end, you're right. Right about what? said Arturo, stretching as if he'd been asleep until that moment. Then they started talking about the power wielded by the King of the Rent Boys in Colonia Guerrero and Arturo asked what that power was based on. Fear, said Ernesto San Epifanio. The King ruled by fear. And what am I supposed to do? asked Arturo. You're not afraid, said Ernesto. You've just come back from Chile. Whatever the King can do to me, you've seen it multiplied a hundred times or a hundred thousand. I couldn't see Arturo's reaction but I guessed that the slightly vacant expression on his face until then was subtly unsettled by a small, almost imperceptible wrinkle,