By Night in Chile

his jaw hanging open, as if he were still laughing after having glimpsed immortality, said Farewell. And then he said: Do you understand?
    Do you understand? And once again I saw my father as the shadow of a weasel or a stoat scurrying from corner to corner in the house, and that house with its dim corners was like my vocation. And then Farewell repeated: Do you understand? Do you understand? while we ordered coffee and the people in the street rushed by, spurred on by an incomprehensible longing to get home, casting their shadows one after another, more and more quickly, on the walls of the restaurant where, undaunted by the agitation or perhaps I should say undaunted by the
    electromagnetic device that had been set off in the streets of Santiago and in the collective consciousness of the city’s inhabitants, Farewell and I stayed put and kept still, only our hands moving, lifting the coffee cups to our lips, while our eyes looked on, as if what they were seeing had nothing to do with us, as if we hadn’t noticed what was going on, in that typically Chilean way, watching the shadow play, figures appearing and disappearing like black flashes on the partition wall, a spectacle that seemed to have a hypnotic effect on Farewell while making me feel dizzy and causing an ache in my eyes that spread to my temples and then to the parietal bones and finally to the whole of my skull, an ache I soothed with prayers and aspirin, although, on that occasion, as I remember it now, struggling to prop myself up on one elbow, as if the moment of my heavenly flight were imminent, the pain persisted only in my eyes, and so could easily have been overcome, since shutting them would have disposed of the problem, and I could and should have done just that, but I did not, for there was something in Farewell’s expression, something in his stillness, hardly disturbed by a slight eye movement, which, as I went on looking at him, seemed with growing force to imply an infinite terror, or rather a terror shooting towards the infinite, as terror does by its very nature, rising and rising endlessly, thence our affliction, thence our grief, thence certain
    interpretations of Dante, stemming from that terror, slender and defenceless as a worm, and yet able to climb and climb and expand like one of Einstein’s equations, and Farewell’s expression, as I was saying, seemed somehow to imply this, although, had anyone passed our table and looked at him, they would only have seen a respectable-looking gentleman in a rather pensive mood. And then Farewell opened his mouth, and I thought he was going to ask me once again if I had understood, but he said: Pablo’s going to win the Nobel Prize. And he said it as if he were sobbing in the middle of an ashen field. And he said: America is going to change. And he said: Chile is going to change. And then his jawbone hung out of joint, but still he said: I won’t live to see it. And I said: Farewell, you’ll see it, you’ll see it all. And then I knew that my words did not refer to heaven or eternal life, for I was pronouncing my first prophecy: if what Farewell had predicted was to happen, he would witness it. And Farewell said: The story of that Austrian has saddened me, Urrutia. And I: You have many years left to live, Farewell. And he: What’s the use, what use are books, they’re shadows, nothing but shadows. And I: Like the shadows you have been watching? And Farewell: Quite. And I: There’s a very interest ing book by Plato on precisely that subject. And Farewell: Don’t be an idiot. And I: What are those shadows telling you, Farewell, what is it? And Farewell: They are telling me about the multiplicity of readings. And I: Multiple, perhaps, but thoroughly mediocre and miserable. And Farewell: I don’t know what you’re talking about.
    And I: The blind, Farewell, the stumbling of the blind, their futile flailing around, their bumping and tripping, their staggering and falling, their general debilitation. And Farewell: I don’t know what you’re talking about, what’s happened to you, I’ve never seen you like this. And I: I’m glad to hear you say that. And Farewell: I don’t know what I’m saying any more, I want to talk, but all that comes out is drivel. And I: Can you make out anything clearly in that shadow play? Can you see particular scenes, or the whirlpool of history, or a crazy ellipse? And Farewell: I can see a rural scene. And I: Something like a group of farmers praying,