By Night in Chile

And I: Yes. And Farewell:
    Everything falls apart, time devours everything, beginning with Chileans. And I: Yes. And Farewell: Do you know the stories of other popes? And I: All of them.
    And Farewell: What about Hadrian II? And I: Pope from 867 to 872, there’s an interesting story about him, when King Lothair II came to Italy, the Pope asked him if he had gone back to sleeping with Waldrada, who had been excommunicated by the previous pope Nicholas I, and then with trembling step Lothair approached the altar at Monte Cassino, which is where the meeting took place, and the Pope waited for him in front of the altar and the Pope was not trembling. And
    Farewell: He must have been a bit scared all the same. And I: Yes. And Farewell: And the story of Pope Lando? And I: Little is known about him, except that he was Pope from 913 to 914, and that he gave the bishopric of Ravenna to one of Theodora’s protégés, who succeeded him on the papal throne. And Farewell: Funny name for a pope, Lando. And I: Yes. And Farewell: Look, the shadow play has finished. And I: Yes, you’re right, so it has. And Farewell: How odd, I wonder what could have happened? And I: We’ll probably never know. And Farewell: The shadows are gone, the rushing is gone, that feeling of being caught in a
    photographic negative is gone, was it just a dream? And I: We’ll probably never know. And Farewell paid for the meal, and I accompanied him to his door, but did not want to go in, because everything was foundering, as the poet says, and then I was walking alone through the streets of Santiago, thinking of Alexander III and Urban IV and Boniface VIII, while a fresh breeze caressed my face, trying to wake me up properly, but still I cannot have been properly awake, for deep in my brain I could hear the voices of the popes, like the distant screeching of a flock of birds, a clear sign that part of my mind was still dreaming or
    obstinately refusing to emerge from the labyrinth of dreams, that parade ground where the wizened youth is hiding, along with the dead poets who were living then, and who now, against the certainty of imminent oblivion, are erecting a miserable crypt in my cranial vault, building it with their names, their
    silhouettes cut from black cardboard and the debris of their works, and although the wizened youth is not among them, since in those days he was just a kid from the south, the rainy borderlands, the banks of our nation’s mightiest river, the fearsome Bío-Bío, all the same I sometimes confuse him with the swarm of Chilean poets whose works implacable time was demolishing even then, as I walked away from Farewell’s house through the Santiago night, and continues to demolish now, as I prop myself up on one elbow, and will go on demolishing when I am gone, that is, when I shall exist no longer or only as a reputation, and my reputation resembling a sunset, as the reputations of others resemble a whale, a bare hill, a boat, a trail of smoke or a labyrinthine city, my reputation like a sunset will contemplate through half-closed eyelids time’s little twitch and the devastation it wreaks, time that sweeps over the parade ground like a
    conjectural breeze, drowning writers in its whirlpools like figures in a
    painting by Delville, the writers whose books I reviewed, the writers whose work I criticized, the moribund of Chile and America whose voices called out my name, Father Ibacache, Father Ibacache, think of us as you walk away from Farewell’s house with a dancer’s sprightly gait, think of us as your steps lead you into the inexorable Santiago night, Father Ibacache, Father Ibacache, think of our ambitions and our hopes, think of our mute, inglorious lot as men and citizens, compatriots and writers, as you penetrate the phantasmagoric folds of time, time that we perceive in three dimensions only, although in fact it has four or maybe five, like the castellated shadow of Sordello, which Sordello? a shadow not even the sun can obliterate. Nonsense. I know. Twaddle. Piffle. Balderdash. Rot.
    Figments of the imagination that throng unbidden as one goes into the night of one’s destiny. My destiny. My Sordello. The start of a brilliant career. But it wasn’t always easy. Even prayer is boring in the long run. I wrote articles. I wrote poems. I discovered poets. I praised them. They would have sunk without a trace if not for me. I was probably the most liberal member of Opus Dei in the whole Republic. The wizened youth is