By Night in Chile

it to him, he read a couple of lines and said it was frightful, unworthy of a prize even in Bolivia, and then he launched into a bitter lament about the state of Chilean literature, was there one contemporary writer you could
    seriously compare to Rafael Maluenda, Juan de Armaza or Guillermo Labarca Hubertson? Farewell was sitting in his armchair, and I was sitting opposite him, in the armchair reserved for close friends. I remember shutting my eyes and hanging my head. Who remembers Juan de Armaza now? I thought as night fell with a snakelike hissing. Only Farewell and some old crone with an elephantine memory. A professor of literature in some remote southern town. A crazy
    grandson, living in a perfect, inexistent past. We have nothing, I murmured.
    What did you say? said Farewell. Nothing, I said. Are you feeling all right?
    asked Farewell. Fine, I said. And then I said or thought: Two conversations. And I said or thought it at Farewell’s house, which was falling apart like its owner, or back in my monkish cell. Because I only had two conversations with María Canales. At her soirées I would usually sit in a corner, near the stairs, beside a large window, next to a table on which there was always an earthenware vase with fresh flowers in it, and I stayed put in that corner, and there I talked with the desperate poet, the feminist novelist and the avant-garde painter, always keeping an eye on the staircase, waiting for the ritual descent of the Mapuche maid and little Sebastián. And sometimes María Canales joined my group. Always so pleasant! Whatever I wanted, nothing was too much trouble. But I suspect she could hardly understand a thing I said. She pretended to
    understand, but how could she have? And she could hardly understand the poet’s ideas either, although she had a slightly better grasp of the novelist’s
    concerns, and was positively enthusiastic about the painter’s schemes. For the most part, however, she just listened. That is, at least, when she was in my corner, in my exclusive little clique. In the other groups scattered around that spacious sitting room, she was, as a rule, the one who called the shots. And when she talked politics she was absolutely sure of herself, and her voice rang out clearly, making her opinions known in no uncertain terms. In spite of which she never ceased to be a model hostess: she knew how to ease any tension with a joke or some playful Chilean teasing. On one occasion she came over to me (I was alone, a glass of whiskey in my hand, thinking about little Sebastián and his wan little face) and without any preliminaries began singing the praises of the feminist novelist. The way she writes, it’s quite unique, she said. I replied frankly: many passages in her books were poor translations (I preferred not to speak of plagiarism, which is always a harsh if not an unjust term) of certain French women writers of the fifties. I watched her expression. There was, undeniably, a certain native cunning in that face of hers. She looked at me blankly and then, little by little, almost imperceptibly, a smile, or the irrepressible prelude to a smile, slightly rearranged her features. Nobody else would have picked it for a smile, but I’m a Catholic priest and I knew
    straightaway. It was harder to tell what kind of smile it was. Perhaps it was a smile of satisfaction, but what was she satisf ied about? Perhaps it was a smile of recognition, as if those words had revealed my true face and now she
    knew
(or oh so cunningly thought she did, at least) who I really was, or perhaps it was just an empty smile, the sort of smile that forms
    mysteriously out of nothing and dissolves away into nothing again. In other words you don’t like her books, she said. The smile disappeared and her face went blank and dull again. Of course I like them, I replied, I’m just critically noting their weaknesses. What an absurd thing to say. That’s what I think now, lying here, confined to this bed, my poor old skeleton propped up on one elbow.
    How trivial, how grammatically awkward, how plain stupid. We all have
    weaknesses, I said. How dreadful. Only works of genius will prove to be
    unblemished. How ghastly. My elbow is shaking. My bed is shaking. The sheets and the blankets are shaking. Where is the wizened youth? He’s probably finding it all very funny, the story of my bungling. He’s probably laughing his head off at my blunders, my venial and mortal mistakes. Or maybe he got bored