By Night in Chile

and went off leaving me here on a brass bed turning, turning like Sordel, Sordello, which Sordello? Well he can do what he likes. I said: We all have weaknesses, but we have to focus on our strengths. I said: We’re all writers, and in the end we all have to walk a long and rocky road. And from behind her long-suffering
    half-wit’s face, María Canales looked at me as if she were weighing me up, and then she said: What a lovely thing to say, Father. And I looked back at her in surprise, partly because until then she had always called me Sebastián, like the rest of my literary friends, and partly because just at that moment the Mapuche maid appeared on the staircase holding the little boys. And that double
    apparition, the maid and little Sebastián along with María Canales’s face and her calling me Father, as if she had suddenly given up the pleasant but trivial role she had been playing and taken on a new, far riskier role, that of
    penitent, that combination of sights conspired to make me lower my guard
    momentarily as they say (I suppose) in pugilistic circles, and momentarily enter a state akin to the joyful mysteries, those mysteries in which we all
    participate, of which we all partake, but which are unnameable, incommunicable, imperceptible from without, a state that brought on a feeling of dizziness, and nausea rising from my stomach, and closely resembled a combination of weeping, perspiration and tachycardia, and after leaving the welcoming home of our hostess it seemed to me this state had been provoked by the vision of the boy, my little namesake, who looked around with unseeing eyes as his hideous nanny carried him downstairs, his lips sealed, his eyes sealed, his innocent little body all sealed up, as if he didn’t want to see or hear or speak, there in the midst of his mother’s weekly party, in the presence of that joyous, carefree band of literati brought together by his mother each week. I don’t know what happened next. I didn’t pass out. I’m sure of that. Perhaps I resolved firmly not to attend any more of María Canales’s soirées. I spoke with Farewell. He had already drifted so far away. Sometimes he talked about Pablo and it was as if Neruda were still alive. Sometimes he talked about Augusto, Augusto this, Augusto that, and hours if not days would pass before it became clear that he was referring to Augusto d’Halmar. To be frank, one could no longer have a conversation with Farewell. Sometimes I sat there looking at him and I thought: You old windbag, you old gossip, you old drunk, how are the mighty fallen. But then I would get up and fetch the things he asked for, trinkets, little silver or iron sculptures, old editions of Blest-Gana or Luis Orrego Luco that he was content simply to fondle. What has become of literature? I asked myself. Could the wizened youth be right? Could he be right after all? I wrote or tried to write a poem. In one line there was a boy with blue eyes looking through a window. Awful, ridiculous. Then I went back to María Canales’s house. Everything was the same as before. The artists laughed, drank and danced, while outside, on the wide, empty avenues of Santiago, the curfew was in force. I didn’t drink or dance. I just smiled beatifically. And thought. I thought how odd it was that, with all the racket and the lights, the house was never visited by a military or police patrol. I thought about María Canales, who by then had won a prize with her rather mediocre story. I thought about Jimmy Thompson, her husband, who was sometimes away for weeks or even months at a time. I thought about the boys, especially my little namesake, who was growing as if against his own will. One night I dreamt of Fr. Antonio, the curate of that church in Burgos, who had died cursing the art of falconry. I was in my house in Santiago, and Fr. Antonio appeared, looking very much alive, wearing a shiny cassock covered with clumsy darning, and without saying a word, he beckoned me to follow him. So I did. We went out into a paved courtyard bathed in moonlight. In the center was a
    leafless tree of indeterminate species. Fr. Antonio pointed it out to me, urgently, from the portico at the edge of the courtyard. Poor fellow, I thought, he’s so old, but I looked carefully at the tree, and perched on one of its branches I saw a falcon. It’s Rodrigo, it must be! I cried. Old Rodrigo, he looked so well, gallant and proud, elegantly perched on a branch, illuminated by