Free The Skating Rink by Roberto Bolaño Page B

feel very close to him, almost as if he were a
friend. Perhaps because in a way I took on the trainer’s role, and although I
could never remember the names of the different moves and routines, overall, I
don’t think I was too bad. As a trainer, I mean, or the next best thing, a
father figure most of the time. I knew how to listen, how to encourage her to
persist when she was succumbing to laziness or fatigue; I knew how to inject a
certain dose of method and discipline into our daily sessions. I took care of
all the bothersome, peripheral tasks, so she could concentrate one hundred
percent on skating. And it was my commitment to perfection (whatever the field
or the task, I have always been a perfectionist) that led me to make a
discovery, or a series of small discoveries, which taken together turned out to
be extremely disturbing. At the start, I tried to tell myself they were
illusions produced by nervous tension, although deep down I knew that I had
never been less tense. Let me explain how it happened. Sometimes I got to the
palace quite a long time before Nuria, and after putting on a canvas apron that
I kept for odd jobs, I would set about checking the refrigeration equipment and
the state of the ice. Sometimes I did a bit of sweeping, too. In one room I kept
bleach, hydrochloric acid, a pair of brooms, trash bags, gloves, rags, as well
as various tools. Occasionally I put a bottle with freshly picked wildflowers in
the place where Nuria changed. I cleaned the heads of the cassette player with
alcohol every day and made sure to rewind the cassette to the beginning of the
“Fire Dance.” Sometimes, if I had time to spare, I went out to the back of the
house and swept the steps that led to the cove, in case Nuria wanted to go down
to the beach, before or after training. There was, in short, always something to
be done, and if, as a rule, I left most of the palace’s rooms alone, my tidying
took me to a fair part of the first and second floors, as well as the
storehouse, the arbor, the sunken garden, and the gardens facing the sea. I knew
those places like the back of my hand. So I was surprised to find little things,
almost always pieces of trash, in places I was sure I had cleaned the previous
day. Naturally my first reaction was to suspect the pair of good-for-nothings
who worked for me there in the mornings, and one day I decided to take them to
task. I wasn’t too hard on them—I was in a hurry—but hard enough to make them
think twice next time. What sort of things did I find? Scraps that ranged from
hamburger remains to empty Fortuna packs (but one of the guys smoked Ducados and
the other one had kicked the habit). That was all. Insignificant things, but
they shouldn’t have been there. One afternoon I found a bloody tissue. I picked
it up, disgusted, as if it were a moribund rat, still twitching and sniffing,
and threw it in the trash. Gradually I reached the conclusion that there was
somebody else in the Palacio Benvingut. For three days I was on the verge of
insanity. I kept thinking about Kubrick’s
The Shining
; I had seen it on
video at Nuria’s place not long before, and my nerves were still on edge. I
tried to be objective and look for logical explanations, but then, having failed
to find any, I decided to face up to the problem and search the palace from top
to bottom. I devoted a whole morning to the task. I found nothing, not a shred
of evidence to suggest that intruders had been present. Gradually I calmed down
again, reassured by the absence of fresh trash over the following days.
Naturally I said nothing to Nuria and I ended up convincing myself that it had
all been a figment of my fevered imagination . . .

Remo Morán:
    One day Rosquelles noticed Nuria’s bike in the street
    One day Rosquelles noticed Nuria’s bike in the street, in front
of the Del Mar, and decided to go in and see what was up. To his surprise he
found Nuria sitting at the bar with me, drinking mineral water. Until