Free Amulet by Roberto Bolaño

conversation, although it was hardly the ideal time or place to engage in an exchange of views. From the bars still open on the Calle Magnolia (of which, admittedly, there were few) a wan tropical music emanated, more conducive to meditation than to festivity or dancing, punctuated from time to time by a resounding shout. I remember thinking that the street seemed to be a thorn or an arrow lodged in the side of the Avenida Guerrero, an image that Ernesto San Epifanio might have appreciated. Then they stopped in front of the Clover Hotel with its neon sign, which was funny, in a way, since it was like finding an establishment by the name of Paris in the Calle Berlin, or so it struck me at least (I was very nervous), and they seemed to be deliberating over what strategy to follow from that point on. I had the impression that, at the last minute, Ernesto wanted to turn around and get out of there as fast as possible, while Arturito was resolved to continue, having entirely assumed the role of hard man, which was partly my creation, and which, in the course of that helpless, airless night, he had accepted like a wafer of bitter flesh, the host that no one can be qualified to swallow.
    Our two heroes went into the Clover Hotel: first Arturo Belano, followed by Ernesto San Epifanio, poets forged in the smithy of Mexico City, and then I, León Felipe's cleaning lady, breaker of Don Pedro Garfias's vases, the only person who remained in the UNAM in September 1968, when the riot police violated the autonomy of the university, I went in after them. And at first glance the interior of the hotel was a disappointment to me. At such moments you feel as if you were shutting your eyes and throwing yourself into a swimming pool of fire. I threw myself in. I opened my eyes. And there was nothing terrible about what I saw. A tiny lobby with two sofas unspeakably scarred by the passage of time, a short, swarthy man at the desk, with an enormous mass of jet-black hair, a fluorescent tube hanging from the ceiling, a green-tiled floor, a staircase covered with a dirty grey plastic runner, in short, a no-star lobby, although, for some of Colonia Guerrero's inhabitants, the Clover would perhaps have seemed a rather luxurious hotel.
    After exchanging a few words with the receptionist, Arturo and Ernesto went up the stairs, then I came in and said that I was with them. The swarthy guy blinked. He was going to say something; he was going to play the guard dog, but I was already on the next floor, walking down a corridor bathed in sickly light, redolent of disinfectant and absolutely unadorned, as if its nakedness dated back to the first days of creation. I opened a door that had just been closed and stepped into my role as witness in the royal bed-chamber of the King of the Rent Boys in Colonia Guerrero.
    I hardly need tell you, my friends, that the King was not alone.
    In the room was a table, and on the table was a green cloth, but the occupants of the room were not playing cards; they were settling the day's or the week's accounts, and spread out on the green cloth were papers with names and numbers written on them, and money.
    No one was surprised to see me.
    The King was solidly built and he must have been about thirty years old. He had brown hair, that shade of brown that in Mexico they call güero, whether seriously or as a joke I've never been able to tell, and I guess I never will. He was wearing a slightly sweaty white shirt, which revealed, for all to see, a pair of muscular, hairy forearms. Next to him was sitting a chubby guy with a mustache and outsize sideburns, probably the chancellor of the kingdom. At the back of the room, on a bed in the shadows, a third man was watching and listening to us, moving his head. My first thought was that he was ill. At the start, he was the only one who frightened me, but as the minutes went by my fear gave way to pity: I realized that the man on the bed, in that semi-prostrate position (which can't have