Free Amulet by Roberto Bolaño Page B

Chilean accent had returned during the months he had spent in his country (and he still hadn't lost it). Which made me wonder what would happen in the unlikely event that I went back to Montevideo. Would my accent come back? Would I gradually cease to be the mother of Mexican poetry? It was typical: for some reason, I always have absurd, outlandish thoughts at the worst moments.
    And that was definitely one of the worst; it even occurred to me that the King could kill us with impunity, and throw our bodies to the dogs, the silent dogs of Colonia Guerrero, or do something worse still. But then Arturo cleared his throat (or that is what it sounded like to me), sat down on an empty chair in front of the King (a chair that hadn't been there before) and covered his face with his hands (as if he were dizzy or thought he might faint). The King and the chancellor of the kingdom looked at him curiously, as if they had never seen such a listless hit man in their lives. Then, with his face still in his hands, Arturo said that they had to sort out Ernesto San Epifanio's problems once and for all, then and there. The curious expression drained from the King's face, as curious expressions do: they are always on the point of morphing into something else. They drain away, but not entirely; traces remain, because curiosity is lasting, and although the voyage from indifference to curiosity can seem brief (because we are drawn on by a natural inclination) the return can feel interminable, like an unending nightmare. And it was clear from the King's gaze that he would have liked to escape from that nightmare through violence.
    But then Arturo began to speak of other things. He spoke of the sick boy who was shivering on the bed at the back of the room, and said that we were going to take him with us. He spoke of death, and he spoke of the shivering boy, who had in fact stopped shivering by then and pulled back the edge of the blanket to peep out at us. He spoke of death, and repeated himself over and over, always going back to death, as if telling the King of the Rent Boys in Colonia Guerrero that he had no competency in matters of death, and at the time I thought: He's making this up, it's fiction, a story, none of this is true, and then, as if Arturo Belano had read my thoughts, he turned just a little, barely moving his shoulders, said, Give it to me, and held out the palm of his right hand.
    And on the palm of his right hand I placed my open jackknife, and he said thank you and turned his back on me again. The King asked him if he'd been hitting the bottle. No, said Arturo, well maybe, but only a bit. Then the King asked him if Ernesto was his boy. And Arturo said yes, which proved that I was right: it was the storyteller talking, not the booze. Then the King went to get up, perhaps to bid us good night and show us the door, but Arturo said, Don't move, you son of a bitch, no one moves, you sit still and you keep your fucking hands on the table, and, surprisingly, the King and the chancellor did as he said. I think at that point Arturo realized that he had won, or at least won the first half of the fight, or the first round, but he must have also realized that if the fight went on he could still lose. In other words, if this was a two-round fight, he had a good chance, but if the fight went to ten, or twelve, or fifteen rounds, his chances would be dwarfed by the immensity of the kingdom. So he went right ahead and told Ernesto to go and see how the boy at the back of the room was doing. And Ernesto looked at him as if to say, Come on, buddy, don't push it, but since it wasn't the moment for equivocation, he obeyed. From the back of the room Ernesto said that the kid was pretty far gone. I saw Ernesto. I saw him walk across the royal bedchamber, tracing an arc, until he reached the bed, where he uncovered the young slave and touched him, or perhaps gave him a pinch on the arm, whispered some words in his ear, put his own ear to the boy's lips,