FICTION: Monsieur PainBy Roberto Bolaño, translated by Chris Andrews Picador, 132pp. £14.99
WHAT IS THERE to be said? The wonderful roadshow that is the fiction of the late Chilean storyteller supreme, Roberto Bolaño, who died aged 50 in 2003, continues to dazzle. This marvellous little yarn, first published in Spain in 1999, is dark, mysterious and rich in surprises.
Just as the reader is gripped by a tale worthy of Edgar Allan Poe – and it is an open homage to Poe, complete with a quote from Poe's Mesmeric Revelationserving as a prologue – Bolaño decides to have fun. The result is a brilliant comic sequence that will leave most readers screaming with laughter. Yet it wouldn't be Bolaño if there weren't a poet at the heart of it, and there is one, an obscure genius dying of hiccups; another of Bolaño's stock devices, politics, is also present.
Set in an atmospheric Paris that admittedly seems more 19th century than 1938, the story is told by the sympathetic, vaguely tragic loner Pierre Pain. He is called to the bedside of a dying man by a woman who is friendly with the patient’s wife. That the first woman, the beautiful Mme Reynaud, should summon Pain is touching, as he had been unable to heal her husband. But never mind: there may even be a hint of romance, as the narrator greatly admires the widow.
As ever with Bolaño, even at his craziest – and there are multiple excesses in his big novels, The Savage Detectives(1998; 2007) and 2666 (2004;2008) – the dialogue is so good: sharp, snappy, at times frenetic and always true to the character who delivers it.
As the narrative begins, Pain recalls meeting Mme Reynaud in a cafe, as had been arranged. She is waiting for him, and he sits opposite her, “facing an enormous wall-mirror, in which the restaurant could be surveyed almost in its entirety”. It is small details such as this that make his shorter fiction curiously precise. The woman remains deadly serious as she informs Pain of the affliction that is killing her friend’s husband. It is a novel in which everyone watches and is watched; the image of the large mirror serves as an inspired metaphor.
Her request appears straightforward: cure the hiccuping. Pain is touched by her faith in him. He, through his reflective observations, quickly emerges as a thoughtful individual. The next morning he is due to visit the dying man.
But first his neighbour Mme Grenelle, a nosy hysteric, wakes him to deliver the two letters that have arrived for him. He describes the exchange. “Monsieur Pain, you gave me such a fright!” His reply is typical of much of the low-key comedy that prevails in even the most menacing sequences. “But all I did was open the door.” The first letter informs him that some Spaniards are requesting to meet him. The other letter, scented of course, is from Mme Reynaud.
The clinic is very odd, consisting of circular corridors. Once in the dying man’s room the mood changes. The doctor attending Vallejo has no intention of discussing the case with Pain and dismisses him as a charlatan. Pain’s position seems impossible. Within hours he has received a large bribe intended to make him abandon the case.
Slowly but surely further information is released; Pain has his own confused past and its many problems, including Mme Reynaud’s sudden absence, to deal with. An intriguing pursuit in which it is difficult to decide who is doing the pursuing leads through a vividly described Paris.
It eventually moves away from the streets and into a cinema. This is where an already engaging novel enters that truly special palace of wonders into which Bolaño so often wandered. The narrator not only keeps an eye on his prey but also sustains a running commentary on the melodrama unfolding on the screen.
A third man arrives. By a crazy whim of fate it turns out that he and Pain knew each years before. A loud, bear-like individual, Pleumeur-Bodou is taking a break from the Spanish Civil War and knows all about the movie’s real-life subplot. The reunion proves distracting as Pain recalls: “Somebody behind us complained . . . The theatre might have been small and old, but its clients were serious movie goers.”
If you have yet to enter the daringly kaleidoscopic labyrinth that is Robert Bolaño’s imagination, this is a lively place to begin what will be quite an experience.
Eileen Battersby is Literary Correspondent of The Irish Times
