2666

by Roberto Bolaño

in a vain effort to find common ground he told the one-legged man that he had been a pilot during the war and shot down twelve French planes and eight English planes and he knew very well the suffering one experienced at the front, to which the one-legged man replied that his worst suffering hadn’t come at the front but at the cursed military hospital near Düren, where his comrades stole not only cigarettes but whatever they could lay their hands on, they even stole men’s souls to sell, since there were a disproportionate number of satanists in German military hospitals, which, after all, said the one-legged man, was understandable, because a long stay in a military hospital drove people to become satanists, a claim that exasperated the selfavowed aviator, who had also spent three weeks in a military hospital,