Cowboy Graves

said my mother's name over a loudspeaker. I think the whole airport heard it. The line stopped and the passengers looked around, searching for the woman who had been called. I looked around too, searching, but I knew who to search for so I looked straight at my mother, and to this day, as I write this, I'm ashamed of having done that. My mother's reaction, meanwhile, was odd: she pretended not to know what was going on and she looked around too, as if searching for the same person everyone else was, but not as eagerly as the other passengers on the Santiago-Lima-Quito-Mexico City flight. For a second I thought that she would get away with it, that if she didn't accept the inevitable then the inevitable wouldn't happen, that so long as she kept moving toward the plane, ignoring the call of the loudspeaker, the voice would stop searching or keep searching even as we were on our way to Mexico. Then the voice called her name again and this time it called my sister's name too (my sister turned pale and then red as a tomato) and mine. In the distance, behind glass, I think I saw my grandmother, looking distressed or flushed, waving and pointing for some reason to the watch on her left wrist, as if to say that we had just enough time or that our time had run out. Then two Interpol agents appeared and asked us none too nicely to follow them. A few seconds before, my mother had said keep calm, kids, and when we had to follow the policemen she repeated it, while demanding to know what was going on (apparently addressing the policemen who were escorting us but actually speaking to nobody in particular), and saying they'd better not delay us because we were going to miss our flight. That was my mother.

 

My mother was Chilean and my father was Mexican and I was born in Chile and I had lived there all my life. Moving from our house in Chile to my father's house may have terrified me more than I was prepared to admit. Also, I was leaving without having done a lot of the things

The Guardian  

"Bolaño's brilliant oeuvre expands with another bright starburst, this one comprising three separate yet thematically connected novellas...Bolaño's inimitable style and searing vision will appeal to fans and new readers alike." Booklist

"Each story reveals a centrifugal writer with a brilliant command of words and no fear of a plot s getting away from him." Kirkus