Even at an early age, when he was only a nine-year-old Colombian boy, Artemio Sandoval decided that when he grew up he would be a writer.

The child Artemio had just written another story about Roy Jackson: his own fictitious cowboy who rode through wild landscapes while he shot at Indians and bandits. In “The Return of Roy Jackson,” as the story was called, the hero, after many years’ absence, had returned to his home town and freed it from the iron grip of a tyrannical villain.

The child used to end all his stories with a drawing, And full of excitement, he concentrated on making the very first stroke: a light, horizontal line drew Roy Jackson’s jawbone, and from there he assumed his full shape gradually. In this scene the hero would stand in the main street with a smoking pistol in his right hand and a foot on the evil villain, who would lie lifeless with a quite visible bullet hole in his forehead.

Suddenly the child’s mother came in, and her usual flurry seemed to fill the whole room in a flash. It was the flurry that kept the family together in spite of the eternally threatening poverty. She stopped and smiled; her youngest child was far off in his own world when he was bent over a piece of paper with pencil in hand. She went over to him and hugged him, closed her eyes and stared into the future. Perhaps some far-off day everything would be different and better, probably not for her, but for her children. “Some day you will be a famous author, my Temito,” she said in a dreamy sort of voice and hugged her child tighter. Temito was the mother’s loving way of saying my beloved, little Artemio. “Mother is so proud of you,” she added. Then she kissed him on the forehead and left the room.

The child continued drawing until the picture was finished. And it was only when he had written THE END at the bottom of the page, right under Roy Jackson, that he once again noticed the sultry heat of the Colombian night. As was his habit, he took off his shirt and lay face down flat on the floor to cool his body against the cool tiles. He felt his heart pounding with joy. A new Roy Jackson story was finished, and his mother had been proud of him. And suddenly he saw himself as a grown man, happy, proud, and writing one book after the other while thousands of people read every line and every word. And now he knew what he would be when he grew up.

But there was something the child Artemio could not know. He could not possibly know that forty years later in a distant country, Denmark, he would remember the hot night when he convinced himself he would be a writer.

*

When Artemio Sandoval became a young man, he chose not to build a future by going to the university, but by dedicating himself to activities he wholeheartedly believed would bring justice to the poor of Colombia.

But in 1969, the 25-year old Artemio Sandoval was forced to flee Colombia. In 1972 after a chaotic knocking about through a number of Latin American countries, he crossed the strip of desert that marks the border between Peru and Chile and headed south. His encounter with Santiago fascinated him. The cool climate and the nearly organized tempo of the city stood in sharp contrast to everything he had experienced in Latin America. He settled down in Santiago.

In the period between 1970 and 1973, under President Salvador Allende’s regime, Chile became a refuge for left wing exiles from all over Latin America. The Chileans had always been extremely proud of the stanza in their national anthem that says that the oppressed from all countries can find asylum in Chile (“o el asilo contra la opresión”). But when the right wing military coup occurred in September 1973, the new leaders ignored this most beautiful stanza. And an unknown number of refugees were mistreated and/or killed in the country that once accepted them with open arms.

Artemio Sandoval realized that he had to say goodbye to Santiago, the city where he had finally managed to settle down. He spent three months in a refugee camp for foreigners on the outskirts of Santiago before he arrived in Copenhagen one cold January night in 1974. He was thirty years old.

*

Copenhagen was a true enchantment. What a city—with lakes, bicycle paths, well-regulated traffic, and courteous people. Compared to Copenhagen, Santiago was just as Latin American as Bogota or Quito.

As soon as he found a place to live, a residence hall, he opened the black plastic bag he had carried with him since his flight from Colombia.

Notes, a number of stories and a novel. It was the priceless treasure the black bag had transported from country to country. Artemio Sandoval took everything out and laid it in a pile on the desk. And then he smiled remembering himself hiding in an apartment in Caracas, along Columbia’s dangerous roads, in the jungles of Ecuador, in the worst slums of Lima, in Santiago’s cafés, and later in the UN refugee camp. Each time circumstances had provided him with a little time, a modicum of peace, he had written. The stack of papers on his desk was proof of his strength and unquenchable will to live.

But the stack of papers was also proof of a long and changeable road covered with wrecked political dreams and frustrated authorial ambitions. Neither the short stories nor the novel were completed, for his life had unfolded itself in violent stops and starts, from day to day, from place to place. People, cities, whole countries had appeared and disappeared the same way that a passenger in a train experiences the world on the other side of the window.

He spread the material out across the desk carefully and started reading at random the scraps of paper, loose pages, and notebooks. Certain passages gripped him strongly. And some downright genial sentences made him read out loud and get up and walk back and forth in the few square meters of his room.

At one point he went over to the room’s only window. And the full moon, which made the world outside visible, took him by surprise. Obviously many hours had gone by since he had opened the black bag. The light of the full moon bathed the residence hall on the other side of the lawn and the parking lot with its cars and bicycles…everything was covered or dappled with snow, and not a single movement, not a single living being disturbed the peace that covered this both strange and fascinating Danish landscape. He could not remember ever enjoying the privilege of observing such a consummate peacefulness.

Artemio Sandoval closed his eyes, breathed deeply, and held in the air as long as he could. Then he exhaled slowly and opened his eyes. Nothing had changed outside. Everything was still there, just as serene as before, as if this Danish landscape wanted to hug him and make him a part of it. He smiled again. From now on, nothing could keep him from becoming a writer.

Day was breaking slowly but steadily when he closed the curtains and lay down to sleep.

*

In the course of the following months, Artemio Sandoval was busy trying to find the answer to the following question: which of his writings should he choose to finish first?

The countless notes offered good linguistic wording and ideas for stories and novels, but they were an impenetrable jungle and so could not serve as a foundation for a budding authorship.

It was another case with the short stories. There were a total of eleven. They were literary experiments attesting to his creative talent. For example, one story took place in the head of a person about to attempt something dangerous and magnificent. One train of thought succeeded the other in a kind of inner monolog which was only interrupted by sounds and voices coming from outside. What a unique short story collection it could be!

Then there was the novel, The Labyrinth—he had written about 150 pages of that—a powerful social-realistic description where people help and hinder each other in the search for meaning in life. But only one of them attains this meaning. The story was constructed of fragments consisting of a single sentence or of many pages. In truth a trailblazing novel.

Being able to choose between different possibilities is usually seen as a propitious, if not fortunate, situation. But for Artemio Sandoval, the short story collection and the novel became the source of unexpected distress.

Every time he committed himself to one of the possibilities and began to write, he had a feeling of terrible loss. To work on only one wonderful book meant to give up on another just as wonderful book. He was really aware that this train of thought was a complete absurdity. And yet weeks and months went by without his being able to get started.

Nothing was more important to him than becoming a writer, a well-known writer. But as soon as he sat down and started to write, he got restless and could not concentrate, as if his limbs were chained to horses, each pulling in its own direction.

*

One evening more than a year after he had opened the black bag, and, during a thoughtful walk along Copenhagen’s lakes, he suddenly hit upon the root of his distress.

He had long been accustomed to working on as many as three writing projects in a single day. In the morning, sitting in a battered bus, he would tackle a new story. And on the same day in the evening at some cheap country pension or other, he would begin writing something completely different. He was quite simply not used to thinking about a single story over a longer period of time.

For almost a year he had been paralyzed. That he had not been able to see such a trifle—inconceivable! And here he discovered the wisdom in the Danish proverb that went something like not being able to see the forest for the trees. Clearly, the urge to write a book had kept him from seeing precisely what kept him from getting started.

He hurried home. Before he opened the door to his room he saw his future book before him—a collection of experimental stories that would carve his name into the world of literature forever. Yes, a long walk along the lakes could work miracles. How lucky to live in Copenhagen, a city with lakes in its center.

At once he felt relieved, skillful again… possessed of a future full of accomplishment. In one year, or more precisely, in July 1976, his wonderful short story collection would be mailed to a Spanish publisher.

*

But July 1976 came and not a single one of the eleven stories was yet completed. The cause of this catastrophe became quickly apparent—he had used too much time for everything else but writing—such as finding a powerful, stimulating title for the book that would serve as a thematic thread though all the stories. Nor had it been easy to compose the query letter to inform the publishers on how the work should be read. His material was spread out over so many different kinds of paper that it had to be retyped. And finally, the choice of the story that should begin the collection had, in spite of all his new awareness, turned out to be surprisingly difficult.

Artemio Sandoval had to surrender to one inexorable fact—writing a book definitely demanded much more than he had imagined. One could well believe that this recognition would destroy his courage. But, no, on the contrary. He felt important, as if accomplishing a unique mission. Books would be his contribution to the world. And for the first time in his poverty-stricken and peripatetic life, he experienced the self-worth that knowledge of one’s own role in life provides.

It was from this moment he really began to resemble an established writer. His clothes, movements, voice—his whole being took on a kind of literary appearance. Little by little people in his circle of acquaintances referred to him with a certain respect as “the author” or “the one who writes.”

*

Endowed with these new experiences of the demanding life of a writer, Artemio Sandoval revised his work habits. Deadlines were a bad thing. He would write freely, out of inspiration and desire, without thinking about whether the work should be finished in a month or in a hundred years.

After careful consideration, he chose “The Voice That Fell Silent” as the story in the collection he should finish first. And to avoid distraction, he locked all the other stories in a cabinet. This story consisted mainly of a conversation between a number of voices going on while a murder in their midst was slowly revealed. As the title clearly indicated, one of the voices fell silent, leading the reader to the identity of the murderer. A demanding task. The niveau for this literary work should be established right from the beginning.

But an unexpected phenomenon ruined his plans and visions. It was as if he did not know what to do with the plot’s mounting suspense. Both language and inspiration failed him and went flat in an inexplicable way. How frustrating; he had finally developed the discipline needed to concentrate on a single literary project… and he still could not get on with it. He came to a complete stop.

*

It was 1978. Artemio Sandoval was getting desperate when, during yet another anxious walk along the lakes, he recovered his confidence in himself and his future as an author once more. It happened when he stopped and let his eyes casually roam along the lake until he spotted a bird floating carefree on the quiet water. He could not determine what kind of a bird it was because suddenly it lifted from the water and flew toward a diminutive spot of earth, a toy island in the middle of the lake. He had never known very much about birds, but wasn’t it some kind of duck or gull, the birds most often seen in Denmark? The bird flew over the toy island and continued in the direction of Sweden until it disappeared into the distance. The uncomplicated naturalness the bird showed when it rose and flew away from everything touched him. And it forced him to reflect on his own complicated and unnatural situation—possessed by a burning desire to write but not able to do it. He was a bird that could not rise and fly!

And he realized that something like that—being blocked in the middle of a creative process—had happened to all great artists throughout history. Moreover, in his original plan, nothing should be forced by haste or deadlines. So why was he fighting an obstinate battle to finish “The Voice That Fell Silent”? It was never his intention his writing should become an inner war.

Maybe it was a good idea to take a break. If he let time work by itself, if he let it calmly bring inspiration and creativity back to him, then he sooner or later would certainly rise and fly like a bird.

*

And time passed until an apparently innocent episode made Artemio Sandoval think about it; namely, that time passed. It happened during a gathering of Danes and Latin Americans who were enjoying wine, dancing, and the topics of conversation the mixed company usually occasioned.

Artemio Sandoval was hurrying to the toilet when a young, Danish girl came up to him:

“Hey, I want to talk with you!”

Like most Latin Americans, Artemio Sandoval had a weakness for blond hair and blue eyes. Pleasantly astounded, he said:

“And why is that?”

“I want to read your books.” She shrugged her shoulders apologetically. “But I don’t know what they’re called. I’d like to take them out of the library.”

At first he lit up. This young Danish girl approached him, the author. But a second later he was seized by an anxiety he had not imagined could exist. What was he to say to the girl?! The painful silence between him and this unexpected beauty forced him to stammer out the truth. Well, yes, he was just working on a book, yes, on several books that would soon be finished as soon as he pulled himself together, and so on.

The girl’s polite disappointment crushed him. He had clearly robbed her of the happiness of meeting a real author.

*

That night Artemio Sandoval could not sleep. All the extra attention he had often enjoyed because he was an author! And then there were the women, who, now that he looked back on it, had obviously felt attracted to him because he was a writer. But where could one read his books? How embarrassing!

The following days were no better. Simple arithmetic nearly made him panic. He had come to Denmark in 1974. And now it was1983. Awhole nine years—and a neglected authorship was still awaiting him.

Naturally he had thought now and then about how time was passing— but at those times he had felt that there was still plenty of time to write one or more books.

From one day to the next, Artemio Sandoval could not recognize himself. Suddenly he stood there, caught between the time already wasted and the time he was about to waste. And life itself ran from him like water between his fingers.

*

Again the lakes of Copenhagen saw the desolated Artemio Sandoval wander along their banks seeking the key to the authorship that would justify his existence.

At the age of 38 he could not think of becoming a mechanic or a doctor. For him there was only one way. With all his talent and burning love for literature, why could he not finish a book?

Desperate, he examined himself and his career as an author. Somewhere or other there has to be a trail, a sign. His doggedness paid off and the answer hit him harder than a clenched fist.

He did not write with one ending in mind, but with various, shifting endings. How simple! In “The Voice That Fell Silent,” for example, a person would fall silent and reveal himself as the murderer—but which of the increasing number of people and voices? He still did not know. At least once a week he changed the murderer. At one point he had even operated with two murderers and two voices that would grow silent, which contradicted the title, formulated as it was, in the singular.

But there was a problem, a big problem. His desire and energy to write sprang out of the very freedom of writing without an ending in sight. His pleasure came from daring experiments, sophisticated formulations, surprising turns of plot, and so on. He wrote to write… not to conclude! And that was fine. But it would never make him a famous author.

*

An overwhelming sense of powerlessness overtook Artemio Sandoval. For it was in 1975 that he discovered the necessity of focusing on just one literary project. But it was only now that his incapacity to write his way to an ending was clear to him. Was he so stupid that he could only realize one thing at a time—one, and that during an interval of nearly 10 years? It was hard to imagine. On the whole, it was hard to be a human being, Artemio Sandoval thought.

Gone were those happy moments where he could fly freely, lost in the landscapes and human relationships created in his fantasy. Now he was a prisoner of the obligation to a single story and its conclusion.

This loss slowly changed his feelings toward the art he had lived for. Literature changed into a crude distortion of reality. For nothing in the universe could be squeezed between a beginning and an ending. Why on earth should a story be presented from a beginning to an end? A story, any story at all, was in principle endless!

There followed a period of several months where Artemio Sandoval underwent a striking change. Those around him observed that he spoke disparagingly of literature as an art, and of authors as human beings. And if his assertions were not followed up, he simply forced the conversation in that direction. An inner rage poured out of him.

What an absurd world! The alliance between authors and publishers hawked the illusion of the demarcated story to millions of readers who threw themselves into the first page simply to get to the last. The readers, these bewildered fools, bought a beginning and an ending—something that could only exist on printed paper and in their heads.

That his listeners sometimes nodded receptively at these effusions encouraged him to continue unrestrained. How could you call… something that moved from point A to point B in a predictable pattern… literary art? Art and artifice… was there any difference at all?

In ancient days there were myths—living, free and endless myths that were always enriched with new actors and developed in just as many directions as there were storytellers to tell them. Modern man had created this fundamental deceit called the well-rounded story. And so on.

At last Artemio Sandoval saw himself: a Colombian Don Quixote fighting windmills, in Denmark. He was tired of being angry. Really tired of not being a writer. It was decidedly easier to see oneself under fatigue than under anger, he discovered. And he resigned himself to the fact that one could not write a never-ending story, much less send it to a publisher. Like all other books, his would have to have a beginning and an end.

*

One could claim with some justice that this crisis, triggered by a completely innocent Danish girl, put Artemio Sandoval on the track he had been seeking for years. And little by little, in the same way his story began to take shape after its ending, he adjusted his days to the work of writing.

He sorted out his friends and acquaintances, including girlfriends, according to their contribution to his inspiration or ideas. He only bought and listened to music that induced the right mood. Television he reduced to a few comprehensive news programs. He even carefully administrated where and when he drank coffee during the day. Writing became the guide to his existence.

And it was hard. There were moments when he really wanted to give up and forget about it all. But, no, he had to continue now and struggle to become the only thing he possibly could become at his age. It was a battle between the pipe-dream writer and the real writer. And he had to win this battle, whatever the cost.

*

And then, one happy day at the end of 1991, nearly five years after the Danish girl asked her stinging question, Artemio Sandoval finished his novel, The Labyrinth. Before thinking too much about it, he made five copies and sent them to five different Spanish publishers.

From that day forward, the postman and the letter slot’s daily snap became an obsession—a disappointing obsession because days and weeks went by without a single letter from Spain.

After seven months he could not endure the wait any longer, and with his heart in his mouth, he picked up the telephone and began to dial the country code of Spain.

At the first two publishers, they remembered the book but had not read it yet… and they probably would not, either; from now on they intended to concentrate on young Spanish authors. The third publisher had gone bankrupt a few months earlier. And the fourth said, without giving any reason, that the book was not of interest to them.

A stunned Artemio Sandoval realized that the telephoning had brought him nothing but misery. Nevertheless he dialed the number of the fifth publisher. It could not get any worse, anyway.

A Spaniard, a man, answered the phone at the other end, and introduced himself. Likewise, Artemio Sandoval introduced himself.

“Oh… you’re the one who lives in Denmark, the author of The Labyrinth,” the Spaniard said, sounding really receptive. “It’s one of the most exciting pieces of experimental literature I’ve read. I mean that, really.”

“Thank you,” Artemio Sandoval said, while he thought… At last!

They exchanged a few polite formalities. The Spaniard seemed eager to know various things about Denmark, and Artemio Sandoval answered, tense with impatience to get down to business. Suddenly, in a way that seemed to him completely out of context, he heard the Spaniard say:

“… and that’s why, unfortunately, we can’t publish your book.”

“But, you just said that it was one of the most exciting books you’ve read,” he pulled himself together enough to reply.

“Yes. And I really mean it,” said the Spaniard sincerely. “But, look, you live in Denmark, and that’s really problematic.”

“Could you… could you please explain that a little more?”

“Of course. It isn’t convincing having a Latin American author who writes in a country with civilized inhabitants, snow, and a royal family. Do you follow me?”

Artemio Sandoval thought he had gone crazy and was hallucinating. In a barely controlled voice, he named a number of famous Latin American authors who lived in Spain, France, and Italy. But the Spaniard continued, unmoved—those writers were already famous when they moved to Europe. Readers wanted the real thing—a Latin American who wrote surrounded by oppression, corruption, poverty, and scorching heat, where families lived packed together under wretched circumstances, promiscuous relationships, where the brother went to work on the sister as soon as the parents fell asleep… “Do you follow me now?” the Spaniard said after his long stream of arguments.

The rest of the conversation was like being tossed down a dark hole. And the fall did not stop when he hung up the telephone. The following months he could neither eat nor sleep properly and seemed a ghost with a distant look and hopeless gait.

Darkness fell with all of its weight on Artemio Sandoval. Life refused to give him the role he had always dreamed of.

*

It was in this alarming condition that one sunny day while walking along the Langelinje, he caught sight of a Catholic priest sitting on a bench gazing out to sea. The priest was an old man, dark-skinned, and looked neither European nor Asian. He could only be Latin American.

Artemio Sandoval wondered what a Catholic priest dressed in classic cassock was doing there, near The Little Mermaid, in one of the most Danish landscapes anywhere. Before he managed to speculate on an explanation, he suddenly recalled his own Catholic childhood and the intense devout moments in front of the wooden altar of his local church. And he also remembered the human decency the people of the church exhibited in a world characterized by callousness and chaos. Touched by these childhood memories and by the need to emerge from the tunnel which kept him from living life, he went over to the priest and said in Spanish:

“Padre, may I speak with you?”

The priest turned his eyes from the sea toward him. As expected, he answered in Latin American Spanish. “You’re doing that already, my son.”

“I’m feeling miserable,” Artemio Sandoval said straight out. His childhood memories made him feel he had known the priest a long time, which in a way was true. “I can’t get on with my life,” he added and felt better already.

The priest scrutinized him a minute with his calm eyes and asked if he were a Chilean refugee. Artemio Sandoval declared he was a refugee all right, but from Colombia. His accent was Chilean because he had lived in Chile, and now he was living in Denmark and socialized with Chilean refugees.

“And here you can’t get on with your life?” the priest asked.

“I just can’t become what I want to become, You see, Padre… I want to…”

The priest sighed deeply and looked out toward the sea. Was he irritated all of a sudden?

“I hope I’m not disturbing you,” Artemio Sandoval said, hesitantly.

“You’re both disturbing and irritating me, my son,” the priest said as he turned toward him again. “You have obviously forgotten how life is in Latin America. It’s a serious sin in God’s eyes not to be able to get on with your life when you are living securely and comfortably here in Denmark.”

Artemio Sandoval bowed his head. After a pause, he said, “You’re right, Padre. I’m ashamed.”

They fell silent, and Artemio Sandoval did indeed feel ashamed. Unexpectedly the priest asked if he could understand English and knew John Wayne.

Artemio Sandoval’s sense of shame was replaced by puzzlement. Only the priest’s dignified bearing kept his expectations high, and he answered in the affirmative.

Satisfied, the priest nodded and said, “Listen, I don’t have much time for you. People in your situation need precise, and above all, short truths.” He lifted his voice. “My son, listen to what I want to tell you.”

“I’m listening, Padre.”

“And remember, this isn’t the word of God. And it isn’t mine, either. These are John Wayne’s words.”

“I’m listening, Padre.” Artemio Sandoval shut his eyes.

The priest said, “A man got to do what a man got to do.”

In spite of the priest’s horrible pronunciation, Artemio Sandoval understood the words very well and their meaning in Spanish. With his eyes still closed, he repeated every word: Un hombre tiene que hacer lo que un hombre tiene que hacer. It was as if the message emptied his head of thoughts and centered him in himself again. And he immediately noticed how his heart beat and the blood coursed within him. The message spoke an incontrovertible language—he was a man with duties here in life! He had grown up with this essential knowledge, but it had been buried in the treadmill of doubt and despondency he had wandered into. He shook his head.

“I have been stupid, Padre,” he said.

“Say no more, and go your way now, my son. You got things to do.”

“Thank you, Padre. Goodbye.”

And the old priest went back to looking at the sea again.

*

Artemio Sandoval hurried home. The ecclesiastical slap on the wrist had really worked. Yes, a real man becomes stronger under pressure, gets up from the floor, fulfills his duty, fights for his life. Shit! The comfortable years in Denmark had made him forget the good old precepts.

But here was the same Artemio Sandoval, who had fought for Colombia’s poor, who had survived highway robbers in Venezuela and an assault in the slums of Lima… who had seen people shot in the streets of Santiago. This priest was really a gift from Heaven. His fighting spirit came to life, and every obstacle on the road to his authorship was just something to be overcome.

Artemio Sandoval had to control himself and handle this energy that overwhelmed him. He stopped. Nyhavn—he found himself in Nyhavn, which was teeming with people. A gentle sun bathed the old houses and the wooden boats in the canal with light. And the sea and the sky seemed united by the same blue purity.

A child with an ice cream in his hand dashed out of an ice cream store and ran into him. A clump of rose-colored ice cream fell on his trousers. Unaware of it, the child went on to join a flock of other children and their teachers. Without caring about the clump of already melting ice cream on his trousers, Artemio Sandoval thought he was a very lucky man to live in such a wonderful country—a country that had been treating him well ever since he arrived as a shabby refugee. And it was at this point the idea struck him— if the Spanish world rejected him because he lived in Denmark, why not write in Danish? Yes, why not write in Danish for the Danes?

*

As soon as he got back to his apartment, he went to look in his address book by the telephone. He wanted to talk with Delfín Olmazabal, a Chilean refugee who wrote in Danish and had been successful in publishing a few books.

As soon as the Chilean answered the telephone, Artemio Sandoval came straight to the point. He had decided to write in Danish and would like to get some advice, before getting started, from someone with experience in this area. He neglected to mention his defeat on the Spanish market. What good advice did he have for him?

“Keep on writing in Spanish. Don’t write in Danish,” the Chilean answered categorically.

Artemio Sandoval found the advice downright irritating when it came from a foreigner writing in Danish himself. “What’s the problem?” he asked.

“There isn’t just one problem, but a lot of them,” the Chilean said with emphasis. “The first problem is the damn debate about foreigners. Editors and the like want you to write about immigration topics—integration, identity, Danes and non-Danes, somewhat-Danish and very-Danish, and God knows what.”

“But I couldn’t care less about those topics,” Artemio Sandoval broke in.

The Chilean laughed. “You can care as much less as you will. But it won’t help you. Whatever you write becomes first and foremost a subject for public debate. That’s just the way it is. Do you want to hear more?”

Of course Artemio Sandoval wanted to hear more. And the Chilean expounded further with great certainty. Danes were more critical when they read something written by a foreigner. For example, a Dane who made up new words and innovations in speech would be considered creative, but a foreigner, well, it would be because he had not learned correct Danish. A Dane who wrote a loony story would be seen as creative, too, but written by a foreigner the same story became ethnic or un-Danish. And even the little misspellings could constitute proof of not being able to write Danish, and finally the book and the author end up as a sympathetic but failed attempt to become integrated… “What do you say to that?”

“I really don’t know what to say.”

“My advice: write in Spanish. And remember, you will be writing so as to be understood by more than a quarter billion people.” Then he added, ironically, the typical Danish regards: “Luck and happiness. Goodbye.”

“Thank you. Goodbye,” Artemio Sandoval answered, also in Danish, but without any irony.

*

For a foreigner who came to Denmark in his adult years Artemio Sandoval possessed some of the best qualifications for throwing himself into a literary project in Danish. First and foremost, he had always loved the Danish language and its metallic, German sound. Admittedly, it was a tricky and difficult language, which, in addition, could only be spoken by a few people in one of the world’s smallest countries. But for that very reason he felt that in learning Danish he had come to own a priceless treasure.

He had read a lot of books in Danish and knew more about Danish literature than the average Dane. And the time a Copenhagen paper had held a competition to identify a Danish author from a selection of his work, he won a prize of three bottles of wine.

And yet… fascination with a foreign language was one thing; it was quite another to express yourself artistically in that language. Would he be able to do it? Artemio Sandoval had no doubt. His knowledge of and love for the Danish language made it possible for him to create literature in Danish.

But the more he thought about the reactions of Danes that Delfin Olmazabal had mentioned, the more he understood them. Why should the Danes accept a writer who spoke their language with mistakes and a terrible accent? Why should they understand that you could write a sentence over and over until it was correct?

Not to mention that getting a book published was in reality a harsh competition between many submitted manuscripts. And in a salsa competition, the Colombians would not show much confidence in a salsa-dancing light-haired Dane just out of dancing school.

After only a few days, these considerations converged into a solution as simple as it was logical. And Artemio Sandoval wondered why the Chilean had not thought of it himself. You just had to remove the foreign element from your literary work. Of course, a Danish main character and a Danish pseudonym… and the book would be read as the piece of art it was, with no disturbing conjectures about where the author came from or which ethnic identity he had or did not have.

When this strategy reached its full development, he was surprised the theme for his next book appeared almost by itself. On a visit to Colombia, a Dane would encounter experiences he could never have had in Denmark. The Dane in Artemio Sandoval’s book would stand face to face with a reality where none of his democratic and humanistic principles were of the slightest use at all. He would be compelled to struggle against his Scandinavian, welfare-state naiveté as he discovered that the only thing that could keep him alive in the South American hell was cruelty—his own cruelty. And at the end, Artemio Sandoval’s Dane would, like one coming back from the realm of the dead, return from Colombia only to find a Denmark where he no longer belonged.

This time he knew the way to the last page of a book. So the obstinate Artemio Sandoval once more set to work. Again he adjusted girl friends, coffee, music, bedtime, and other things to his writing work.

He looked back on that crazy time when he fought his own private war against authors and the art of writing. So obvious—every form of insanity was just an expression of powerlessness.

Now life had a perspective in exactly the same way that his writing aimed at a conclusion. And he was approaching his life’s goal the same way the book was approaching the last line. Life and literature mirrored one another.

*

The dogged Artemio Sandoval stopped writing and reading Spanish—and had it been within his power, he would have completely stopped thinking in his mother tongue, too. Danish—the language in his future was Danish. He analyzed novels, stories, songs, advertisements, newscasts, poems, and historical texts. Each Danish text constituted a challenge to his insatiable linguistic hunger. He practiced constantly and also wrote poems, short tales, or anything whatsoever, which were corrected by Danish friends with a sense for language. And he experienced happy days where he managed to write whole pages without mistakes.

There were still some small problems left, particularly with word order, prepositions, and those damn word-endings. But his self-confidence was untouched because any Dane with an average education could eliminate these elementary errors from his text in just a few minutes.

Artemio Sandoval grew stronger as did the book and his mastery of the new language.

*

It was 1995. One morning he was awakened by the mail slot’s usual noisy announcement of correspondence. He went over to the door half asleep and picked up a small package from the floor. He knew by the shape and weight that it was a book.

It was from Bettina, a former girl friend whom he had long ago left for another woman with less interest in cozy domestic life and more insight into literature.

Walking back to his bed, he opened the package. As expected—a book with a letter from Bettina. “Dear sweet Artemio…” He was already tired of reading it. A renewal of that relationship was out of the question. He skipped to the letter’s concluding sentences. “Maybe one of these days we can have dinner, light a few candles, and talk about the old days… and so on? A big kiss, Bettina. PS: Hope you’ll like the book.”

Such a letter had an inherent problem. It forced him to answer, and he had no time for anything but writing. Irritation made him realize he had a pain in his right wrist again this morning. It was because he preferred to write by hand and with a pencil. A habit, almost a ritual, which helped him concentrate more deeply on his creative work. He closed his eyes and tried to will the pain away.

The question of which Danish pseudonym he would use for the forthcoming book made him forget the pain in his hand. He was unusually fond of old Danish names and could not understand Danes calling their children Jimmy or Maria. During the last couple of days he had been able to boil the choices down to two possibilities—Valdemar Gammelgård and Holger Rasmussen. Which… which of the two sounded best?

Finally he condescended to take a closer look at Bettina’s gift. Its title was Out of the Jungle. What kind of a silly book was it Bettina had sent him? Tarzan’s memoir…? But on the back cover he read about “a Dane’s gruesome experiences as a prisoner of Colombian guerrillas.” All of it based on a “true story.”

At first it took Artemio Sandoval by surprise that he did not know anything about this strange event—a Dane kidnapped in Colombia, his native country! Once more he realized that his preoccupation with writing had the power to cut him off from the world. Then it hit him that the plot of Out of the Jungle reminded him of his own novel. He opened the book and began to read.

A Dane who works for a Danish company in Colombia is kidnapped by local guerrillas who demand a ransom. The Dane is hidden in the jungle by his kidnappers. The Danish firm, whose security measures failed completely, begins to play a dangerous double game. Publicly they report doing everything they can to ransom their missing employee, but behind the scenes they try to dicker on the amount of the ransom. The firm not only prolongs their employee’s captivity but also puts his life at risk.

Artemio Sandoval read and read and encountered one surprise after another. All too many elements of his own book showed up. Sure, in another form and poorly written. Strange, really strange he had not noticed the news of the kidnapped Dane.

He put the book aside before finishing it and looked up at the ceiling, muddled. Was it actually his own book he was reading in Out of the Jungle?

No. Categorically not. In spite of all the striking similarities, it lacked the drama and epic development that his main character could deliver to the reader. Out of the Jungle was nothing more than a description of an incident without literary verve. His own main character went through a painful change that transformed him from a naïve, cheerful Dane to a disillusioned and hardened man of the world. This transformation was not found at all in the simpleminded anecdotes of Out of the Jungle.

Artemio Sandoval shook his head. Case closed. There was only a superficial, trivial, resemblance between the two books. And this would be clear to any more or less intelligent reader.

He took a deep breath and let it slowly out while he realized that for a split second he had felt threatened, gripped by an indefinable fear. How ridiculous! He laughed. Such an inferior book as Out of the Jungle could not possibly threaten the work of art he was creating. And the more ridiculous his earlier fear seemed to be, the greater his urge to laugh. One burst of laughter came out after the other in an irresistible chain. He needed to open a window. The cool night air would certainly help him get a grip on himself.

Now he did not laugh any more and an unexpected stillness seemed to have fallen over the entire world. He thought fleetingly that winter made Denmark a silent country, and that cold air was rushing into the room, and therefore it was best to close the window. So he shut the window and right afterward, he turned around and looked at Out of the Jungle, which lay on the coffee table. A second later, he sat down on the floor and burst into tears.

His book was as good as doomed. No matter how well he wrote, it would be inevitably considered an extension of an event reported in the newspapers, like some kind of Out of the Jungle number two.

How could reality have reproduced the plot he had created step by step? Unbelievable that it could ever happen. It was clear that life opposed his wishes, worked against him. The struggle to become an author was irrevocably lost.

He kept on crying. And every sob that shook his chest left him more tired and indifferent. It was not only literature he was about to give up, but life itself. Without the motivation to write, he was not motivated to live, either. Suicide, for the first time, seemed to him a reliable alternative. Until then he had only felt contempt for people who took their own lives. But now he could easily put himself in their situation and understand their profound indifference to a life that prevented one from living.

What do you want to be when you grow up, little Artemio? And little Artemio would always answer promptly: A writer—when I grow up, I want to be a writer.

To write—to write even a single line now struck him as an absurdity beyond all reason. How was it that he had chained himself to the illusion of becoming a writer? He closed his eyes full of tears and the darkness in their depths drew him in. Suddenly he moved weightlessly and quickly through a host of memories that came to meet him.

He remembered that warm night lying face down on the tiles after completing another Roy Jackson story when, for the first time, he saw himself happy as an author. And the dream had accompanied him ever since.

Artemio Sandoval got up, found pencil and paper, and went back to his place on the floor. Tears ran down his cheeks again when he wrote at the top of the sheet of paper: “The Return of Roy Jackson”.

The story began with the galloping Roy Jackson on his way to help his hometown, oppressed by a villain. And the child, who always wrote in the present tense, had probably begun with something like this… Roy Jackson rides his faithful horse Lightning…, or Here is the unbeatable hero Roy Jackson…, or The bandits’ terror, Roy Jackson, and his clever horse Lightning approaches the town. Artemio Sandoval continued writing until the realization that he could not recall the exact wording made him stop. It could just as well have been any of these beginnings.

The older man kept staring at the surface of the sheet of white, tear-spotted paper, hoping to find the words used by the small boy to write the story, hoping to understand why he was sitting now on the floor, crying over a broken dream.

And suddenly, there on the white paper he caught a glimpse of the hero Roy Jackson. The glimpse of the drawing gave him a shock. He had not only written, but had sketched, too. Excited, he dried his eyes and held his breath for a moment. Something was going to happen, but he did not know what.

The first stroke he made with the pencil drew Roy Jackson’s jaw. That stroke began all his drawings of Roy Jackson. He moved the pencil farther up and the hero’s left cheek and forehead appeared. It was as if Roy Jackson was just waiting to be drawn on the white paper. With no difficulty Artemio Sandoval’s hand remembered the right movements for the right strokes.

And there stood Roy Jackson, back in town, strong, just and courageous, wearing his cowboy hat and holding a smoking pistol in his right hand. His left boot rested on the dead villain, who had a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead.

Incredulous, Artemio Sandoval shook his head. For his heart beat the heartbeats of the Colombian boy he had been more than forty years ago. And through the mist in his teary eyes, he saw his mother come into the room, go over to him, bow down and kiss him lovingly on the head. Then she hugged him and closed her eyes. “One day you’ll be a famous writer, my Temito,” she said with a dreamy voice and hugged her child closer to her. Temito—his mother’s loving way of saying little Artemio.

Artemio Sandoval saw that his mother did not look at the paper on which her Temito had both written and drawn. She did not have time, his mother; she was struggling to keep the poverty-stricken family together. She did not notice that her son liked to write, but loved to draw. She could not have known that for her Temito, the story was just a warm-up for the drawing.

And the child—in that intense moment, the child closed his eyes, too, and dreamed his mother’s dream.

The grown-up Artemio Sandoval sat on the floor, looked at his childhood hero, and continued crying. He did not notice that the day was waning and it was already getting dark in his apartment. For it was winter in Denmark and the short days take the light out with them quickly.

*

It has been some years since Artemio Sandoval’s unexpected reunion with Roy Jackson. He lives a quiet life. You can often catch sight of him around the Copenhagen lakes, his favorite spot for drawing.

Without haste of any kind, with a tender care that shows time is on his side, he finds a bench along the lakeside and unpacks his drawing materials from the black, plastic bag that has accompanied him since his young years in South America. He observes and senses the landscape until a place, a person or a thing reveals to him certain uniqueness. And then he begins, calm and collected, to reproduce, stroke after stroke, the uniqueness of the chosen subject on the pad’s white surface.

It is by the lakes that he both draws and remembers the Artemio Sandoval who for years struggled against himself and life to become an author. Sometimes he moves his hand and eyes away from the sketching pad and looks at the opposite bank, where he can see clearly the ambling, powerless man who could not be what he dreamed to be.

It is also by the lakes that occasional passersby are surprised when they see this middle-aged foreigner with his sketchpad and his absorbed look. At first glance they imagine the most obvious thing—that he suffers from some kind of madness or other. But they quickly come to the conclusion he is not mentally disturbed, but just one of those artists who live so deeply in their art that they do not care in the least what people around them think or don’t think about them. This perception, as far as it goes, is correct, for Artemio Sandoval is no longer particularly attentive to how he is perceived. He draws his pictures without paying any attention to the fact that through them he has become a sketch artist. Nor does he strive to break the boundaries of the art of drawing in order to create heretofore-unseen images that will make him famous. He draws for the simple reason that his whole life, just like in a story, converged toward the moment when he realized that he had to draw every day.

Truth to tell, the drawings of Artemio Sandoval’s possess a strange ability to evoke comments from viewers. Some of them have said enthusiastically that they are “good” and “absolutely works of genius.” Others that they are “bad” and could “just as well been drawn by a child.” And when he hears these kinds of comments, whether they praise his work or denigrate it, he just shrugs his shoulders humbly and smiles.

For Artemio Sandoval does not consider his drawings “good” or “bad.” For him, first and foremost, they are evidence that people—yes, that all of us have to walk a particular path which is frequently just as long as inscrutable before we can embrace our fate.