Blow-Up and Other Stories

by Julio Cortázar

  “Madame Francinet, we are going to drink together,” he said, handing me the glass. “You like whiskey, of course.”

  “Heavens, sir,” I said, frightened. “Outside of wine, and a little pernod at Gustave’s place on Saturdays, I don’t know anything about drinking.”

  “You’ve never tasted whiskey, really?” he asked in astonishment. “One swallow, not more, try, you’ll see how good it is. Come, madame Francinet, cheer up. The first swallow is the one that counts …” And he began to recite a poem, what, I don’t remember, where it says something about seafarers from some strange place. I took a swallow of the whiskey and found it so aromatic that I took another, and then another. Monsieur Bébé was sipping his vodka and watching me fascinated.

  “It’s a pleasure to be with you, madame Francinet,” he said. “Luckily you are not young, with you one can be a friend … One has only to look at you to see how goodhearted you are, like an aunt from the provinces, one whom one can cater to, but without risk, without risk … Look, for example, Nina has an aunt in Poitou who sends him chickens, baskets of vegetables, even honey … isn’t that wonderful?”

  “It certainly is, sir,” I said, letting him pour me another little glass since it gave him so much pleasure. “It’s always nice to have someone to look after you, especially when you’re so young. When you get old there’s nothing else to do but to think of oneself, because the rest … Here I take care of myself, for example. When my George died …”

  “Have another small one, madame Francinet. Nina’s aunt lives way down there, and she does nothing, she has nothing else to do besides send chickens … There’s no risk in telling family stories …”

  I was so dizzy already I didn’t even care what might happen if Mr. Rodolos came in and surprised me sitting in the kitchen talking with one of the guests. It was a tremendous pleasure for me to look at monsieur Bébé, to hear his laugh, it was so sharp, probably because of the drinking. And it pleased him that I was watching him, although he seemed a little uncomfortable at first but then he only smiled and drank, looking back at me all the time. I know that he was terribly drunk because Alice had told me that they’d drunk an awful lot, and besides, the way monsieur Bébé’s eyes shone so. If he hadn’t been drunk, what would he have been doing in the kitchen with an old woman like me? But the others were drunk too, and yet monsieur Bébé was the only one who was keeping me company, the only one who’d given me a drink and patted me on the head, though maybe he shouldn’t have done that. But because of that I felt very pleased with monsieur Bébé, and looked at him more and more, and he liked it, people looking at him, because once or twice he turned his profile and he had a very handsome nose, like a statue’s. He was, all of him, like a statue, especially with his white suit. Even what he was drinking was white, and he was so pale that I was a little afraid for him. You could see he lived a shut-in life, like so many young men these days. I would have liked to tell him so, but who was I to give advice to a gentleman like him, and furthermore I had no time to then because there was a knock on the door and monsieur Loulou came in dragging the great Dane along behind him with a sort of curtain that’d been twisted to make a kind of rope. He’d drunk a good deal more than monsieur Bébé and nearly fell when the great Dane ran around him and tangled the curtain around his legs. There were voices in the hallway and a gentleman with grey hair appeared, he must have been monsieur Rosay, and right after him madame Rosay all flushed and excited and a thin young man with such black hair, blacker than I’d ever seen before. All of them were trying to help monsieur Loulou, who was getting more and more tangled up with the great Dane and the curtain, all the while laughing and joking at the top of his lungs. No one paid any attention to me, until madame Rosay saw me finally and became serious. I couldn’t hear what she said to the grey-haired gentleman, who then looked at my glass (it was empty, but there was the bottle next to it), and monsieur Rosay looked at monsieur Bébé and made an indignant face while monsieur Bébé winked at him and threw himself back in his chair laughing to beat the band. I was very mixed up, it seemed to me that I ought to stand up, that would be better, and greet everyone with a curtsy, and then go to one side and wait. Madame Rosay had left the kitchen and an instant later Alice and Mr. Rodolos came in, they came over and indicated that I should follow them. I curtsied to everyone there, but I don’t think anyone saw me because they were all trying to quiet monsieur Loulou down, he’d suddenly burst into tears and was saying incomprehensible things waving his hands at monsieur Bébé. The last thing I remember was monsieur Bébé’s laugh, throwing his chair back and laughing.

  Alice waited until I’d taken the apron off, and Mr. Rodolos handed me six hundred francs. In the street it was snowing, and the subway had stopped running some time back. I had to walk for over an hour to get back home, but the whiskey kept me warm, and remembering so many nice things, and how much fun I’d had in the kitchen at the end of the party.

  Time flies, as Gustave says. You think it’s Monday and it’s Thursday already. Autumn ends and suddenly you’re in the middle of next summer. Every time Robert shows up to ask me if the chimney doesn’t have to be cleaned (he’s a very good man, Robert, and charges me half of what he charges the other tenants), I turn around twice and see that winter’s here already. So, I don’t rightly remember how much time had passed until I saw monsieur Rosay again. He came at nightfall, almost at the same time as madame Rosay had the first time. He also began by saying that he’d come because madame Beauchamp had recommended me, and sat down in the chair rather confusedly. No one sits comfortably in my house, not even me when there are visitors who are not good friends. I begin to rub my hands together as if they were dirty, and begin to realize only afterwards that other people are going to think they really are dirty, and I don’t know where to put them. It wasn’t so bad, monsieur Rosay was as upset as I was, although he hid it better. He used his cane to tap slowly on the floor, frightening Minouche a great deal, and as if to avoid my eyes, looked around constantly. I didn’t know what saint to call on, because it was the first time that a gentleman had been so upset in front of me, and I didn’t know what to do in a case like that except to offer him a cup of tea.

  “No, no thanks,” he said impatiently. “I’ve come at the request of my wife … You remember me, surely.”

  “Oh, go on, monsieur Rosay. That night of the party when there were so many distinguished guests …”

  “That’s right. The party. Exactly … I mean, this has nothing to do with the party, but that was a time you were very helpful to us, madame …”

  “Francinet, at your service.”

  “Madame Francinet, of course. My wife thought … Look, it’s something somewhat delicate. But I wish, above all else, to reassure you, what I am going to propose to you is not … how do they say … illegal.”

  “Illegal, monsieur Rosay?”

  “Oh, you know, these days … But I repeat: it has to do with something very delicate, but basically perfectly correct. My wife has been informed of all the details and has given her consent. I say this to you to reassure you.”

  “If madame Rosay is in favor, for me it’s like communion bread,” I said, so he would feel more at home, although I didn’t know a great deal about madame Rosay and furthermore she struck me as unsympathetic.

  “In short, the situation is, madame … Francinet, that’s it, madame Francinet. One of our friends … perhaps it would be better to say one of our acquaintances, has just passed away under very particular circumstances.”

  “Oh, monsieur Rosay! I’m so sorry.”

  “Thank you,” said monsieur Rosay, and made a very strange face, almost as though he were going to yell in rage or break into tears. The face of a really crazy person, it made me afraid. Luckily, the door was ajar and Fresnay’s shop is next door.

  “This gentleman … well, a very well known fashion designer … lived alone, that is, estranged from his family, do you understand? He had no one besides his friends, well, his c
lients, you understand, that doesn’t count in these cases. Well then, for a series of reasons which would take too long to explain, his friends have been thinking about the details of the burial, and …”

  How beautifully he spoke! He picked every word, beating the floor slowly with his cane, and without looking at me. It was like listening to the news on the radio, only that monsieur Rosay spoke more slowly, aside from which you could see he wasn’t reading a script. The effect was much better. I felt so much admiration that I lost my suspicion and brought my chair a little closer. I felt a sort of warmth in my stomach feeling that such an important gentleman had come to ask a service of me whatever it might be. And I was frightened to death and rubbed my hands without knowing what to do.

  “It seemed to us,” monsieur Rosay went on, “that a ceremony to which only his friends would be invited, a few … anyway, it would not have the magnitude requisite in the case of this gentleman … nor would it translate the consternation”—that’s what he said—“which his loss has produced … Do you understand? It seemed to us that if you would function with your presence at the wake, and naturally at the burial… let’s say in the capacity of a relative very close to the deceased … do you see what I mean to say? A very close relative … let’s say an aunt … I would even venture to suggest …”

  “Yes, monsieur Rosay?” I said at the height of wonder.

  “Well, it all depends upon you, and certainly you are … But if you would receive an adequate recompense … after all it’s not a matter of your taking the trouble for nothing … In that case, isn’t it so, madame Francinet? … if the remuneration would be suitable to you … you understand … let’s say the mother of the deceased … Let me explain carefully … The mother who has just arrived from Normandy, having been apprised of her son’s death, has come to accompany him to the cemetery … No, no, before saying anything … My wife thought that perhaps you would agree to help us out of friendship … and for my part, my friends and I have agreed to offer you ten thousand—would that be all right, madame Francinet?—ten thousand francs for your assistance … Three thousand at this moment and the rest when we leave the cemetery, after the …”

  I opened my mouth, only because it had fallen open on me all by itself, but monsieur Rosay didn’t let me say anything. He was very flushed and was speaking rapidly, as if he wished to finish it as soon as possible.

  “If you accept, madame Francinet … as all of us hope you will, it’s understood that we rely on your assistance, and we are not asking of you anything … irregular, to put it that way, in that case my wife and her maid will be here within half an hour, with appropriate clothing … and the car, naturally, to take you to the house … of course it will be necessary that you … how shall I say … that you become used to the idea of what’s involved … the deceased’s mother … My wife will give you the necessary information and you, naturally, will have to give the impression, once in the house … You understand … Grief, ah, desperation … This has to do chiefly with the clients,” he added. “In front of us it will be enough to keep silent.”

  I don’t know how it happened but a bundle of bank notes, very new ones, appeared in his hand, and may I drop dead this very moment if I know how, suddenly I felt them in my hand, and monsieur Rosay got up and left murmuring and forgetting to close the door like everyone who leaves my house.

  May God pardon me this and so many other things, I know. It wasn’t right, but monsieur Rosay had assured me that it was not illegal, and that in that fashion it would lend a very substantial assistance (I believe that those were his very words). It wasn’t right that I pretend to pass for the mother of the gentleman who had died, and who was a fashion designer, because there are things that just ought not to be done, not to trick anyone. But he had to think of the clients, and if the mother wasn’t at the burial, or at least an aunt or a sister, the ceremony would not have the significance or give the feeling of grief generated by the loss. Monsieur Rosay had just finished saying these exact words, and he knew better than I. It wasn’t right for me to do this, but God knows I hardly earn three thousand francs a month, breaking my back at madame Beauchamps’s house and other places, and now I was going to get ten thousand for nothing more than crying a little, to lament the death of this gentleman who was going to be my son until they buried him.

  The house was located near Saint-Cloud, and they drove me there in a car the like of which I’ve never seen except from the outside. Madame Rosay and the maid had dressed me, and I knew that the deceased was named monsieur Linard, his given name Octave, and that he was the only son of his aged mother who lived in Normandy and had just arrived on the five o’clock train. The aged mother was me, but I was so excited and mixed up that I heard very little of all they told me and what madame Rosay advised me. I remember that in the car she entreated me many times (she entreated me, I won’t gainsay it, she had changed a lot since the night of the party) to not be too exaggerated in my grief, and told me it would be better to give the impression of being terribly fatigued and on the edge of an attack.

  “Unfortunately I shall not be able to be next to you,” she said as we were already arriving. “But act as I have indicated to you, and aside from that my husband will take care of everything that’s necessary. But please, please, madame Francinet, above all when you see newspaper-men, and ladies, especially the reporters …”

  “Won’t you be there, madame Rosay?” I asked, really amazed.

  “No. You can’t understand, it would be something to explain. My husband will be there, he has some interests in monsieur Linard’s business … Naturally, he will be there out of respect … a business matter and a humane one … But I shall not go in, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to … Don’t worry about that.”

  I saw monsieur Rosay and various other gentlemen in the doorway. They were coming over and madame Rosay gave me a last piece of advice, then threw herself back in the seat so they shouldn’t see her. I let monsieur Rosay open the car door, then I got out into the street, crying at the top of my lungs while monsieur Rosay was hugging me and leading me inside, followed by some of the other gentlemen. I couldn’t see much of the house because I was wearing a shawl which almost covered my eyes, and besides I was crying so hard that I couldn’t manage to see anything, but you could tell it was luxurious by the odor and also by the thickness of the carpets. Monsieur Rosay was murmuring consolations, and his voice sounded as though he were crying too. In a very, very large salon where the chandeliers had fringes, there were several gentlemen who were looking at me with a lot of compassion and sympathy, and I’m sure they would have come to console me if monsieur Rosay had not hurried me forward, holding me across the shoulders. I managed to see a young man on a sofa who had his eyes closed and a glass in one hand. Hearing me come in, he didn’t even move, even though I was crying very hard just then. They opened another door and two gentlemen came out carrying their handkerchiefs. Monsieur Rosay gave me a little shove, and I went into a room, tottering, and let myself be led over to where the dead man was, and I saw the dead man who was my son, I saw the profile of monsieur Bébé, more blond and white than ever now that he was dead.

  I think I grabbed hold of the edge of the bed, because monsieur Rosay and several other gentlemen leaped over and came around me and held me up, while I was looking at the handsome face of dead monsieur Bébé, his long black eyelashes and his nose like wax, and I couldn’t believe that he was monsieur Linard, the gentleman who was a fashion designer and had just died, I couldn’t convince myself that this corpse there in front of me was monsieur Bébé. Without knowing, I swear, I had begun to cry for real, grabbing hold of the edge of the big deluxe bed of carved oak, remembering how monsieur Bébé had patted my head the night of the party, and had poured me a glass of whiskey, talking to me and paying attention to me while the others were having fun. When monsieur Rosay murmured something like, “Speak to him, say son, son …” I had no trouble lying at all, and I think that crying for him made
me feel a lot better, as if it were a reward for being so afraid as I’d been up to that moment. Nothing seemed strange to me now, and when I raised my eyes and at one side of the bed I saw monsieur Loulou with his eyes all red and his mouth trembling, I started to cry at the top of my lungs looking him right in the face, and he was crying as well in spite of his surprise, he was crying because I was crying, and was filled with surprise at realizing that I was crying like him, really crying, because we both loved monsieur Bébé, and we almost challenged one another from opposite sides of the bed, almost as if, without rhyme or reason, monsieur Bébé might laugh and make jokes like when he was alive, sitting at the kitchen table and laughing at all of us.

  They led me back to a sofa in the big salon with chandeliers, and a lady there who’d pulled a bottle of smelling salts out of her purse, and a servant pushed a small table on wheels over next to me that had a tray with hot coffee and a glass of water on it. Monsieur Rosay was much more at ease now that he saw I was capable of doing what they’d asked me. I saw that when he went off to speak with some other gentlemen, and there was a long period when no one came into or left the salon. On the sofa opposite me, the young man I’d seen when I came in was still sitting there and crying with his face in his hands. Every now and then he’d take out his handkerchief and blow his nose. Monsieur Loulou appeared in the doorway and looked at him a minute before coming over and sitting down beside him. I felt so sorry for both of them, you could see they’d been very good friends of monsieur Bébé, and they were so young, and felt it so greatly. Monsieur Rosay also watched them from one corner of the room, where he was standing talking in a low voice to two ladies who were already standing up to leave. And so the moments passed until monsieur Loulou jumped up with a shriek, and drew away from the other young man who was looking at him furiously, and I heard monsieur Loulou say something like, “Nothing at all was ever of any importance to you, Nina,” and I remembered that there was someone called Nina who had an aunt in Poitou who sent him chickens and vegetables. Monsieur Loulou shrugged his shoulders and went on to say that Nina was a liar, and at last he went off making faces and gestures of annoyance. Then monsieur Nina stood up also, and both of them were almost running to the room where monsieur Bébé was laid out, and I heard them arguing, but right away monsieur Rosay went in to make them be quiet, and I couldn’t hear anything else until monsieur Loulou came back to sit on the sofa, with a soaked handkerchief in his hand. Just behind the sofa there was a window which opened on an inside court. I think that of all the things there were in that room, I remember the window best (and also the chandeliers, they were so elegant), because toward the end of the night I saw the sky changing color little by little and growing more and more grey and finally pink, just before the sun came up. And all that time I was sitting thinking of monsieur Bébé, and suddenly I wasn’t able to restrain myself and I cried, although only monsieur Rosay and monsieur Loulou were there, because monsieur Nina had left or was in another part of the house. And so the night passed, and at times I couldn’t help thinking about monsieur Bébé so young, and I began crying again, though also it was a little bit because I was tired; then monsieur Rosay came over to sit beside me with a very strange look on his face, and said that it was not necessary for me to continue to pretend, and that I should ready myself for when the time came for the burial and the people and the newspaper reporters would arrive. But it’s difficult at times to know when one is crying for true or not, and I begged monsieur Rosay to let me sit wake on monsieur Bébé. He seemed very surprised that I didn’t want to go to sleep a bit, and different times he suggested that he should take me to a bedroom, but finally he was convinced and left me alone. I took advantage of a few minutes when he’d gone out, probably to the bathroom, and I went into the other room where monsieur Bébé was.