Blow-Up

by Julio Cortázar

  I went down to the kitchen, heated the kettle, and when I got back with the tray of mate, I told Irene:

  “I had to shut the door to the passage. They’ve taken over the back part.”

  She let her knitting fall and looked at me with her tired, serious eyes.

  “You’re sure?”

  I nodded.

  “In that case,” she said, picking up her needles again, “we’ll have to live on this side.”

  I sipped at the mate very carefully, but she took her time starting her work again. I remember it was a grey vest she was knitting. I liked that vest.

  The first few days were painful, since we’d both left so many things in the part that had been taken over. My collection of French literature, for example, was still in the library. Irene had left several folios of stationery and a pair of slippers that she used a lot in the winter. I missed my briar pipe, and Irene, I think, regretted the loss of an ancient bottle of Hesperidin. It happened repeatedly (but only in the first few days) that we would close some drawer or cabinet and look at one another sadly.

  “It’s not here.”

  One thing more among the many lost on the other side of the house.

  But there were advantages, too. The cleaning was so much simplified that, even when we got up late, nine thirty for instance, by eleven we were sitting around with our arms folded. Irene got into the habit of coming to the kitchen with me to help get lunch. We thought about it and decided on this: while I prepared the lunch, Irene would cook up dishes that could be eaten cold in the evening. We were happy with the arrangement because it was always such a bother to have to leave our bedrooms in the evening and start to cook. Now we made do with the table in Irene’s room and platters of cold supper.

  Since it left her more time for knitting, Irene was content. I was a little lost without my books, but so as not to inflict myself on my sister, I set about reordering papa’s stamp collection; that killed some time. We amused ourselves sufficiently, each with his own thing, almost always getting together in Irene’s bedroom, which was the more comfortable. Every once in a while, Irene might say:

  “Look at this pattern I just figured out, doesn’t it look like clover?”

  After a bit it was I, pushing a small square of paper in front of her so that she could see the excellence of some stamp or another from Eupen-et-Malmédy. We were fine, and little by little we stopped thinking. You can live without thinking.

  (Whenever Irene talked in her sleep, I woke up immediately and stayed awake. I never could get used to this voice from a statue or a parrot, a voice that came out of the dreams, not from a throat. Irene said that in my sleep I flailed about enormously and shook the blankets off. We had the living room between us, but at night you could hear everything in the house. We heard each other breathing, coughing, could even feel each other reaching for the light switch when, as happened frequently, neither of us could fall asleep.

  Aside from our nocturnal rumblings, everything was quiet in the house. During the day there were the household sounds, the metallic click of knitting needles, the rustle of stamp-album pages turning. The oak door was massive, I think I said that. In the kitchen or the bath, which adjoined the part that was taken over, we managed to talk loudly, or Irene sang lullabies. In a kitchen there’s always too much noise, the plates and glasses, for there to be interruptions from other sounds. We seldom allowed ourselves silence there, but when we went back to our rooms or to the living room, then the house grew quiet, half-lit, we ended by stepping around more slowly so as not to disturb one another. I think it was because of this that I woke up irremediably and at once when Irene began to talk in her sleep.)

  Except for the consequences, it’s nearly a matter of repeating the same scene over again. I was thirsty that night, and before we went to sleep, I told Irene that I was going to the kitchen for a glass of water. From the door of the bedroom (she was knitting) I heard the noise in the kitchen; if not the kitchen, then the bath, the passage off at that angle dulled the sound. Irene noticed how brusquely I had paused, and came up beside me without a word. We stood listening to the noises, growing more and more sure that they were on our side of the oak door, if not the kitchen then the bath, or in the hall itself at the turn, almost next to us.

  We didn’t wait to look at one another. I took Irene’s arm and forced her to run with me to the wrought-iron door, not waiting to look back. You could hear the noises, still muffled but louder, just behind us. I slammed the grating and we stopped in the vestibule. Now there was nothing to be heard.

  “They’ve taken over our section,” Irene said. The knitting had reeled off from her hands and the yarn ran back toward the door and disappeared under it. When she saw that the balls of yarn were on the other side, she dropped the knitting without looking at it.

  “Did you have time to bring anything?” I asked hopelessly.

  “No, nothing.”

  We had what we had on. I remembered fifteen thousand pesos in the wardrobe in my bedroom. Too late now.

  I still had my wrist watch on and saw that it was 11 P.M. I took Irene around the waist (I think she was crying) and that was how we went into the street. Before we left, I felt terrible; I locked the front door up tight and tossed the key down the sewer. It wouldn’t do to have some poor devil decide to go in and rob the house, at that hour and with the house taken over.

  THE DISTANCES

  The Diary of Alina Reyes

  JANUARY 12

  Last night it happened again, I so tired of bracelets and cajoleries, of pink champagne and Renato Viñes’ face, oh that face like a spluttering seal, that picture of Dorian Gray in the last stages. It was a pleasure to go to bed to the Red Bank Boogie, with a chocolate mint, mama ashen-faced and yawning (as she always comes back from parties, ashen and half-asleep, an enormous fish and not even that).

  Nora who says to fall asleep when it’s light, the hubbub already starting in the street in the middle of the urgent chronicles her sister tells half-undressed. How happy they are, I turn off the lights and the hands, take all my clothes off to the cries of daytime and stirring, I want to sleep and I’m a terrible sounding bell, a wave, the chain the dog trails all night against the privet hedges. Now I lay me down to sleep … I have to recite verses, or the system of looking for words with a, then with a and e, with five vowels, with four. With two and one consonant (obo, emu), with four consonants and a vowel (crass, dross), then the poems again, The moon came down to the forge/ in its crinoline of tuberoses./ The boy looks and looks./ The boy is looking at it. With three and three in alternate order, cabala, bolero, animal; pavane, Canada, repose, regale.

  So hours pass: with four, with three and two, then later palindromes: easy ones like hah, bob, mom, did, dad, gag, radar; then more complicated or nice silly ones like oho Eve oho, or the Napoleon joke, “able was I ere I saw Elba.” Or the beautiful anagrams: Salvador Dalí, avida dollars; Alina Reyes, es la reina y … That one’s so nice because it opens a path, because it does not close. Because the queen and … la reina y …

  No, horrible. Horrible because it opens a path to this one who is not the queen and whom I hate again at night. To her who is Alina Reyes but not the queen of the anagram; let her be anything, a Budapest beggar, a beginner at a house of prostitution in Jujuy, a servant in Quetzaltenango, any place that’s far away and not the queen. But yes Alina Reyes and because of that last night it happened again, to feel her and the hate.

  JANUARY 20

  At times I know that she’s cold, that she suffers, that they beat her. I can only hate her so much, detest the hands that throw her to the ground and her as well, her even more because they beat her, because I am I and they beat her. Oh, I’m not so despondent when I’m sleeping or when I cut a suit or it’s the hours mama receives and I’m serving tea to señora Regules or to the boy from the Rivas’. Then it’s less important to me, it’s a little more like something personal, I with myself; I feel she is more mistress of her adversity, far away and alone,
but the mistress. Let her suffer, let her freeze; I endure it from here, and I believe that then I help her a little. Like making bandages for a soldier who hasn’t been wounded yet, and to feel that’s acceptable, that one is soothing him beforehand, providentially.

  Let her suffer. I give a kiss to señora Regules, tea to the boy from the Rivas’, and I keep myself for that inner resistance. I say to myself, “Now I’m crossing a bridge, it’s all frozen, now the snow’s coming in through my shoes. They’re broken.” It’s not that she’s feeling nothing. I only know it’s like that, that on one side I’m crossing a bridge at the same instant (but I don’t know if it is at the same instant) as the boy from the Rivas’ accepts the cup of tea from me and puts on his best spoiled face. And I stand it all right because I’m alone among all these people without sensitivity and I’m not so despondent. Nora was petrified last night, and asked, “But what’s happening to you?” It was happening to that one, to me far off. Something horrible must have happened to her, they were beating her or she was feeling sick and just when Nora was going to sing Fauré and I at the piano gazing happily at Luis María leaning with his elbows on the back of it which made him look like a model, he gazing at me with his puppy-look, the two of us so close and loving one another so much. It’s worse when that happens, when I know something about her just at the moment I’m dancing with Luis María, kissing him, or just near him. Because in the distances they do not love me—her. That’s the part they don’t like and as it doesn’t suit me to be rent to pieces inside and to feel they are beating me or that the snow is coming in through my shoes when Luis María is dancing with me and his hand on my waist makes the strong odor of oranges, or of cut hay, rise in me like heat at midday, and they are beating her and it’s impossible to fight back, and I have to tell Luis María that I don’t feel well, it’s the humidity, humidity in all that snow which I do not feel, which I do not feel and it’s coming in through my shoes.

  JANUARY 25

  Sure enough, Nora came to see me and made a scene. “Look, doll, that’s the last time I ask you to play piano for me. We were quite an act.” What did I know about acts, I accompanied her as best I could, I remember hearing her as though she were muted. Votre âme est un paysage choisi … but I watched my hands on the keys and it seemed to me they were playing all right, that they accompanied Nora decently. Luis María also was watching my hands. Poor thing, I think that was because it didn’t cheer him up particularly to look at my face. I must look pretty strange.

  Poor little Nora. Let someone else accompany her. (Each time this seems more of a punishment, now I know myself there only when I’m about to be happy, when I am happy, when Nora is singing Fauré I know myself there and only the hate is left.)

  NIGHT

  At times it’s tenderness, a sudden and necessary tenderness toward her who is not queen and walks there. I would like to send her a telegram, my respects, to know that her sons are well or that she does not have sons—because I don’t think there I have sons—and could use consolation, compassion, candy. Last night I fell asleep thinking up messages, places to meet. WILL ARRIVE THURSDAY STOP MEET ME AT BRIDGE. What bridge? An idea that recurs just as Budapest always recurs, to believe in the beggar in Budapest where they’ll have lots of bridges and percolating snow. Then I sat straight up in bed and almost bawling, I almost run and wake mama, bite her to make her wake up. I keep on thinking about it. It is still not easy to say it. I keep on thinking that if I really wanted to, if it struck my fancy, I would be able to go to Budapest right away. Or to Jujuy or Quetzaltenango. (I went back to look up those names, pages back.) Useless, it would be the same as saying Tres Arroyos, Kobe, Florida Street in the 400-block. Budapest just stays because there it’s cold, there they beat me and abuse me. There (I dreamed it, it’s only a dream, but as it sticks and works itself into my wakefulness) there’s someone called Rod—or Erod, or Rodo—and he beats me and I love him, I don’t know if I love him but I let him beat me, that comes back day after day, so I guess I do love him.

  LATER

  A lie. I dreamed of Rod or made him from some dream figure already worn out or to hand. There’s no Rod, they’re punishing me there, but who knows whether it’s a man, an angry mother, a solitude.

  Come find me. To say to Luis María, “We’re getting married and you’re taking me to Budapest, to a bridge where there’s snow and someone.” I say: and if I am? (Because I think all that from the secret vantage point of not seriously believing it. And if I am?) All right, if I am … But plain crazy, plain …? What a honeymoon!

  JANUARY 28

  I thought of something odd. It’s been three days now that nothing has come to me from the distances. Maybe they don’t beat her now, or she could have come by a coat. To send her a telegram, some stockings … I thought of something odd. I arrived in the terrible city and it was afternoon, a green watery afternoon as afternoons never are if one does not help out by thinking of them. Beside the Dobrina Stana, on the Skorda Prospect equestrian statues bristling with stalagmites of hoarfrost and stiff policemen, great smoking loaves of coarse bread and flounces of wind puffing in the windows. At a tourist’s pace, walking by the Dobrina, the map in the pocket of my blue suit (in this freezing weather and to leave my coat in the Burglos), until I come to a plaza next to the river, nearly in the river thundering with broken ice floes and barges and some kingfisher which is called there sbunáia tjèno or something worse.

  I supposed that the bridge came after the plaza. I thought that and did not want to go on. It was the afternoon of Elsa Piaggio de Tarelli’s concert at the Odeón, I fussed over getting dressed, unwilling, suspecting that afterwards only insomnia would be waiting for me. This thought of the night, so much of night … Who knows if I would not get lost. One invents names while traveling, thinking, remembers them at the moment: Dobrina Stana, sbunáia tjéno, the Burglos. But I don’t know the name of the square, it is a little as though one had really walked into a plaza in Budapest and was lost because one did not know its name; if there’s no name, how can there be a plaza?

  I’m coming, mama. We’ll get to your Bach all right, and your Brahms. The way there is easy. No plaza, no Hotel Burglos. We are here, Elsa Piaggio there. Sad to have to interrupt this, to know that I’m in a plaza (but that’s not sure yet, I only think so and that’s nothing, less than nothing). And that at the end of the plaza the bridge begins.

  NIGHT

  Begins, goes on. Between the end of the concert and the first piece I found the name and the route. Vladas Square and the Market Bridge. I crossed Vladas Square to where the bridge started, going along slowly and wanting to stop at times, to stay in the houses or store windows, in small boys all bundled up and the fountains with tall heroes with their long cloaks all white, Tadeo Alanko and Vladislas Néroy, tokay drinkers and cymbalon players. I saw Elsa Piaggio acclaimed between one Chopin and another, poor thing, and my orchestra seat gave directly onto the plaza, with the beginning of the bridge between the most immense columns. But I was thinking this, notice, it’s the same as making the anagram es la reina y … in place of Alina Reyes, or imagining mama at the Suarez’s house instead of beside me. Better not to fall for that nonsense; that’s something very strictly my own, to give in to the desire, the real desire. Real because Alina, well, let’s go—Not the other thing, not feeling her being cold or that they mistreat her. I long for this and follow it by choice, by knowing where it’s going, to find out if Luis María is going to take me to Budapest. Easier to go out and look for that bridge, to go out on my own search and find myself, as now, because now I’ve walked to the middle of the bridge amid shouts and applause, between “Albéniz!” and more applause and “The Polonaise!” as if that had any meaning amid the whipping snow which pushes against my back with the wind-force, hands like a thick towel around my waist drawing me to the center of the bridge.

  (It’s more convenient to speak in the present tense. This was at eight o’clock when Elsa Piaggio was playing the third piece, I thi
nk it was Julián Aguirre or Carlos Guastavino, something with pastures and little birds.) I have grown coarse with time, I have no respect for her now. I remember I thought one day: “There they beat me, there the snow comes in through my shoes and I know it at that moment, when it is happening to me there I know it at the same time. But why at the same time? Probably I’m coming late, probably it hasn’t happened yet. Probably they will beat her within fourteen years or she’s already a cross and an epitaph in the Sainte-Ursule cemetery.” And that seemed to me pleasant, possible, quite idiotic. Because behind that, one falls always into the matching time. If now she were really starting over the bridge, I know I would feel it myself, from here. I remember that I stopped to look at the river which was like spoiled mayonnaise thrashing against the abutments, furiously as possible, noisy and lashing. (This last I was thinking.) It was worth it to lean over the parapet of the bridge and to hear in my ears the grinding of the ice there below. It was worth it to stop a little bit for the view, a little bit from fear too which came from inside—or it was being without a coat, the light snowfall melting and my topcoat at the hotel—And after all, for I am an unassuming girl, a girl without petty prides, but let them come tell me that the same thing could have happened to anyone else, that she could have journeyed to Hungary in the middle of the Odeón. Say, that would give anyone the shivers!