“You gave me a scare, it seemed to me for a minute that … Oh, I’m so stupid, but you were … you looked different.”
“Who did you see?”
“Nobody,” Michèle answers.
Pierre crouches down, waiting, now there’s something, like a door swinging, ready to open. Michèle breathes deeply, something like a swimmer waiting for the starter’s gun.
“I was frightened because … I don’t know, you made me think of that …”
It swings, the door swings open, the swimmer, she’s waiting for the shot to dive in. Time stretches like a piece of rubber, then Pierre reaches out his arms and imprisons Michèle, raises himself to her and kisses her passionately, his hands reaching under her blouse to find her breasts, to hear her moan, he moans too kissing her, come, come on now, trying to pick her up (there are fifteen stairs and the door’s on the right), hearing Michèle’s moan, her useless protest, he stands up holding her in his arms, he can’t wait any longer, now, right this minute, it won’t do her any good to try to grasp the glass ball or the banister (but there isn’t any glass ball at the banister), all the same he has to carry her upstairs and then like a bitch, all of him is a single knot of muscle, like the bitch that she is, she’ll learn, oh Michèle, oh my love, don’t cry like that, don’t be sad, love, don’t let me fall again into that black pit, how could I have thought that, don’t cry Michèle.
“Put me down,” Michèle says in a low voice, struggling to get loose. She has finally pushed him away, looks at him for a moment as if he were someone else and runs out of the living room, closes the kitchen door, a key turns in the lock, Bobby is barking in the garden.
The mirror shows Pierre a smooth, expressionless face, arms hanging like rags, a shirttail outside the trousers. He rearranges his clothes mechanically, still looking at himself in his reflection. His throat is so tight that the brandy burns his mouth, refuses to go down, so he forces himself and drinks directly from the bottle, swallowing interminably. Bobby has stopped barking, there’s a silence of siesta about the place, the light grows greener and greener in the house. A cigarette between his too-dry lips, he goes out onto the porch, down into the garden, walks past the motorcycle and toward the back. There’s an odor of bees buzzing, of a mattress of pine needles, and now Bobby has begun to bark among the trees, is barking at him, has suddenly started to growl and bark without coming too close, but each time a bit closer, and barking at him.
The rock catches him in the middle of his back; Bobby lets out a howl and runs off, begins to bark again from a safe distance. Pierre takes aim slowly and lands one on a back leg. Bobby hides in the underbrush. “I have to find some place to think,” Pierre tells himself. “I have to find a place to hide and think right now.” His shoulder slides down the trunk of a pine, he lowers himself slowly. Michèle is watching him from the kitchen window. She must have seen me throwing stones at the dog, she’s looking at me as though she didn’t see me, she’s watching me and not crying, she’s not saying anything, she looks so alone at the window, I have to go to her and be nice, I want to be good, I want to take her hand and kiss her fingers, each finger, skin so soft.
“What are we playing, Michèle?”
“I hope you didn’t injure him.”
“I threw a stone just to scare him. He acted like he didn’t know me, same as you.”
“Don’t talk nonsense.”
“And you, don’t lock doors with keys.”
Michèle lets him in, accepts without resisting the arm he takes her around the waist with. The living room is darker, you can almost not see the bottom of the stairs.
“Forgive me,” Pierre says. “I can’t explain it to you, it’s so stupid.”
Michèle picks up the brandy glass from the floor and corks the bottle of cognac. It’s getting hotter all the time, as though the house were breathing heavily through their mouths. A handkerchief that smells of moss wipes the sweat off Pierre’s forehead. Oh Michèle, how can we go on like this, not talking to one another, not trying to figure this thing out that breaks us up every time we start … Yes, sweet, I’ll sit beside you, I won’t be stupid, I’ll kiss you, lose myself in your hair, your throat, and you’ll understand that there’s no reason … yes, you’ll understand that when I want to take you in my arms and carry you with me, go up to your bedroom, I don’t want to hurt you, your head leaning on my shoulder …
“No, Pierre, no. Not today, love, please.”
“Michèle, Michèle …”
“Please.”
“Why, tell me why?”
“I don’t know, forgive me … Don’t blame yourself, it’s all my fault. But we have time, so much time …”
“Let’s not wait any more, Michèle, now.”
“No, Pierre, not today.”
“But you promised me,” Pierre says feeling stupid. “We came out here … After all this time, waiting so long so that you’d love me a little … I don’t know what I’m saying, it all comes out so dirty when I say …”
“If you could forgive me, if I …”
“How can I forgive you when you don’t talk, I hardly know you? What’s there to forgive?”
Bobby growls out on the porch. Their clothes are stuck to them with the heat, the tick-tock of the clock sticks to them, the hair sticks to Michèle’s forehead, she’s slumped down on the sofa looking at Pierre.
“I don’t know you very well either, but that’s not it, you’re going to think I’m crazy.”
Bobby growls again.
“Years ago …” Michèle says, and closes her eyes. “We were living in Enghien, I already told you that. I think I mentioned that we were living in Enghien. Don’t look at me like that.”
“I’m not looking at you,” Pierre says.
“Yes you are, it hurts.”
But that’s not so, how can he hurt her by hanging on her words, unmoving, waiting for her to go on, watching her lips barely move, now it’s going to happen, she’s going to join her hands and beg, a flower of delight opening while she pleads, wrestling and weeping in his arms, a damp flower that’s opening, the pleasure of feeling her struggling in vain … Bobby comes in, dragging himself over to a corner to lie down. “Don’t look at me like that,” Michèle just said, and Pierre answered, “I’m not looking at you,” and then she said yes, it hurt, someone looking at her like that, but she can’t go on because Pierre’s standing up now looking at Bobby, looking at himself in the mirror, runs his hand down his face, breathes with a long moan, a whistle that keeps going, and suddenly falls on his knees against the sofa and buries his face in his hands, shaking and panting, trying to pull off the images that stick to his face like a spiderweb, like dry leaves that stick to his drenched face.
“Oh Pierre,” Michèle says in a whisper of a voice.
His sobbing comes out from between his fingers that cannot hold it back, fills the air with a clumsy texture, obstinate, starts again and keeps up.
“Pierre, Pierre,” Michèle says. “Why, love, why.”
She caresses his hair slowly, reaches him his handkerchief with its moldy smell.
“I’m a goddamn idiot, forgive me. You … you were t-telling me that …”
He gets up, he sinks onto the other end of the sofa. He hasn’t noticed that Michèle has swung back to it again suddenly, she’s looking at him again as she did before he ran away. He repeats, “You were … you were telling me,” with great effort, his throat’s tight, and what’s that, Bobby is growling again, Michèle’s on her feet, retreating step by step without turning, looking at him and walking backwards, what’s that, why is that now, why is she leaving, why. The door slamming leaves him indifferent. He smiles, sees his smile in the mirror, smiles again, als alle Knospen sprangen, he hums, his lips compressed, there’s a silence, the click of a telephone being taken off the hook, buzzing sound of the dialing, one letter, another letter, the first number, the second. Pierre stumbles, tells himself vaguely that he should go explain himself to Michèle, but he’s already
out the door next to the motorcycle, Bobby growling on the porch, the house rattles violently with the sound of the starter, first, up the street, second, under the sun.
“Babette, it was the same voice. And then I realized that …”
“Nonsense,” Babette answers. “If I were out there I think I’d give you a good hiding.”
“Pierre’s gone.”
“It’s about the best thing he could have done.”
“Babette, if you could come out here.”
“For what? Sure, I’ll come, but it’s idiotic.”
“He was stuttering, Babette, I swear to you … It’s not my imagination, I already told you before that … It was as if again … Come right away, I can’t explain like this on the telephone … Now I just heard the cycle taking off and I feel awful, how can he understand what’s happening with me, poor thing, but he’s acting crazy himself, Babette, it’s so strange.”
“I thought you’d gotten over that whole business,” Babette says in a very indifferent voice. “After all, Pierre’s not foolish, he’ll understand. I thought he’d known already for some time.”
“I was going to tell him, I wanted to tell him and then … Babette, I swear he was stuttering, and before, before …”
“You told me that already, but you’re exaggerating. Roland combs his hair anyway he wants to sometimes, and you don’t get him confused with anyone else, what the hell.”
“And now he’s left,” Michèle repeats dully.
“He’ll be back,” Babette says. “All right, cook up something tasty for Roland, he’s getting hungrier and hungrier every day.”
“You’re ruining my reputation,” Roland says from the doorway. “What’s wrong with Michèle?”
“Let’s go,” Babette says. “Let’s go right away.”
The world is steered by a little rubber tube that fits in the hand; turning just a little to the right, all the trees become a single tree spread out at the side of the road; then turn the slightest bit to the left, the green giant splits into hundreds of aspens that race backwards, the towers carrying the high-tension wires move forward with a leisurely motion, one at a time, the march is a cheerful cadence, even words can get into it, tags of images, nothing to do with what you see along the road, the rubber tube turns to the right, the sound gets louder and louder, a wire of sound extends itself unbearably, but there’s no more thinking now, it’s all machine, body set onto the machine and the wind against the face like forgetfulness, Corbeil, Arpajon, Linas-Montlhéry, the aspen trees again, bus dispatcher’s sentry shack, the light turning more violet, cool air that rushes into your half-open mouth, slower now, take a right at this crossroad, Paris 18 kilometers, Cinzano, Paris 17 kilometers. “I haven’t killed myself,” Pierre thinks, swinging slowly into the road on the left. “It’s incredible, I haven’t killed myself.” Exhaustion weighs him down, like a passenger leaning on his shoulders, something that gets softer and more necessary every minute. “I think she’ll forgive me,” Pierre thinks. “We’re both so absurd, it’s necessary that she understand, that she understand, that she understand, you don’t know anything until you’ve made love together, I want her hair in my hands, her body, I want her, I want her …” The woods start at the roadside, dry leaves invade the highway, drawn out by the wind. Pierre looks at the leaves the motorcycle is eating up and whipping back; the rubber tube starts to turn to the right again, a little more, more. And suddenly it’s the glass ball that gleams faintly at the bottom of the stairs. Don’t have to leave the motorcycle too far from the house, but Bobby will start barking so you have to hide the bike in the trees and go up on foot with the last of the daylight, go into the living room looking for Michèle, who will be there, but Michèle’s not sitting on the sofa, there’s only the cognac bottle and some used glasses, the kitchen door is wide open and a reddish light’s coming in through there, the sun that’s setting at the bottom of the garden, and just silence, so the best thing to do is head for the stairs, steering yourself by the glass ball that’s shining, or they’re Bobby’s eyes, he’s stretched out on the bottom step with his hair bristling, growling a bit, it’s not hard to step up over Bobby, to climb the stairs carefully so they won’t creak and Michèle won’t get scared, door half-open, the door shouldn’t be half-open and he not have the key in his pocket, but if the door is ajar he won’t need the key now, it feels good to run his hands through his hair walking toward the door, you go in leaning on your right foot lightly, lightly edging the door that opens soundlessly, and Michèle sitting at the side of the bed looks up and sees him, puts her hands to her mouth, looks like she’s going to scream (but why isn’t her hair loose, why doesn’t she have the pale blue nightgown on, she’s wearing trousers now and looks older), and then Michèle smiles, sighs, stands up and stretches out her arms to him, says, “Pierre, Pierre,” instead of wringing her hands and begging and fighting him off, she says his name and is waiting for him, she looks at him and trembles as if out of happiness or shyness, like the double-crossing bitch that she is, as if he could see her in spite of the mattress of dry leaves that again cover his face and that he tears away with both hands while Michèle steps backward, trips on the edge of the bed, looks behind her desperately, screams, screams, all the pleasure that rises and drenches him, screams, like this, her hair between his fingers, like this, I don’t care if you beg, like this then, you bitch, just like this.
“For God’s sake, that business is more than gone and forgotten,” Roland says, taking a turn at top speed.
“I thought so too. Almost seven years. And it has to pop up just now …”
“You’re mistaken there,” Roland says. “If there was any time it was going to pop up it’s now, given that it’s absurd, it’s really very logical. Even I … you know, sometimes I dream about all that. The way we killed that guy, you don’t forget things like that very easy. Anyway, you couldn’t handle things any better in those days,” Roland says, pushing the gas pedal to the floor.
“She doesn’t know a thing,” Babette says. “Just that they killed him shortly afterwards. It was right to tell her at least that much.”
“I guess. But it didn’t seem right to him at all. I remember his face when we pulled him out of the car in the middle of the woods, he knew immediately he was a goner. He was brave, sure.”
“It’s always easier to be brave than to be a man,” Babette says. “To force himself on a child who … When I think that I had to fight to keep Michèle from killing herself. Those first nights … It doesn’t surprise me that she’s feeling the same thing again now, it’s almost natural.”
The car enters the street on which the house is located, doing seventy.
“Yeah, he was a pig,” Roland says. “The pure Aryan, that’s the way they saw it, those days. Naturally, he asked for a cigarette, the complete ceremony. Also, he wanted to know why we were going to liquidate him, we explained it to him, boy, we certainly explained it to him. When I dream about him, it’s that moment especially, his disdainful air of surprise, the almost elegant way of stuttering. I remember how he fell, his face blasted to bits among the dry leaves.”
“Don’t go on, please,” Babette says.
“He had it coming, besides, we didn’t have any other weapons. A shotgun properly used … It’s on the left, down there at the bottom?”
“Yes, on the left.”
“I hope there’s some cognac,” Roland says, coming down hard on the brake.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julio Cortázar was born in Brussels to Argentinian parents in 1914, was raised in Argentina, and in 1952 moved to Paris, where he continued to live for the rest of his life. He was a poet, translator, and amateur jazz musician as well as the author of several novels and volumes of short stories. Ten of his books have been published in English: The Winners, Hopscotch, Blow-Up and Other Stories, Cronopios and Famas, 62: A Model Kit, All Fires the Fire and Other Stories, A Manual for Manuel, A Change of Light, We Love Glenda So Much, and A Certain Lucas. Considered
one of the great modern Latin American authors, he died in Paris in February, 1984.
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