Cronopios and Famas (New Directions Classic)

by Julio Cortázar

  STORY

  A small cronopio was looking for the key to the street door on the night table, the night table in the bedroom, the bedroom in the house, the house in the street. Here the cronopio paused, for to go into the street, he needed the key to the door.

  THE NARROW SPOONFUL

  A fama discovered that virtue was a spherical microbe with a lot of feet. Immediately he gave a large table-spoonful to his mother-in-law. The result was ghastly: the lady ceased and desisted from her sarcastic comments, founded a club for lost Alpine climbers, and in less than two months conducted herself in such an exemplary manner that her daughter’s defects, having up till then passed unnoticed, came with great suddenness to the first level of consideration, much to the fama’s stupefaction. There was no other recourse than to give a spoonful of virtue to his wife, who abandoned him the same night, finding him coarse, insignificant, and all in all, different from those moral archetypes who floated glittering before her eyes.

  The fama thought for a long while and finally swallowed a whole flask of virtue. But all the same, he continued to live alone and sad. When he met his mother-in-law or his wife in the street, they would greet one another respectfully and from afar. They did not even dare to speak to one another. Such was his perfection and their fear of being contaminated.

  THE PHOTO CAME OUT BLURRED

  A cronopio is about to open the door to the street, and upon putting his hand in his pocket to take out the key, what he emerges with is a box of matches, whereupon this cronopio grows extremely upset and begins to think that if, in place of the key, he finds matches, it would be horrible if at one stroke the world were to be transposed, and at best, if the matches were where the key should have been, why shouldn’t it happen that he would find his wallet full of matches, the sugar bowl full of money, and the piano full of sugar, and the telephone directory full of music, the wardrobe full of commuters, the bed full of men’s suits, the flowerboxes full of sheets, the trams full of roses, and the countryside full of trams. So it happens that this cronopio is horribly dejected and runs to look at himself in the mirror, but as the mirror is somewhat tilted, what he sees is the umbrella stand in the vestibule and his worst suspicions are confirmed. He snaps. He breaks into sobs, he falls to his knees and wrings his little hands and doesn’t know why. The famas who are neighbors of his gather around to console him, and the esperanzas also. But hours pass before the cronopio can emerge from his despair and accept a cup of tea, which he looks at and examines thoroughly before drinking, whether instead of a glass of tea it might not be an anthill or a book of Samuel Smiles.

  EUGENICS

  It happens that cronopios do not want to have sons, for the first thing a recently born cronopio does is to be grossly insulting to his father, in whom he sees obscurely the accumulation of misfortunes that will one day be his own.

  Given these reasons, the cronopios turn to the famas for help in fecundating their wives, a situation toward which the famas are always well disposed, it being a question of libidinous character. They believe furthermore that in this way they will be undermining the moral superiority of the cronopios, but in this they are stupidly mistaken, for the cronopios educate their sons in their own fashion and within a few weeks have removed any resemblance to the famas.

  HIS FAITH IN THE SCIENCES

  An esperanza believed in physiognomical types, such as for instance the pugnosed type, the fìsh-faced type, those with a large air intake, the jaundiced type, the beetle-browed, those with an intellectual face, the hairdresser type, etc. Ready to classify these groups definitively, he began by making long lists of acquaintances and dividing them into the categories cited above.

  He took the first group, consisting of eight pugnosed types, and noticed that surprisingly these boys divided actually into three subgroups, namely pugnoses of the mustached type, pugnoses of the pugilist type, and pug-noses of the ministry-appointee sort, composed respectively of 3, 3, and 2 pugnoses in each particularized category. Hardly had he separated them into their new groupings (at the Paulista Bar in the calle San Martin, where he had gathered them together at great pains and no small amount of coffee with sweet cream, well whipped) when he noticed that the first subgroup was not homogenous, since two of the mustached-type pugnoses belonged to the rodent variety while the remaining one was most certainly a pugnose of the Japanese-court sort. Well. Putting this latter one aside, with the help of a hefty sandwich of anchovies and hard-boiled eggs, he organized a subgroup of the two rodent types, and was getting ready to set it down in his notebook of scientific data when one rodent type looked to one side and the other turned in the opposite direction, with the result that the esperanza, and furthermore everyone there, could perceive quite clearly that, while the first of the rodent types was evidently a brachycephalic pugnose, the other exhibited a cranium much more suited to hanging a hat on than to wearing one.

  So it was that the subgroup dissolved, and as for the rest, better not to mention it, since the remainder of the subjects had graduated from coffee with sweet cream to coffee with flaming cognac, and the only way in which they seemed to resemble one another at the height of these festivities was in their common and well-entrenched desire to continue getting drunk at the expense of the esperanza.

  NEVER STOP THE PRESSES

  A fama was working so hard in the raw-tea industry that he didn’t-have-time-for-anything. Thus this fama languished at odd moments, and raising-his-eyes-to-heaven, frequently cried out:

  —How I suffer! I’m a victim of my work, notwithstanding being an example of industry and assiduity, my-life-is-a-martyrdom!

  Touched and depressed by his employer’s anxiety, an esperanza who was working as a typist in the accounting office of the fama got up enough nerve to address himself to the fama, speaking like this:

  —Gray day, fama fama. If you solitary occasion work, I pull solution right away from left pocket.

  The fama, with the amiability characteristic of his class, knitted his eyebrows and extended his hand. A miracle! Among his fingers, there the world lay caught, and the fama had no reason to complain of his luck. Every morning the esperanza came in with a fresh supply of miracle and the fama, installed in his armchair, would receive a declaration of war and/or a declaration of peace, or a selected view of the Tyrol and/or of Bariloche and/or of Porto Alegre, the latest thing in motors, a lecture, a photo of an actress and/or of an actor, etc. All of which cost him only a dime, which is not very much bread if you’re buying the world.

  IMPROPRIETIES IN THE PUBLIC SERVICE

  See what happens when you trust the cronopios. Hardly had he been named Director General of Radio Diffusion when this cronopio called in several translators from the calle San Martin, and had them translate all the scripts, commercials, and songs into Rumanian, a language not very popular in Argentina.

  At eight in the morning the famas began to tune in their receivers, wishing to hear the news bulletins as well as the commercials for GENITAL, the Cigarette with Sex, and for COOK’S OIL, the Kitchen Oil That WON’T Soil.

  And they heard them, but in Rumanian, so that they understood only the trade name of the product. Profoundly astonished, the famas shook and beat on their radios, but everything rumbled on in Rumanian including the tango I’m Getting Drunk Tonight, and the telephone at the Radio Diffusion Center was tended by a young lady who answered the loud and numerous complaints in Rumanian, which imparted a certain warmth to the confusion daddy.

  Advised of the situation, the Administration gave the order to shoot the cronopio who had so besmirched the traditions of his native land. Through a mischance, the firing squad was composed of conscript cronopios who, instead of firing on the ex-Director General, fired over the crowd in the plaza de Mayo with such excellent aim that they bagged six naval officers and a pharmacist. A firing squad of famas turned out, the cronopio was duly executed, and a distinguished author of folksongs and of an essay on gray matter was designated to take his place. This fama re-established Sp
anish as the language on the Radio Diffusion, but it happened so that the famas had already lost their confidence and hardly ever turned their radios on. Many famas, pessimists by nature, had bought manuals and dictionaries in Rumanian, as well as biographies of King Carol and Magda Lupescu. Rumanian came into fashion despite the Administration’s indignation, and delegations made furtive pilgrimages to the cronopio’s tomb, where they let fall their tears and calling cards, cards teeming with names well known in Bucharest, a city with many stamp collectors and assassins.

  MAKE YOURSELF AT HOME

  An esperanza built a house and plastered up a tile which read:

  WELCOME ALL

  WHO COME TO THIS HOME

  A fama built a house and did not put up a tile in the first place.

  A cronopio built a house and, following the custom, set into the porch divers tiles which he bought or had made. The tiles were cemented up in such a way that they could be read in order. The first said:

  WELCOME ALL

  WHO ENTER THIS HOME

  The second said:

  THE HOUSE IS SMALL

  BUT THE HEART IS IMMENSE

  The third:

  THE PRESENCE OF A GUEST

  IS AS SOFT AS REST

  The fourth:

  WE ARE POOR BUT STILL

  WE HAVE GOOD WILL

  And the fifth read:

  THIS ORDINANCE CANCELS ALL PREVIOUS ANNOUNCEMENTS

  BEAT IT!

  THERAPIES

  A cronopio receives his medical degree and opens a practice in the calle Santiago del Estero. A patient arrives almost immediately and tells him how there are places that ache and how there are places that ache and how he doesn’t sleep at night and eats nothing during the day.

  —Buy a large bouquet of roses, the cronopio tells him.

  The patient leaves, somewhat surprised, but he buys the bouquet and is instantly cured. Bursting with gratitude, he returns to the cronopio and not only pays him but, as a delicate testimonial, he presents him with the gift of a handsome bouquet of roses. He has hardly left the office when the cronopio falls ill, aches all over, can’t sleep at night, and eats nothing during the day.

  THE PARTICULAR AND THE UNIVERSAL

  A cronopio was about to brush his teeth standing next to his balcony, and being possessed by a very incredible gayety to see the morning sun and the handsome clouds racing through the sky, he squeezed the tube of toothpaste prodigiously and the toothpaste began to emerge in a long pink strip. After having covered his brush with a veritable mountain of toothpaste, the cronopio found he had some left over, started to flap the tube out the window still squeezing away and strips of pink toothpaste fell over the balcony into the street where several famas had gathered to discuss municipal scandals. The strips of pink toothpaste landed all over the famas’ hats, while up above, the cronopio was singing away and filled with great contentment was brushing his teeth. The famas grew very indignant over this incredible lack of self-consciousness on the cronopio’s part, and decided to appoint a delegation to upbraid him immediately. With which the delegation, composed of three famas, tromped up the stairs to the cronopio’s apartment and reproached him, addressing him like this:

  —Cronopio, you’ve ruined our hats, you’ll have to pay for them.

  And afterward, with a great deal more force:

  —Cronopio, you shouldn’t have wasted your toothpaste like that!

  THE EXPLORERS

  Three cronopios and a fama join forces, speleologically speaking, in order to discover the subterranean sources of a spring. Arriving at the cavern’s mouth, one cronopio descends supported by the others, carrying at one shoulder a package containing his favorite sandwiches (cheese). The two cronopio assistants lower him little by little, and the fama writes the details of the expedition down in a large notebook.

  The first message from the cronopio soon arrives: “Furious. You have made primary error. Have included only ham sandwiches.” He shakes the rope and demands that they pull him up.

  The two cronopio assistants consult with one another miserably, and the fama draws himself up to his most terrible stature and says NO! with such violence that the cronopios let go of the rope and run over to calm him.

  They are occupied with this when another message arrives, for the cronopio it seems has fallen exactly on top of the source of the spring, and from that vantage point communicates that everything is going badly, and informs them between insults and tears that the sandwiches are all ham, and no matter how he looks and looks, that among all those ham sandwiches there is not even one of cheese.

  EDUCATION OF THE PRINCE

  Cronopios hardly ever have sons, but when they do have them they lose their heads and extraordinary things occur. For example, a cronopio has a son, and immediately afterward wonderment invades him, and he is certain that his son is the very peak and summit of beauty and that all of chemistry runs through his veins with here and there islands of fine arts, poetry, and urban architecture. Then it follows that this cronopio cannot even look at his son but he bows deeply before him and utters words of respectful homage.

  The son, as is natural, hates him fastidiously.

  When he comes of school age, his father registers him in 1-B, and the child is happy with other little cronopios, famas, and esperanzas. But he knows that when class is out his father will be waiting for him and upon seeing him will raise his hands and say divers thing, such as:

  —Grade A, cronopio cronopio, tallest and best and most rosy-cheeked and most particular and most dutiful and most diligent of sons!

  Whereat the junior famas and junior esperanzas are doubled up with laughter at the street curb, and the small cronopio hates his father with great pertinacity and consistency and will always end by playing him a dirty trick somewhere between first communion and military service. But the cronopios do not suffer too much from this, because they also used to hate their fathers, to such point as it seems likely that this hate is the other name for liberty or for the immense world.

  PLACE THE STAMP IN THE UPPER

  RIGHT-HAND CORNER OF THE

  ENVELOPE

  A fama and a cronopio are very good friends and go together to the post office to mail several letters to their wives who are traveling in Norway, thanks to the diligence of Thos. Cook & Sons.

  The fama sticks his stamps on with prolixity, beating on them lightly numerous times so that they will stick well, but the cronopio lets go with a terrible cry, frightening the employees, and with immense anger declares that the portraits on the stamps are repugnant and in bad taste and that never shall he be obliged to prostitute his love letters to his wife with such sad pieces of work as these. The fama feels highly uncomfortable because he has already stamped his letters, but as he is a very good friend of the cronopio, he would like to maintain solidarity with him and ventures to say that in fact, the twenty-centavo stamp is vulgar in the extreme and repetitious, but that the one-peso stamp has the fuzzy color of settling wine.

  None of this calms the cronopio, who waves his letter and exhorts, apostrophizes, and declaims at the employees, who gaze at him completely stupefied. The postmaster emerges and hardly twenty seconds later the cronopio is in the street, letter in hand, and burdened with a great sorrow. The fama, who has furtively posted his in the drop box, turns to consoling him and says:

  —Luckily our wives are traveling together, and in my letter I said that you were all right, so that your wife can read it over my wife’s shoulder.

  TELEGRAMS

  An esperanza exchanged the following telegrams with her sister, between the suburb of Ramos Mejía and Viedma:

  YOU FORGOT CANARY’S CUTTLEBONDE. STUPID. INÉS.

  STUPID YOURSELF. I HAVE REPLACEMENT. EMMA

  Three telegrams from cronopios:

  UNEXPECTEDLY I MISTOOK THE TRAIN IN PLACE OF THE 7:12 I TOOK THE 8:24 AM IN A CRAZY PLACE. SINISTER MEN COUNT POTAGE STAMPS. HIGHLY LUGUBRIOUS LOCATION. DON’T THINK THEY’LL LET THE TELEGRAM THROUGH. WILL LIKELY
FALL SICK. TOLD YOU SICK . TOLD YOU I SHOULD HAVE BROUGHT HOT-WATER BOTTLE. VERY DEPRESSED SITTING STAIRWAY WAITING TRAIN BACK. ARTURO.

  NO. FOUR PERSOS SIXTY OR NOTHING. IF THEY GIVE THEM TO YOU FOR LESS BUY TWO PAIRS, ONE PLAIN THE OTHER WITH STRIPES.

  FOUND AUNT ESTHER CRYING, TURTLE SICK. POISONOUS ROOT IT SEEMS OR CHEESE TERRIBLE CONDITIONS. TURTLES DELICATE ANIMALS. SOMEWHAT STUPID. DON’T DISCRIMINATE. A SHAME.

  THEIR NATURAL HISTORIES

  Lion and Cronopio

  A cronopio who was crossing the desert encountered a lion, and the following dialogue took place:

  LION. I eat you.

  CRONOPIO (terribly worried, but with dignity.) Okay.

  LION. Ah, none of that. None of this martyrdom with me. Lie down and cry, or fight, one of the two. I can’t eat you like that. Let’s go, I’m waiting. Say something.