Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series)

by Julio Cortázar

  It would have been so easy to organize a coherent scheme, an order of thought and life, a harmony. All that was needed was the usual hypocrisy, elevate the past to the value of experience, derive profit from the wrinkles on one’s face, from the knowing look one sees in smiles and silences after forty years. Then one would put on a blue suit, comb one’s graying hair, and go to art galleries, to the Sociedad Argentina de Escritores and the Richmond bar, reconciled with the world. A discreet skepticism, an air of having returned, a measured entrance into maturity, into matrimony, into the paternal sermon at carving time or on receipt of an unsatisfactory report card. I am telling you this because I have lived longer than you. I’ve been around. When I was a boy. They’re all alike, te lo digo yo. I’m telling you this from my own experience, son. You don’t know what life is yet.

  And all of it, so ridiculous and gregarious, could have been even worse on other levels, in meditations constantly menaced by idola fori, words that falsify institutions, turning things to stone in the name of simplification, moments of fatigue in which one slowly takes the flag of surrender from one’s vest pocket. The betrayal could have taken place in perfect solitude, without witnesses or accomplices: hand to hand, believing one’s self to be beyond personal compromises and dramas of the senses, beyond the ethical torture of knowing that one is tied to a race or to a people and a language at least. In what is apparently perfect freedom, not having to render accounts to anyone, leaving the game, leaving the crossroads and following any one of the roads put there by circumstance, proclaiming it to be the necessary one or the only one. La Maga was one of those roads, literature was another (burn the notebook at once, even if Gekrepten wu-rr-inggs her hands), laziness was something else, and meditation on the sovereign kicking of the bucket was something else. Stopping in front of a pizzeria at 1300 Corrientes, Oliveira asked himself the great question: “Must one stay in the center of the crossroads, then, like the hub of a wheel? What good is it to know or to think we know that every road is false if we don’t walk with an idea that is not the road itself? We’re not Buddha, and there are no trees here to sit under in the lotus position. A cop appears and asks for your identity card.”

  Walking with an idea that is no longer the road itself. From all that chatter (what a combination, ch, mother of chigger, cheese, and chili beans) the only thing left was that glimpse. Yes, it was a formula that deserved meditation. In that way his visit to El Cerro would have had to have a meaning after all, in that way La Maga would cease being a lost object and become the image of a possible reunion—no longer with her but on this side of her or on the other side of her; by her, but not her—. And Manú, and the circus, and that incredible idea of the nuthouse that they were talking about so much at that time, everything could have meaning just as long as it was extrapolated, the whinevitable whextrapolation at the metaphysical whour, that stately word was always on time. Oliveira took a bite of pizza, burning his gums in his usual gluttonous way, and he felt better. But how many times had he gone through the same cycle on dozens of corners and in cafés in so many cities, how many times had he reached similar conclusions, felt better, thought he could begin to live in a different way; one afternoon, for example, when he had gone in to listen to an idiotic concert, and afterwards … Afterwards it had rained so much, why think about it. That’s the way it was with Talita, the more he thought about it the worse it was. The woman was beginning to suffer because of him, not for any serious reason, just because he was there and everything seemed to be changing between Talita and Traveler, heaps of little things like that, taken for granted and dismissed, and suddenly they start to get sharp edges and what had started out as a Spanish stew ends up as a Kierkegaardian herring, without going any deeper into the matter. The afternoon with the boards had been a return to order, but Traveler had let the chance of saying what had to be said slip by, so that on that very day when Oliveira would have ordered himself to change neighborhoods and their lives, he not only had said nothing, but he had got him the job with the circus, proof that … In that case pity would have been just as idiotic as the other time: rain, rain. I wonder if Berthe Trépat still plays the piano?

  (–111)

  49

  TALITA and Traveler talked at great length about famous madmen and others less well known now that Ferraguto had decided to buy the clinic and turn the circus, cat and all, over to somebody called Suárez Melián. It seemed to them, Talita especially, that the change from circus to clinic was like a step forward, but it was hard for Traveler to see very clearly the reasons for that optimism. In hopes of understanding better they went around in great excitement and were always going over to their windows or down to the street entrance to exchange impressions with Señora Gutusso, Don Bunche, Don Crespo, and even with Gekrepten if she was within range. The worst of it was that in those days there was a lot of talk of a revolt, that the armed forces in Campo de Mayo were about to rise up, and all that seemed much more important to people than the acquisition of a clinic on the Calle Trelles. Finally Talita and Traveler set out to try to find a little normality in a psychiatry text. As usual they got excited over anything, and the day of the duck, it was hard to tell why, their arguments became so violent that Cien Pesos was going crazy in his cage and Don Crespo waited for an acquaintance to go by so he could move his index finger in a circular pattern next to his forehead. On occasions like that thick clouds of duck feathers would come flying out the kitchen window and there would be a slamming of doors and a hand-to-hand dialectic without quarter which would barely give way to lunchtime, when the duck would disappear right down to the last tegument.

  When it was time for coffee and some Mariposa caña, a tacit reconciliation brought them together over venerated texts, issues of esoteric reviews, long out of print, cosmological treasures that they felt they had to assimilate as a sort of prelude to their new life. They talked a lot about eccentricities, because Traveler, with Oliveira’s approval, had condescended to bring out some old papers and exhibit part of his collection of phenomena, something they had begun together when they were both studying in the long-forgotten university and which they had kept up separately later on. The study of those documents was a fine dessert, and Talita had earned the right to participate thanks to her copies of Renovigo (Periódiko Rebolusionario Bilingue), a Mexican publication in the Ispamerikan tongue put out by Editorial Lumen, on which a number of madmen had collaborated with exciting results. They only heard from Ferraguto every so often, because the circus was practically in the hands of Suárez Melián already, but it seemed certain that the clinic would be turned over to them around the middle of March. Once or twice Ferraguto had shown up at the circus to watch the calculating cat, from whom he was obviously going to find it difficult to be parted, and both times he spoke about the imminence of the great transaction and the-weighty-responsibilities that would fall on their shoulders (sigh). It seemed practically assured that Talita would be entrusted with the pharmacy, and the poor girl was extremely nervous, reviewing some notes from the time of her anointment. Oliveira and Traveler amused themselves endlessly at her expense, but when they went back to the circus they would both walk around sadly and look at the people and the cat as if a circus were something unappreciably rare.

  “They’re a lot crazier here,” Traveler would say. “There won’t be any comparison.”

  Oliveira would shrug-his-shoulders, incapable of saying that he felt the same way inside, and he would look up at the top of the tent, losing himself stupidly in uncertain ruminations.

  “Of course you have changed as you went from place to place,” Traveler would grumble. “Me too, but always here, always in this meridian …”

  He would stretch out his arm and take in the vague geography of Buenos Aires.

  “Changes, you know …” Oliveira would say.

  While they were talking that way they would choke with laughter, and the audience would look at them out of the corner of their eyes because they were distracting their attent
ion.

  In moments of confidence, the three of them would admit that they were admirably prepared for their new duties. For example, the arrival of the Sunday edition of La Nación would provoke in them a sadness comparable only to people lined up at the movies and reprints from the Reader’s Digest.

  “Contacts are getting cut off more all the time,” Traveler would say with a note of prophecy. “You have to give great shouts.”

  “Colonel Flappa already gave one last night,” Talita answered. “Result, a state of siege.”

  “That’s not a shout, girl, just a death-rattle. I’m talking about the things Yrigoyen used to dream about, historic cuspidations, prophetic promissorations, those hopes of mankind that have reached such bad shape in these parts.”

  “You’re talking just like the other one now,” Talita said, looking at him worriedly but hiding her characterological glance.

  The other one was still at the circus, giving Suárez Melián some last-minute help and being surprised sometimes at the fact that he was becoming so indifferent to everything. He had the feeling that he had turned over the mana he had left to Talita and Traveler, who were getting more and more excited thinking about the clinic; the only thing he really liked doing those days was playing with the calculating cat, who had taken an enormous liking to him and would do additions for his exclusive pleasure. Since Ferraguto had given instructions that the cat was not to be taken into the street except in a basket and with an identification collar like army dog-tags from the Battle of Okinawa, Oliveira understood the cat’s feelings and as soon as they were two blocks away from the circus he would leave the basket in a delicatessen he could trust, take the collar off the poor animal, and the two of them would wander around inspecting empty cans in vacant lots or nibbling grass, a delightful occupation. After those hygienic walks it was almost tolerable for Oliveira to become involved in the gatherings in Don Crespo’s courtyard, in Gekrepten’s tender insistence on knitting him things for winter. The night that Ferraguto telephoned the boarding house to tell Traveler about the imminent date of the great transaction, the three of them were perfecting their notions of the Ispamerikan language, extracted with infinite joy from an issue of Renovigo. They became almost sad thinking that in the clinic seriousness, science, abnegation, and all of those things were waiting for them.

  “¿Ké bida no es trajedia?” Talita read in excellent Ispamerikan.

  They went on like that until Señora Gutusso arrived with the latest radio news bulletin about Colonel Flappa and his tanks, something real and concrete at last that scattered them immediately, to the surprise of the informant, drunk with patriotic feelings.

  (–118)

  50

  THE Calle Trelles was just a step away from the bus stop, a little over three blocks. Ferraguto and Cuca were already there with the superintendent when Talita and Traveler arrived. The great transaction was taking place in a room on the second floor, with two windows that opened onto the courtyard garden where the patients took their walks and a little stream could be seen rising and falling in a concrete fountain. To reach the room Talita and Traveler had to go through several hallways and rooms on the ground floor, where ladies and gentlemen had addressed them in correct Spanish, asking for the kind donation of a pack or two of cigarettes. The male nurse who accompanied them seemed to find this interlude perfectly natural, and the circumstances did not favor any preliminary question in the nature of an orientation. Practically out of cigarettes, they reached the room of the great transaction where Ferraguto pompously introduced them to the superintendent. Halfway through the reading of an unintelligible document Oliveira appeared, and they had to explain to him with whispers and hidden gestures that everything was going along fine and that nobody understood much of anything. When Talita succinctly whispered to him about her complicated arrival shh shh, Oliveira looked at her puzzled because he had come in through an entrance that led right to that door. As for the Boss, he was dressed in black as called for by the occasion.

  The heat was the kind that lowered the pitch of the radio announcers’ voices as every hour they would first give the weather report and then the official denials of the uprising in Campo de Mayo and Colonel Flappa’s grim intentions. The superintendent had interrupted the reading of the document at five minutes to six to turn on his Japanese transistor radio in order to keep up, as he affirmed after begging their pardon, with the news. That expression immediately brought on in Oliveira the classic look of one who has forgotten something in the hallway downstairs (and one that even the superintendent would have to recognize as another form of contact with facts), and in spite of the fierce looks from Traveler and Talita he tore out of the room by the first available door, which was not the one he had come in by.

  From a couple of phrases in the document he had surmised that the clinic had five floors and in addition a summerhouse in the rear of the garden. The best thing to do would be to take a turn around the garden, if he could find his way, but he didn’t get the chance because no sooner had he gone twenty feet than a young man in shirtsleeves approached smiling, took him by the hand, and led him, swinging his arm the way children do, up to a corridor where there were many doors and something that must have been the opening of a freight elevator. The idea of getting to know the clinic in the care of a madman was exceedingly agreeable, and the first thing Oliveira did was to offer his companion a cigarette. He was an intelligent-looking young man who accepted a butt and whistled with satisfaction. Then it turned out that he was an attendant and that Oliveira was not a patient, the usual misunderstandings in cases like that. The episode was cute and didn’t have much to offer, but as they went from one floor to another, Oliveira and Remorino became friendly and the inside topography of the clinic was explained, with anecdotes, jibes at the rest of the personnel, and watch-out-fors between friends. They were in the room where Dr. Ovejero kept his guinea pigs and a picture of Monica Vitti when a cross-eyed boy appeared, running over to tell Remorino that if the gentleman with him was Señor Horacio Oliveira, etc. With a sigh, Oliveira went down two flights and returned to the room of the great transaction where the document was dragging along to its conclusions in the midst of Cuca Ferraguto’s menopausal blushes and Traveler’s rude yawns. Oliveira was still thinking about the figure dressed in pink pajamas he had glimpsed on turning the corner of the hallway on the fourth floor, a man who was getting old and who was walking along close to the wall petting a pigeon that seemed to be asleep in his hand. It was exactly at that moment that Cuca Ferraguto let out a kind of bellow.

  “What do you mean, they have to okay it?”

  “Be quiet, dear,” the Boss said. “The gentleman means …”

  “It’s quite clear,” said Talita, who had always got along with Cuca and wanted to help her. “The transfer requires the approval of the patients.”

  “But that’s crazy,” Cuca said, very ad hoc.

  “My dear lady,” the superintendent said, plucking at his vest with his free hand. “The patients here are very special, and the Méndez Delfino Act is quite clear in this respect. Except for eight or nine whom have families that have given their approval, the rest have spent all their lives between one asylum and another, if I may use the term, and no one is responsible for them. In these cases the law allows the superintendent to get from them in lucid moments their approval of the transfer of the clinic to a new owner. Here are their statements, waiting to be signed,” he added, showing her a book bound in red with strips cut from the comic section sticking out. “Read them, that’s all there is to it.”

  “If I understand correctly,” Ferraguto said, “this negotiation has to be done right now.”

  “And why do you think I’ve had you all come here? You as owner and these gentlemen as witnesses: let’s start bringing in the patients and we can get it all done this afternoon.”

  “The point,” Traveler said, “is that the ones who sign have to be in what you call their lucid moments.”

  The superinte
ndent gave him a look of pity and pressed a buzzer. Remorino came in dressed in a smock; he winked at Oliveira and placed the enormous register on a small table. He placed a chair in front of the table, and folded his arms like a Persian executioner. Ferraguto, who had hastened to examine the register with the air of one who understood, asked if the approval should be signed at the bottom of the document, and the superintendent said yes, so now they would call the patients in in alphabetical order and ask them to give their stamp of approval under the influence of a large, round blue fountain pen. In spite of such efficient preparations, Traveler insisted on suggesting that maybe one of the patients would refuse to sign or would throw a sudden scene. Although they didn’t dare to back him openly, Cuca and Ferraguto were-hanging-on-his-every-word.

  (–119)

  51

  REMORINO appeared just then with an old man who seemed rather startled, and who when he recognized the superintendent greeted him with a sort of bow.

  “In pajamas,” said Cuca, dumfounded.

  “I noticed when we came in,” Ferraguto said.

  “They weren’t pajamas. More like …”

  “Quiet please,” the superintendent said. “Come here, Antúnez, and put your signature where Remorino will show you.”

  The old man examined the register closely while Remorino held the pen out to him. Ferraguto took out his handkerchief and dried his forehead with a few soft dabs.

  “This is page eight,” Antúnez said, “and I think that I ought to sign on page one.”

  “Right here,” said Remorino, showing him a place in the register. “Come on, your café con leche is getting cold.”

  Antúnez signed with a flourish, bowed to everyone, and went out with little pink steps that delighted Talita. The second pair of pajamas was much fatter, and after circumnavigating the table he went over and shook hands with the superintendent, who took his hand grudgingly and pointed to the register with a curt gesture.