Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series)

by Julio Cortázar

  All this must have, I imagine, an Edenic root. Perhaps Eden, as some would like to see it, is the mythopoetic projection of good old fetal times that persist in the unconscious. I suddenly understand better the frightening gesture of Masaccio’s Adam. He covers his face to protect his vision, what had been his; he preserves in that small manual night the last landscape of his paradise. And he cries (because the gesture is also one that accompanies weeping) when he realizes that it is useless, that the real punishment is the one about to begin: the forgetting of Eden, that is to say, bovine conformity, the cheap and dirty joy of work and sweat of the brow and paid vacations.

  (–61)

  133

  OF course, as Traveler thought right away, what counted were results. Still, why so much pragmatism? He was doing Ceferino an injustice, since his geopolitical system had not been tested out as so many others that were equally brainless (and just as promising, one had to recognize that). Cefe intrepidly stuck to his theoretical terrain and almost immediately launched another crushing demonstration:

  Wages of workers of the world:

  In accordance with the Society of Nations it will be or is to be that if, for example, a French worker, let us say a steelworker, for example, earns a definite daily wage between a minimum base of 8 pesos and a maximum base of 10 pesos, then it will have to be that an Italian steelworker will also have to earn the same amount, between 8 pesos and 10 pesos a day; in addition: if an Italian steelworker earns the same aforesaid, between 8 pesos and 10 pesos a day, then a Spanish steelworker will also have to earn between 8 pesos and 10 pesos a day; in addition: if a Spanish steelworker earns between 8 pesos and 10 pesos a day, then a Russian steelworker will also have to earn between 8 pesos and 10 pesos a day; in addition: if a Russian steelworker earns between 8 pesos and 10 pesos a day, then an American steelworker will also have to earn between 8 pesos and 10 pesos a day; etc.

  “What’s the reason for that ‘etc.,’ ” Traveler thought, “for the fact that at a given moment Ceferino stops and chooses that et cetera that is so painful to him? It can’t just be the weariness of repetition, because it’s obvious that he loves it, or the feeling of monotony, because it’s obvious that he loves it (his style is rubbing off on you).” The fact was that the “etc.” left Ceferino a little nostalgic, a cosmologist obliged to give in to an irritating reader’s digest. The poor fellow recovered his loss at the end of his list of steelworkers:

  (For the rest, in this thesis, if we kept on speaking, there will or there should be room for all countries respectively, or rather for all steel workers of all respective countries.)

  “But,” Traveler thought, pouring himself another caña and cutting it with soda, “it’s strange that Talita hasn’t come back.” He should go and take a look. He was sorry to leave Ceferino’s world in full process of development just when Cefe was about to enumerate the 45 National Corporations which would make up the exemplary country:

  (1) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR (all branches and employees in general of the Ministry of the Interior). (The ministration of all stability for every establishment, etc.); (2) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF THE MINISTRY OF THE TREASURY (all branches and employees in general of the Ministry of the Treasury). (The ministration as patronage of all goods (all property) within the national territory, etc.); (3)

  And that’s the way the corporations went, 45 in number, among which 5, 10, 11, and 12 stood out in their own way:

  (5) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF THE MINISTRY OF CIVIL FAVOR (all branches and employees in general of said Ministry). (Education, Enlightenment, Love of one neighbor for another, Control, Registry (books of), Health, Sexual Education, etc.). (The ministration or Control and Registry (lawyer…) which will furnish “Courts of Instruction,” “Civil Courts,” “Council of the Child,” “Judge of Minors,” “Registries”: births, deceases, etc.) (The Ministration which will include everything that may be part of Civil Favor: MATRIMONY, FATHER, SON, NEIGHBOR, DOMICILE, INDIVIDUAL, INDIVIDUAL OF GOOD OR BAD BEHAVIOR, INDIVIDUAL OF PUBLIC IMMORALITY, INDIVIDUAL WITH BAD ILLNESSES, HOME (FAMILY AND), UNDESIRABLE PERSON, HEAD OF FAMILY, CHILD, MINOR, FIANCÉ, CONCUBINAGE, etc.).

  (10) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF RANCHES (all rural establishments for the Major Breeding of animals and all employees in general of said establishments). (Major Breeding or the breeding of corpulent animals: oxen, horses, ostriches, elephants, camels, giraffes, whales, etc.);

  (11) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF FARMS (all truck farms or large small farms, and all employees in general of said establishments). (Cultivations of every respective type of plant, except vegetables and fruit trees);

  (12) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF ANIMAL BREEDING HOUSES (all establishments for the Minor Breeding of animals, and all employees in general of said establishments). (Minor Breeding or the breeding of noncorpulent animals: pigs, sheep, goats, dogs, tigers, lions, cats, hares, hens, ducks, wasps, fish, butterflies, mice, insects, microbes, etc.)

  Touched, Traveler forgot all about the hour and how the level of the caña was going down. The problems came to him like caresses: Why exempt vegetables and fruit trees? Why did the word wasp have something diabolical about it? And that almost Edenic vision of a farm where goats were raised alongside tigers, mice, butterflies, lions, and microbes … Choking with laughter he went out into the hallway. The almost tangible aspect of a ranch where the employees-of-said-establishment were arguing as they tried to breed a whale became superimposed on the austere vision of the nighttime hallway. It was a hallucination worthy of the place and the time, it seemed perfectly foolish to wonder what Talita was doing in the pharmacy or in the courtyard, when the order of Corporations continued to offer itself as a guiding light.

  (25) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF HOSPITALS AND RELATED HOUSES (all hospitals of all types, workshops for repairs and adjustments, houses for the curing of hides, stables for the curing of horses, dental clinics, barber shops, houses for the pruning of plants, houses for the arrangement of intricate legal forms, etc., and also all employees in general of said establishments).

  “There it is,” Traveler said. “A break that proves Ceferino’s perfect central healthiness. Horacio is right, there’s no reason to accept the order of things the way daddy hands them to us. Cefe thinks that the fact that something is being repaired unites a dentist and intricate legal forms; accidents are just as valuable as essences … But it’s pure poetry, boy. Cefe is breaking the hard mental crust, as somebody or other said, and he’s beginning to see the world from a different angle. Of course this is what they call being batty.”

  When Talita came in he was on the twenty-eighth Corporation:

  (28) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF SCIENTIFIC DETECTIVES-ERRANT AND THEIR HOUSES OF SCIENCE (all places for detectives and/or investigation police, all places for explorers (travelers) and all places for scientific explorers, and all employees in general of said same establishments). (All of the abovementioned employees must belong to a class that is to be called “ERRANT.”)

  Talita and Traveler liked this part less, it was as if Ceferino were abandoning himself too soon to a persecutory worry. But perhaps the scientific detectives-errant were not mere investigators; the “errant” business invested them with a quixotic air that Cefe, probably taking it as understood, had not bothered to emphasize.

  (29) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF SCIENTIFIC DETECTIVES HAVING TO DO WITH PLEAS AND THEIR HOUSES OF SCIENCE (all places for detectives and/or Investigation police, and all places for explorers, and all employees in general of said same establishments). (All of the abovementioned employees are to belong to a class that is to be called “PLEAS,” and the places and employees of this class are to be separate from those of other classes such as the already mentioned “ERRANT.”

  (30) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF SCIENTIFIC DETECTIVES HAVING TO DO WITH FINAL BOUNDARIES AND THEIR HOUSES OF SCIENCE (all places for detectives and/or Investigation police, and all places for explorers, and all employees in general of said same establishments). (All
of the abovementioned employees are to belong to a class that is to be called “BOUNDARIES,” and the places and employees of this class are to be separate from those of other classes such as the already mentioned “ERRANT” and “PLEAS.”)

  “It’s as if he were talking about orders of chivalry,” Talita said convinced. “But the strange thing is that in these three corporations of detectives, the only thing he mentions are the places.”

  “That’s one thing, and the other is the meaning of ‘final boundaries.’ ”

  “He must be deriving final from fine. But that doesn’t solve anything. What’s the difference.”

  “What’s the difference,” Traveler repeated. “You’re so right. The beautiful part is that there exists the possibility of a world where there will be detectives-errant, plea detectives, and final-boundary detectives. That’s why it seems quite natural to me that Cefe turns now from chivalry to religious orders, with an interlude that looks like a concession to the scientifical (you’ve got to call it something) spirit of the times. I’ll read it to you:”

  (31) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF THE LEARNED IN SUITABLE SCIENCES AND THEIR HOUSES OF SCIENCE (all houses or communal places for the learned in suitable sciences and all of the aforementioned learned men). (Learned men in suitable sciences: physicians, homeopaths, healers (all surgeons), midwives, technicians, mechanics (all types of technicians), engineers of the second grade or architects of every branch (all executors of plans already drawn beforehand, such as would be an engineer of the second grade), classifiers in general, astronomers, astrologers, spiritualists, full doctors in every branch of the law or laws (all experts), classifiers of generic species, accountants, translators, primary school teachers (all composers), trackers—men—of murderers, pathfinders or guides, plant grafters, barbers, etc.)

  “Look at this,” Traveler said, taking a drink of caña at one gulp. “He’s an absolute genius!”

  “It’ll be a great country for barbers,” Talita said, flopping on the bed and closing her eyes. “They come pretty high on the scale. What I don’t understand is why the trackers of murderers have to be men.”

  “I’ve never heard of a female tracker,” Traveler said, “and probably Cefe didn’t find it very appropriate. You must have noticed that he’s a terrible puritan in sexual matters, it comes out all the time.”

  “It’s hot, too damned hot,” Talita said. “Did you notice how he likes to include classifiers, and even repeats the name? So let’s have the mystical leap you were going to read me.”

  “Get ready to catalogue,” Traveler said.

  (32) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF MONKS OF THE PRAYER OF THE SIGN OF THE CROSS AND THEIR HOUSES OF SCIENCE (all communal houses of monks, and all monks). (Monks or men who bless, who are to remain outside all extraneous cults, uniquely and only for the world of the word and the curative mysteries of the “conquest” of the latter.) (Monks who are always to combat all spiritual ills, all harm earned or put into goods or bodies, etc.) (Penitent and anchorite monks who are to pray for and bless sometimes people, sometimes objects, sometimes sites of places, sometimes planted fields, sometimes a boyfriend badly affected by a rival, et cetera.)

  (33) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF CHURCHGOING GUARDIANS OF COLLECTIONS AND THEIR HOUSES OF COLLECTION (all houses of collection, and idem, houses—deposits, warehouses, archives, museums, cemeteries, jails, asylums, homes for the blind, etc., and also all employees in general of said establishments). (Collections: example: an archive keeps files in a collection; a cemetery keeps corpses in a collection; a jail keeps prisoners in a collection, etc.)

  “Even Espronceda didn’t think of the cemetery bit,” Traveler said. “You can’t deny the analogy between the Chacarita cemetery and an archive … Ceferino has an intuition for relationships, and that, basically, is true intelligence, don’t you think? After introductions like these, his final classification isn’t strange at all, quite the contrary. A world like this should be tried.”

  Talita didn’t say anything, but she lifted her upper lip like a festoon and let out a sigh that had its origins in what is called the first signs of sleep. Traveler took another drink of caña and got into the final and definitive Corporations:

  (40) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF COMMISSION AGENTS FOR COLORED SPECIES COLORED IN RED AND HOUSES OF ACTIVE LABOR FOR THE BENEFIT OF SPECIES COLORED IN RED (all communal houses of commission agents for generic species colored in red, or the main Offices of said agents, and also all said agents). (Generic species colored in red: animals with fur colored in red; plants with flowers colored in red, and minerals with the look of colored in red.)

  (41) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF COMMISSION AGENTS FOR SPECIES COLORED IN BLACK AND HOUSES OF ACTIVE LABOR FOR THE BENEFIT OF SPECIES COLORED BLACK (all communal houses of commission agents for generic species in black, or the main Offices of said agents, and also all said agents). (Generic species colored in black or simply black: animals with black fur, plants with black flowers, and minerals with a black look.)

  (42) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF COMMISSION AGENTS FOR SPECIES COLORED IN BROWN AND HOUSES OF ACTIVE LABOR FOR THE BENEFIT OF BROWN SPECIES (all communal houses of commission agents for generic species colored in brown, or the main Offices of said agents, and also all said agents). (Generic species colored in brown or simply brown: animals with brown fur, plants with brown flowers, and minerals with a brown look.)

  (43) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF COMMISSION AGENTS FOR SPECIES COLORED IN YELLOW AND HOUSES OF ACTIVE LABOR FOR THE BENEFIT OF SPECIES COLORED IN YELLOW (all communal houses of commission agents for generic species colored in yellow, or the main Offices of said agents, and also all said agents). (Generic species colored in yellow or simply yellow: animals with yellow fur, plants with yellow flowers, and minerals with a yellow look.)

  (44) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF COMMISSION AGENTS FOR SPECIES IN WHITE AND HOUSES OF ACTIVE LABOR FOR THE BENEFIT OF SPECIES COLORED IN WHITE (all communal houses of commission agents for generic species colored in white, or the main Offices of said agents, and also all said agents.) (Generic species colored in white: animals with white fur, plants with white flowers, and minerals with a white look.)

  (45) NATIONAL CORPORATION OF COMMISSION AGENTS FOR SPECIES IN PAMPA AND HOUSES OF ACTIVE LABOR FOR THE BENEFIT OF SPECIES COLORED IN PAMPA (all communal houses of commission agents for generic species colored in pampa, or the main Offices of said agents, and also all said agents). (Generic species colored in pampa or simply pampa: animals with pampa fur, vegetables with pampa flowers, and minerals with a pampa look.)

  Break the hard mental crust … How did Ceferino visualize what he had written? What dazzling reality (or not) showing him scenes in which polar bears moved about in a vast marble backdrop, among Cape jasmines? Or crows nesting in a pile of coal with black tulips in their beaks … And why “colored in black,” “colored in white”? Shouldn’t it be “in color”? But then, why: “colored in yellow or simply yellow”? What colors were they that couldn’t be translated by Michaux’s or Huxley’s marijuana? Ceferino’s notes, useful to lose one’s self a little more (if that was useful), didn’t go very far. In any case:

  Concerning the aforementioned pampa color: pampa color is all of that color which is varied, or which is formed by two or more kinds of paint.

  And a highly necessary clarification:

  Concerning the aforementioned or alluded agents for generic species: said agents are to be Governors, for through them none of the generic species shall disappear from the earth; the generic types, within their class, shall not cross, either one class with another, or one type with another, or one race with another, or one generic color with another generic color, etc.

  Ceferino Piriz, a purist, a racist! A cosmos of pure colors, Mondrianesque to an intolerable degree! Dangerous Ceferino Piriz, always a possible candidate for Deputy, perhaps for President! On guard, Uruguay! And another caña before going to sleep while Cefe, drunk with colors, allows himself a last poem in which, as in a huge canvas by Ensor, everyth
ing explosive explodes into material for masks and antimasks. Militarism suddenly erupts in his system, and the treatment, somewhere between macaronic and trismegistical, that the Uruguayan philosopher reserved for it, had to be seen. Or in other words:

  As for the announced work The Light of World Peace, the question is that it includes a rather detailed explanation of militarism, but now, in a brief summary, we shall give the following version(s) dealing with militarism:

  Police (“Metropolitan” type) for military men born under the zodiacal sign of Aries; Syndicates of fundamental antigovernment for military men born under the zodiacal sign of Taurus; the Direction and sponsorship of public festivities and social gatherings (dances, soirées, arrangement of betrothals: bringing fiancés together, etc.) for military men born under the zodiacal sign of Gemini; Aviation (military) for military men born under the zodiacal sign of Cancer; the Pen in support of fundamental government (military journalism, and political wizardry for the benefit of all fundamental and national Government) for military men born under the zodiacal sign of Leo; Artillery (heavy weapons in general and bombs) for military men born under the zodiacal sign of Virgo; Sponsorship and practical production of public and/or national celebrations (the use of adequate disguises on the part of military men in moments for the incorporation of either a military parade, or a festival like those called “harvest,” etc.) for military men born under the zodiacal sign of Scorpio; Cavalry (regular cavalry and motorized cavalry, with their respective participation, either of fusileers, or lancers, or machete bearers: typical example: “Republican Guard,” or of swordsmen, etc.) for military men born under the zodiacal sign of Capricorn; and practical military Service (couriers, orderlies, firemen, practical missionaries, servants of the practical, etc.) for military men born under the zodiacal sign of Aquarius.