Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (36 page)

“That’s what it is,” Talita said, throwing back her hair. “Sailing at random, wandering, missing cannon-shots, civet-scented, collecting payments according to the tithe of first fruits, and isn’t it the same as any plant juice used for food, like wine, olive oil, etc.?”

“Very good,” Oliveira admitted. “Plant juice, like wine, olive oil … It never occurred to me to think of wine as a plant juice. Splendid. But listen to this: To bloom again, turn the fields to bloom, tangle up hair, wool, get tangled in a fight or quarrel, poison water with great mullein or some similar substance
to stupefy the fish so they can be taken out, isn’t that the ending of a dramatic poem, particularly if it’s a tragic one?”

“How beautiful,” Talita said enthusiastically, “it’s beautiful, Horacio. You really can squeeze the juice out of the cemetery.”

“Plant juice,” Oliveira said.

The door of the room opened and Gekrepten entered breathing heavily. Gekrepten was a bleached blonde, she could talk quite easily, and she was not in the least surprised to see a wardrobe flung across the bed and a man straddling a board.

“It’s sure hot,” she said, throwing the bundles on a chair. “It’s the worst time of day to go shopping, believe me. What are you doing out there, Talita? I don’t know why I always go out at siesta-time.”

“Good, good,” Oliveira said without looking at her. “Your turn, Talita.”

“I can’t think of anything else.”

“Think a little, you must remember something.”

“Yes, the dentist,” Gekrepten said. “He always gives me the worst hours for a filling. Did I tell you I had to go to the dentist’s today?”

“I remember one now,” Talita said.

“And what do you think happened,” Gekrepten said. “I get to the dentist’s, on the Calle Warnes. I ring the bell, and the receptionist comes to the door. I say: ‘Good afternoon.’ She says: ‘Good afternoon. Please come in.’ I come in and she takes me into the waiting room.”

“It’s like this,” Talita said. “One whose cheeks are puffed up, or a row of buckets lashed together and floated like a raft to a place where reeds grow: a storehouse for items of prime necessity, established so that certain persons can acquire them there more economically than in a store, and everything pertaining to or relative to the eclogue, isn’t it like applying the science of galvanism to a living or dead animal?”

“Such beauty,” Oliveira said astounded. “It’s simply phenomenal.”

“She tells me: ‘Please sit down for a moment.’ And I sit and wait.”

“I’ve still got one left,” Oliveira said. “Just a minute, I can’t remember it too well.”

“There were two women and a man with a child. The minutes
dragged on. I tell you I got through three whole issues of
Idilio.
The child was crying, poor thing, and his father was a little nervous … I’m not lying when I say that more than two hours passed from the time I had come in at two-thirty. Finally it was my turn, and the dentist says: ‘Come in, madam’; I go in, and he says: ‘Did the one I put in the other day bother you much?’ And I tell him: ‘No, doctor, how could it bother me. Besides I only chewed on one side all the time.’ He says: ‘Good, that’s what you have to do. Please sit down.’ I sit down and he says: ‘Open your mouth, please.’ He’s very pleasant, that dentist.”

“I’ve got it now,” Oliveira said. “Listen carefully, Talita. What are you looking back for?”

“To see if Manú is coming back.”

“He’ll be back. Listen carefully: the action and effect of passing in opposite directions, or in tournaments and jousts, the movement of a rider to make his mount run his chest against that of his opponent’s mount, isn’t it a lot like the fastigium, the most critical and serious moment of an illness?”

“It’s strange,” Talita said thoughtfully. “Is that how they say it in Spanish?”

“Say what?”

“That business about a rider making his mount run his chest against …”

“In tournaments, yes,” Oliveira said. “It’s in the cemetery, after all.”

“Fastigium is a very pretty word,” Talita said. “Too bad it means what it does.”

“Hell, the same thing can be said about bologna and lots of other words,” Oliveira said. “The Abbé Bremond has already worked on this, but what could he do. Words are like us, they’re born with one face and what can you do about it. Think about Kant’s face for a moment, tell me what you think. Or Bernardino Rivadavia’s, to stay closer to home.”

“He put in a plastic filling,” Gekrepten said.

“This heat is terrible,” Talita said. “Manú said he was going to get me a hat.”

“It’s hard to tell what that guy will bring back,” Oliveira said.

“If it’s all right with you, I’ll toss you the package and go back inside,” Talita said.

Oliveira looked at the bridge, measured the window with a vague motion of his arms, and shook his head.

“You might miss,” he said. “Besides, I get a funny feeling having you out there in this freezing cold. Can’t you feel icicles forming in your hair and in your nasal passages?”

“No,” Talita said. “Are the icicles going to be like fastigiums?”

“In a certain way, yes,” Oliveira said. “They’re two things that do seem alike from the point of view of their differences, a little like Manú and me, if you think about it a little. You’re probably aware that all this trouble with Manú is that we look too much alike.”

“The butter has melted,” Gekrepten said, spreading some on a piece of dark bread. “The butter, with all this heat, it’s a battle.”

“The worst difference is in all that,” Oliveira said. “The worst of all worst differences. Two guys with dark hair, with the face of a Buenos Aires low-life, with practically the same disdain for the same things, and you …”

“Well, I …” Talita said.

“There’s no reason to hide,” Oliveira said. “It’s a fact that in some sort of way when you join us the similarity and the difference come out at the same time.”

“I don’t think I sum up the two of you,” Talita said.

“What do you know about it? How could you know? There you are in your room, living and cooking and reading the self-teaching encyclopedia, and at night you go to the circus, and then you think that you’re only where you are at that moment. Didn’t you ever notice latches on doors, metal buttons, little pieces of glass?”

“Yes, I notice them sometimes,” Talita said.

“If you were to take a good look you would see very easily that on all sides, where you least suspect, there are images that copy all your movements. I’m very sensitive to all that foolishness, believe me.”

“Come here and drink this milk before it all curdles,” Gekrepten said. “Why do you people always talk about such strange things?”

“You’re making me too important,” Talita said.

“Oh, you can’t decide things like that,” Oliveira said. “There’s a whole order of things you can’t decide by yourself, and they’re always the most bothersome, even if they’re not the most
important. I tell you this because it’s a great consolation. For example, I was planning to have some
mate.
Now this one comes home and starts to make
café con leche
without anybody’s asking her. Result: if I don’t drink it the milk will curdle. It’s not important, but it gets under your skin. Do you know what I’m talking about?”

“Oh, yes,” Talita said, looking into his eyes. “It’s true that you’re like Manú. The pair of you can talk so well about
café con leche
and
mate
, and one ends up realizing that
café con leche
and
mate
, in reality …”

“Exactly,” Oliveira said. “In
reality.
So let’s get back to what I was saying before. The difference between Manú and me is that we’re almost exactly alike. At this level, a difference is like an imminent cataclysm. Are we friends? Yes, of course, but I would never be surprised at anything that … Notice how ever since we’ve known each other, I can tell you because you already know that, all we’ve done is hurt each other. He doesn’t like for me to be the way I am, all I have to do is try to straighten out some nails and look at the hassle he starts, and he gets you into it along the line. But he doesn’t like for me to be the way I am because in reality a lot of the things that come to my mind, a lot of the things I do, it’s as if I’d stolen them out from under his nose. Before he has a chance to think of them, zip, there they are. Bang, bang, he comes to the window and I’m straightening out the nails.”

Talita looked backwards and saw the shadow of Traveler, who was listening, hidden between the dresser and the window.

“Well, but you don’t have to exaggerate,” Talita said. “Some of the things that occur to Manú can’t always have occurred to you.”

“For example?”

“The milk’s getting cold,” Gekrepten grumbled. “Shall I put it on the fire a little more, sweet?”

“Make a custard with it tomorrow,” Oliveira advised. “Go ahead, Talita.”

“No,” Talita said with a sigh. “What for? I’m so hot, and I have the feeling I’m going to get sick.”

She felt the bridge vibrate as Traveler straddled it by the windowsill. Lying prone and staying on his side of the sill, Traveler put a straw hat on the board. With the aid of a mop handle he began to inch it along the board.

“If it gets the least bit off course it will fall into the street and it will be a terrible drag having to go down and get it.”

“I think I’d better come back inside,” Talita said, looking at Traveler with a mournful expression.

“But first you’ve got to give Oliveira his
yerba
,” Traveler said.

“It doesn’t matter any more,” Oliveira said. “In any case, let her give it a toss, it doesn’t make any difference.”

Talita looked back and forth at them and remained motionless.

“It’s hard to understand you,” Traveler said. “All this work and now it turns out that one more
mate
, one less
mate
, it doesn’t really matter.”

“The minute-hand has made its circle, my son,” Oliveira said. “You move in the time-space continuum with the speed of a worm. Think of all that has happened since you decided to go find that overworked Panama hat. The cycle of the
mate
came to a close without reaching fruition, and in the meantime the ever-faithful Gekrepten made her showy entrance, loaded down with cooking utensils. We are now in the
café con leche
sector, and nothing can be done about it.”

“That’s some argument,” Traveler said.

“That’s no argument, it’s a proof, arrived at in a perfectly objective way. You tend to move in the continuum, as physicists say, while I am quite sensitive to the giddy discontinuity of existence. At this very moment the
café con leche
has burst upon the scene, has installed itself, rules, is propagated, and is repeated in hundreds of thousands of homes. The
mate
gourds have been washed, put away, abolished. A temporary
café con leche
mantle now covers this segment of the American continent. Think of all that this presupposes and brings with it. Conscientious mothers lecturing their offspring on the virtues of lactic diet, children grouped around the pantry table, all smiles on top and all kicks and pinches underneath. To say
café con leche
at this time of day means change, a friendly get-together towards the end of the working day, the recounting of good deeds, deeds to real estate, transitory situations, vague prologues to what six o’clock in the afternoon, that terrible hour of keys in the door and a race to catch the bus, will bring home with brutal concreteness. Practically nobody ever makes love at that hour, they do it either before or after. At that hour people think about a shower (but we’ll take one at five o’clock) and
people begin to think about something to do in the evening, whether they’ll go to see Paulina Singerman or Toco Tarántola (but we’re not sure, there’s still time). What does all this have to do with
mate
time? I’m not talking about
mate
that’s not taken properly, superimposed on the
café con leche
, but the authentic one I wanted, at just the right moment, just when the weather was coldest. And it’s all these things that I don’t think you understand enough.”

“The dressmaker is a crook,” Gekrepten said. “Do you have your clothes made by a dressmaker, Talita?”

“No,” Talita said. “I know a little bit about cutting and sewing.”

“Smart girl. This afternoon after the dentist I run over to the dressmaker’s, it’s a block away, to inquire about a skirt that should have been ready a week ago. She says to me: ‘I’m awfully sorry, miss, but with my mother as sick as she’s been I wasn’t even able to thread a needle, you might say.’ I tell her: ‘But I need the skirt.’ She says: ‘I’m terribly sorry, miss, believe me. A customer like you. But you’ll have to forgive me.’ I say: ‘Forgiving won’t get me anything. It would have been better if you’d had it done on time and we’d all be better off.’ She says: ‘If that’s the way you feel, why don’t you go to another dressmaker?’ And I say: ‘Not that I don’t feel like it, but since I put in an order with you it would be better if I waited, but I don’t think you’re very reliable.’ ”

“Did all that happen?” Oliveira asked.

“Of course,” Gekrepten said. “Can’t you hear me telling Talita all about it?”

“They’re two different matters.”

“There you go again.”

“There’s your example,” Oliveira said to Traveler, who was wrinkling his brow at him. “There’s your example of what things are like. Everybody thinks he’s talking about something he has in common with everybody else.”

“And that’s not the way it is, of course,” Traveler said. “What a fresh piece of news.”

“It’s worth repeating, damn it.”

“You repeat everything you think is a sanction against somebody.”

“God put me here to watch over your city,” Oliveira said.

“When you’re not judging me you do it to your old lady.”

“In order to prod you and keep you both awake,” Oliveira said.

“Like a Mosaic mania. It came to you on the way down from Mount Sinai.”

“I like things to be as clear as possible,” Oliveira said. “It doesn’t seem to matter to you that right in the middle of a conversation Gekrepten sticks in a completely fantastic story about a dentist and some damned skirt or other. You don’t seem to realize that these outbursts, pardonable when they’re beautiful or at least inspired, become repulsive as soon as they start to cut into an order of things, torpedo a structure. How I do go on, old man.”