Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (40 page)

“You’re getting lucky …”

“I’m still losing really. Manú, I’m running out of change.”

“Get some from Don Crespo who has probably reached the age of the pharaohs and will give you pieces of pure gold. Look, Horacio, what you were saying about harmony …”

“Well,” Oliveira said, “since you insist I turn my pockets inside out and put the lint on the table …”

“Something besides turning your pockets inside out. My impression is that you’re peacefully watching how everybody else gets all mixed up. You’re looking for that thing called harmony, but you’re looking for it precisely in the place where you just said it didn’t exist, between friends, in the family, in the city. Why are you looking for it in social organisms?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even looking for it. It’s all just happening to me.”

“Why should it happen to you in such a way that the rest of us can’t get any sleep because of you?”

“I haven’t been sleeping very well either.”

“Just to give an example, why did you get together with Gekrepten? Why do you come to see me? Don’t you think perhaps that Gekrepten and we are the ones who are destroying your harmony?”

“She wants to drink some mandrake!” Don Crespo shouted, stunned.

“What?” asked Señora Gutusso.

“Mandrake! She tells the slave-girl to pour her some mandrake. She says she wants to sleep. She’s completely mad!”

“She ought to take some Bromural,” Señora Gutusso said. “Of course in those days …”

“You’re quite right, old man,” Oliveira said, filling the glasses with
caña.
“The only thing wrong is that you’re attaching too much importance to Gekrepten.”

“What about us?”

“You people, well, you’re probably that coagulant we were talking about a while back. It makes me think that our relationship is almost chemical, something outside of ourselves. A sort of sketch that is being done. You came to meet me, don’t forget.”

“And why not? I never thought you would have come back with all that resentment, that they would have changed you so much over there, that you would have given me such an urge to be different … That’s not what I mean. Hell, you don’t live and you don’t let live.”

A
cielito
was being played on the guitar between them.

“All you have to do is snap your fingers like that,” Oliveira said in a very low voice, “and you won’t see me again. It wouldn’t be fair that just because of me, you and Talita should …”

“Leave Talita out of this.”

“No,” Oliveira said. “I couldn’t think of leaving her out. All of us, Talita, you, and I, we form a triangle that is exceedingly trismegistic. I’ll tell you again: just give me a signal and I’ll break it off. Don’t think I haven’t noticed how worried you’ve been.”

“You won’t fix anything up by going away now.”

“Why not, man? You don’t need me.”

Traveler began the prelude to
Malevaje
, stopped. It was already dark, and Don Crespo turned on the light in the courtyard so he could read.

“Look,” Traveler said in a low voice. “In any case, someday you’re going to beat it and there won’t be any need of my going around giving you signals. I may not be able to sleep at night, as Talita has probably told you, but underneath it all, I’m not sorry you’ve come back. What’s more likely is that I needed you.”

“Whatever you say, old man. That’s the way things turn out, the best thing is to keep cool. It’s not so bad for me either.”

“This sounds like a dialogue between two idiots,” Traveler said.

“Pure-bred mongoloids,” said Oliveira.

“You think you’re going to explain something, and it gets worse every time.”

“Explanation is a well-dressed mistake,” Oliveira said. “Make a note of that.”

“Yes, it’s much better to talk about other things then, about what’s going on in the Radical party. It’s just that you … But
it’s like a merry-go-round, it always comes back to the same thing, the white horse, then the red one, the white one again. We’re poets, dad.”

“Terrific troubadours,” Oliveira said, filling up the glasses. “People who don’t sleep well and go over to the window to get a breath of fresh air, things like that.”

“So you did see me last night.”

“Let me think. First Gekrepten got to be a drag and I had to temporize. Just a little, but still … Then I slept like a log, trying to forget. Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” Traveler said, and slapped his hand across the strings. Jingling her winnings, Señora Gutusso brought a chair over and asked Traveler to sing.

“A man named Enobarbus said in here that night dampness is poisonous,” Don Crespo informed them. “They’re all crazy in this book, in the middle of a battle they start talking about things that have nothing to do with what’s going on.”

“Well, then,” Traveler said, “let’s do the lady’s pleasure, if Don Crespo doesn’t mind.
Malevaje
, a bona fide tango by Juan de Dios Filiberto. Say, old buddy, remind me to read you Ivonne Guitry’s confession, it’s something great. Talita, go get the Gardel anthology. It’s on the night-table, where something like that should be.”

“And give it back to me while you’re at it,” Señora Gutusso said. “I don’t need it, but I like to have the books I like close to me. My husband is just the same, I might add.”

(–
47
)

I AM I, I am he. We are, but I am I, first I am I, I will defend being I until I am unable to fight any longer. I am I, Atalía.
Ego. Yo.
A professional degree, an Argentine, a scarlet fingernail, pretty sometimes, big dark eyes, I. Atalía Donosi, I.
Yo.
Yo-yo, windlass and hawser. Funny.

What a nut, Manú, going to the Casa América and renting this thing just to have some fun.
REWIND
. What a voice, that’s not my voice. False and forced: “I am I, I am he. We are, but I am I, first I am I, I will defend …”
STOP
. Wonderful machine, but it’s no good thinking out loud, or maybe you have to get used to it. Manú talks about recording his famous radio script about fine ladies; he won’t do anything. The magic eye is really magical, green slits that oscillate, contract, a one-eyed cat staring at me. Maybe I should cover it with a piece of cardboard.
REWIND
. The tape runs so smoothly, so regularly,
VOLUME
. Put it on 5 or 5½: “The magic eye is really magical, green slits that osci …” But what would really be magic would be for my voice to have said: “The magic eye plays secretly, red slits …” Too much echo. I have to put the microphone closer and lower the volume. I am I, I am he. What I really am is a bad parody of Faulkner. Cheap effects. Does he dictate to a magnetic recorder or does he use whiskey for tape? Do you say magnetic recorder or tape recorder? Horacio says magnetic recorder, he was surprised when he saw the machine, he said: “What a fine magnetic recorder, old man!” The manual calls it a tape recorder, they ought to know in the Casa América. Mystery: Why does Manú buy everything, even his shoes, in the Casa América? A fixation, a touch of idiocy,
REWIND
. This will be funny: “… Faulkner. Cheap effects.”
STOP
. It isn’t very funny listening to myself again. All this should take time, time, time. All this should take time,
REWIND
. Let’s see if the tone is more
natural: “… ime, time, time. All this should …” The same thing, the voice of a midget with a cold. One thing, though, I do a good job of running it, Manú will be surprised, he doesn’t trust me with machines at all. Me, a pharmacist, Horacio doesn’t even notice, he looks at a person like mashed potatoes going through a strainer, mush that comes oozing out on the other side, something to sit down to and eat. Rewind? No, let’s keep on, let’s turn out the lights. Let’s try to speak in the third person … Then Talita Donosi turns out the lights and there isn’t anything except the little magic eye with its red slits (maybe it’ll come out green, maybe it’ll come out purple) and the glow of her cigarette. Hot, and Manú hasn’t come back from San Isidro, eleven-thirty. There’s Gekrepten at the window, I don’t see her but she’s there just the same, she’s at the window, in her nightgown, and Horacio at his tiny table, with a candle, reading and smoking. Horacio and Gekrepten’s room, I don’t know why, seems less like a hotel than this one. Stupid, it’s enough of a hotel so that even the cockroaches must have the room number written on their backs, and they have to put up with Don Bunche next door and his tubercular patients at twenty pesos a visit, the cripples and the epileptics. And below them the brothel, and the tangos that the errand-girl sings out of tune.
REWIND
. A good stretch, I should go back a half a minute at least. It goes against time, Manú would like to talk about that. Volume 5: “… the room number written on their backs …” Farther back.
REWIND
. N
OW
: “… Horacio at his tiny table, with a green candle …”
STOP
. Tiny, tiny. There’s no reason to say tiny when you’re a pharmacist. Pure corn. Tiny table! Misapplied tenderness. O.K., Talita. Enough of inanities,
REWIND
. All of it, until the tape is ready to snap off, the trouble with this machine is that you have to judge carefully, if the tape snaps off you lose a half a minute putting it back on again.
STOP
. Just right by an inch. I wonder what I said at the beginning? I can’t remember any more but my voice sounded like a frightened little rat, the well-known mike fright. Let’s see, volume 5½ so it’ll be easier to hear. “I am I, I am he. We are, but I am I, fir …” And why, why did I say that? I am I, I am he, and then talking about the tiny table, and then getting annoyed. “I am I, I am he. I am I, I am he.”

Talita turned off the recorder, shut the cover, looked at it with deep disgust, and poured herself a glass of lemonade. She didn’t
want to think about the business of the clinic (the Manager called it “the mental clinic,” which was idiotic) but if she refused to think about the clinic (besides the fact that this matter of refusing to think was more of a hope than a reality) she immediately got into another equally bothersome sphere. She thought about Manú and Horacio at the same time, in the scale simile that she and Horacio had manipulated in such an ostentatious way in the circus box-office. Then the feeling of being inhabited became stronger, at least the clinic was an idea of fear, of the unknown, a hair-raising vision of raving maniacs in nightshirts chasing her with razors and grabbing stools and bed-legs, vomiting on their temperature charts and masturbating ritually. It was going to be very amusing seeing Manú and Horacio in white lab coats, taking care of the lunatics. “I’ll have a certain importance,” Talita thought modestly. “The Manager will certainly put me in charge of the clinic’s pharmacy. It’s probably a little first-aid station. Manú is going to tease me about it as usual.” She would have to review certain things, so much gets forgotten, time with its fine sandpaper, the indescribable daily battle that summer, the waterfront and the heat, Horacio coming down the gangplank with a friendless face, the rudeness of sending her off with the cat, you take the streetcar back because we’ve got to talk. And then a period began that was like a vacant lot full of twisted cans, hooks that could hurt your feet, dirty puddles, pieces of rag caught on the thistles, the circus at night with Horacio and Manú looking at her or looking at each other, the cat getting stupider every day or really more brilliant, solving problems to the delighted shrieks of the audience, the walks home with stopoffs in bars so Manú and Horacio could drink some beer, talking, talking about nothing, listening to herself talking in this heat and this smoke and the fatigue. I
am I, I am he
, she had said it without thinking, that is, it was beyond being thought, it came from a region where words were like the lunatics in the clinic, menacing or absurd entities living an isolated life of their own, jumping up suddenly without anybody’s being able to tie them down:
I am I, I am he
, and he wasn’t Manú, he was Horacio, the inhabitant, the treacherous attacker, the shadow within the shadow of his room at night, the glow of his cigarette slowly sketching out the shapes of his insomnia.

When Talita was afraid, she would get up and make herself
some tea that was half linden, half mint. She did it hoping with great longing that Manú’s key would scratch on the door. Manú had said with soaring words: “Horacio doesn’t care a damn about you.” It was insulting but tranquilizing. Manú had said that even if Horacio had made a pass (and he hadn’t, he’d never even hinted)

one of linden

one of mint

the water good and hot, first sign, of boiling, stop

not even then would she have meant anything to him. But then. But if it didn’t make any difference to him, why always be there in the corner of the room smoking or reading,
be
(I am I, I am he) there as if he were needing her in some way, yes, just that exactly, needing her, hanging on to her from a distance to reach something, the better to see something, the better to be something. Then it wasn’t: I am I, I am he. Then it was the opposite: I am he
because
I am I. Talita sighed, satisfied a little with her good powers of reason and the good taste of the tea.

But that wasn’t all there was to it, because then it would have been too easy. It couldn’t be (there’s a reason for logic) that Horacio was interested and at the same time was not interested. The combination of the two things should have produced a third, something that had nothing to do with love, for example (it was so stupid to think about love when love was only Manú, only Manú until the end of time), something that was close to being a hunt, a search, or rather a terrible expectation, like the cat looking at the canary it cannot reach, a kind of congealing of time and day, a kind of crouching. A lump and a half, the soft smell of the country. A crouching without explanations, the-way-things-look-from-here, or until one day when Horacio would deign to speak, go away, shoot himself, any explanation or material on which one could imagine an explanation. Not that business of being there drinking
mate
and looking at them, making Manú drink
mate
and look at him, making the three of them dance a slow, interminable pattern. “I should be a novelist,” Talita thought, “marvelous ideas come to me.” She was so depressed that she turned on the tape recorder again and sang songs until Traveler came home. They both agreed that Talita’s voice did not come out too well, and Traveler showed her how a
baguala
should be sung. They brought the recorder over to the window so Gekrepten could be the impartial judge, and even
Horacio if he was in the room, but he wasn’t. Gekrepten found everything perfect and they decided to have dinner together at the Travelers’, combining a cold roast that Talita had with a tossed salad that Gekrepten would make before coming over. This all seemed perfect to Talita and at the same time there was something like a bedcover about it, or a teapot cover, or some kind of cover, just like the recorder or Traveler’s satisfied air, things done or decided, to be put on top, but on top of what, that was the problem and the reason that everything underneath it all was still the way it had been before the half-linden, half-mint tea.