Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (47 page)

“I’ll stay with you, doctor,” said Number 18.

“No, go ahead. I’ll defend myself perfectly well.”

“You needed a Heftpistole, I told you so. It puts staples all around, and it’s better to hold down the threads.”

“I’ll fix it myself, old man,” Oliveira said. “Go to bed. Thanks just the same.”

“Well then, doctor, I hope it all goes fine.”

“Good night, have a good sleep.”

“Watch the rulemans, you’ll see that they won’t let you down. Just leave them the way they are and you’ll see.”

“O.K.”

“If it turns out that you need the Heftpistole after all just let me know, Number 16 has one.”

“Thanks, so long.”

At half-past three Oliveira finished placing the threads. Number 18 had taken speech away, or at least that business of looking at each other from time to time or reaching for a cigarette. Almost in the dark because he had covered the lamp with a green sweater that was slowly getting singed, it was strange to go around like a spider from one side to the other with the threads, from the bed to the door, from the bathroom to the closet, stretching out each time five or six threads and retreating with great care so as not to step on the rulemans. Finally he was getting to be fenced in between the window, one side of the desk (placed against the flat of the wall, on the right), and the bed (up against the wall on the left). Between the door and the last line were strung successively the warning threads (from the doorknob to the leaning chair, from the doorknob to a Martini vermouth ashtray placed on the edge of the sink, and from the doorknob to a dresser drawer, full of books and papers, barely held by the edge), the watery basins in the shape of two irregular defensive lines, but oriented in general from the left wall to the right one, or in other terms from the sink to the closet the first line, and from the legs of the bed to the legs of the desk the second line. There was just about a yard left between the last series of watery basins, over which hung
multiple threads, and the wall where the window opened onto the courtyard (two stories down). Sitting on the edge of the desk, Oliveira lit another cigarette and began to look out the window; at a given moment he took off his shirt and put it under the desk. Now he couldn’t drink any more even if he was thirsty. He stayed that way, in his undershirt, smoking and looking into the courtyard, but with his attention focused on the door even though from time to time he would become distracted when it was time to toss his butt onto the hopscotch. It wasn’t so bad, even if the edge of the desk was hard and the smell of the burned sweater bothered him. He ended up turning off the lamp and little by little he saw a purple beam form under the door, that is to say that when Traveler arrived his rubber-soled slippers would cut the purple band in two places, an involuntary signal that he was about to initiate his attack. When Traveler opened the door several things would happen and many others might happen. The first would be mechanistic and ordained, within the stupid obedience of effect to cause, of chair to string, of doorknob to hand, of hand to will, of will to … And that’s where one passes to other things that might happen or not, according to whether the blow of the chair on the floor, the breaking into five or six pieces of the Martini ashtray, and the fall of the dresser drawer would have one or another repercussion in Traveler and even in Oliveira himself, because now, while he was lighting another cigarette with the stub of the previous one and threw the butt so that it would fall on the ninth square, and he watched it fall on the eighth and jump to the seventh, motherfucker, now was perhaps the moment to ask himself what he was going to do when the door would open and half the bedroom would go wild and he would hear Traveler’s muffled exclamation, if it was an exclamation and if it was muffled. Basically he had been stupid to reject the Heftpistole, because aside from the lamp which didn’t weigh anything and the chair, in the corner by the window there wasn’t the least kind of defensive arsenal, and with the lamp and the chair he wouldn’t get very far if Traveler managed to breach the two lines of watery basins and missed skating on the rulemans. But it wouldn’t happen, all of the strategy was in that; defensive arms cannot be of the same nature as offensive arms. The threads, for example, they would produce a terrible effect on Traveler as he advanced in the darkness and felt a sort of subtle
resistance grow against his face, on his arms and legs, and he would get that insuperable loathing of a man who runs into a spider-web. Supposing that in two jumps he knocked down all the threads, supposing that he didn’t put his shoe in a watery basin and didn’t skate on a ruleman, he would finally reach the sector of the window and in spite of the darkness he would recognize the motionless silhouette on the edge of the desk. It was remotely probable that he would reach there, but if he did, there was no doubt that a Heftpistole would be of absolutely no use to Oliveira, not so much because Number 18 had spoken of staples, but because there was not going to be an encounter as Traveler might imagine it perhaps but something totally different, something that he was incapable of imagining but which he knew with as much certainty as if he were seeing or living it, a slipping of the black mass that came from outside against that which he knew without knowing, an incalculable disengagement between black mass Traveler and what was there smoking on the edge of the desk. Something like waking against sleep (the hours of sleep and wakefulness, someone had said one day, have not been joined into unity yet), but to say wakefulness against sleep was to admit until the end that there existed no hope at all for unity. On the other hand it might happen that Traveler’s arrival would be like an extreme point from which to try again the jump of one into the other and at the same time of the other into the one, but that jump would be precisely the opposite of a collision, Oliveira was sure that Traveler territory could not reach him even if he fell on top of him, beat him, tore his undershirt to shreds, spit in his eyes and on his mouth, twisted his arms, and threw him out the window. But a Heft-pistole was of absolutely no use against the territory, since from what he could gather from Number 18 it might turn out to be a buttonhook or something like it, what good was a Traveler knife or a Traveler punch, poor inadequate Heftpistoles to bridge the unbridgeable distance from one body to another in which one body begins by denying the other, or the other denies the one? If in fact Traveler could kill him (and there was some reason for his mouth being dry and for the fact that the palms of his hands were sweating abominably), everything moved to deny that possibility on one plane in which its occurrence in fact would not have any more confirmation than for the murderer. But it was better yet to feel that the murderer was not a murderer, that
the territory was not even a territory, to thin and minimize and underestimate the territory so that so much operetta and so much ashtray breaking to pieces on the floor would be nothing more than a noise and contemptible consequences. If he affirmed himself (by fighting against fear) in that total unattachment in relation to the territory, defense was then the best attack, the worst thrust would come from the hilt and not from the blade. Why was he winning himself over with metaphors at that hour of the night when the only sensible senseless thing to do was to leave his eyes alone to watch over the purplish lines at the bottom of the door, that thermometric ray of the territory.

At ten minutes to four Oliveira got up, moving his shoulders to get the stiffness out of them, and went over to sit on the windowsill. It amused him to think that if he had had the good luck to go crazy that night, the liquidation of the Traveler territory would have been absolute. A solution not at all in accord with his pride and his intention of resisting any form of surrender. In any case, to imagine Ferraguto inscribing his name in the register of patients, putting a number on the door and a magic eye to spy on him at night … And Talita preparing capsules in the pharmacy, going across the courtyard with great care so as not to step on the hopscotch again. Not to mention Manú, poor fellow, terribly disconsolate over his stupidity and his absurd attempt. Turning his back on the courtyard, reclining dangerously in the windowsill, Oliveira felt fear begin to leave him, and that was bad. He didn’t take his eyes off the beam of light, but with every breath a contentment penetrated him finally without words, without anything to do with the territory, and the joy was precisely that, to feel how the territory was giving in. It didn’t matter how long; with every breath the warm air of the world was reconciled with him as had already happened one time or another before in his life. He didn’t even feel the need to smoke, for a few minutes he had made peace with himself and that was the equivalent of abolishing the territory, of conquering without a battle and of wanting to fall asleep finally in the moment of wakening, on that line where wakefulness and sleep first mixed their waters and discovered that there was no such thing as different waters; but that was bad, naturally, naturally all of that had to see itself interrupted by the brusque interposition of two black sectors halfway across the ray of light and a fussy scratching on the door. “You asked
for it,” Oliveira thought, slipping down until he was tight against the desk. “The truth is that if I had gone on another minute like that I would have dropped head first onto the hopscotch. Come right in, Manú, it all means you don’t exist or I don’t exist, or that we’re so stupid we believe this and we’re going to kill each other, brother, this time it’s the payoff, that’s all there is to it.”

“Come right in,” he repeated aloud, but the door didn’t open. The soft scratching continued, probably it was a pure coincidence that down below there was someone beside the fountain, a woman with her back turned, with long hair and arms hanging by her sides, absorbed in the contemplation of the trickle of water. At that hour and in that darkness it could have just as easily been La Maga as Talita or any one of the madwomen, even Pola if one really thought about it. Nothing stopped him from staring at the woman with her back towards him, since if Traveler decided to come in the defenses would function automatically and there would be more than enough time to stop looking at the courtyard and face him. At any rate, it was rather strange that Traveler should keep on scratching at the door as if to ascertain whether he was sleeping (it couldn’t be Pola, because Pola’s neck was shorter and her hips were more well-defined), unless he too for his part had devised a special system of attack (it could be La Maga or Talita, they looked so much alike and much more so at night and from the third story) designed to make him lose his mind, pull him off his position on the square (at least from one to eight, because he hadn’t been able to get beyond eight, he would never reach Heaven, he would never enter his kibbutz). “What are you waiting for, Manú?” Oliveira thought. “What good is all this doing us?” It was Talita of course, who was now looking up and stood motionless again when he stuck his bare arm out the window and moved it tiredly from side to side.

“Come over here, Maga,” Oliveira said. “You look so much alike from here that your name can be changed.”

“Close that window,” Talita said.

“Impossible, the heat is terrible and your husband is out there scratching on the door in a fearsome way. It’s what they call a conjunction of annoying circumstances. But don’t you worry, pick up a pebble and try again, who can tell but that with one …”

The drawer, the ashtray, and the chair all fell onto the floor at the same time. Crouching down a little, Oliveira looked blinded at the purple rectangle that replaced the door, the black shape moving around, he heard Traveler’s curse. The noise must have waked everybody up.

“You simple bastard,” Traveler said in the doorway. “Do you want the Boss to throw us all out?”

“He’s preaching to me,” Oliveira informed Talita. “He always was like a father to me.”

“Close the window, please,” Talita said.

“There’s nothing needed so much as an open window,” Oliveira said. “Listen to your husband, one can observe that he’s put one foot in the water. He must have a face full of threads, he doesn’t know what to do.”

“You son of a bitch,” Traveler was saying, lashing out in the darkness and pulling threads off himself on all sides. “Turn on the light, God damn it.”

“He hasn’t fallen on the floor yet,” Oliveira informed. “The rulemans are letting me down.”

“Don’t lean out like that!” Talita shouted, raising her arms. With his back to the window, with his head turned around to see her and talk to her, Oliveira was leaning farther and farther back. Cuca Ferraguto came running out into the courtyard, and only at that moment did Oliveira realize that it was no longer nighttime, Cuca’s bathrobe was the same color as the stones of the courtyard and the walls of the pharmacy. Allowing himself a reconnaissance of the battlefield, he looked into the darkness and observed that in spite of his offensive difficulties, Traveler had decided to close the door. Between two curses he heard the sound of the latch.

“That’s the way I like it, hey,” Oliveira said. “Alone in the center of the ring like two men.”

“Shit on your soul,” Traveler said furiously. “One of my slippers is soaked through, and that’s the thing that can upset me worse than anything in the world. Turn on the light at least, you can’t see a thing.”

“The ambush at Cancha Rayada was something like this,” Oliveira said. “You must understand that I’m not going to sacrifice the advantages of my position. Be thankful that I’m answering you, because I don’t really have to do that. I had my lessons on the rifle range too, brother.”

He heard Traveler breathe heavily. Outside there was a slamming of doors, Ferraguto’s voice mixed in with other questions and answers. Traveler’s silhouette was becoming more and more visible; everything was drawing a number and fitting into its place, five basins, three spittoons, dozens of rulemans. They could almost see each other now in that light which was like the dove in the hands of the madman.

“Well,” Traveler said, picking up the fallen chair and sitting down on it without much desire. “If you could explain a little of this clambake to me.”