Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (66 page)

Traveler had always been fascinated by that “—the—” which interrupted the rigorous crystallization of the system, like the mysterious
garden
in a sapphire, that mysterious spot in the gem that determines perhaps the coalescence of the system and which in sapphires irradiates its transparent celestial cross like a congealed energy in the heart of the stone. (And why was it called
garden
, unless because of the influence of gardens of precious stones that appear in Oriental fables?)

Cefe, much less deliquescent, immediately explained the importance of the question:

It warmed Traveler’s heart to think that this
idem
must have cost Ceferino quite a bit. It was an extraordinary acquiescence towards the reader. But now he was into the heart of the matter, and he proceeded to enumerate what he called “the skillful assignment of the model Society of Nations,”
viz.:

Why, Traveler wisely wondered, this repetition in matters concerning freedom of the womb and demography? Under (3) it appeared as a value, and under (5) as a concrete matter of the Society’s competence. Curious infractions of symmetry, of the implacable rigor of the consecutive and orderly enumeration, which meant perhaps a worry, the suspicion that the classic order was, as always, a sacrifice of truth to beauty. But Ceferino recovered from that romanticism that Traveler suspected in him, and proceeded to an exemplary distribution:

(–
139
)

PERILS OF THE ZIPPER

THE British Medical Journal
speaks of a new type of accident that can befall boys. This accident is caused by the use of a zipper in place of buttons in trouser flies (our medical correspondent informs us).

The danger lies in the prepuce’s being caught in the fastener. Two cases have already been reported. In both of them circumcision had to be resorted to in order to free the child.

The accident is more likely to occur when the child goes to the bathroom unaccompanied. In an attempt to help him, parents can make matters worse by pulling on the zipper in the wrong direction, as the child will be in no condition to tell whether the accident happened when he was pulling the zipper up or when he was pulling it down. If the child has already been circumcised, the damage can be much more severe.

The doctor advises that by cutting the bottom part of the zipper with pliers or shears the two halves can easily be separated. But a local anaesthetic will have to be administered for the extraction of the part imbedded in the skin.

The Observer
, London

(–
151
)

“WHAT do you think about our getting into the national corporation of monks of the prayer of the sign of the cross?”

“Either that or getting into the national budget …”

“We’d have a heavy time of it,” Traveler said, watching Oliveira’s breathing. “I remember perfectly, our obligations would be those of praying for or blessing people, objects, and those very mysterious regions that Ceferino calls sites of places.”

“This must be one,” Oliveira said as if from far away. “It’s the site of a definite place, old buddy.”

“And we would also have to bless planted fields, and boyfriends badly affected by a rival.”

“Call Cefe about it,” said the voice of Oliveira from some site of a place. “I’d like that … Hey, now that I think of it, Cefe comes from Uruguay.”

Traveler didn’t say anything, and he looked at Ovejero who came in and took the pulse of the
hysteria matinensis yugulata.

“Monks who are always to combat all spiritual ills,” Oliveira said distinctly.

“Aha,” said Ovejero by way of encouragement.

(–
58
)

AND while somebody explains something as always, I don’t know why I am in this café, in all cafés, in the Elephant & Castle, in the Dupont Barbès, in the Sacher, in the Pedrocchi, in the Gijón, in the Greco, in the Café de la Paix, in the Café Mozart, in the Florian, in the Capoulade, in Les Deux Magots, in the bar that puts its chairs out on the Colleone square, in the Café Dante fifty yards away from the tomb of the Scaligers and that face on a pink sarcophagus that looks as if it had been burned by the tears of Saint Mary of Egypt, in the café across from the Giudecca, with aged and impoverished marchionesses drinking a tiny tea and getting expansive with dusty ambassadors, in the Jandilla, in the Floccos, in the Cluny, in the Richmond in Suipacha, in El Olmo, in the Closerie des Lilas, in the Stéphane (which is on the Rue Mallarmé), in the Tokio (which is in Chivilcoy), in the Au Chien Qui Fume, in the Opern Café, in the Dôme, in the Café du Vieux Port, in cafés anywhere where

Hart Crane
dixit.
But they’re more than that, they are the neutral territory for the stateless of the soul, the motionless center of the wheel from where one can reach himself in full career, see himself enter and leave like a maniac, wrapped up in women or I O U’s or epistemological theses, and while the coffee swirls around the little cup that goes from mouth to mouth along the edge of days, can loosely attempt revision and balance, equally removed from the ego that came into the café an hour ago and from the ego that will leave within another hour. Self-witness and self-judge, an ironical autobiography between two cigarettes.

In cafés I remember dreams, one no man’s land revives another; now I remember one, but no, I only remember that I must have dreamed something marvelous and that in the end I felt as if expelled (or leaving, but forcibly) from the dream that remained irremediably behind me. I don’t know if I even closed a door behind me, I think I did; in fact a separation was established between what had already been dreamed (perfect, spherical, finished) and the present. But I kept on sleeping, that business of expulsion and the door closing I also dreamed. A single and terrible certainty dominated that instant of transition within the dream; to know that irremediably that expulsion brought with it the complete forgetting of the previous marvel. I suppose that the feeling of a door closing was just that, fateful and instantaneous forgetting. The most startling is remembering also having dreamed that I was forgetting the previous dream, and that that dream
had to be
forgotten (my expulsion from its finished sphere).

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
)

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:

“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:

“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:

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.)