Strong again, Elric sheathed Stormbringer and the sword settled against his side; then, with powerful strokes, he began to swim towards the island while the men he left on the ship breathed with relief and speculated whether he would live or perish in the bleak waters of that strange and nameless sea…
Julio Cortázar (1914–1984) was an Argentine novelist, poet, essayist, and short story writer who was born in Brussels and lived much of his life in France. His family returned to Argentina after World War I, and Cortázar grew up outside Buenos Aires. His 1946 story “Casa Tomada” (“House Taken Over”) appeared in a literary journal edited by Borges, and a later story, “Blow Up,” provided the basis for Michelangelo Antonioni’s famed movie (1966) of that name. As a novelist, Cortázar is best known for Hopscotch (1963), the sections of which can be read in various orders. Though Cortázar had visited Argentina throughout his time in France, in 1970, the Argentine military junta officially banned him from returning, citing some of his short stories as evidence of his deviance. After a liberalization of the government, he returned for a final visit in 1983. In his short stories, especially, Cortázar used fantasy to explore questions of fiction, language, and reality and to push readers toward new ways of thinking and seeing. In a 1981 interview he argued that “literature has to take the role of an agitator; that is, it must create a certain degree of anxiety in the reader, showing him that things aren’t as he’s always viewed them—they can be very different. Beyond this, the author must have confidence in his reader—expose things to him crudely, violently, without sugar-coating the pill, as they say. And that’s what I’ve tried to do.” The story “Cronopios and Famas” appeared in the book of that title in 1962 and was first translated into English in 1969.
CRONOPIOS AND FAMAS
Julio Cortázar
Translated by Paul Blackburn
TRAVEL
WHEN FAMAS GO ON A TRIP, when they pass the night in a city, their procedure is the following: one fama goes to the hotel and prudently checks the prices, the quality of the sheets, and the color of the carpets. The second repairs to the commissariat of police and there fills out a record of the real and transferable property of all three of them, as well as an inventory of the contents of their valises. The third fama goes to the hospital and copies the lists of the doctors on emergency and their specialties.
After attending to these affairs diligently, the travelers join each other in the central plaza of the city, exchange observations, and go to a café to take an apéritif. But before they drink, they join hands and do a dance in a circle. This dance is known as “The Gayety of the Famas.”
When cronopios go on a trip, they find that all the hotels are filled up, the trains have already left, it is raining buckets and taxis don’t want to pick them up, either that or they charge them exorbitant prices. The cronopios are not disheartened because they believe firmly that these things happen to everyone. When they manage, finally, to find a bed and are ready to go to sleep, they say to one another, “What a beautiful city, what a very beautiful city!” And all night long they dream that huge parties are being given in the city and that they are invited. The next day they arise very contented, and that’s how cronopios travel.
Esperanzas are sedentary. They let things and people slide by them. They’re like statues one has to go visit. They never take the trouble.
ON THE PRESERVATION OF MEMORIES
To maintain the condition of their memories, the famas proceed in the following manner: after having fastened the memory with webs and reminders, with every possible precaution, they wrap it from head to foot in a black sheet and stand it against the parlor wall with a little label which reads: “EXCURSION TO QUILMES” or “FRANK SINATRA.”
Cronopios, on the other hand, disordered and tepid beings that they are, leave memories loose about the house. They set them down with happy shouts and walk carelessly among them, and when one passes through running they caress it mildly and tell it, “Don’t hurt yourself,” and also “Be careful of the stairs.” It is for this reason that the famas’ houses are orderly and silent, while in those of the cronopios there is great uproar and doors slamming. Neighbors always complain about cronopios, and the famas shake their heads understandingly, and go and see if the tags are all in place.
CLOCKS
A fama had a wall clock, and each week he wound it VERY VERY CAREFULLY. A cronopio passed and noting this, he began to laugh, and went home and invented an artichoke clock, or rather a wild-artichoke clock, for it can and ought to be called both ways.
This cronopio’s wild-artichoke clock is a wood artichoke of the larger species, fastened by its stem to a hole in the wall. Its innumerable leaves indicate what hour it is, all the hours in fact, in such a way that the cronopio has only to pluck a leaf to know what time it is. So he continues plucking them from left to right, always the leaf corresponds to that particular hour, and every day the cronopio begins pulling off a new layer of leaves. When he reaches the center, time cannot be measured, and in the infinite violet-rose of the artichoke heart the cronopio finds great contentment. Then he eats it with oil, vinegar, and salt and puts another clock in the hole.
THE LUNCH
Not without some labor, a cronopio managed to invent a thermometer for measuring lives. Something between a thermograph and a topometer, between a filing cabinet and a curriculum vitae.
For example, the cronopio received at his house a fama, an esperanza, and a professor of languages. Applying his discoveries, he established that the fama was infra-life, the esperanza para-life, and the professor of languages inter-life. As far as the cronopio himself was concerned, he considered himself just slightly super-life, but more poetry in that than truth.
Came lunchtime, this cronopio took great pleasure in the conversation of his fellow members, because all of them thought they were referring to the same things, which was not so. The inter-life was maneuvering such abstractions as spirit and conscience, to which the para-life listened like someone hearing rain—a delicate job. Naturally, the infra-life was asking constantly for the grated cheese, and the super-life carved the chicken in forty-two separate movements, the Stanley Fitzsimmons method. After dessert, the lives took their leaves of one another and went off to their occupations, and there was left on the table only little loose bits of death.
HANDKERCHIEFS
A fama is very rich and has a maid. When this fama finishes using a handkerchief, he throws it in the wastepaper basket. He uses another and throws it in the basket. He goes on throwing all the used handkerchiefs into the basket. When he’s out of them, he buys another box.
The servant collects all the handkerchiefs and keeps them for herself. Because she is so surprised at the fama’s conduct, one day she can no longer contain herself and asks if, really and truly, the handkerchiefs are to be thrown away.
—Stupid idiot, says the fama—you shouldn’t have asked. From now on you’ll wash my handkerchiefs and I’ll save money.
BUSINESS
The famas had opened a factory to make garden hoses and had employed a large number of cronopios to coil and store them in the warehouse.
The cronopios were hardly in the building where the hoses were manufactured—an incredible gayety! There were green hoses, blue hoses, yellow hoses, and violet hoses. They were transparent and during the testing you could see water running through them with all its bubbles and occasionally a surprised insect. The cronopios began to emit shouts and wanted to dance respite and dance catalan instead of working. The famas grew furious and applied immediately articles 21, 22, and 23 of the internal regulations. In order to avoid the repetition of such goings-on.
As the famas are very inattentive, the cronopios hoped for favorable circumstances and loaded very many hoses into a truck. When they came across a little girl, they cut a piece of blue hose and gave it to her as a present so that she could jump rope with it. Thus on
all the street-corners there appeared very lovely, blue, transparent bubbles with a little girl inside, who seemed to be a squirrel in a treadmill. The girl’s parents had aspirations: they wanted to take the hose away from her to water the garden, but it was known that the astute cronopios had punctured them in such a way that the water in them broke all into pieces and would serve for nothing. At the end, the parents got tired and the girl went back to the corner and jumped and jumped.
The cronopios decorated diverse monuments with the yellow hoses, and with the green hoses they set traps in the African fashion, right in the middle of the rose park, to see how the esperanzas would fall into them one by one. The cronopios danced respite and danced catalan around the trapped esperanzas, and the esperanzas reproached them for the way they acted, speaking like this:
—Bloody cronopios. Cruel, bloody cronopios!
The cronopios, who had no evil intentions toward the esperanzas, helped them get up and made them gifts of sections of red hose. In this way, the esperanzas were able to return home and accomplish their most intense desire: to water green gardens with red hoses.
The famas closed down the factory and gave a banquet replete with funereal speeches and waiters who served the fish with great sighs. And they did not invite one cronopio, and asked only those esperanzas who hadn’t fallen into the traps in the rose gardens, for the others were still in possession of sections of hose and the famas were angry with these particular esperanzas.
PHILANTHROPY
Famas are capable of gestures of great generosity. For example: this fama comes across a poor esperanza who has fallen at the foot of a coconut palm. He lifts him into his car, takes him home, and busies himself with feeding him and offering him diversion until the esperanza has regained sufficient strength, and tries once more to climb the coconut palm. The fama feels very fine after this gesture, and really he is very goodhearted, only it never occurs to him that within a few days the esperanza is going to fall out of the coconut palm again. So, while the esperanza has fallen once more to the foot of the coconut palm, the fama, at his club, feels wonderful and thinks about how he helped the poor esperanza he found lying there.
Cronopios are not generous on principle. They pass to one side of the most touching sights, like that of a poor esperanza who does not know how to tie his shoe and whimpers, sitting on the sidewalk by the curb. These cronopios do not even look at the esperanza, being completely occupied with staring at some floating dandelion fuzz. With beings like that, beneficence cannot be practiced coherently. For which reason the heads of philanthropic societies are all famas, and the librarian is an esperanza. From their lofty positions the famas help the cronopios a lot, but the cronopios don’t fret themselves over it.
THE PUBLIC HIGHWAYS
A poor cronopio is driving along in his automobile. He comes to an intersection, the brakes fail, and he smashes into another car. A traffic policeman approaches, terribly, and pulls out a little book with a blue cover.
—Don’t you know how to drive? the cop shouts.
The cronopio looks at him for a moment and then asks:
—Who are you?
The cop remains grim and immovable, but glances down at his uniform, as though to convince himself that there’s been no mistake.
—Whaddya mean, who am I? Don’t you see who I am?
—I see a traffic policeman’s uniform, explains the cronopio, very miserable.—You are inside the uniform, but the uniform doesn’t tell me who you are.
The policeman raises his hand to give him a hit, but then he has the little book in one hand and the pencil in the other, in such a way that he doesn’t hit the cronopio, but goes to the front of the automobile to take down the license-plate number. The cronopio is very miserable and regrets having gotten into the accident because now they will continue asking him questions and he will not be able to answer them, not knowing who is doing the asking, and among strangers there can be no understanding.
SONG OF THE CRONOPIOS
When the cronopios sing their favorite songs, they get so excited, and in such a way, that with frequency they get run over by trucks and cyclists, fall out of windows, and lose what they’re carrying in their pockets, even losing track of what day it is.
When a cronopio sings, the esperanzas and famas gather around to hear him, although they do not understand his ecstasy very well and in general show themselves somewhat scandalized. In the center of a ring of spectators, the cronopio raises his little arms as though he were holding up the sun, as if the sky were a tray and the sun the head of John the Baptist, in such a way that the cronopio’s song is Salome stripped, dancing for the famas and esperanzas who stand there agape asking themselves if the good father would, if decorum. But because they are good at heart (the famas are good and the esperanzas are blockheads), they end by applauding the cronopio, who recovers, somewhat startled, looks around, and also starts to applaud, poor fellow.
STORY
A small cronopio was looking for the key to the street door on the night table, the night table in the bedroom, the bedroom in the house, the house in the street. Here the cronopio paused, for to go into the street, he needed the key to the door.
THE NARROW SPOONFUL
A fama discovered that virtue was a spherical microbe with a lot of feet. Immediately he gave a large tablespoonful to his mother-in-law. The result was ghastly: the lady ceased and desisted from her sarcastic comments, founded a club for lost Alpine climbers, and in less than two months conducted herself in such an exemplary manner that her daughter’s defects, having up till then passed unnoticed, came with great suddenness to the first level of consideration, much to the fama’s stupefaction. There was no other recourse than to give a spoonful of virtue to his wife, who abandoned him the same night, finding him coarse, insignificant, and all in all, different from those moral archetypes who floated glittering before her eyes.
The fama thought for a long while and finally swallowed a whole flask of virtue. But all the same, he continued to live alone and sad. When he met his mother-in-law or his wife in the street, they would greet one another respectfully and from afar. They did not even dare to speak to one another. Such was his perfection and their fear of being contaminated.
THE PHOTO CAME OUT BLURRED
A cronopio is about to open the door to the street, and upon putting his hand in his pocket to take out the key, what he emerges with is a box of matches, whereupon this cronopio grows extremely upset and begins to think that if, in place of the key, he finds matches, it would be horrible if at one stroke the world were to be transposed, and at best, if the matches were where the key should have been, why shouldn’t it happen that he would find his wallet full of matches, the sugar bowl full of money, and the piano full of sugar, and the telephone directory full of music, the wardrobe full of commuters, the bed full of men’s suits, the flowerboxes full of sheets, the trams full of roses, and the countryside full of trams. So it happens that this cronopio is horribly dejected and runs to look at himself in the mirror, but as the mirror is somewhat tilted, what he sees is the umbrella stand in the vestibule and his worst suspicions are confirmed. He snaps. He breaks into sobs, he falls to his knees and wrings his little hands and doesn’t know why. The famas who are neighbors of his gather around to console him, and the esperanzas also. But hours pass before the cronopio can emerge from his despair and accept a cup of tea, which he looks at and examines thoroughly before drinking, whether instead of a glass of tea it might not be an anthill or a book of Samuel Smiles.
EUGENICS
It happens that cronopios do not want to have sons, for the first thing a recently born cronopio does is to be grossly insulting to his father, in whom he sees obscurely the accumulation of misfortunes that will one day be his own.
Given these reasons, the cronopios turn to the famas for help in fecundating their wives, a situation toward which the famas are always
well disposed, it being a question of libidinous character. They believe furthermore that in this way they will be undermining the moral superiority of the cronopios, but in this they are stupidly mistaken, for the cronopios educate their sons in their own fashion and within a few weeks have removed any resemblance to the famas.
HIS FAITH IN THE SCIENCES
An esperanza believed in physiognomical types, such as for instance the pugnosed type, the fish-faced type, those with a large air intake, the jaundiced type, the beetle-browed, those with an intellectual face, the hairdresser type, etc. Ready to classify these groups definitively, he began by making long lists of acquaintances and dividing them into the categories cited above.
He took the first group, consisting of eight pugnosed types, and noticed that surprisingly these boys divided actually into three subgroups, namely pugnoses of the mustached type, pugnoses of the pugilist type, and pugnoses of the ministry-appointee sort, composed respectively of 3, 3, and 2 pugnoses in each particularized category. Hardly had he separated them into their new groupings (at the Paulista Bar in the mile San Martin, where he had gathered them together at great pains and no small amount of coffee with sweet cream, well whipped) when he noticed that the first subgroup was not homogenous, since two of the mustached-type pugnoses belonged to the rodent variety while the remaining one was most certainly a pugnose of the Japanese-court sort. Well. Putting this latter one aside, with the help of a hefty sandwich of anchovies and hard-boiled eggs, he organized a subgroup of the two rodent types, and was getting ready to set it down in his notebook of scientific data when one rodent type looked to one side and the other turned in the opposite direction, with the result that the esperanza, and furthermore everyone there, could perceive quite clearly that, while the first of the rodent types was evidently a brachycephalic pugnose, the other exhibited a cranium much more suited to hanging a hat on than to wearing one.
The Big Book of Modern Fantasy Page 26