Hopscotch: A Novel

by Julio Cortázar

  “Tell me how Ossip makes love,” Oliveira whispered, putting his lips hard against La Maga’s. “The blood is rushing to my head, I can’t do this much longer, it’s frightening.”

  “He does it very well,” La Maga said, biting his lip. “Much better than you and much longer.”

  “But does he retilate your murt? Don’t lie to me. Does he really retilate it?”

  “A lot. Everywhere, sometimes too much. It’s a wonderful feeling.”

  “And does he make you put your plinnies in between his argusts?”

  “Yes, and then we trewst our porcies until he says he’s had enough, and I can’t take it any more either, and we have to hurry up, you understand. But you wouldn’t understand that, you always stay in the smallest gumphy.”

  “Me or anybody else,” Oliveira grumbled, getting up. “Christ, this mate is lousy, I’m going out for a while.”

  “Don’t you want me to keep on talking to you of Ossip?” said La Maga. “In Gliglish.”

  “I’m getting sick of Gliglish. Besides, you haven’t got any imagination, you always say the same things. Gumphy, that’s some fine invention. And you don’t say ‘talking to you of.’ ”

  “I invented Gliglish,” La Maga said resentfully. “You come out with anything you want and sound like a million dollars, but that’s not real Gliglish.”

  “Getting back to Ossip …”

  “Don’t be silly, Horacio, I tell you I have not gone to bed with him. Do I have to give you the sacred oath of the Sioux Indians?”

  “No, I think I’m finally beginning to believe you.”

  “And later on,” La Maga said, “I’ll probably end up sleeping with Ossip, but you’ll be the one who wanted it all along.”

  “But do you really think you could like that guy?”

  “No. The fact is I owe the drugstore. I don’t want a penny from you, and I can’t borrow money from Ossip and just leave him with his illusions intact.”

  “I see now,” Oliveira said. “Your good Samaritan side is coming out. You couldn’t leave that soldier crying in the park either.”

  “No I couldn’t, Horacio. You can see how different we are.”

  “Yes, pity was never one of my strong points. But I could have been crying at a time like that too, and then you would have …”

  “I can’t picture you crying,” La Maga said. “You’d consider it a waste.”

  “I’ve cried in the past.”

  “Only from rage. You don’t know how to cry, Horacio, it’s one of those things you don’t know how to do.”

  Oliveira pulled La Maga over and sat her down on his lap. He thought about the Maga smell, the back of the Maga neck, and it made him sad. It was that same smell that once before…“To find out what’s behind something,” he thought confusedly. “Yes, that’s one of the things I don’t know how to do, that and crying and having pity.”

  “We were never in love,” he said, kissing her hair.

  “Speak for yourself,” La Maga said, closing her eyes. “You have no way of telling whether I’m in love with you or not. You don’t even know how to do that.”

  “Do you think I’m so blind?”

  “On the contrary, I think it might do you some good to be a little blind.”

  “Ah, yes. Touch replaces definitions, instinct goes beyond intelligence. The magic route, the dark night of the soul.”

  “It would do you good,” La Maga insisted as she always did when she did not understand something and wanted to cover up.

  “Look, I know enough to know that everybody can go his own way. I think that I have to be alone, Lucía; in all truth, I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s not fair to you or to Rocamadour, who I think is waking up, for me to treat you so badly and I don’t want it to go on that way.”

  “You don’t have to worry about me or about Rocamadour.”

  “I’m not worried, but the three of us are getting tangled up in each other’s feet, it’s uncomfortable and unaesthetic. I may not be blind enough for you, sweetie, but my optic nerve is good enough to let me see that you are going to get along perfectly well without me. No girlfriend of mine has ever committed suicide, even though my pride bleeds when I admit it.”

  “Yes, Horacio.”

  “So if I can summon up enough heroism to run out on you tonight or tomorrow, we can say that nothing happened here.”

  “Nothing,” La Maga said.

  “You can take your kid back to Madame Irène’s, and you can come back to Paris and pick up where you left off.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You’ll see a lot of movies, keep on reading novels, you’ll take walks and risk your life in the worst neighborhoods at the worst hours.”

  “Yes, all that.”

  “You’ll pick up a lot of strange things in the street, you’ll bring them home, and you’ll make something out of them. Wong will teach you sleight-of-hand tricks and Ossip will follow six feet behind you with his hands clasped in an attitude of humble reverence.”

  “Please, Horacio,” La Maga said, hugging him and burying her face.

  “Of course we will meet by magic in the strangest places, like that night in the Place de la Bastille, remember?”

  “On the Rue Daval.”

  “I was quite drunk and you came around the corner and we stood looking at one another like idiots.”

  “Because I thought you were going to a concert that night.”

  “And you had told me that you had an appointment with Madame Léonie.”

  “That’s why we thought it was so funny meeting on the Rue Daval.”

  “You were wearing your green sweater and you had stopped to console a fag.”

  “They had beaten him up and thrown him out of a café, and he was crying so.”

  “Another time I remember we met near the Quai de Jemmapes.”

  “It was hot.”

  “You never told me what you were looking for along the Quai de Jemmapes.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t looking for anything.”

  “You had a coin in your hand.”

  “I found it on the edge of the sidewalk. It was shining so.”

  “Then we went to the Place de la République where the shellgames were and we won a box of candy.”

  “It was awful.”

  “And another time I was coming out of the movies in Mouton-Duvernet and you were sitting in a sidewalk café with a Negro and a Filipino.”

  “And you never told me what you were doing in Mouton-Duvernet.”

  “I was going to a chiropodist,” Oliveira said. “He had a waiting room papered with violet and reddish-purple scenes: gondolas, palm trees, and lovers embracing in the moonlight. Think of it, the same thing repeated five hundred times in six-by-four-inch squares.”

  “That’s why you went, not because of the calluses.”

  “They weren’t calluses, my dear. I had a genuine wart on the sole of my foot. Due to a vitamin deficiency, I think.”

  “Did it go away?” La Maga asked, raising her head and looking at him with great intensity.

  Rocamadour woke up at the first burst of laughter and began to whimper. Oliveira sighed, now they would go through the same thing all over again, for a while he would see La Maga only from behind as she leaned over the bed, her hands moving back and forth. He began to prepare some mate and took out a cigarette. He didn’t want to think. La Maga went to wash her hands and came back. They both reached for the gourd and scarcely glanced at one another.

  “The best thing about all this,” said Oliveira, “is that we’re not in competition with the soap-operas. Don’t look at me like that; if you think a little you’ll figure out what I mean.”

  “I’ve figured it out,” La Maga said. “That’s not why I’m looking at you like this.”

  “Oh, you think maybe …”

  “A little, yes. But let’s not talk again.”

  “You’re right. Well, I think I’ll take a little walk.”

  “Don’t
come back,” La Maga said.

  “Come on, let’s not carry this to extremes,” Oliveira said. “Where do you expect me to sleep tonight? Gordian knots are one thing, but the wind in the street is another. It must be twenty above out there.”

  “It would be better if you didn’t come back,” La Maga said. “It’s easy for me to say it right now, understand?”

  “Well, anyway,” Oliveira said, “I think we ought to be congratulated on our savoir faire.”

  “I feel so sorry for you, Horacio.”

  “Oh no; hold it right there.”

  “You know that sometimes I really can see. I see things so clearly. To think that an hour ago I thought the best thing to do would be go jump in the river.”

  “Body of an unidentified woman found in Seine … But you swim like a swan.”

  “I feel sorry for you,” La Maga repeated. “I can see now. That night we met behind Notre-Dame I also saw that … But I refused to believe it. You were wearing a lovely blue shirt. It was the first time we went to a hotel, wasn’t it?”

  “No, but that doesn’t make any difference. And you taught me to speak Gliglish.”

  “If I were to tell you that I did it all out of pity.”

  “Come off it,” Oliveira said, looking at her with surprise.

  “You were in danger that night. It was obvious, like a siren in the distance … I can’t explain it.”

  “The only dangers for me are metaphysical,” Oliveira said. “They’re not going to haul me out of the water with grappling hooks, believe me. I will explode from an intestinal occlusion, the Asian flu, or a Peugeot 403.”

  “I don’t know,” La Maga said. “Sometimes I think about killing myself, but then I can see that I wouldn’t do it. Don’t think that it’s only because of Rocamadour, it was the same before he came. The idea of killing myself always makes me feel good. But you never think about it … Why did you say metaphysical dangers? There are also metaphysical rivers, Horacio. You’re going to jump into one of those rivers.”

  “It would have to be the Tao,” said Oliveira.

  “I thought I could have protected you. Don’t tell me. Then right away I saw you didn’t need me. We made love like two musicians who got together to work over some sonatas.”

  “What you’re saying is delightful.”

  “That’s how it was, the piano on one side and the violin on the other and out of that the sonata came, but you can see now that underneath it all we never really met. I realized it at once, Horacio, but the sonatas were so beautiful.”

  “Yes, love.”

  “And Gliglish.”

  “Sure.”

  “And everything, the Club, that night on the Quai de Bercy under the trees, when we hunted stars until dawn and told stories about princes, and you were thirsty and we bought a bottle of expensive champagne, and we drank it on the riverbank.”

  “And then a clochard came along and we gave him half the bottle.”

  “And the clochard knew a lot of Latin and Oriental things, and you were talking to him about something like … Averroes, I think.”

  “Yes, Averroes.”

  “And the night the soldier patted my behind in the Foire du Trône and you punched him in the face and they arrested all of us.”

  “Don’t let Rocamadour hear,” Oliveira said laughing.

  “Luckily Rocamadour won’t ever remember anything about you, there’s still nothing behind his eyes. Like the birds who eat the crumbs you throw them. They look at you, they eat the crumbs, they fly away … Nothing left.”

  “Yes,” Oliveira said. “Nothing left.”

  The woman who lived on the third floor was shouting on the landing, drunk as usual at that hour. Oliveira glanced vaguely at the door, but La Maga drew him to her, and she slipped down to grasp his knees, trembling and weeping.

  “Why are you torturing yourself that way?” Oliveira asked. “Metaphysical rivers are flowing everywhere. You don’t have to go very far to find one. Look, no one has as much right to drown as I have, dopey. I promise you one thing: I’ll remember you in my last moments so that they’ll be all the more bitter. A real cheap novel, with a cover in three different colors.”

  “Don’t leave,” La Maga murmured, hugging his legs.

  “I just want to walk around a little, that’s all.”

  “No, don’t leave.”

  “Let me go. You know very well I’m going to come back, at least for tonight.”

  “Let’s go out together,” La Maga said. “Look, Rocamadour is asleep, he’ll be quiet until it’s time for his bottle. We’ve got two hours, let’s go to that café in the Arab quarter, that sad little café where we feel so good.”

  But Oliveira wanted to go out alone. Slowly he began to extract his legs from La Maga’s embrace. He stroked her head, he ran his fingers around her neck, he kissed the back of it, he kissed her behind an ear, listening to her cry as her hair hung down over her face. “No blackmail,” he thought. “Let’s cry face to face, but not with that cheap sob you pick up from the movies.” He raised her face up, he made her look at him.

  “I’m the bastard,” Oliveira said. “Let me take care of paying myself back. Cry over your son, who could be dying for all we know, but don’t waste your tears on me. Jesus, I bet there hasn’t been a scene like this since Zola’s times. Please let me leave.”

  “Why?” La Maga asked without getting up from the floor, looking at him like a dog.

  “Why why?”

  “Why?”

  “Oh, you mean why all this. You’ll find out, I don’t think that either you or I is too much to blame. We’re not grown up yet, Lucía. It’s a virtue, but it costs a lot. Children always end up pulling each other’s hair when they’ve finished playing. That’s the way it probably is. Think about it.”

  (–126)

  21

  THE same thing happens to everybody, the statue of Janus is a useless waste, the truth is that after forty years of age we have our real face on the back of our heads, looking desperately backwards. It is what in all truth is called a commonplace. You can’t do anything about it, that’s about the strength of it, with the words that come twisting out from between the bored lips of one-faced adolescents. Surrounded by boys in baggy sweaters and delightfully funky girls in the smoke of the cafés-crème of Saint-Germain-des-Prés who read Durrell, Beauvoir, Duras, Douassot, Queneau, Sarraute, here I am a Frenchified Argentinian (horror of horrors), already beyond the adolescent vogue, the cool, with an Etes-vous fous? of René Crevel anachronistically in my hands, with the whole body of surrealism in my memory, with the mark of Antonin Artaud in my pelvis, with the Ionisations of Edgard Varèse in my ears, with Picasso in my eyes (but I seem to be a Mondrian, at least that’s what I’ve been told).

  “Tu sèmes des syllabes pour récolter des étoiles,” Crevel kids me.

  “One does what he can,” I answer.

  “And that female, n’arrêtera-t-elle donc pas de secouer l’arbre à sanglots?”

  “You’re unfair,” I tell him. “She’s just crying a little bit, it’s little more than a complaint.”

  It’s sad to reach the point in life where it’s easier to open a book to page 96 and converse with the author, from café to grave, from boredom to suicide, while at the tables around people are talking about Algeria, Adenauer, Mijanou Bardot, Guy Trébert, Sidney Bechet, Michel Butor, Nabokov, Zao-Wu-Ki, Luison Bobet, and in my country the boys do talk, what do the boys talk about in my country? I don’t know any more, I’m so far away, but they don’t talk about Spilimbergo any more, they don’t talk about Justo Suárez, they don’t talk about the Shark of Quillà, they don’t talk about Bonini, they don’t talk about Leguisamo. It’s all quite natural. The catch is that nature and reality become enemies for some unknown reason, there is a time when nature sounds horribly false, when the reality of age twenty rubs elbows with that of age forty and on each elbow there is a razor-blade which slashes our jackets. I discover new worlds which are simultaneous and a
lien, and every time I get the feeling more and more that to agree is the worst of illusions. Why this thirst for universality, why this struggle against time? I also read Sarraute and look at a picture of Guy Trébert in handcuffs, but those are things that happen to me, while if I must be the one who decides, it’s almost always in a backward direction. My hand pokes around the bookcase, I take down Crevel, I take down Roberto Arlt, I take down Jarry. Today fascinates me, but always from the point of view of yesterday (did I say phascinate?), and that’s how at my age the past becomes present and the present is a strange and confused future where boys in baggy sweaters and long-haired girls drink their cafés-crème and pet each other with the slow gracefulness of cats or plants.

  We must fight against this.

  We must establish ourselves in the present once more.

  It seems that I am a Mondrian, therefore…

  But Mondrian painted his present forty years ago.

  (A picture of Mondrian looking exactly like a typical orchestra conductor (Julio de Caro, ecco!) with glasses and plastered-down hair and stiff collar, with the frightful air of a clerk dancing with a waterfront whore. What kind of present did Mondrian feel while he was dancing? Those canvases of his, that picture of him … Ab-bysses.)

  You’re getting old, Horacio. Quintus Horatius Oliveira, you’re getting old, Flaccus. You’re getting flaccid and old, Oliveira.

  “Il verse son vitriol entre les cuisses des faubourgs,” Crevel mocks.

  What am I going to do? In the midst of this great disorder I still think I’m a weather vane that after every spin must show where north or south lies. It takes little imagination to call someone a weather vane: you see the spins but never the intention, the point of the arrow which tries to huddle down and hide in the river of the wind.

  There are metaphysical rivers. Yes, my love, of course. And you are taking care of your son, crying from time to time, and here it is another day with another yellow sun that doesn’t warm. J’habite à Saint-Germain-des-Prés, et chaque soir j’ai rendez-vous avec Verlaine. / Ce gros pierrot n’a pas changé, et pour courir le guilledou…Twenty francs in the slot and Leo Ferré will sing to you of his loves, or Gilbert Bécaud, or Guy Béart. Back in my country: Si quiere ver la vida color de rosa / Eche veinte centavos en la ranura…Better turn on the radio (the rent falls due next Monday, I thought I’d better tell you) and listen to some chamber music, probably Mozart, or have you put on some record with the volume turned low so as not to wake up Rocamadour. And I don’t think you’re really aware that Rocamadour is very sick, terribly weak and sick, and that he would get better care in a hospital. But I can’t talk about these things with you any more, let’s say it’s all over and I’m wandering around here, walking up and down trying to find north, south, if I really am looking for them. If I really am looking for them. But if I’m not, what’s this all about? Oh, my love, I miss you, I feel the pain of you in my skin, in my throat, every time I breathe it’s as if an emptiness came into my chest where you no longer are.