“Don’t let them do anything stupid,” Oliveira said to him. “The old man must be eighty and he’s crazy.”
“Tous des cons!” the old man was shouting on the landing. “Bande de tueurs, si vous croyez que ça va se passer comme ça! Des fripouilles, des fainéants. Tas d’enculés!”
It was odd that he was not shouting very loudly. Through the half-open door Étienne’s voice bounced back like a return shot: “Ta gueule, pépère.” Gregorovius had grabbed Ronald by the arm, but in the light that came from the apartment Ronald had been able to see that the old man really was very old and all he did was shake his fist in his face with less conviction each time he did it. Once or twice Oliveira glanced at the bed where La Maga was very still beneath the covers. She was sobbing heavily with her mouth plunged into the pillow, on the exact spot where Rocamadour’s head had been. “Faudrait quand même laisser dormir les gens,” the old man was saying. “Qu’est-ce que ça me fait, moi, un gosse qu’a claqué? C’est pas une façon d’agir, quand même, on est à Paris, pas en Amazonie.” Étienne’s voice came on louder and swallowed up the other as he convinced him. Oliveira told himself that it would not be so difficult to go over to the bed, squat down beside it and say a few words in La Maga’s ear. “But I would be doing it for myself,” he thought. “She’s beyond anything. I’m the one who would sleep better afterward, even if it’s just an expression. Me, me, me. I would sleep better after I kissed her and consoled her and repeated everything these people here have already said.”
“Eh bien, moi, messieurs, je respecte la douleur d’une mère,” the old man’s voice said. “Allez, bonsoir messieurs dames.”
The rain was slicing down on the window. Paris must be a great gray bubble in which dawn would come up little by little. Oliveira went over to the corner where his lumberjacket was looking like the torso of a quartered criminal, oozing dampness. He put it on slowly, looking all the while towards the bed as if he expected something. He thought of Berthe Trépat’s arm on his, the walk in the rain. “¿De qué te sirvió el verano, oh ruiseñor en la nieve?” he quoted ironically. “Stinking, absolutely stinking. And I’m out of cigarettes, damn it.” He would have to go all the way to the Bébert café, but still and all, dawn would be just as repugnant there as anywhere else.
“What an old fool,” Ronald said, closing the door.
“He went back to his flat,” Étienne said. “I think Gregorovius went out to tell the police. Are you staying?”
“No, what for? They won’t like it if they find so many people here at this hour. It would be better for Babs to stay, two women are always more convincing in these cases. It’s more intimate, understand?”
Étienne looked at him.
“I’d like to know why your mouth is quivering so much,” he said.
“Nervous tics,” Oliveira said.
“Tics don’t go well with the cynical air. I’ll go with you, come on.”
“Let’s go.”
He knew that La Maga had sat up in bed and was looking at him. Putting his hands in the pockets of his lumberjacket, he went to the door. Étienne made a sign as if to hold him back and then followed him out. Ronald saw them leave and shrugged his shoulders, furious. “This is all so absurd,” he thought. The idea that everything was absurd made him uncomfortable, but he couldn’t tell why. He began to help Babs, made himself useful, wetted compresses. The pounding on the ceiling started up again.
(–130)
29
“TIENS,” said Oliveira.
Gregorovius was huddled by the stove, wrapped up in a black bathrobe, reading. He had hung a lamp on a nail in the wall and with a shade made out of a newspaper was guiding the light just where he needed it.
“I didn’t know you had a key.”
“Leftovers,” said Oliveira, tossing his lumberjacket in the usual corner. “I’ll let you have it, now that the place is yours.”
“Just for a while. It’s too cold in here, and besides, I’ve got that old man upstairs. He pounded on the floor five times this morning. Why, I don’t know.”
“Habit. Everything has a longer overlap than it should. Take me, for example. I climb the stairs, I take out my key, I open the door … It stinks in here.”
“Cold as hell,” said Gregorovius. “After they finished fumigating I had to keep the window open for forty-eight hours.”
“And you were here all the time? Caritas. What kind of a guy are you?”
“That wasn’t why. I was afraid somebody from the landlady might use that time to get in here and cause trouble. Lucía told me once that the landlady is an old nut and that a lot of tenants have owed her rent for years. When I was in Budapest I was reading law and things like that stick with you.”
“You’ve made a real posh setup for yourself. Chapeau, mon vieux. I hope they didn’t throw out my yerba mate.”
“No, it’s over there in the night-table, among the stockings. There’s lots of space now.”
“So it seems,” said Oliveira. “La Maga had an attack of neatness. I don’t see any records or books. But now that I think of it …”
“She took everything,” said Gregorovius.
Oliveira opened the drawer of the night-table and took out the yerba mate and the gourd that went with it. He began to fill the gourd slowly, looking all around. The lyrics of Mi noche triste began to run through his head. He counted on his fingers: Thursday, Friday, Saturday. No. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. No. Thursday night, Berthe Trépat, me amuraste/en lo mejor de la vida, Wednesday (a wild binge; n.b., don’t mix vodka and red wine), dejándome el alma herida / y espina en el corazón. Thursday, Friday, Ronald and a rented car, a visit to Guy Monod, like an old glove come home, buckets of green vomit, out of danger, sabiendo que te quería / que vos eras mi alegría / mi esperanza y mi ilusión. Saturday, where? where? somewhere near Marly-le-Roi, five days in all; no, six, a week more or less, and the room still cold in spite of the stove. Wily old Ossip, king of convenience.
“So she’s gone,” said Oliveira, plumping down in the easy chair and keeping the little kettle within reach.
Gregorovius nodded. He had his book open on his knees and gave the posed impression that he would like to keep on reading.
“And she left her place to you.”
“She knew I was in delicate shape,” said Gregorovius. “My great-aunt stopped sending me my allowance, she’s probably dead. Miss Babington hasn’t said anything, but with the situation in Cyprus … And you know what that can mean to Malta, censorship and all that. Since you had said you were going away, Lucía offered to share the room with me. I wasn’t sure, but she insisted.”
“It doesn’t tie in too well with her leaving.”
“But that was before all this happened.”
“Before they fumigated?”
“Exactly.”
“You’ve hit the jackpot, Ossip.”
“It’s all very sad, really,” said Gregorovius. “It could have been quite different.”
“Don’t complain. A room twelve by ten for five thousand francs a month, with running water …”
“I want everything to be perfectly clear between us,” said Gregorovius. “This room …”
“Doesn’t belong to me. Take it easy. And La Maga has gone.”
“Anyway …”
“Where did she go?”
“She said something about Montevideo.”
“She hasn’t got enough money for that.”
“She mentioned Perugia.”
“You must mean Lucca. Ever since she read Sparkenbroke she’s been crazy about those things. Once and for all, tell me where she went.”
“I don’t have the slightest idea, Horacio. Last Friday she filled a suitcase with books and clothes, bundled a lot of things together, and then two Negroes came and took it all away. She told me I could stay here, but since she was crying all the time you can imagine how hard it was to talk to her.”
“I’d like to bust you in the face,” said Oliveira, sucking on
his mate.
“It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not a matter of fault, damn it. You’re so damned Dostoevskian, repulsive and pleasant at the same time. A kind of metaphysical ass-kisser. When you put on a smile like that who in hell would ever want to hurt you.”
“Oh, I’m one up on you,” said Gregorovius. “The mechanics of ‘challenge and response’ is a bourgeois trait. You’re like me, that’s why you can’t hit me. Don’t look at me like that. I don’t know what’s happened to Lucía. One of the Negroes I mentioned always hangs out in the Café Bonaparte. I’ve seen him there. He could probably tell you. But why are you looking for her now?”
“What do you mean, ‘now’?”
Gregorovius shrugged his shoulders.
“It was a very proper wake,” he said. “Especially after we got rid of the police. Socially speaking, people were commenting about the fact that you weren’t there. The Club was on your side, but the neighbors and the old man upstairs …”
“You mean to tell me that the old man came to the wake?”
“It wasn’t really a wake. They let us keep the body until noon, then the authorities came. Efficient and quick, I must admit.”
“I can picture the whole thing,” said Oliveira. “But there’s no reason for La Maga to move without so much as a word.”
“She thought you’d been with Pola all the time.”
“Ça alors,” said Oliveira.
“People do get ideas, you know. It’s all your fault that we’re using the familiar form and that makes it harder for me to tell you certain things. It’s obviously a paradox, but that’s the way it is. It must be because it’s a false familiarity. You started it the other night.”
“I don’t see any reason not to be familiar with the man who’s been sleeping with my girl.”
“I’m getting sick of telling you it wasn’t that way. So there’s no reason for us to use the familiar form. If La Maga had really drowned, I can see how in the grief of the moment, while we were embracing and consoling each other … But that’s not how it was. At least I don’t think so.”
“You saw something in the paper,” said Oliveira.
“The description doesn’t match at all. We can still use formal address. There it is over there, on the mantel.”
The description, in fact, did not match. Oliveira took the newspaper and prepared himself another mate. Lucca, Montevideo, la guitarra en el ropero / para siempre está colgada…And when she puts everything in a suitcase and makes up bundles one might deduce that (take care: all deductions are not necessarily proofs), nadie en ella toca nada / ni hace sus cuerdas sonar. Or makes music on its strings.
“Well, I’ll find out where she’s gone. She couldn’t get very far.”
“This will always be her home,” said Gregorovius, “even though Adgalle is coming to stay with me this spring.”
“Your mother?”
“Yes. She sent an emotional telegram in which she mentioned the tetragrammaton. It so happened that I had been reading the Sefer Yetzirah, trying to trace its Neoplatonic influences. Adgalle knows her kabala. There’ll be some wild arguments.”
“Had La Maga said anything that would make you think she’d kill herself?”
“Well, you know women.”
“Anything concrete.”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Gregorovius. “She talked a lot about Montevideo.”
“She’s a fool. She doesn’t have a cent.”
“About Montevideo and that business of a wax doll.”
“Hmm, the doll. And she imagined that …”
“She was sure of it. Adgalle will be interested in this; what you called coincidence. Lucía doesn’t think it was coincidence. You either, deep inside. Lucía told me that when you found the green doll you threw it on the floor and stepped on it.”
“I hate stupidity,” said Oliveira virtuously.
“All the pins had been stuck in the breasts, except for one in the organs. Did you know already that Pola was sick when you trampled on the green doll?”
“Yes.”
“Adgalle will be fascinated. Do you know anything about poisoned portraits? You mix some poison with the paints and you wait for a favorable moon to paint the portrait. Adgalle tried it on her father, but there were interferences … In any case, the old man died of some kind of diphtheria three years later. He was alone in the castle. We had a castle in those days, and when he began to strangle he tried to perform a tracheotomy in front of the mirror by inserting a goose quill or something like that. They found him at the bottom of the stairs. But I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”
“Because you don’t give a damn, I suppose.”
“Yes, maybe,” said Gregorovius. “Let’s have some coffee. You can feel night coming on at this hour, even though you can’t see it.”
Oliveira picked up the newspaper. While Ossip put the pot on the fire he began to read the news. “Blonde, about forty-two.” How stupid to think that … But, of course…Les travaux du grand barrage d’Assouan ont commencé. Avant cinq ans, la vallée moyenne du Nil sera transformée en un immense lac. Des édifices prodigieux, qui comptent parmi les plus admirables de la planète…
(–107)
30
“A MISUNDERSTANDING, like everything else. But the coffee is up to the occasion. Did you drink all the caña?”
“The wake, you understand …”
“Of course, the little corpse.”
“Ronald was drinking like a beast. He was really upset, nobody could figure out why. Babs was suspicious. Even Lucía was surprised at him. But the watchmaker on the sixth floor brought a bottle of brandy and it was enough for everybody.”
“Did many people come?”
“Well, let’s see, we were all here from the Club, you weren’t here,” (“No, I wasn’t here”) “the watchmaker from the sixth floor, the concierge and her daughter, a woman who looked like a moth, the telegraph man stayed a while, and the police were nosing around for evidence of infanticide, things like that.”
“I’m surprised they didn’t talk about an autopsy.”
“They mentioned it. Babs blew her top, and Lucía … A woman came and looked around, touching and feeling … There wasn’t enough room for all of us on the stairway, everybody outside and it was cold. They did something, but finally they left us alone. I don’t know how, but I’ve got the death certificate here in my wallet if you want to look at it.”
“No, tell me more. I’m listening, even if I don’t look like it. Come on, keep talking. I’m very upset. It doesn’t show, but you can believe me. I’m listening, come on. I can picture the scene perfectly. You’re not going to tell me that Ronald helped carry him downstairs?”
“Yes, he and Perico and the watchmaker. I went with Lucía.”
“Por delante.”
“And Babs brought up the rear with Étienne.”
“Por detrás.”
“Halfway between the fourth and third floors we heard a tremendous thump. Ronald said it was the old man on the fifth floor getting his vengeance. When mother comes I’m going to have her get to know the old man.”
“Your mother? Adgalle?”
“She is my mother, after all, the Herzegovina one. She’s going to like this place, she’s quite receptive and things have happened here … I don’t mean just the green doll.”
“Come on now, let’s see, explain to me why your mother is receptive and about this place. Let’s talk, eh, we’ve got to get these pillows all stuffed. Give with the stuffing.”
(–57)
31
IT had been some time since Gregorovius had given up the illusion of understanding things, but at any rate, he still wanted misunderstandings to have some sort of order, some reason about them. No matter how many times the cards of the deck might be shuffled, laying them out was always a consecutive process, which would take place on the rectangle of a table-top or a bedspread. To get the mate drinker from the pampas willing to revea
l the order behind his meanderings. In the worst moments to let him improvise for the moment; then it would be difficult for him to extricate himself from his own web. Between one and another mate Oliveira condescended to remember some moment from the past or answer questions. He would ask questions in turn with an ironic interest in the burial, in how people acted. He rarely referred directly to La Maga, but it was clear that he suspected some lying going on. Montevideo, Lucca, some corner of Paris. Gregorovius told himself that Oliveira would have gone running out if he had had any idea where Lucía was staying. He seemed to be a specialist in lost causes. Lose them first, then run after them like a madman.
“Adgalle is going to enjoy her stay in Paris,” Oliveira said, changing the yerba mate in his gourd. “If she’s looking for the gates of assorted hells, all you have to do is show her some of the things that go on here. On a modest level, of course, but hell has been cheapened too. The nekias of today: a trip on the Métro at six-thirty, or going to the police to get your carte de séjour renewed.”
Hopscotch: A Novel Page 20