“You would have liked to have found the main gate, eh? A dialogue with Ajax, with Jacques Clément, with Keitel, with Troppmann.”
“Yes, but the biggest hole so far is the one in the bathroom. And not even Traveler understands, and that’s saying something. Traveler is a friend of mine you don’t know.”
“You’re hiding your cards,” said Gregorovius, looking at the floor.
“For example?”
“I don’t know, I’m just guessing. All the time I’ve known you, all you’ve done is search, but one gets the feeling that what you’re looking for is right in your pocket.”
“The mystics talked about that, but they didn’t mention pockets.”
“And in the meantime you mess up the lives of any number of people.”
“They’re willing, old man, perfectly willing. All I had to do was give a little shove, I walk through, and there I am. No evil intent.”
“But what are you after with all that, Horacio?”
“The freedom of the city.”
“Here?”
“It’s a metaphor. And since Paris is another metaphor (I’ve heard you say so sometimes) it seems perfectly natural to me that I came here for that reason.”
“But Lucía? And Pola?”
“Heterogeneous quantities,” Oliveira said. “Just because they’re women you think that you can add them up in the same column. Aren’t they looking for their happiness too? And you, so puritanical all of a sudden, haven’t you slithered in here as a result of meningitis or whatever it was they found the kid had? It’s lucky that you and I are not squares because otherwise one of us would be carried out dead and the other one with handcuffs on. Something just right for Cholokov, believe me. But we don’t even detest each other, it’s so protective in this apartment.”
“You’re hiding your cards,” said Gregorovius, looking at the floor again.
“Elucidate, mon frère, do me that small favor.”
“You,” insisted Gregorovius, “have an imperial notion in the back of your head. Freedom of the city? Rule of the city. Your resentment: a half-cured ambition. You came here to find a statue of yourself waiting for you on the edge of the Place Dauphine. What I don’t understand is your method. Ambition, why not? You’re outstanding enough in some ways. But up till now all that I’ve seen you do has been just the opposite of what other ambitious people would have done. Étienne, for example, and we don’t even have to mention Perico.”
“Ah,” said Oliveira. “It seems your eyes are good for something after all.”
“Just the opposite,” Ossip repeated, “but without denying ambition. And that’s what I don’t understand.”
“Oh, understanding, you know … It’s all very mixed up. Take the bit that what you call ambition can only be productive if it’s denied. Do you like the formula? That’s not it, but what I want to say is something that really is unexplainable. You’ve got to turn round and round like a dog chasing his tail. All of this and what I said about the freedom of the city ought to satisfy you, you fucking Montenegran.”
“I understand in an obscure sort of way. Then you … It’s not a path, like Vedanta or things like that, I hope.”
“No, no.”
“A lay renunciation, could we call it that?”
“Not that either. I’m not renouncing anything, I simply do what I can so that things renounce me. Didn’t you know that if you want to dig a little hole you’ve got to shovel up the ground and toss it far away?”
“But freedom of the city, well …”
“You’ve put your finger right on it. Remember the dictum: Nous ne sommes pas au monde. Now get the gist of it, slowly.”
“An ambition to clear the table and start all over again, is that it?”
“A little bit, a touch of that, just a hair, a drop, oh stern Transylvanian, son of three witches.”
“You and the others …” murmured Gregorovius, looking for his pipe. “What a bunch, my God. Thieves of eternity, atmospheric frauds, hounds of God, cloud-chasers. It’s good we’ve got an education and can define them. Astral swine.”
“You do me honor with those definitions,” Oliveira said. “It’s proof that you’re beginning to understand it all fairly well.”
“Bah, I prefer breathing oxygen and hydrogen in the dose the Lord prescribes. My alchemy is much less subtle than what all of you practice; all that interests me is the philosopher’s stone. A trifle alongside your frauds and your bathrooms and your ontological deductions.”
“It’s been a long time since we had a metaphysical chat, eh? They’re out of favor with our friends, they think you’re a snob. Ronald, for example, finds them ghastly. And Étienne never gets out of the solar spectrum. It’s nice being here with you.”
“We really could have been friends,” Gregorovius said, “if you had had something human about you. I suspect that Lucía must have told you that more than once.”
“Every five minutes, to be exact. You’ve got to see what mileage people can get from the word human. But why didn’t La Maga stay with you since you glow all over with humanity?”
“Because she wasn’t in love with me. Humanity takes in all kinds.”
“And now she’s going back to Montevideo and she’ll fall back into a life that …”
“She probably went to Lucca. She’ll be better off anywhere without you. The same goes for Pola, or me, or the rest of us. Please excuse my frankness.”
“But it fits you so well, Ossip Ossipovich. Why fool ourselves? It’s impossible to live with a puppeteer who works with shadows, a moth-tamer. Someone who spends his time making pictures out of the iridescent rings the oil makes on the Seine is unacceptable. Me, with my padlocks and keys that I make out of the air, me, writing with smoke. I’ll save the answer for you because I see it coming up: There is no substance more deadly than the one that can ooze in anywhere, that breathes without being aware of it, in words or in love or in friendship. It’s been a long time now since I should have been left alone to me, myself, and I. You’ve got to admit that I don’t go around kissing ass. Get lost, you son of a Bosnian. The next time you run into me on the street you’d better not even know me.”
“You’re crazy, Horacio. You’re stupidly crazy, because it suits you.”
Oliveira took a newspaper clipping out of his pocket that he had kept for God knows how long: a list of all-night drugstores in Buenos Aires. Ones that were open from eight o’clock on Monday until the same time on Tuesday.
“First district,” he read. “446 Reconquista (Tel. 31-5488), 366 Córdoba (Tel. 32-8845), 599 Esmeralda (Tel. 31-1700), 581 Sarmiento (Tel. 32-2021).”
“What’s all that?”
“Moments of reality. I’ll explain: Reconquista, something we did to the English. Córdoba, a learned city. Esmeralda, a gypsy girl hanged because she was in love with an archdeacon. Sarmiento, he blew a fart and the wind carried it away. Second version: Reconquista, a street of harlots and Near Eastern restaurants. Córdoba, wonderful sweetshops. Esmeralda, a river in Colombia. Sarmiento, he never missed school. Third version: Reconquista, a drugstore. Esmeralda, another drugstore. Sarmiento, another drugstore. Fourth version …”
“And when I insist you’re crazy it’s because I don’t see any way out of your famous renunciation.”
“620 Florida (Tel. 31-2200).”
“You didn’t go to the burial because although you renounce many things, you’re still not capable of looking your friends in the face.”
“749 Hipólito Yrigoyen (Tel. 34-0936).”
“And Lucía is better off at the bottom of the river than in bed with you.”
“800 Bolívar. The phone number is hard to make out. If people in the neighborhood have a sick kid they won’t be able to buy him some terramycin.”
“Yes, at the bottom of the river.”
“1117 Corrientes (Tel. 35-1468).”
“Or in Lucca, or in Montevideo.”
“Or in 1301 Rivadavia (Tel. 38-7841).”
&nbs
p; “Keep that list for Pola,” Gregorovius said, getting up. “I’m going out, you can do what you feel like. You’re not at home, but since nothing has any reality, and we have to start ex nihil, etc.… Help yourself to all these illusions. I’m going out to get a bottle of brandy.”
Oliveira caught up to him next to the door and put his hand on his shoulder.
“2099 Lavalle,” he said, looking him in the face and smiling. “1501 Cangallo. 53 Pueyrredón.”
“You forgot the telephone numbers,” Gregorovius said.
“You’re beginning to understand,” said Oliveira, taking his hand away. “Underneath it all you’ve got the feeling that I can’t say anything to anybody, to you, or to anybody.”
The footsteps stopped when they got to the second floor. “He’s coming back,” Oliveira thought. “He’s afraid I’ll burn up the bed or cut up the sheets. Poor Ossip.” But after a moment the shoes went on their way downstairs.
Seated on the bed, he looked at the papers in the drawer of the night-table. A novel by Pérez Galdós, a bill from the drugstore. It was drugstore night. Some pieces of paper with scribbling in pencil. La Maga had taken everything, there was a smell left over from before, the paper on the walls, the bed with the striped spread. A novel by Galdós, what an idea. If it wasn’t Vicki Baum it was Roger Martin du Gard, and that brought on the strange jump to Tristan L’Hermite, hours on end repeating for any reason at all “les rêves de l’eau qui songe,” or an artistic edition of pantungs, or stories by Schwitters, a kind of ransom, penitence of the most exquisite and sneaky sort, until suddenly one would fall back into John Dos Passos and spend five days swallowing enormous doses of the printed word.
The scribbling was some kind of letter.
(–32)
32
BABY Rocamadour, baby, baby. Rocamadour.
By now I know you’re like a mirror, Rocamadour, sleeping or looking at your feet. Here I am holding a mirror and thinking that it’s you. But don’t you believe it, I’m writing to you because you don’t know how to read. If you did know I wouldn’t be writing to you or I’d be writing about important things. Someday I’ll have to write to you and tell you to behave and keep warm. Someday seems incredible, Rocamadour. Now I can only write to you in the mirror, sometimes I have to dry my finger because it gets wet with tears. Why, Rocamadour? I’m not sad, your mother is a slob, I dropped the borscht I had prepared for Horacio into the fire; you know who Horacio is, Rocamadour, the man who brought you the velvet bunny last Sunday and who got so bored because you and I had so much to say to one another and he wanted to go back to Paris; then you started to cry and he showed you how the rabbit moved its ears; you looked good then, Horacio I mean, someday you’ll understand, Rocamadour.
Rocamadour, it’s silly to cry like this because I spilled the borscht. The room is full of beet-smell, Rocamadour, you’d laugh if you could see the pieces of beet and the cream, all over the floor. It’s not too bad because I’ll have it all cleaned up by the time Horacio comes, but first I have to write to you, it’s so foolish to cry like this, the pots have taken on a soft shape, there are things like halos on the windowpanes, and you can’t hear the girl upstairs singing, the one who sings Les Amants du Havre all day long. When we’re together I’ll sing it for you, you’ll see. Puisque la terre est ronde, mon amour t’en fais pas, mon amour, t’en fais pas…Horacio whistles it at night when he’s writing or sketching. You’d like it, Rocamadour. You’d like it, Horacio gets furious because I like to use the same familiar form Perico does, but it’s different in Uruguay. Perico is the man who didn’t bring you anything the other day but talked so much about children and their diet. He knows a lot, you’ll respect him someday, Rocamadour, and you’ll be a fool if you respect him. But there I go with his familiar again.
Rocamadour, Madame Irène is upset because you’re so handsome, so happy, so weepy and shouty and pissy. She says that everything is all right and that you’re a charming child, but all the time she keeps her hands in the pockets of her apron the way some sneaky animals do, Rocamadour, and that frightens me. When I said so to Horacio he laughed a lot, but he didn’t realize what I really meant, I can’t explain it. Rocamadour, if only there was some way to read in your eyes what has happened to you in these two weeks, moment by moment. I think I’ll try to get a different nourrice even though Horacio will get very angry and say, but you’re not interested in what he thinks about me. Another nourrice who doesn’t talk so much, I don’t care whether she says you’re naughty or cry at night or don’t want to eat, I don’t care if when she says all that I can feel that she isn’t evil, that she’s telling me something that won’t do you any harm. It’s all so strange, Rocamadour, for example, the way I like to say your name and write it down, every time I get the feeling that I’m touching the tip of your nose and that you’re laughing, but Madame Irène never uses your name, she says l’enfant, just imagine, she doesn’t even say le gosse, she says l’enfant, it’s as if she put on rubber gloves every time she spoke, maybe she already has them on and that’s why she puts her hands in her pockets and says that you’re so good and so handsome.
There’s something called time, Rocamadour, it’s like a bug that just keeps on walking. I can’t explain it to you because you’re so small, but what I mean is that Horacio will be back any minute now. Shall I let him read my letter so that he can add something too? No, I wouldn’t want anyone to read a letter that was just for me either. A big secret between the two of us, Rocamadour. I’m not crying any more, I’m happy, but it’s so hard to understand things, I need so much time to understand just a little of what Horacio and the others understand right away, but they understand everything so well and they can’t understand you and me, they don’t understand why I can’t have you with me, feed you, change your diapers, make you go to sleep or play with me, they don’t understand and they really don’t care, and I who care so much only know that I can’t have you with me, that it would be bad for both of us, that I have to be alone with Horacio, live with Horacio, I don’t know for how long, helping him look for what he’s looking for and what you’ll be looking for too, Rocamadour, because you will be a man and you too will be searching like a big fool.
That’s how it is, Rocamadour: In Paris we’re like fungus, we grow on the railings of staircases, in dark rooms with greasy smells, where people make love all the time and then fry some eggs and put on Vivaldi records, light cigarettes, and talk like Horacio and Gregorovius and Wong and me, Rocamadour, and like Perico and Ronald and Babs, we all make love and fry eggs and smoke, oh, you can’t imagine how we smoke, how we make love, standing up, lying down, on our knees, with our hands, with our mouths, crying or singing, and outside there are all sorts of things, the windows open onto the air and it all begins with a sparrow or a gutter, it rains a lot here, Rocamadour, much more than in the country, and things get rusty, the leaders, the pigeons’ feet, the wires Horacio uses to make figures with. We don’t have many clothes, we get along with so few, a good overcoat, some shoes to keep the rain out, we’re very dirty, everybody is dirty and good-looking in Paris, Rocamadour, the beds smell of night and deep sleep, dust and books underneath, Horacio falls asleep and the book ends up under the bed, we get into terrible fights because we can’t find the books and Horacio thinks that Ossip has stolen them, until they show up one day and we laugh, and there just about isn’t room for anything, not even another pair of shoes, Rocamadour, to set down a washbasin on the floor we have to move the phonograph, but where can we put it because the table is full of books. I couldn’t have you here, as small as you are there wouldn’t be room for you, you’d bump against the walls. When I think about it I start to cry, Horacio doesn’t understand, he thinks I’m wicked, that it’s bad of me not bringing you here, even though I know he wouldn’t be able to stand you for very long. No one can stand it here for very long, not even you and I, you have to live by fighting each other, it’s the law, the only way that things are worth while but it hurts, Rocamadour,
and it’s dirty and bitter, you wouldn’t like it, you see lambs in the fields, or hear the birds perched on the weather vane of the house. Horacio calls me sentimental, he calls me materialist, he calls me everything because I don’t bring you or because I want to bring you, because I deny it, because I want to go see you, because suddenly I understand that I cannot go, because I’m capable of walking for an hour in the rain if in some part of town I don’t know they’re showing Potemkin and I’ve got to see it even if the world comes to an end, Rocamadour, because the world doesn’t matter any more if you don’t have the strength to go ahead and choose something that’s really true, if you keep yourself neat like a dresser drawer, putting you on one side, Sunday on the other, mother-love, a new toy, the Montparnasse station, the train, the visit you have to make. I don’t feel like going, Rocamadour, and you know it’s all right and you don’t feel bad. Horacio is right, sometimes I don’t care about you at all, and I think you’ll thank me for that some day when you’ll be able to understand, when you’ll be able to see that the best thing was that I’m the way I am. But just the same I cry, Rocamadour, and I write this letter to you because I don’t know, because maybe I’m wrong, because maybe I am wicked or sick or a little stupid, not much, just a little, but that’s terrible, it makes me sick to my stomach just thinking about it, I’ve got my toes curled all the way under and I’m going to split open my shoes if I don’t take them off, and I love you so much, Rocamadour, baby Rocamadour, little garlic-clove, I love you so much, sugar-nose, sapling, toy pony…
(–132)
33
“THERE’S a reason behind his leaving me alone,” Oliveira thought as he opened and shut the drawer of the night-table. “A gracious act or a dirty trick, it’s all in the way you look at it. He’s probably on the stairway now, listening like a half-baked sadist. He’s waiting for the great Karamazov crisis, the Céline attack. Or he’s tiptoed off on his Herzegovina toes and after a second glass of kirsch at Bébert’s he’ll raise mental hell and plan out the ceremonies for the arrival of Adgalle. Torture through waiting: Montevideo, the Seine, or Lucca. Variants: the Marne, Perugia. But then you, really …”
Hopscotch: A Novel Page 21