Final Exam

by Julio Cortázar

  “She comes from Lincoln, from Curuzú Cuatiá, and Presidente Roca,” said the man.

  “She is coming,” repeated the others.

  “She is coming from Formosa, from Covunco, from Nogoyá and from Chapadmalal.”

  “She is coming.”

  “She is good,” said the man.

  “She is good.”

  The woman did not move, but Clara could see her hands pressed tightly to her thighs. She was opening and closing her fingers as if in a hysteria suddenly about to explode. Clara felt afraid, as well as the disgust of realizing

  that how had she been able, how

  had she been able

  (and now there is no going back—all speeds of takeoff, things are as IRREVERSIBLE as the time-that-bears-them-away)

  but how could she, finally, whisper with the others, “She is good”? She heard herself with the other side of her hearing, the true part, that hears the voice as it is being born, in the very throat

  (as a little girl she liked to cover her ears and sing or breathe deeply; and, when she had bronchitis, to hear the wheezes, the whistles like little frogs or owls, and after coughing hard, the whole orchestra would put itself back together little by little, different themes, charming, because she was good).

  “Let’s go,” she said, clinging to Andrés, terrified.

  He looked at her, but said nothing. Juan and Stella veered off to the right, the chronicler steering them like a tugboat. They followed with difficulty because everyone was fighting to see the woman who was good, who came from Chapadmalal. Clara squeezed closer to Andrés, walked with her eyes closed, panting. “I sang with them, I prayed with them, I’ve signed, I’ve signed.” It was stupid but something in her

  a part of her inside herself, freeing itself for a moment from the rest, had partaken in the ritual, had swallowed the host, consented.

  “I’m afraid, Andrés,” she said in a very low voice.

  He saw her point of view, but was above all that.

  Armageddon, he thought. O pallid plain, o ending of things.

  “Careful with that little guy on the left there, he looks like a crook,” said the chronicler elbowing Juan. “You’re walking along here as if you were totally bewildered. You and your package. I wish shorty would grab it. Since we have purse snatchers, we should also have cauliflower snatchers. Ah, this is what I like:

  After you, ma’am.

  Finding pretty words.

  What was all that about eutrapely? But you know—

  Sure, kid, the Sanctuary is THERE.

  —that the Editor hates style. He thinks it’s, well, he thinks, that it’s the eutrapely of journalism. He believes in headlines that take over the whole page. He won’t let me write well. I tell you, the prospects are gloomy.”

  “I wonder what it is you call ‘writing well,’” said Juan. “Besides, stop trying to distract us with all that. We came to look at this thing, and we’re damned well going to. Stella, slip between those two stout Paraguayan maidens. Just stylize yourself kid, no Editor is going to say a word to you.”

  “You’re bad as a friend,” said the chronicler. “But do remind me later to explain what I think about style.”

  By then they could see the poles holding up the canvas of the Sanctuary. They still had to get through the most crowded space: the passive cadres of hundreds of women standing there like posts sharing the wait, leaning against one another, and the thick smell, the murmuring. Andrés pointed toward a spot and right then a child began screaming. They made their way through, guided by the shriek, until they could see. There was a little bench where a boy about eight years old was seated. Two kneeling men held him in place by the shoulders and the waist. A peasant with eyes like slits and a brutal face was standing a yard in front of the kid, aiming an upholsterer’s needle at his face. Little by little, he came closer, pointing the needle first at the boy’s mouth, then at an eye, then at his nose. The boy pleaded, shouted in terror; on his light-colored shorts the urine stains of terror were clearly visible. Then the peasant stepped back, impassive, and the people standing around murmured something that Andrés—the only one of the group who’d gone forward to get a look at the scene—didn’t understand. Something like

  in the middle/ the middle/ the middle/ the middle—

  unless it were—

  Enemies/ enemies/ enemies/ enemies—

  Suspecting something, Juan and the chronicler held the ladies’ arms, not letting them move forward.

  “What bastards sons of bitches,” said Andrés grabbing hold of Clara and starting to walk toward the Sanctuary.

  “You’re as white as a sheet!” said Stella.

  “What kind of sheet,” said Andrés without looking at her.” “There are bed sheets, sheets of paper . . ."

  “This guy will be a philologist till the day he dies,” said the chronicler. “But just listen to the music.”

  A curtain of solid shoulders—Blue black blue red green black—stopped them fifteen feet from the Sanctuary;

  and nothing worked, not pushing, not excuse me miss, not even make way for the police.

  “It’s all so confusing,” whispered Juan. “So devoid of style.”

  “Style’s dead,” said Andrés.

  “Long live style!” said the chronicler. “But just listen to this music.”

  What you’d call listen to it they did, having no other choice. POET AND SMALL TOWN MAAAAN. Son of a bitch, thought the chronicler. How right Juan is. So void of style. How can anyone understand the combination of all these short-haired black women here with that von Suppée apple sauce in the background? Would you expect to find a Frigidaire in a country store? What are we doing here?

  “Those are the most diarrheic violins I’ve ever smelled in my life,” said Juan. “For God’s sake, this is crazy. Why don’t they just play tangos?”

  “Because they like this,” said the chronicler. “Don’t you see that poor people have discovered music because of movies? Don’t you think that disgusting mess called “Unforgettable Song” had something to do with it? The bone of Tchaikovsky, man—pizza and Rachmaninoff.”

  “Let’s just get inside and be done with it,” said Clara. “I hope you don’t think I’ll be able to stand much more of this. With each step I take I’m sinking deeper into the mud, and I’m dying of thirst.”

  “Dying of thirst at the foot of the pyramid,” said the chronicler. “My, what a delicate theme.”

  “Dying of thirst at the foot of the pyramid!” said Juan.

  “Ecco: the very image of the Fatherland!”

  “Just Egypt will do,” said Andrés. “Ma’am, if you don’t mind, we’ll just pass through.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, just go right on ahead,” said the lady. “No one said you couldn’t.”

  “True enough. I never heard anything truer than that,” said Andrés.

  “What’s that you said?”

  “Nothing, ma’am. Just a little tune

  lookin’ at the moon

  catapoom, catapoom.

  “There’s always got to be a wise guy,” said the lady.

  After that they ran into a pair of Slavs—man and wife— going their way; but they managed things so well, they gave the impression they were going in the opposite direction. And after that—oh, successions, oh A, B, C, of things!—it turned out that they missed the Sanctuary and ended up at the canvas wall that faced toward Rivadavia, so that the entrance

  —as with piles of records

  boxes of tools

  portfolios filled with papers—

  was on the other side, on the pyramid side—

  WHERE FROM ON HIGH TWENTY CENTURIES DO NOT CONTEMPLATE YOU;

  it opened onto the nearby and crowded horizon of Hipólito Yrigoyen.

  “They screwed up my cauliflower,” Juan said to Stella, who was ecstatic with joy. “It’s a shame, because if you’d seen it when it was fresh out of the market, it would certainly have refreshed your soul.”

&
nbsp; “You can buy another tomorrow,” said Stella.

  “Sure. As Cocteau said to Orpheus: Kill Eurydice. You’ll feel much better afterward.”

  “Well,” said Stella. “What I really meant to say …”

  “Of course. But the fact is that it wasn’t you who happened to be passing through the Plata market at the exact moment that a cauliflower like this was for sale. And just think of the thousands of factors that had a role in it. If my bus stops at that corner two minutes too late, I miss my chance to buy it. I know, because when I raised it in my arms—”

  “Shitty maniflower,” an educated voice enunciated clearly somewhere in the crowd.

  “I sing a lullaby to my cauli

  I sing a lullaby to my flower

  Yes,

  I really raised it in my arms—and just then a lady stood there staring at it with such envy—————so you see, there are thousands of factors.”

  “Come on, push a little,” said the chronicler who was out of breath, puffing behind. “What a night, kid. There I was in my café; and then you all turn up, and now this. I could have sworn we could get in on the Rivadavia side. I think I even said so in my article.”

  They flanked the sanctuary

  HUMMING A TANGO YOU STROLL THE STREEEEETS

  and all of them managed to reach the high ground at the …

  “Jacky baby! Where’s it at?"

  “Behina’ pyramud!"

  Gloriously unfading. Never tied to the jeep of any conqueror of the land; column of the free seat of honor, of the valiant.

  AND THE FREEDOM FIGHTERS

  TIED THEIR HORSES TO THE PYRAMID.

  Alzaga, to die

  Liniers, to die

  Dorrego, to die

  Facundo, to die

  Poor little dead guy

  Mista Kurtz, he dead.

  A penny for the old guy.

  Poor little shepherd girl

  who died in the fields.

  Crévons, crévons, qu’un sang impur.

  Abreuve nos fauteuils

  PROVINCIAUX.

  “Sure, it must have been the buy of a lifetime,” said Stella.

  A dog, almost invisible in the constantly shifting columns of trousers and stockings, sniffed Stella’s shoes. Andrés and Clara had gone on ahead and were already looking back from one of the edges of the pyramid. They’ve leveled the whole place here just so they could set up the Sanctuary, thought Juan. When all this is over, the plaza will look awful. It was muddier here. Juan stumbled and had to rest his free hand on the pyramid. Then he saw Abel mixed in with the people on his left, but quite a ways behind. He only saw him because of one of those waves that crowds make (the same way a many-sided conversation will suddenly be broken by an instantaneous silence).

  An angel’s flying over, Grandma would say—

  like an air pocket that lasts, that someone’s got to burst by inventing the first word, the swerve that gets you out of the hole. Here he is again, thought Juan, not wanting to recognize the disquiet coming over him.

  “At last,” said Stella. “God, what heat! Inside it must be just horrible.”

  “I think they only let in one small group at a time,” said Juan. “Maybe they’ve installed air conditioning.”

  He wanted to tell Andrés he’d just seen Abelito. He thought that perhaps he was mistaken; but that pale face, that slicked-down hair. And he was wearing the same suit in the café, with the pointy shoulder pads. Poor Abelito, to think I have to knock the crap out of him the next time he pulls a fast one on me. The canvas panels on the sanctuary trembled as if there were a flutter of wings inside. Now all of them were part of a group that would enter in two or three more turns. The spotlights, hung on tall posts, were focused on the entrance, projecting light through the fog and smoke—yellow, tired shadows that were shining a dirty smudge on their faces.

  “Atenti al piato,” warned the chronicler, indicating a political candidate who surged up from among the people, beyond the entrance to the sanctuary. They should have put him on top of a little table or a stool. He materialized out of nowhere, a white clown under the lights. He was surrounded by a silence in the heat, perforated by the shouts and songs coming from farther along, as well as the indifference of those who didn’t see him.

  “This is the moment when we must understand the way out,” said the candidate, whose rhetorical style was mechanical and whose voice sounded like a magpie. “We’ve wasted our lives trying to explain the way in, the roads that lead to the entrance, the requirements for the entrance, the reason for the entrance.

  IT WAS THE ANALYSIS OF THE ENTRANCE!

  “You can rely on me. I return from the voyage like a mariner who scorns compasses,

  because deep within his breast the stars of truth were showing him the way.”

  “To Calcutta,” said Juan in a rather loud voice.

  “For God’s sake, shut up,” said Clara, pinching him so hard he jumped.

  “Fellow citizens,” said the magpie,

  “this is the moment for the way out.”

  Who killed Cock

  Robin?

  “Communion with the relic is over for you …”

  (and suddenly they realized that the guy wasn’t addressing them but the column that was leaving the Sanctuary and making its way toward the Cabildo)

  “but you carry it away with you in your hearts.”

  Hearts don’t have bones.

  It would be a good thing if they did, thought Andrés. Badly made for the life they stick us with. The skin and bones, poveretti. Bones, armor, chitin, and inside the skin, something like a lining of broken glass.

  “AND I ALSO MEAN ON THE ALTAR OF THE FATHERLAND!”

  hiccup

  ” ” ” ” ” ”(his

  voice like a car horn’s)

  “deposited here are our”

  Hearts, again?

  “our meek”

  (Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.)

  “sacrifices”

  (Now you put your foot in your mouth: your

  vanity’s showing—that pointy little nose.)

  “ANDITWILLGIVEUSTHESTRENGTHTOGOFORWARDUNTILTHEEND!”

  VIVAVIVAVIVA!!

  “We are not worthy,” said the chronicler, “of an oratory of such noble lineage, such profundity of concepts. As the Editor would put it: incommensurable.”

  “There were some good moments,” said Clara. “You don’t really have to use Demosthenes as a standard to judge a man in the Plaza de Mayo—worn-out styles to new needs. I think Malraux was right when he said that there comes a moment when the arts would actually rather be taken as regressive, rather than continuing to copy blueprints bereft of vitality; and that’s what I intend to prove in detail during the exam, if I get—and I hope I do—question number 4.”

  “All right, all right,” said the astonished chronicler. “I don’t believe in the need for metopes. But the guy didn’t say anything! Of course, it would have been worse if he’d made us believe, with the help of style, that he had said something.”

  THEN A PARTITA BY JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH EMANATED FROM THE LOUDSPEAKERS, AND FROM TIME TO TIME THE VIOLIN COULD BE HEARD AMID THE COMMENTS AND THE VIVAS!

  “How’s that for a lesson in style?” said Andrés, laughing against his will. “I’m not saying that in the old boy’s time people would fall to their knees when they heard that music, and I think that most of us agree, all past time was not better. But what we try to understand as style—that, that ubiquitous thing, that perfect tuning of a violin whose strings sound, or should sound, different—that no longer exists. All we have left to us is a trunk filled with miscellaneous things, and it’s time to get dressed and leave for the party.”

  “You’re not saying anything particularly new,” said Juan. “After The Waste Land, I think all that’s been said. The orator did a good job. He said nothing and was cheered. It was perfect. We’re the ones who should say something, but we’re standing here as you see, talking in low voice
s because we’re afraid they’ll beat the crap out of us. The orator fits in better than we do.”

  “You’re still crabby,” said the chronicler. “Remember that later on I have to explain my “Begriff” of style. Hey they let dogs in too?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Stella. “They’d make a mess of the place.

  But it’s only right,” said Clara. “Bones are for dogs.”

  “Oh sweet, subtle, epigrammatic woman,” said Juan. “Okay, I think our turn’s about to come up. Now we’ll find out if the chronicler’s articles were a faithful portrait of the Sanctuary. It’s not often you get a chance to compare journalism with reality.”

  “Bah, all I changed were the important things,” said the chronicler. “And I forgot to talk about the dogs. It’s incredible how many there are near the Sanctuary. Look at that fox terrier, there, that bootlicker. I don’t know why, I don’t like seeing dogs mixed in with people. They lose status, they’re reduced somehow.”

  “They take on this imploring air that depresses you a little,” said Andrés. “Careful, darling, you’re up to your ankle in mud.” He closed his eyes and blinked in rage: the light fell on his face like hot semolina, and around the Sanctuary. Even the fog couldn’t filter that attack of anger. He wondered if Juan had seen Abel making his furtive way behind a row of workers, who were organized in the joy of all the unions that take part in a MEETING OF HONOR.

  “Just listen to that,” said the chronicler, snapping out of it delightedly. “A friend of mine, a photographer, told me—listen carefully, because as a lesson in style it’s of the highest quality: A cute little couple goes to be photographed and a week later comes back to see the proofs. They thought it over and finally chose one of the photos. But the girl says to the boy: ‘You don’t seem to be completely okay about it.’ And the guy, a little embarrassed, says: ‘Well, the photo’s pretty, and you look great: but it’s a shame that you really can’t see my party pin and ballpoint pen.’”

  “PAPER! PAPER! LATE EDITION!” screeched a newsboy, whose papers were sold out in every direction in a minute. Now they were standing in front of the entryway’s canvas walls (one of them was spattered with something black—tar or glue), waiting, while other people in line amused themselves with the newspaper. A dog howled nearby. Everyone laughed at the same time. The lights blinked and then brightened again. The speakers were playing one of you-know-who’s Hungarian Rhapsodies. “It’s odd that Abel would be around here,” Andrés said to himself looking over his shoulder. “It was Abel, I’m sure of it. And Juan spotted him before we ate.”