Final Exam

by Julio Cortázar

  “Paradise lost,” said Clara. “But everything you said seems just like a filthy appropriation of Platonic ideas. Maybe in some dreams we actually reach those Ideas”

  “If only,” said the chronicler. “But dreams are usually filled with telephones, ladders, idiotic flying around, and persecutions that are not in the least stimulating.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Andrés, “I’ve sometimes felt something similar to what Juan’s talking about—but instead of it being left over from the dream world, it was much worse. Like this: one morning, I opened my eyes and saw the sun peeking in. At that instant, I felt a horror that was like a convulsion, a kind of rebellion of my entire body and soul (please excuse the terminology). I understood at that moment, 1 lived, purely, the horror of having lost a paradise—of being once again in banal Reality. The sun every single day. The sun again, whether you like it or not. It comes up at 6:21 whether Picasso paints Guernica, whether Paul Éluard writes Capitale de la Douleur, whether Flagstad sings Brünhilde. Little man, attend to your sun! And the sun attends to its little men, day after day.”

  “Damn,” said the chronicler. “You all just get more and more complex.”

  “Quite complex,” said Stella. “Why don’t we get going?”

  Clara, looking at the window facing onto Bolivar, made a gesture of surprise.

  “Right, let’s get going,” said Andrés. “The night is young, as someone probably says in ‘London Again.’”

  “There are no lyrics in ‘London Again,’ ” said the chronicler, offended. “I think we should cut out. But there’s the Chinese guy, and I would really like to ask him about it.”

  “You know someone who’s Chinese!” said Stella, and she really put her hands together.

  “Well he’s Chinese, mentally,” clarified the chronicler. “A bit like Andrés, except that Andrés actually uses Chinese dialectic. This Chinese only has a Chinese way of behaving.”

  Andrés was watching Clara search for nothing in her purse, multiplying the signs of being busy. It seemed to him she’d grown pale.

  “Gimme da dime you bastard,” shouted the paperboy on the corner. “You lousy motherfucker, son of a bitch.“

  “Dixit,” proclaimed the chronicler, delighted. “What an animal. It’s like a cursing marathon.”

  “We Argentines are pros at that too,” said Juan. “The increase in cursing must be in inverse proportion to the will of a given people.”

  “It’s not that simple,” said Andrés. “It’s more a matter of tensions. What you’re saying is that our cursing is meaningless—just words we use to fill any void in life. We curse for no reason—we wind ourselves up, then we extend a little bridge over the thing that opens at our feet and threatens to swallow us up. Then we cross over the curses; the impulse lasts us a while, until the next time. But look at the symbol of Cambronne, which is formidable. Victor Hugo saw it clearly. The guy cursed at the far end of tension; the curses flew out like arrows, with all of Waterloo behind them.”

  “All right, all right, take yer ten cents,” said a shrill voice. “What a lot of noise you make.” “I’m defendin’ my rights,” said the paperboy.

  “Let me introduce you to the Chinese guy,” said the chronicler.

  “On the other hand, tensions exist here more than in other countries,” Andrés went on. “Too bad they have to be negative. Repressions.”

  “All right, all right, you’re going to trot out your favorite theme,” said the chronicler. “If we’d only relax more, we wouldn’t have such bitter stomachs and all that.”

  “No, it isn’t that, my dear café psychoanalyst. What I insinuated is that for us there are two levels of swearing: the useless level where there’s a reason for it and we get riled up; and there’s the necessary level that destroys us, born of tragic (excuse the expression) tensions. This necessary level goes on and on; if you look at it carefully, it’s tragedy—and, as you see, my adjective turns itself into a noun very nicely. The tragedy is an immense, deafening curse against Zeus. And don’t think the tortoise that fell on Aeschylus’ head doesn’t have its sequels. If Pascal had actually questioned Zeus instead of God the Father, I’m sure he would have been struck by lighting.”

  “More and more fog!” said the waiter, bringing a coffee for Clara. “There are going to be traffic accidents galore! That gentleman over there seems to know you.”

  “Right, it’s Salaver,” said the chronicler. “Hey, man, come on over here. Allow me to introduce the Chinese gentleman, I mean Juan Salaver. Salaver, my friend, this young lady here is Miss Stella, shake hands. Sit down Salaver. Let’s chat a bit before we leave. What are you up to?”

  “Me? Nothing,” said Salaver. “What about you?”

  “Me?” said the chronicler. “I’m writing a book called Paludes.”

  “Oh,” said Salaver, who had walked around the table and was holding out a cereal-like, a rather dirty hand. “How nice.”

  “Are you a journalist?” asked Stella, who now had Salaver on her right.

  “Yes, well, I write pieces. Tonight I’m gathering material for something about …”

  And on the cross of my desires

  (the guy singing must have had a problem with his adenoids, he’d been singing the whole length of Yrigoyen, and he raised his voice when he passed the café.)

  Ah’l fill my soul wit mist

  The blue uv da sky will die

  Above my sleepless nights

  Seein’ you leave

  “O Argentores, o Sadaic,” said Juan, trembling. “But notice that it is symbolic. The fog has touched this guy’s very soul. Of course, he calls it ‘mist,’ but not all of us are as cultured as he is.”

  “. . . I’m writing about the religious spirit,” said Salaver.

  The chronicler observed him fondly, focusing his gaze on Salaver’s bald pate, on his triangular sideburns, and his long face. The Chinese guy, he thought. A great man.

  “Well, well, let’s talk about Eugenie Grandet,” he said, smiling at Salaver. “When are you off to Spain?”

  “If all goes well, within five squares,” said Salaver.

  “He means five months,” translated the chronicler. “Come on, explain it to the folks.”

  Salaver took out his wallet, and extracted from it a card holder; and from the card holder he extracted a Celluloid calendar with a glamour girl wearing sunglasses that advertised Kirchner Optometrists, and also (it folded in two) an excellent picture of 1950 Liberator of the Year, General San Martín

  and on such-and-such a date, in Paris, Yehudi Menuhin would play Bach’s sonatas for solo violin,

  and Edwin Fischer would be in Padua,

  and Arletty would be staging A Streetcar Named Desire—in Paris—and in Barracas Mrs. Encarnación Robledo de Muñoz died.

  And someone, in a hotel, wept with his head in his hands thinking about Prokofiev’s sonatas for violin; and a ranch owner in Chivilcoy stopped his car outside the Galarce and Trezza bakery, ordering one of his ranch hands: “Okay, Bluebird, go on in and buy some macaroons!” While in Montreal a light rain fell.

  “Five squares,” said Salaver, placing his calendar, dates upward, between two plates containing cold turnips.

  “Oh,” said a distracted Clara. “Of course.”

  “Well, actually, it’s rather clear,” Salaver said, happy to explain. “You know that my Aunt Olga lives in Málaga. I want to see my Aunt Olga because I want to put into practice a plan I have about moving definitively to the peninsula.”

  He talks like the late edition, thought Andrés, and then he remembered something said by Murena, an unknown comrade of solitude: antagonist in twenty different things, but—and this, this … —also connected in many other things,

  Contributing, by means of perverting language, to man’s becoming an anarchic spectator at a circus, the press … But the Chinese guy doesn’t look anarchic, thought Andrés. The poor man’s just an idiot, nothing more.

  “To that end,” said Salaver, “I�
��ve put order in the disorder, and I think that Málaga fits in the fifth square. Towards the right and down.”

  “Around the 25th or 30th of August,” said the chronicler, studying the little squares filled with numbers written in red and black.

  “But I’m not sure, you see, because counter-luck lends itself to the worst things.”

  “Explain that counter-luck thing.”

  “Everything is a matter of luck,” said Salaver. “Everything. Philosophers have taught us that, and it’s in lots of books. So you’ve got to go against it, and I’ve invented counter-luck, which is a way of life, you see. I can explain it this way: we all live in squares. The first thing we should do is construct a ‘super-luck’ so that natural luck finds itself in difficulties immediately. My method consists in sticking a pin into a square, every morning, while I look up at the ceiling. Then you check where the pinprick is. If you’ve already been through it, it doesn’t count, so you stick in the pin again. When you stick a place you haven’t before, you observe the symbol conventionally designating the time when the sun is shining on that part of the earth and then you think. Water.”

  “Take this,” said the chronicler, passing him his lemonade.

  “Then you do the second part of ‘super-luck,’ which is most delicate. If you fall into what will be a (so-called) day, that is, say, two weeks off, you set about thinking how you’re going to live that piece of the square, right? First the physical circumstance: if it will rain, if the wind will be strong or weak, if you’ll have to write an article about how a quantity of combustible materials combusted in a place called Buenos Aires, or if the man holding the position of Editor will tell you to prepare a memo on the birth rate. Let’s say all that will happen. You postulate those events. That’s super-luck. Then,” (at this point Salaver straightened up) “then you prepare counter-luck. I was talking about wind and rain: when that day (so-called) comes, you walk out wearing a light-colored suit, whether it rains or not. I mentioned a fire; that day, you get to the paper and write about Beethoven even if Troy or Albion House burns down. So then, it doesn’t matter that there is no fire, or that you aren’t ordered to write about the birth rate. You’ve foreseen super-luck and sunk it with counter-luck.”

  “No two ways about it,” said a delighted Juan.

  “Didn’t I tell you he was a great man?” said the chronicler, who’d never spoken of him before.

  “It all sounds fine to me,” said Andrés. “But will you be able to travel to Málaga?”

  “It’s entirely possible,” said Salaver. “Fifth square, lower right, more or less easy.”

  “Really?”

  “The ships sail according to a fixed schedule,” said Salaver. “That’s an advantage: chance is already conquered in the most crudely practical aspect of setting sail, which is to have a ship to sail on. Against all the rest, super-luck arrays itself—and we attack with counter-luck.”

  “You,” said Clara against her will, “should be named Salaluck.”

  “The ‘ver’ in my last name does concern me,” said Salaver. “I’m ahead of my time, so my very destiny orders me to look at what will happen.”

  “Very interesting,” said Stella, obsessed with the calendar. “Weren’t we about to leave?”

  “Yes, it’s hot here.”

  “Good-by,” said Salaver, quickly getting to his feet. “It’s been a real pleasure.”

  “Bye-bye,” said the others.

  AND ABEL WAS AT THE WINDOW

  “The chronicler should pay, as punishment for the squares and Aunt Olga,” said Juan. “I admit the guy has a certain Chinese quality to him, if we both mean the same thing by that.”

  “Everybody pays his own way,” said Clara, putting two pesos on the table. “Either I’m crazy or there goes Abelito again. Don’t let Juan see him . . .”

  “Out!” shouted the waiter kicking a bluish-black dog that was heading toward a fried turnip on the floor. Then he gave them their change, bade them a very cordial farewell, happy both for the kick and the mutt’s howl.

  The ladies exited first. The chronicler finished saying goodby to the waiter, and Andrés’ hand lightly touched Juan’s shoulder as they moved forward.

  “Yes, I saw him too,” said Juan without turning around. “What can you do, that’s how he is. The amazing thing is how quickly he can fade away like smoke in the breeze.”

  Andrés waited for the chronicler.

  “Like smoke in the breeze is an expression to ponder,” he said. “Smoke is the easiest thing to see! You’d become famous if you proposed in your column that thankful firemen erect a statue to smoke.”

  “I’ll do it,” said the chronicler. “They could commission a statue from Troiani. But, man, the fog is getting thicker. What a night for walking around. It could only happen to us … Well, we must accompany the exam takers.”

  Two columns of women were crossing toward Avenida de Mayo. They were very well drilled, escorted by young men carrying torches and flashlights. In the fog they looked something like a caterpillar turned loose, dragging itself along with the slowest movements. Someone with a high voice shouted, and Juan thought,

  But Abel, that jerk. It’s as if he’s in the sirens of the ambulances going along Leandro N.Alem. Switching the package to his left arm, he used his right to hold Clara close to him.

  “How are you, old girl?”

  “Okay. Wide awake. Very wise, a bit sad.”

  “Clara,” said Juan in a low voice.

  “Yes, I know. Why are you worried?”

  “I’m not worried. It’s just that it seems absurd. Andrés saw him too.”

  “Poor Andrés.”

  “Why ‘poor’ Andrés?”

  “Because he sees ghosts.”

  “But don’t we?”

  “Yes,” said Clara. “But Abelito is alive.” A violent desire to weep came over her. If she could at least get question number four.

  The chronicler bought a newspaper, and they began walking along Bolivar to Alsina. A hot, wet drizzle was falling. “Wonderful,” said the chronicler. “Congress has approved a project for the protection of wildlife.”

  As they were reaching Paseo Colón, slipping slightly as they walked down from Alsina, Andrés abandoned Stella’s arm—she always made him serve as a tugboat—and fell behind, listening to the chronicler’s shrill voice and Juan’s angry humming, his way of holding on to Clara as if someone were going to take her away from him. He looked silly, with the package and Clara, shouting things to the chronicler, waiting for Stella to catch up to them, turning around to look at him, to get corroboration from him.

  “How tired I am,” muttered Andrés. “What a night.”

  The light from the tall streetlights outlined Clara’s ankles, her rapid walk. It would probably rain at dawn—one of those fine, hot rains that depresses you. “I don’t believe it!” shouted Juan, stopping on the corner. The light bathed Clara’s hair, half her face; and Andrés paused, looking at them. He saw the chronicler, retracing his steps, waving for them to wait for him as he ran to the opposite sidewalk. Stella and Clara were talking with Juan; they had forgotten about Andrés in the shadow. I too am a witness, he thought. You will give testimony … About what if not about myself? And even then …

  The woman stepped out of a doorway and whistled softly. She was very blond, tall, and thin, wearing a black dress that emphasized her breasts. She whistled again, standing in the shadow, staring at Andrés.

  “Excuse me for not wagging my tail like a good little dog,” said Andrés, “but I don’t like being whistled at.”

  “Come on,” said the woman. “Come home with me, handsome.”

  Andrés pointed out the group on the corner—Stella, who was looking back, and the chronicler with a package in his hand, catching up to them.

  “Ah,” said the woman, her voice falling. “You might have told me.”

  “What can I say? Are you always around here?”

  “Yes, sometimes. You can find me at
one in the Hafmoon”

  “Okay,” said Andrés, waving good-by to her. He watched her go back into the doorway, her hair darkening. Who knows?he thought. Who’s to say that the best thing wouldn’t be going off with that poor thing and getting drunk instead of …

  “A little wine of the first quality!” the chronicler was shouting. “This is the time for eutrapely, my boy. 1:00 A.M! Andiamo á fare una festicciola in the Plaza Colón, and may the cops be deaf and blind, questa sera!”

  “Andrés,” shouted Stella, watching him come along slowly, his hands lost in the deepest part of his pockets. “Lonely little mouse, come along with your cat.”

  “Kitty,” said Andrés. “You’re the angel who protects me from temptation.”

  “Ah, so it was true,” said Stella. “Clara said it looked like you were talking to …” She stopped, confused without knowing why. It was a mistake to mention Clara by name, she thought, but the thought didn’t even enunciate itself, it yielded …

  Andrés little cat

  blond nice little … wine and the festicciola … a whore voice—Clara voice, as if she were angry, but senseless … Cat from Catamarca, so I … my RIGHTS!

  now oh those skinny arms

  He never

  his heat his smell and inside

  during love and oh what delight …

  “Bah,” said Andrés, rigidly leaning forward (the way we always do when we have our hands in our pockets, the game of the dorsal hinge) and kissing her noisily on the hair. To Clara it looked, he thought, upset, happy. She saw that I was talking with that woman. Clara walked along listening to that velvet interior silence that throbs in the depths of our ears—the resistance of the body’s night to the stridencies of the street and the lights. The others surrounded her, speaking to one another within her hair, through her ears, her skin. Deep river, she thought, my soul is on the Jordan. She was overcome with absurd desires to be alone, to be in Juan’s arms, to listen to Marian Anderson, to read one of Poirot’s adventures or an article by César Bruto, to drink water with lemon, to dream beautiful dreams, the early morning dreams when you squint your eyes and see that it’s six, and delight in stretching your legs as far as they can go, cuddle against a warm, heavy back, let yourself go again into the depth