Final Exam

by Julio Cortázar

  “It’s to the point: Reasons for anger.”

  “Poor us,” said Clara, as if she were asleep. “The distance we’ve yet to travel today, and how tired we are.”

  “Traveling doesn’t make you tired. If we could only learn to disassociate those two things.”

  In a very low voice (and Mr. Funes was fuming now), he added: “I need a poetry of denunciation, see? Not social-consciousness idiocy, not a correspondence course. What do the facts matter to me? What I denounce is antecedent to the fact— the thing that you and I and the rest are. Do you think poetry is possible, Clara—in this material, which is so corroded and angry?”

  “Listen to the news, Bebe, and during an intermission I’ll call you from the concert hall.”

  “Yes, Dad.”

  “I don’t know,” said Clara. “It’s so strange that poetry not be the daughter of light.”

  “But it is possible, dear,” murmured Juan. “Poetry ascends to its true homeland. It knows the regions where song is not possible and joins the battle to free itself.”

  “Above all else, pay attention to any detail.

  There’s nothing worse than panic.”

  “But of course, Dad.”

  “I don’t know,” whispered Juan, lost. “I wish I could cry a whole night through and wake up afterwards to my truth. I feel as if I’m constantly walking around houses, sleeping on the streets.”

  “I’m a little piece of truth,” said Clara. “How dumb that sounds, right? God, soap operas have eliminated tenderness.”

  “My keys!”

  “Irma, Mr. Funes’ keys.”

  “Forward march,” whispered Juan, getting up. “Come on, old girl. How do you feel?”

  “Horrid. But I’ll do fine on the exam, I think I’m going to have phosphorescence.”

  “Hegel, friend of Copernicus, right?”

  “Go ahead, laugh at me. Laugh.”

  But Juan didn’t laugh. But now is the thing, he thought. The street, the hours left. How stupid of Abel to threaten her that way. The idiot. Anonymous letter, written in that dumb handwriting we’ve known all our lives. He almost felt sorry for Abelito; but no matter what, he would have to do something, to put a halt to that advance of Abel’s toward them. First the face:

  SO WHITE

  under blue hat

  and then his handwriting, the first direct action. Ignoring him was no longer enough. We’ll take the test, thought Juan, shaking himself as if he were a wet dog, and then I’ll go find him. Like all planning, this made him happy, ordered his thoughts. How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, twenty pesos. Write or call.

  As césar bruto puts it so well: what with all this demolition, Buenos Aires ain’t what she used to be. Non sum qualis eram bonae sub regno Cynarae.

  And thus it was that Mr. Funes (noting that the taxi was bringing them along 9 de Julio Avenue, over the strip that was Cerrito) froze as he contemplated the rear façade of Teatro Colón, where the authorities had just set up a canopy pour faire pendant.

  “But just in front here was a café,” he said.

  “There was,” agreed Clara.

  “A café where musicians would get together.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Extraordinary,” said Mr. Funes. “How everything’s changed in such a short time.”

  He looked all the way down the avenue, the confused traffic, the vague perspective between banks of fog. The taxi skidded as it turned up Tucuman, and Clara was overcome with something like nausea at that instant.

  “Dying must be like that,” she said to Juan. “Like a change of movement. In reality, the movement of the car is the same, but in the skid it’s different: something soft, unreal, as if it weren’t touching the

  “It touches it, but the wheels aren’t moving,” said Juan.

  “Exactly. The person who dies is like the wheel: still, but entering into the new movement of its quietude. Daddy, it’s 5.70.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Juan getting out the money. “It’s all taken care of, Don Carlos.”

  “I’m sad they knocked down the café,” said Mr. Funes. “And how strange Teatro Colón looks with that part exposed, and …”

  Obscene, thought Juan. That’s right, certain naked façades, and suddenly it’s pornography. He wondered if that guy on the stairs might not be

  but of course it was …

  “In fact, I’m here because of a professional obligation,” said the chronicler, slightly embarrassed.

  “Great!”

  “No, really. We’ve got so much work that … and he said hello to Mr. Funes, whom he’d never met, while he winked at Clara. “Man, it’s exciting to have a box. Now I know Colón the way I know my way around beef—every part but the sirloin. Good joke, huh?”

  “Rancher-style,” said Clara, looking around at the people in the foyer, the white faces, the gray faces, the devilish facets, façades, falsies; she saw decolletés, handbags (quickly evaluated because she adored pretty handbags), lights, and a lame gentleman who went up the stairs oh so slowly— with a soft unreality thanks to the silence of the carpeting; she listened to the chattering of already-organized groups, boxes prefabricated, going up to slip into their containers; then, for the first time, with violence, with terror, the exam.

  She seized Juan’s arm, foolishly squeezing close to him. She could hear the chronicler explaining to her father that the paper had already published two special editions and that another would be out at 4:00 P.M.

  “The paper wants to get a sense of the mood of different sectors of society,”

  (it was extremely amusing to hear the chronicler plagiarizing newspaper jargon)

  “and because of my cultural background, it has assigned me the task of looking in at this concert.”

  “In that case you should be sitting in the paradise of the last row in the balcony, where the commonfolk sit.”

  “You know very well that news flash about paradise here on earth is made up. Good one, huh?”

  “Your paper and your opinion polls seem pretty stupid to me,” said Juan.

  “Well, what do you want? It isn’t enough for people that things actually happen—they’re only true if they read about them in the late editions.”

  “Do you think there’s a big panic?” asked Mr. Funes, who did think so.

  “Well now, Mr. Funes, panic is a pretty big word. What there is is apprehension, and no one believes anything except lies, with the result that the government’s communiques are a huge and prodigious success.”

  “The yellow press meets the yellow nineties,” said Juan, mocking himself. “Uh oh, time to sit down.”

  The box was at balcony height, on the right. In the packed orchestra seats, there was anxious chatter, as if all news had to be shared before the lights went out. Sitting next to Juan, in front, Clara heard her father impatiently interrogate the chronicler, who seemed in no way disposed to discuss either his work or any information to which he might be privy.

  “We’ve got to be discreet,” he was saying. “We won’t get anywhere tossing out theories that scientific analysis will disprove.”

  “Scientific analysis?” asked Mr. Funes.

  “Yes, of course. The paper is conducting an analysis of the fog. We still don’t have the results.”

  “An analysis of the fog!”

  “An analysis of the fog, exactly.”

  Juan caressed Clara’s hair, noticing how pretty she was.

  “Want me to let you see the jewel of great nights?”

  “Yes,” she said, as if suddenly remembering. “Yes, hurry up, before the lights go out.”

  Juan took off his glasses and carefully held them up close to his chest. Leaning over, Clara looked at the reflection in the lenses: the chandelier was reduced to a double gold coin, glowing like yellow eyes inlaid with ivory—tiny points of light.

  “Balzac’s eyes,” said Juan. “Remember? Gold dust? I forget who said it.”

  “And the eyes of that character in Felis
berto Hernández,” said Clara, “I think he’s an usher in a movie theater and light comes from his eyes.”

  “A dreadful trade, dear. Look, look, the lights are going out.”

  The eyes faded without closing, and instead of light, there arose the vaulted shape of the concert hall, a pink disk where the pupils, opaque now but still present, seemed to see their own contemplation, like the eyes of enraptured bodhisattvas. Juan enjoyed the parallel fading of the lights and the whispers. It’s the voices that are going out, he thought, and it’s valid to say the lights fall silent. But there’s fear in this hall. People in the higher seats were coughing—dry, crackling, annoying coughs. Soon they’ll be suffocating from the heat, even now it’s disagreeable. As long as the fog doesn’t get in …

  “What are they playing?” asked the chronicler. “I hope it’s something by Borodin.”

  “Well that’s progress, considering we caught you with Eric Coates last night,” said Juan. “Look, there he is—wise and old, like Homer; and like Homer in need of a cane and a boy to lead him.”

  “A unique case of artistic devotion,” said Mr. Funes.

  The blind man was ushered in between two employees in livery and wigs. The virtuoso grasped his violin and moved forward taking small steps, which on the stage looked like tiny dance steps. The corpulent accompanist followed and went straight to the piano where he began to arrange the music, while the soloist remained in the perfect place to greet the audience with a grave bow (perhaps there was a chalk mark on the floor so the ushers wouldn’t miss it). Then he shook his head as if making sure the ushers had left him alone.

  “Man, how disappointing,” said the chronicler between two rounds of applause. “I thought he was a pianist.”

  “You too?” said an angry Juan.

  “The violin is a noble instrument,” said Mr. Funes.

  He talks like Andrés’ girlfriend, thought the chronicler. Now he’s going to say it’s the instrument that most resembles the human voice. From the box next to theirs came a whisper: “… censorship. But censorship isn’t going to fix anything.” Someone went on applauding stubbornly. People in the orchestra hushed him up. There was a great silence, and the violin rose to the virtuoso’s chin. There were rubbing noises, like those of some insect, as he tuned the violin, leaning a bit toward the pianist. The great cricket of wood, thought Juan. The hard, implacable bug, the key of songs. He felt for Clara’s hand, and their moist palms touched. A small, localized anguish that didn’t pass beyond their wrists.

  The pianist had stood up—imperturbable, immobility—and was now demanding absolute silence. “The master,” he said in a strong Balkan accent, “must rest between movements of the Kreutzer Sonata

  because of the delicate state of his health …”

  The audience applauded loudly, making it impossible to hear the end.

  “But why the hell did they applaud?” asked the chronicler, whispering into Juan’s ear.

  “They were born for that,” said Juan. “Some people do things and others applaud. That’s what’s called musical culture.”

  “Stop being a light-weight Zoilus,” said Clara. “Enough raging against everyone else.”

  “Silence,” ordered Mr. Funes, whose emotional state was visible. He vigorously blew his nose, drowning out the beginning of the sonata for those around him. Clara had her eyes closed; Juan wanted to tell her he was a light-weight Giorgione, but the music stopped him. He wanted to think, to entrench himself in his rapid rage at this hysterical applause which recalled the reaction of audiences to Primo Camera; but instead, he abandoned himself to the rhythms, to the slightly dry and, as it were, schoolboyish sound of the blind man. Squinting, the thin figure of the artist shrank to a silhouette drawn in ink—a puppet that moved in abrupt starts, whose white hair is shaken by a sudden wind. He had something of the sacrificial victim to him, of the stations of the cross. Out of his hands came all the sins of the world; the melody was malignant, uselessly beautiful. And this was born, like all voices that matter, from a world of darkness, falling into a falsely dark hall, full of murmurs and furtive reflections—exit lights, sunflowers of jewels. The cricket chirped, and the entire theater depended falsely (its attention loaded with idleness, affection, escapism) on the almost ridiculous language—its angry dialogue with the yawning mouth of the piano, the back-and-forth shift of voices; its encounters, its flights; the material—irritated, incongruous, but forged together by force by the blacksmith from Bonn. A blind man playing a deaf man, thought Juan. I can’t wait for someone to lecture me about allegories after this. The applause fell like a rain of sand, and the lights came on suddenly, almost with the last stroke of the bow.

  “But this is absurd,” said Clara. “I understand he’s very old, but taking a break between every movement destroys all the unity.”

  “They probably sit him down in his corner and fan his face with a towel,” said the chronicler, watching the employees with wigs lead the virtuoso away. The accompanyist stayed on stage, and since people went on applauding, he began waving, sometimes from the piano, sometimes standing and moving to the proscenium.

  “Grabbing all that applause, it’s as if he were taking the Lord’s name,” said Juan, watching a redhead in the orchestra put on lipstick.

  “You’re bored,” said Clara.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, you’d be just as bored at home.”

  “Maybe more so. The most humiliating form of tedium is the kind that grabs you when you’re in your pajamas. Then there’s no salvation. Chronicler, how about a cigarette?”

  They all took a stroll, observing the women in that comfortable mode of intermissions. The groups in the foyer and in the mirrored salon had a more deliberate air to them. People were not talking about the concert.

  “Practice your observations,” suggested Juan. “I can help you. How about, I tell that lady over there that the Torre de los Ingleses just collapsed? You go up to the last balcony and time how long it takes the news to get there.”

  “Yeah, yeah, but listen to this dilemma,” the chronicler was saying as he looked over at some teenage girls. “When I leave here, I have to go to a poor neighborhood; I don’t know if I should choose La Boca or Mataderos, which are both excellent ears of Dionysus. The bad thing is I’m still tired from last night, and the list of chores waiting for me …”

  “Why do you keep on working at the paper?”

  “Because I can’t find a better job.”

  “Anything’s better than the paper.”

  “Don’t you believe it,” said the chronicler staring at the floor. “Sometimes you get to go to concerts, or you’re one of the few who get to see a widow’s cadaver. Are people panicking here?”

  “No,” said Juan, looking at the various groups, discovering himself, thin and unkempt, in a mirror. “These people are Romans watching the barbarians enter, but the difference is no one’s entering here. Science has cured us of many real fears by showing us that the worst deaths are the kind you can’t prevent. You can imagine a man of our times trembling because of a metaphysical fear in the presence of a bouquet: beauty, first level of the terrible;

  and no sooner is he concerned when a flying fortress drops a bomb on his head.”

  “How retro,” said the chronicler. “Bombs, flying fortresses. Bah.”

  “At least you give me the bouquet,” said Juan.

  By the time they got back to the box, the virtuoso had appeared, just before the lights when down suddenly, and alone; the lento began. Juan had bought mints for Clara, who was docilely tending to her father but she was beginning to concentrate more and more on the hands of her wrist watch.

  “When will we go?”

  “We’ll leave straight from here,” said Juan. “We’ll have café con leche in the bar on Viamonte.”

  “It will begin late, as usual.”

  “Sure, but it doesn’t matter.”

  “We can chat with Andrés,” said Clara. “He told me he was going to c
ome.”

  The beam from a flashlight ran along the floor of the box. Juan felt someone hand him a paper. The usher left, and they heard him trip as he entered the box next door. Someone hissed. Clara put her mourn against the felt covering the ledge and sniffed it; the music was cutting, but at the same time there was something silly to it, something tired, something of the conservatory text book. The fertile plain of the Nile supplied the Egyptians with huge crops of wheat, and the periods of flooding and low water of the wide river …

  and the program they had was for the following Thursday: 3 concerts for piano and orchestra, seats at eighteen pesos

  “… straight home,” someone said in the box next door. The movement was ending, and when the first applause began to sizzle up like meat in a skillet, the blind man raised his bow menacingly and launched into the allegro. The pianist seemed rather put out; but now the two were playing very well.

  In the hall was created that fluid which later disappears to be replaced by the word “success.” Almost no one coughed. When the sonata came to an end, many people in the orchestra were on their feet, and from the upper balconies there came a strident roar, as if from a moth or a grater. Mr. Funes applauded for the four of them, even Clara was moved. And the virtuoso’s blindness suddenly seemed to her like an immediate quality, as if it were her blindness, a hint of the sonorous world where the blind man moved around in small jumps, with his cricket, his tiny, varnished coffin, his pretty, singing mummy, telling the future. Now the artist had finished waving to the audience, and the two employees wearing wigs were at his side; he was leaving, but stopping every few feet, turning his chest toward the hall, toward the piano, making vague gestures of happiness, suddenly rejecting the employees’ helping hands. A gentleman wearing evening clothes appeared at the left, gave some instructions to the employees, and they firmly took hold of the artist and carried him along. The gentleman brought up the rear along with the pianist, who had put away the music in a glistening briefcase and was walking along without looking at anyone.

  “Let’s have a smoke,” Juan said to Clara, who still had her nose stuck in the felt.