Final Exam

by Julio Cortázar

  “Silence!” (It was the voice of one of the proctors.)

  “We can’t get any work done here.”

  “Are you saying that to me?” asked Andrés.

  “I’m saying it to everyone,” said the proctor. “Jeez, how touchy everyone is. Can’t you see we’re making up the lists?”

  “To tell you the truth,” said Andrés, “there are so many lists I can barely see the two of you.”

  “Don’t say another word,” the chronicler cut him off. He pulled out his press identification and put it under the nose of the proctor who was closer to him. “See this? Just keep on being wise guys, and I’ll write a piece in the paper that will get the two of you canned.” He winked at Juan: “I’ve got lots of influence and won’t tolerate abuse.”

  “Nobody’s abusing anybody,” said the proctor. “Just lower your voices. Try to understand our responsibility, sir.”

  “You have no responsibility whatsoever,” said Juan. “You have nothing to do with us. Call the Secretary, or a professor.”

  “Hey, man, don’t make such a fuss,” said the student with the notes. “First let’s take the test, there’s plenty of time to protest later.”

  “Your name is Juárez, right?” asked Juan, standing up. “No, my name is Migueletti.”

  This bastard’s technique for getting the guy’s name, thought the chronicler.

  “Ah, you’re Migueletti. And you’re going to take the exam with us, I guess.”

  “Yes, unless the exam is suspended. I don’t think there are any professors here.”

  “So you’re so well-informed you know if there are professors here or not.”

  “Cut the crap, man,” said Migueletti. “If you don’t like things, why did you come to take the exam? Stay outside.”

  Andrés grabbed Juan’s arm and brought him over to Clara. The guy said the right thing, he thought in a cold rage. We’re always where we have no right to be. Juan was staring avidly over toward Migueletti, but Clara made him sit down and scolded him in such a low voice that the others didn’t hear a word. Some girls who’d laughed at the argument walked around the table and came over. Two of them looked like twins, the other was a redhead the chronicler liked immediately.

  “The guy’s an idiot,” said one of the twins in a low voice, “but he’s right that there aren’t any professors. Now’s the time that the exam’s supposed to begin, and there isn’t a single professor here. And what time do you have?”

  “7:40,” said the chronicler. “And you three are the kind that dazzle the examination committee, right?”

  “But of course,” said the redhead. “Everyone here is taking the same exam. There’s only one committee.”

  “If the committee shows up,” said the other twin, blowing her nose and sneaking a peek into her handkerchief. The gallery door squeaked open again, but along with the smell came an employee from the accounting office wearing an electric-blue suit. He vaguely glanced at them, and then immersed himself in a prolonged murmur with the proctors. The light in the gallery went out, came on again, oscillated, dimmed.

  “Is there an exam?” asked the redhead.

  The employee raised his hands as if he were being held up, then signaled maybe yes, maybe no, as if he were cleaning a window. He strode off at a quick pace, and they watched him enter the anteroom to the dean’s office. A light went on, but the employee didn’t go in, and closed the door.

  “I’m suffocating in here,” said Clara. “I’m going to walk in the gallery.”

  “They won’t let you,” said the redhead.

  Andrés glanced over at Juan, who was writing something in his notebook. He walked Clara to the door, which he held open so she could pass through. They walked silently in the gallery, and when Andrés tried a classroom door, he could see that it was locked.

  “It smells even worse out here,” he said. “It’s more and more unbearable, but actually we should be getting used to it. It’s odd that it’s getting increasingly annoying.”

  “It might well be that we just don’t adapt to some things, odd as it may seem.” said Clara. “May I lean on your arm?”

  As if lending her his arm was a delicate way of losing his life, he supported Clara. She was staggering.

  “You’re ice cold,” he said. “You don’t feel well?”

  “It’s nerves. All this will never end.”

  Andrés used all his strength so Clara wouldn’t notice the tremor in his hand. He recalled their walk the previous night, and that afterward, when he was no longer with her, he’d measured in the same way as delicately frustrated

  like a movement in a sonata, that appears and grows after we leave a concert and we’re in a plaza, under the trees,

  not even the memory of its sound can alter its beauty. But the arm was there, he felt it in his hand. The sound, necessary substance, flesh as a substitute for the unattainable idea.

  “Everything lasts too long,” said Clara. “It’s so hard to be in perfect harmony with things. Last night I walked too much, dreamed too much, and today I ate too much. I was at the concert too long, I got too upset in the subway when the guard shoved the dog onto the tracks, when…"

  “The guard shoved a dog onto the tracks?”

  “It was contemptible. I can still see it.”

  “Yes, those things we keep on seeing,” said Andrés. “We’re so soft. Did you know that photographic plates are made with gelatin?”

  “Today I’d rather not be myself,” said Clara. “When I think that last night I was living so happily, imagining that I was furious. Waiting for Juan at the House, making a scene because he was a half-hour late.”

  “Look over there,” said Andrés, lightly squeezing her arm. “Look.” Where the gallery turned, two individuals had appeared and were taking a portrait off the wall. One removed it from the hook and handed it to the other, who was keeping the ladder steady with his foot. They’d already taken down two other pictures and piled them in a corner.

  “Moving day,” said Clara. “What idiots.”

  “No, they aren’t moving men. Actually, they want to move others. Beginning with the most defenseless.”

  “Who are you talking about?” asked Clara, staring at him.

  “I think about us,” said Andrés. “I guess about the portraits … I was thinking once about what a beautiful piece of music would think if it were given consciousness. It isn’t impossible to imagine that, right? ”

  “It’s pretty,” said Clara. “Too bad someone’s already written about it in a magazine you must not read, called Tales of Terror.”

  “Is that true? said Andrés. “Tell me the story.”

  “It was so stupid,” smiled Clara. “The only beautiful part was the central idea: imagining a dimension (on another planet, for example) where what we call music is a form of life.”

  “Well, I’ll devote myself to writing for that magazine,” said Andrés.

  “I’ll be your assiduous reader. And what would happen if music had consciousness?”

  “Nothing. I just imagined the horror of a piece of beautiful music that feels itself lived through an unworthy voice, or whistled by some mediocrity. Mozart, for instance, played by that Migueletti. I thought it when I realized …

  For a long time now I’ve realized it, but today,

  when I was thinking about how values, those portraits if you like,

  are defenseless in the hands of people who pile them up in a corner, of people who don’t even destroy them, who simply set them aside.”

  “But people don’t let themselves be set aside, unless they’re set-asideable,” said Clara, amusing herself by hissing all the s’s. “That’s the horrible part. You feel cornered, even if you don’t know by whom or against what. Now think about the people who no longer hang from their hook, who still go on posing as portraits without realizing they’ve been tossed into a corner.”

  “Like someone who puts on a mask and a disguise in the middle of the night and just sits there alone in the
dark.”

  “I don’t know,” said Clara. “All I can tell you is that I feel as if I’m being chased. And don’t think it’s only because of Abel. It’s something else. Ever since last night, when I noticed that my shoes were sinking into the mud—it’s so hard to explain, Andrés. Much worse than either taking or not taking the exam.”

  “At least you two have an exam,” said Andrés releasing her arm and walking up ahead, toward the open galleries.

  “Sure, but what happens after that?” Clara’s voice reached him.

  “After you’ll have to discover for yourself,” he said, turning around and facing her, hostile. Clara looked at him, prolonging the question. There was moisture on the floor and she slipped, but Andrés held her up. Now he was holding her with both hands, holding her still, opposite him. Clara had a shine of moisture on the skin of her cheeks, her nose. She was looking at him, expecting more. What can I give you that you don’t already have?thought Andrés. If at least you could save yourself, you and Juan … He saw, thought he saw, horribly, Clara’s skull under her face and hair, as if a black wind were coming out of her and striking him in the mouth.

  “You’re so sad,” said Clara. “So silly, my poor Andrés.”

  The skull was speaking. Her future death lived under the smoke, the stink of the city. Closing his eyes, canceling the image, Andrés measured how much further he had to go. Without knowing why, he took off his glasses and held them up in the air. Nothing was formulated. He only saw (with a gaze that doesn’t define images exactly, the gaze that had contemplated Clara’s skull) a decision, a step,

  a blurred gesture towards completion.

  “I’m both things,” he said, putting his glasses back on. “Sad and silly. Silly because sad, but not vice versa. I’m silly because I have a particularly useless sort of lucidity. And above all, believe me, because I lack what Juan has a surplus of—enthusiasm.”

  “Sometimes,” she said, leaning her face toward his, “he seems like such a boy next to you.”

  “Handsome compliment,” said Andrés, lightly touching her hair with his fingers.

  “You deserve it,” said Clara.

  “No, I mean, to Juan.”

  “Ah.”

  “But you and I are very similar. Now you’re on the verge of your exam. Tomorrow you’ll have finished it. We’ll meet again in cafés or concerts, and out of all this will remain …

  (But it’s a lie, he thought. I’m lying like …)

  one encounter among so many others.”

  “You know very well it isn’t like that,” said Clara. “Why do you need to use those words with me?”

  “Exaggeration makes me uncomfortable,” said Andrés. “We fall into the idiotic habit of problematizing everything. Not only our moods, but also the things around us: a day like today, or a bothersome presence—Abel if you like. Don’t fall into that, Clara, you who are above all that sloppiness.”

  “You’re almost advising me to keep my eyes shut,” said Clara. “That’s old advice in this country.”

  “What I’m asking you to do is to not give up,” said Andrés. “What I’m asking is that you always stay on the good verge of the exam.”

  They went back, taking note as they passed that the workers had finished piling up the portraits. From the basement, through the elevator shaft, arose a confused noise. A black shape rapidly crossed the tile floor and dashed down the stairs before they had time to see

  —it looked like a rat—

  although, going down the staircase at that speed, it was probably a young cat;

  but that way of slipping along so close to the tiles,

  perhaps it was confused because the lights were blinking, fading; and fading again. A whitish glow entered from the corridor leading to the exterior galleries; but before they could recognize any shapes, a dim light, barely a light, came on.

  “It was a rat,” said Clara with infinite disgust.

  “It may have been,” said Andrés. “We can go back if you like.”

  “No, I don’t want to. All those people annoy me. I don’t know, I hoped I’d get to talk with you; but we really haven’t said anything.”

  “There’s so little to say, when you get right down to it.”

  “You’re right. It always seems as if words and time were out of synch,

  excuse me for being clever;

  as if what I should be saying to you were inopportune, or will be one day, when you and I are gone and nothing can be said.”

  “Sounds pretty,” said Andrés without irony. “What’s happening—among other things—is that the discredit language has fallen into strips us of meaning more and more. What can you say, anyway, in front of a Picasso? We’ve gotten so close to the sources that what people say about them is useless. And also if something’s said that moves us, we no longer believe it.”

  “But unfortunately,” said Clara, “we haven’t learned how to disregard things. If at least we knew how to look at each other, see each other …”

  “There was a time,” said Andrés. “But we didn’t know it then. We weren’t able to know what destiny expected of us, that is, what we expected of ourselves. Now: now, it’s so easy to correct mistakes on paper, but time’s already read the original. Talk about being clever, how about that metaphor?”

  “It’s bad,” said Clara. “But so correct, if I’m understanding it. Look, this thing with Abel is a bit like that too. What’s he looking for now? Think what he could have found right when he wasn’t looking for it.”

  “You mean you?” said Andrés.

  “I don’t know, really. I suppose so, but it’s like in a nightmare. There’s no reason for it, Andrés: no reason,

  now.”

  “It isn’t reason that’s moving him,” said Andrés.

  “Look,” said Clara, and she handed him the letter. They had to stand under one of the lights because it was getting darker and darker. As if their sense of hearing became sharper in compensation, they heard a peal of laughter from the depths of the gallery and a noise of wrinkled papers. (Wasn’t the door open? Yes, it was wide open, they could see the chronicler’s back and the proctors’ table.) Clara confusedly associated the smell

  —it smelled like wet cotton—

  with the forms in the room—the jackets, the heads, and white shirts against the woodwork and the walls. Without looking, she took the letter Andrés handed back to her and put in her pocket.

  “I suppose,” said Andrés, “that Juan is carrying a pistol.” “

  No,” said Clara. “He thinks it’s a threat made by a lunatic.”

  “For that very reason then. Well, I’m glad I put mine in my pocket. It occurred to me I have no idea why.

  (lie)

  Maybe the idea of believing that when things aren’t going well …”

  “It seems absurd to me!” said Clara. “All I can imagine in your pockets are books and cigarettes.”

  “You’ll see,” he said. “You’ll see if it’s absurd.”

  Weapons, thought Clara. The way he and I live, how strange, the value of certain gestures—a going back to the basic supports. From a revolver to holy water, there’s so little ...

  “You should try exorcism, or something more effective,” she said. “Abel isn’t in your path, and even if he were, what could you really do about it?”

  “I’m not carrying the pistol because of Abel,” said Andrés. “But I can always pass it to Juan if the need arises. But, you know, you’re right. I couldn’t do anything to defend you.”

  “No one could,” said Clara. “At least not with a gun.”

  “You’re right not to believe you can defend yourself,” said Andrés. “But don’t forget about the attacks.”

  “Bah,” said Clara sweetly. “All this …” She pointed to the piled-up portraits, the fog, the tiles along which the black shape had run. “I don’t think I could forget all this. Everything is against us, Andrés.”

  Juan was waving to them, and they heard a whistle
(it was the chronicler). Staring at the floor, Clara began walking along the gallery.

  “It’s useless and wouldn’t do you any good,” she murmured in a voice that seemed of other times to Andrés, the voice she used when she never spoke to him that way. “But I want you to know how sorry I am.”

  “Clara,” said Andrés.

  “You know very well how much I love him. I’m not sorry I ended up with him. What pains me in fact is that you and he aren’t one man or that I can’t be two women.”

  “Please,” said Andrés. “Everything’s fine as it is. Don’t say another word.”

  “No, things aren’t fine as they are,” said Clara. “Not fine at all. They just are, as they always are.”

  “Don’t be sorry,” said Andrés.

  “It isn’t that, not precisely that. What pains me actually is being sure I’ve done the right thing; and just when I have that feeling, suddenly

  the disgust of doing ‘the right thing,’ knowing that there isn’t a right thing when more than two are involved.”

  “Just don’t be sorry,” repeated Andrés. “Above all else, don’t be sorry.”

  “Well, at least let me be sorry for myself,” said Clara.

  “I can’t stop you. That you feel this way is more than I could want when …”

  “Now at least you know how I feel,” said Clara. “I never said anything more truthful than that.”

  They were next to the door, which was engulfed in shouting and the vision of clothing and movement.

  “I want to thank you,” said Andrés. “But don’t give in to goodness. Look, to be sorry when you’ve done nothing bad;

  that horrible weakness—like condemning yourself, you know

  losing the right to choose your suit and the tune you whistle each morning, and your book to read;

  no, never that. Our eyes are in the front of our head, sweetheart. It isn’t your fault if I’m, if only slightly, your shadow, your echo.

  If the ship can’t sail without cleaving the water look how pretty …”

  “You’re good,” said Clara, and she smiled at him.

  “And one more thing,” said Andrés. “I think it really was a rat.”