Final Exam

by Julio Cortázar

  The proctors folded up the lists and went to the dean’s office carrying them as if …

  but everyone knew perfectly well that the dean’s office was empty.

  “Amazing how culture proliferates,” said the chronicler as he made room on the bench so one of the twins could rest. “Now there are more than thirty of us.”

  “And what a spuzza,” said the redhead. (The lights went out.

  The lights went on.)

  “A quarter to nine,” announced Juan, as if that fact were very important. Whereupon he went back to his notebook.

  “The divine rhythm dominates him,” said the chronicler. “Oh, Andrés, I really must be getting down to the paper. I don’t think it will be too difficult to get there with …”

  They heard a series of low-sounding explosions off in the west, as if muffled in cotton; odd that the noise should reach them as if through the earth, the same way that the rat shortly before …

  “Since you’re already here, stay and keep me company while these guys take their famous exam,” said Andrés.

  “The exam will be postponed,” said the chronicler. “Notice how no one’s studying? Wait: there you have young Migueletti—phagocytizing mimeographed copies,

  mickey-mouse-o’graphed!

  (In the dark. The redhead

  smelled of pine soap, of matches.)

  “Fiat lux—even if it’s weak as a dressing table lamp,” the chronicler said to her, sniffing her neck. “Comrade, you have the most fragrant skin. As long as the breeze keeps bringing us these mephitic vapors, don’t budge from my side.”

  “Mephi-who?” asked the redhead, hesitantly.

  “Je m’en foutism,” said Andrés. “That’s what the breeze bears. But Clara usually carries cologne in that classy little bag of hers.”

  “Go ahead, use some,” said Clara, digging out the bottle. Yes, it was a rat, she thought. Dragging itself down; now it’s probably in the basement, and there are people down there, I heard them …

  The proctors were gathered together, not being able to leave the office of the dean—

  but everyone knew there was no one in the dean’s office.

  Only the twins went to the gallery to review their notes, looking for a place where there was some light.

  “Nice cologne,” the chronicler said as he doused his hair. “Genuine Arabian myrrh.”

  The light came back on little by little. Juan put his notebook in his jacket pocket and pointed to the doors of the dean’s office.

  “There he goes,” he said. “He’s taking off.”

  The proctors came out, and between them walked a short, dark individual—his hands behind his back, he was twiddling his thumbs—as if seeking protection between the proctors,

  who made their way shouting, “Excuse us, please!” in bombastic tones—with young Migueletti greeting the professor and the professor not greeting young Migueletti—

  until the three of them reached the gallery and slammed the door behind them.

  “That little sycophant must be in charge of the preliminaries for convening the committee,” said Juan. “It won’t be long now.”

  “Waiting really is death,” said Stella, pulling some dust out of her mouth. “I think I fell asleep. What a hard bench.”

  “Poor thing,” said Andrés, caressing her. “You really shouldn’t have come.”

  “Why not? If you were going, so was I.”

  He looked at her smiling, without saying a word. The door creaked, and the proctors reappeared. They glanced furtively at Juan’s group and began to fill in some receipts. To do this, they consulted different notebooks with oilcloth covers, along with the telephone book and a book with a blue binding and golden shield emblazoned on its cover. One of the employees who had taken down the pictures in the gallery came in to tell them something; the fatter proctor made a gesture saying that he knew nothing, suggesting, with a round flutter of his hand, all the students.

  “Here comes the prof again,” said the chronicler. “What a curious way he has of slithering along—this …

  what did you call him, Juan? Right, this little sycophant. But the guy’s green.”

  “He’s Nile green,” said Clara. “He’s seen a ghost.”

  The rat, she thought. He ran into the rat! They watched him pass by the group of students (some were playing cards in a corner, using a portfolio as a table) and enter the dean’s rooms. It was dark inside, and the professor retreated, shouting to the proctors to turn on the lights. The fatter one didn’t even look up, but the other went to the door gesturing angrily. He went in, followed by the professor.

  “Nothing doing, his voltage isn’t working,” said Juan. He took off his jacket, slipping it between two bars on the staircase, and rolled up his sleeves. Other students imitated him; and the chronicler pointed out to the redhead that she would be much more comfortable if she took off her blouse, warning her, should she decide not to, about the dangers of spontaneous combustion. Then he spoke to her about psychic hybrids, immediately arousing her interest. No one saw the professor leave the dean’s rooms, but suddenly he was standing next to the proctors’ table, escorted by the less fat proctor, who was carrying piles of rolls of paperboard. He’d put them in a wastebasket made of woven wire so they wouldn’t fall.

  “It looks like a bouquet of calla lilies,” said Andrés to Clara. “Just look at that brilliant simplification of forms. Observe how bureaucracy imitates art.”

  “Extremely successful—great intonation, and very elegant plastic play,” said Clara looking at Andrés with

  yes, it was gratitude, a desire to extend affection to him to be near him—but so far away in her fatigue, her eyes drooping, overwhelmed.

  “Don’t use that vocabulary,” Juan said. “Unless you’re speaking for The Voice of the Proctor, which is what they should call the magazine of this University. So what’s going on?” he shouted standing on top of the bench.

  The proctors (enraged) took note of Juan, but the professor went on giving instructions in a low voice, staring fearfully toward the gallery, where the light had just definitively gone out. One of the twins was sitting on the floor not looking well at the chronicler’s feet, and the other asked Clara for her cologne. This one’s going to faint, thought the chronicler. Unless she starts vomiting. In a low voice, he said something to Andrés, who began to push the nearest students, who in turn started pushing the ones on the periphery—

  if in fact it was possible to talk about a periphery in this mass, where the surface of the table stood out like a pit, a blemish in the general configuration of …

  they pushed so the ill student could get a bit more air.

  “No, she isn’t going to vomit,” said Andrés to the chronicler. “That bothers you a lot?”

  “Man, one thing I can’t stand is when people vomit.”

  “I suppose,” said Andrés, “that’s because it’s a reversion. Vomit is associated with Satan’s sin, or the Battle of the Titans. The mythology of rebellion is vomiting on a cosmic scale. When we vomit what we’ve eaten, we’re carrying out an organic act that obscurely coincides with our most secret human ambition—which is to tell nature to go to hell and take her T-bone steak and salad with her.”

  “You’re really something,” said the chronicler.

  “I’m going to let you in on a big secret,” said Andrés. “The sin wasn’t that Eve ate the apple; the sin was that she vomited it.”

  “Get down off that bench!” the fatter proctor shouted to Juan.

  “I don’t feel like it,” said Juan. “Andrés, get a load of these characters.”

  “And you listen to what’s going on in the street,” said the chronicler, raising his voice because all the students were excited and moving around, swarming all over; and it was hard to hear in the cottony air

  although what the chronicler was referring to was an ambulance or fire-truck siren, followed by strident whistles from the dock area.

  “This is bad,” said Juan. “T
he huns are at the gate, and, of course, the lights have to go out. Blackout!”

  No one moved, but in the darkness, the heat was thicker, and everyone noticed, pointing out that whatever was floating in the air smelled more intensely. The twin on the floor whimpered weakly. In the shadow, her head weighed enormously on Clara’s hand, as Clara knelt beside her, holding out a handkerchief doused with cologne. The rumors spread in shouts—half jokingly, but louder and louder. A slap, a groan—

  you son of a bitch, asshole.

  Hey, I didn’t step on your foot, it was someone else. A match laughter filled with tickling of the redhead as the chronicler slipped his hand in her blouse and kissed the back of her neck, hugging her close and feeling the breath of hot scent in her hair, her skin …

  Matches.

  The pilgrims of Emmaus.

  “Dracula! Stop screwing around, there are ladies present.”

  The twin on the floor was crying. Andrés was afraid that she’d be trampled in the confusion so he stood in front of her with his arms stretched forward. Juan’s laughter came from above, and when someone lit a match, he could be seen halfway up the staircase, his hair a mess and his shirt wide open. The lights in the dean’s office suddenly came on; in the distance someone was knocking at a door, three, four times. The light reflected weakly on the nearest group, allowing a glimpse of the proctors’ table, and the rolls of paperboard in the wastebasket. The telephone in the dean’s office rang, and the fatter proctor made his way through shouts and curses. When the ringing stopped, there was a huge silence; but it was broken simultaneously by the crying of the twin on the floor, and a burst of laughter from Juan on the stairs. The proctor’s voice was faint but audible:

  Yes, sir.

  Hello. Yes, sir.

  No, sir.

  I think so.

  Sir, it seems to me …

  Hello?

  It’s a supposition sir.

  Then,

  whatever you say, sir.

  Yes, sir.

  “The Voice of the Proctor!" shouted Juan imitating a bird. An orange ray of light appeared somewhere from high above—it grew, and then stopped, oscillating.

  The light.

  “I feel better,” said the twin. “The cologne was good for me, thank-you.”

  The light

  Right away, sir.

  the light in the fog (it wasn’t smoke) the vapor surrounds the

  bodies, but thick. “It is smoke,” said the chronicler, staring at the redhead, who was straightening herself up and laughing. “The ceiling is full of smoke.”

  The card players dealt out another hand—three slaps in succession and the challenging shouts of one of them were heard and the purring of a contented cat which came from the twin on the floor now getting up, leaning on her sister and on Clara. No one expected the proctor to return from the office so quickly

  not even the other proctor, who was looking at the lights and scratching his head.

  “The human sea,” Juan was saying from the balustrade. “Andrés, the hair on your occiput is thin. Chronicler, you’ve got dandruff. But Clara, oh how beautiful you look, how I idolize you.”

  “Enough,” said Clara. “Come down here and be still.”

  “I incuadore you!” shouted Juan at the top of his lungs. “I pyramate you! I florimund you, I reconsider you!”

  “Incredible,” said one of the twins. “It’s 9:30. Coca, go call Mom.”

  “Where? With the policeman at the door and then the street, I …”

  “Okay, I’ll go.”

  “No. We’ll go together.”

  With dialogue like that, people write notable books, thought the chronicler, looking at Juan, who was coming down but stopping on each step to study the scene, with the air of someone who pretends that he’s not being seen. And the proctor who’d returned was whispering things nervously into the ear of the other. Few people were distressed when a thin girl with large squirrel eyes suddenly fainted next to the table, her hand hitting the lists and dragging them down as she fell. To get over there—that two feet of rage and sweat—was a useless task; Clara sat down on the bench next to Andrés, who seemed asleep.

  “We’re all sleepy,” said Clara. “That is …”

  “And the smoke. Look at the floor, that piece of floor under the table,” said Stella.

  “I can’t see it. It’s impossible to see it.”

  Stella smiled, happy. Chance had opened a space for her between trousers and skirts. She could clearly see that area of floor under the table. Really, she saw it quite well.

  “Look, they’re carrying her to the dean’s office,” Juan informed them. “Not a good idea. In a place like that, she might pass from a faint to a heart attack. Well, Clarita, I think this thing is coming to an end. Take a good look—”

  and he pointed to the table with a trembling finger that several people followed with their eyes, even Andrés, who was opening them, waking from his vertiginous stroll. Nearness, he thought, so longed for. He looked at Clara’s profile, her slim shoulder. Now the necessity to invent distance, how nauseating …

  “This is incredible!”

  “They’re insulting us.”

  It all follows, thought Andrés, almost surprised. That hand was in mine, with a gesture that’s been repeated since …

  “They’re crazy, this is a mess!”

  “What’s it to you? Join in, there’s room for everybody!”

  … that tub of pure water. It’s odd that in reverse of triumph is the beauty we love. This is so beautiful. To die this way—all finished. To seek death because you have nothing seems so strange. … That dead man had something. At least he collapsed in action, without desiring it …

  The chronicler was laughing so hard. Andrés looked at him, and even Juan stopped pointing at the table to observe him. He’s crazy, he thought. He lives in the morning. And the chronicler was laughing at all the chaos around the table, and the redhead with her arms stretched out, waving her hands to grab one of the rolls distributed by the proctors.

  “Get out of my way, this can’t be!”

  The student Migueletti already had his; now the redhead got her roll and started unrolling it, holding it up high.

  It’s better to be here, thought Andrés. Who knows how we’ll finish off the night. Going back means taking refuge in our holes, you know. Although maybe new spaces await us out there … The explosion of Juan’s laughter made him stop. New spaces. Here was a new space, a new time: 9:30.

  (Didn’t one of the twins say it?

  but the poor things weren’t around anymore they’d be left without diplomas.)

  “Take a good look, a good look,” Juan was crying with laughter on the stairs. “Chronicler, chronicler, you’ve got to write about this! This is finally perfection, the Seventh day!”

  But the chronicler was holding the redhead’s roll and suggesting dinner at The Hunter’s Horn.

  Clara stared at the proctor,

  because there were spaces now, the students were leaving, but when the proctor handed her her roll, she had turned around and found herself face-to-face with Juan. He was looking right at her

  having jumped down to the floor,

  and at Andrés, who smiled at him, thinking Poor kids, they’re taking it rather badly; because Clara’s eyes were filled with tears, she was crying now, her eyes wide open, and staring at Juan, at Andrés, at the foot of the stairs; her back was to the proctor handing her her diploma

  the space for the student’s name blank

  below so pretty, in India ink;

  and the emphatic seals:

  with the air of a final chord of the symphony contained in all good diplomas.

  UNIVERSITY OF BUENOS AIRES

  IN REGARD:

  And now pay ten pesos to a teacher who has good English penmanship.

  IN REGARD: (I’ll grab one, thought the chronicler, doubling over with laughter. I’ll hang it in the office, I’ll bring it to the paper …)

  Jua
n hugged Clara close. Over his wife’s shoulder, he looked at the proctors as they finished their task, hurrying because the lights were dimming again. A delicate creaking was heard, a breakable substance separating bit by bit from another substance. One of the lower sheets of veneer on the table was coming unstuck; genuine cedar veneer protection against … This humidity was greater than that foreseen when … An extremely fine creak, like a dialogue of dry, agile insects arguing in some point in space. Juan couldn’t see clearly (and it irritated him not to see, he ran the back of his hand over his eyes like a little boy); but he could hear very well a diminutive debate in the coming apart of the table.

  They accepted (and Clara went on crying) when Andrés walked between them, hooking his arms into theirs taking them, along with Stella behind, asking why not wait their turn. The chronicler praised the redhead’s hairdo and how fresh she was: a real rose at this late hour of the sunset. The furniture they could see in the dark: a clothes rack, an umbrella holder, and a portrait of San Martin. The policeman at the entrance (now the policeman at the exit)

  —relativity of things—

  he didn’t keep them from exiting, to the contrary. But he was astonished and stared at their hands, their pockets, really, quite astonished to see them leave that way with empty hands.

  Know whattsa matter, ya pie-faced dork?

  Yer mout’s fulla chatter yer nose is too short!

  It was a freckled kid shouting, irritated. The other kid was farther off, near the Letras bookstore. Then he in turn shouted something unintelligible.

  Ya pie faced dork!

  Halfway down the flight of stairs, Andrés looked toward the river. It was strange that the houses blocked all sight of it. He confusedly remembered an image where there were no obstacles between the city, as it inclined downward, and the shore. As they silently walked down toward the water, the fog was drowning out the street light at Viamonte and Reconquista. They were certain that it made no sense to stay there, but there was no reason for them to leave. From the center of town there descended an even thicker fog, mixed with something that smelled like scorched clothes. Stella screamed when they walked by the street light because a cascarudo landed on her neck, scratching her with its sharp little feet. Juan pulled it off and studied it, while the insect stupidly rowed the air. Then he let it go with a soft toss of his hand. No one was speaking, but Andrés (not wanting to look at her) heard Clara’s muffled crying as she struggled to contain herself.