Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (12 page)

(–
90
)

“I ALWAYS suspected you’d end up going to bed with him,” Oliveira said.

La Maga diapered her son, who was not bleating as much now, and wiped her hands with a piece of cotton.

“Please wash your hands like a civilized person,” Oliveira said, “and get rid of all that crap.”

“Right away,” La Maga said. Oliveira was able to stand her look (which was always hard on him) and La Maga got a newspaper, opened it up on the bed, put in the cotton, bundled it up, and left the room to go throw it in the toilet on the landing. When she came back her hands were red and shining; Oliveira handed her the gourd. She sat down on the low easy chair and sucked the
mate
in a deliberate sort of way. She always damaged the gourd, moving the sipper around from one side to another as if she were mixing batter.

“After all,” Oliveira said, blowing smoke through his nose, “the least you could have done was to tell me. Now it’s going to cost me six hundred francs to hire a taxi to move my stuff. And it’s not easy finding a room these days, either.”

“You don’t have to move out,” La Maga said. “How long do you plan to go on lying to yourself?”

“Lying to yourself,” Oliveira said. “You sound like a best-selling novel from the Río de la Plata. All you have to do now is laugh with all the force of your insides at my unparalleled boorishness, and we can put it all in print.”

“He’s stopped crying,” La Maga said, looking at the bed. “Let’s speak low, he’ll go to sleep quite easily with the aspirin. I never in my life went to bed with Gregorovius.”

“Oh, yes you did.”

“No, Horacio. Why wouldn’t I have told you? Ever since I met you I haven’t had any other lover but you. I don’t care if I sound
stupid and you laugh at the way I say it. I speak the best way I can, I don’t know how to say what I feel.”

“O.K., O.K.,” Oliveira said in a tired tone, having another
mate.
“Maybe your son has changed you then. For some time now you’ve been converted into what they call a mother.”

“But Rocamadour is sick.”

“All right,” Oliveira said, “if that’s the way you want it. But I see a different kind of change. Really, it’s that we can’t stand each other very much any more.”

“You’re the one who can’t stand me. You’re the one who can’t stand Rocamadour.”

“That’s true. I hadn’t thought about the kid. Three is too many for one room. And to think that with Ossip it will be four is more than I can take.”

“Ossip has nothing to do with this.”

“Please put the kettle on,” Oliveira said.

“He has nothing to do with this,” La Maga repeated. “Why do you want to make me suffer, silly? I know you’re tired of me and don’t love me any more. You never did love me, it was something else, some kind of dream you had. Leave, Horacio, you don’t have to stay. The same thing has happened to me so many times …”

She looked over at the bed. Rocamadour was asleep.

“So many times,” Oliveira said, putting fresh
yerba mate
into his gourd. “You have a remarkable frankness when it comes to amorous autobiography. Just ask Ossip. To meet you and hear the story about the Negro is one and the same thing.”

“I have to tell it, you don’t understand.”

“I don’t understand, but it’s awful.”

“I think I have to tell it even if it is awful. It’s only right that a woman tell a man what her life has been like if she wants to. I’m talking about you, not Ossip. You could have told me about your girlfriends or not if you wanted to, but I had to tell everything. You know, it’s the only way to get rid of a man before you start to fall in love with someone else, the only way to get them out the door so the two of us can be alone in the room.”

“A kind of ceremony of expiation, and maybe propitiatory too. First the Negro.”

“Yes,” La Maga said, looking at him. “First the Negro. Then Ledesma.”

“Then Ledesma, of course.”

“And the three up the alley, on carnival night.”

“Por
delante
,” said Oliveira, sipping his
mate
, as he remembered an obscene game he played as a boy in Buenos Aires, and kept it up to show his exasperation.

“And Monsieur Vincent, the hotel keeper’s brother.”

“Por
detrás.
”

“And a soldier who was weeping in a park.”

“Por
delante.
”

“And you.”

“
Por detrás.
But the idea of putting me on the list in my presence just bears out my gloomiest premonitions. You really should have recited the complete list to Gregorovius.”

La Maga stirred with the sipper. She had lowered her head and her hair fell over her face all at once, covering up the expression that Oliveira had been studying with an indifferent air.

Oliveira was singing the old tango in a low voice. La Maga sucked on the sipper and shrugged her shoulders, not looking at him. “Poor thing,” Oliveira thought. He reached out his hand and drew her hair back, brutally, as if opening a curtain. The sipper made a dry sound between her teeth.

“It’s almost as if you had slapped me,” La Maga said, putting two fingers to her trembling lips. “I really don’t care, but …”

“You just do happen to care,” Oliveira said. “If you hadn’t been looking at me like that I would have despised you. You’re a marvel, Rocamadour and everything.”

“What good is it for me for you to say that?”

“It’s good for me.”

“Yes, it’s good for you. Everything’s good for you if it helps you keep on searching.”

“Sweet,” Oliveira said softly, “it’s a known fact that tears ruin the taste of
mate.
”

“Maybe my crying is good for you too.”

“Yes, it is as long as you hold me to blame.”

“Go away, Horacio, that’s the best thing.”

“It probably is. But look, anyway, if I leave now I will be committing an act that would be awfully close to heroism, I mean, leaving you alone and with a sick child.”

“Yes,” La Maga said with a Homeric smile coming out from behind her tears. “Awfully close to heroism, yes.”

“And since I’m by no stretch a hero, I think I’d better stay until we find out on what we can abide, as my brother says with his elegant style.”

“Stay then.”

“But you do understand how and why I reject that heroic course?”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Come on, explain to me why I’m not leaving.”

“You’re not leaving because you’re just bourgeois enough to think what Ronald and Babs and your other friends would say.”

“Precisely. I’m glad you see that you didn’t figure in my decision at all. I’m not staying out of friendship or out of pity or because someone has to give Rocamadour his bottle. And much less because you and I still have something in common.”

“You’re so funny sometimes,” La Maga said.

“Sure I am,” Oliveira said. “Bob Hope is just a turd next to me.”

“When you said that we didn’t have anything in common any more, you held your mouth in a certain way … sort of like this, eh?”

“Yes, it’s incredible.”

They had to take out their handkerchiefs and cover their faces with both hands, they let out such loud guffaws that Rocamadour might wake up, it was something terrible. Although Oliveira tried to hold her, biting his handkerchief and weeping with laughter, La Maga slowly slipped out of the chair, which had the front legs shorter than the rear ones and so helped her slide down until she was on the floor caught between Oliveira’s legs as he laughed with a sort of jerky hiccup and finally spit out the handkerchief in one last burst.

“Show me the face again, the one I make when I say things like that,” Oliveira begged.

“Like this,” La Maga said and again they rolled around until Oliveira doubled over holding his stomach, and La Maga saw his face opposite hers, and his eyes shining at her among the tears.
They kissed backwards, she face up and he with his hair hanging down like a fringe, they kissed and bit each other a little because their mouths did not recognize one another, they were kissing different mouths, trying to find each other with their hands in a devilish mess of hanging hair and
mate
, which was dripping onto La Maga’s skirt from the gourd which had tipped over on the edge of the table.

“Tell me how Ossip makes love,” Oliveira whispered, putting his lips hard against La Maga’s. “The blood is rushing to my head, I can’t do this much longer, it’s frightening.”

“He does it very well,” La Maga said, biting his lip. “Much better than you and much longer.”

“But does he retilate your murt? Don’t lie to me. Does he really retilate it?”

“A lot. Everywhere, sometimes too much. It’s a wonderful feeling.”

“And does he make you put your plinnies in between his argusts?”

“Yes, and then we trewst our porcies until he says he’s had enough, and I can’t take it any more either, and we have to hurry up, you understand. But you wouldn’t understand that, you always stay in the smallest gumphy.”

“Me or anybody else,” Oliveira grumbled, getting up. “Christ, this
mate
is lousy, I’m going out for a while.”

“Don’t you want me to keep on talking to you of Ossip?” said La Maga. “In Gliglish.”

“I’m getting sick of Gliglish. Besides, you haven’t got any imagination, you always say the same things. Gumphy, that’s some fine invention. And you don’t say ‘talking to you of.’ ”

“I invented Gliglish,” La Maga said resentfully. “You come out with anything you want and sound like a million dollars, but that’s not real Gliglish.”

“Getting back to Ossip …”

“Don’t be silly, Horacio, I tell you I have not gone to bed with him. Do I have to give you the sacred oath of the Sioux Indians?”

“No, I think I’m finally beginning to believe you.”

“And later on,” La Maga said, “I’ll probably end up sleeping with Ossip, but you’ll be the one who wanted it all along.”

“But do you really think you could like that guy?”

“No. The fact is I owe the drugstore. I don’t want a penny from you, and I can’t borrow money from Ossip and just leave him with his illusions intact.”

“I see now,” Oliveira said. “Your good Samaritan side is coming out. You couldn’t leave that soldier crying in the park either.”

“No I couldn’t, Horacio. You can see how different we are.”

“Yes, pity was never one of my strong points. But I could have been crying at a time like that too, and then you would have …”

“I can’t picture you crying,” La Maga said. “You’d consider it a waste.”

“I’ve cried in the past.”

“Only from rage. You don’t know how to cry, Horacio, it’s one of those things you don’t know how to do.”

Oliveira pulled La Maga over and sat her down on his lap. He thought about the Maga smell, the back of the Maga neck, and it made him sad. It was that same smell that once before…“To find out what’s behind something,” he thought confusedly. “Yes, that’s one of the things I don’t know how to do, that and crying and having pity.”

“We were never in love,” he said, kissing her hair.

“Speak for yourself,” La Maga said, closing her eyes. “You have no way of telling whether I’m in love with you or not. You don’t even know how to do that.”

“Do you think I’m so blind?”

“On the contrary, I think it might do you some good to be a little blind.”

“Ah, yes. Touch replaces definitions, instinct goes beyond intelligence. The magic route, the dark night of the soul.”

“It would do you good,” La Maga insisted as she always did when she did not understand something and wanted to cover up.

“Look, I know enough to know that everybody can go his own way. I think that I have to be alone, Lucía; in all truth, I don’t know what I’m going to do. It’s not fair to you or to Rocamadour, who I think is waking up, for me to treat you so badly and I don’t want it to go on that way.”

“You don’t have to worry about me or about Rocamadour.”

“I’m not worried, but the three of us are getting tangled up in each other’s feet, it’s uncomfortable and unaesthetic. I may not
be blind enough for you, sweetie, but my optic nerve is good enough to let me see that you are going to get along perfectly well without me. No girlfriend of mine has ever committed suicide, even though my pride bleeds when I admit it.”

“Yes, Horacio.”

“So if I can summon up enough heroism to run out on you tonight or tomorrow, we can say that nothing happened here.”

“Nothing,” La Maga said.

“You can take your kid back to Madame Irène’s, and you can come back to Paris and pick up where you left off.”

“That’s right.”

“You’ll see a lot of movies, keep on reading novels, you’ll take walks and risk your life in the worst neighborhoods at the worst hours.”

“Yes, all that.”

“You’ll pick up a lot of strange things in the street, you’ll bring them home, and you’ll make something out of them. Wong will teach you sleight-of-hand tricks and Ossip will follow six feet behind you with his hands clasped in an attitude of humble reverence.”

“Please, Horacio,” La Maga said, hugging him and burying her face.

“Of course we will meet by magic in the strangest places, like that night in the Place de la Bastille, remember?”

“On the Rue Daval.”

“I was quite drunk and you came around the corner and we stood looking at one another like idiots.”

“Because I thought you were going to a concert that night.”

“And you had told me that you had an appointment with Madame Léonie.”

“That’s why we thought it was so funny meeting on the Rue Daval.”

“You were wearing your green sweater and you had stopped to console a fag.”

“They had beaten him up and thrown him out of a café, and he was crying so.”

“Another time I remember we met near the Quai de Jemmapes.”

“It was hot.”

“You never told me what you were looking for along the Quai de Jemmapes.”

“Oh, I wasn’t looking for anything.”

“You had a coin in your hand.”

“I found it on the edge of the sidewalk. It was shining so.”