Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (21 page)

“Go back to sleep, old man,” said Horacio, stretched out comfortably on the floor.

“Dormir, moi, avec le bordel que fait votre bonne femme? Ça alors comme culot, mais je vous préviens, ça me passera pas comme ça, vous aurez de mes nouvelles.”

“Mais de mon frère le Poète on a eu des nouvelles,”
Horacio quoted with a yawn. “Have you been watching this guy?”

“A fool,” La Maga said. “You put on a record turned down low and he pounds. You take the record off and he keeps on pounding. What does he want?”

“Well, it’s the story of the guy who only drops one shoe.”

“I don’t know that one,” La Maga said.

“It was predictable,” said Oliveira. “Old people inspire respect in me, mixed up with other feelings, but as far as this one is concerned, I’d like to buy a bottle of formalin and stick him in it so he’d stop bugging us.”

“Et en plus ça m’insulte dans son charabia de sales métèques,”
the old man said.
“On est en France, ici. Des salauds, quoi. On devrait vous mettre à la porte, c’est une honte. Qu’est-ce que fait le Gouvernement, je me demande. Des Arabes, tous des fripouilles, bande de tueurs.”

“Come off it with the
sales métèques
, you ought to see that bunch of Frogs pile up the loot in Argentina,” Oliveira said. “What were you listening to? I just got here, I’m soaked.”

“A Schoenberg quartet. Just now I wanted to listen to a Brahms sonata, turned down very low.”

“The best thing would be to let it go till tomorrow,” said Oliveira, sizing up the situation and sitting up on one elbow as he lit a Gauloise.
“Rentrez chez vous, monsieur, on vous emmerdera plus pour ce soir.”

“Des fainéants,”
the old man said.
“Des tueurs, tous.”

The astrakhan hat could be seen in the light of the match along with a dirty bathrobe and wrathful little eyes. The hat cast a gigantic shadow on the wall of the stairwell; La Maga was fascinated. Oliveira got up, blew out the match, and went into the apartment, closing the door softly.

“Hello,” Oliveira said. “I can’t see anything.”

“Hello,” said Gregorovius. “I’m glad you handled the man upstairs all right.”

“
Per modo di dire.
The old man is really right, and besides, he’s old.”

“Being old is no reason,” La Maga said.

“It may not be a reason, but it is a safe-conduct pass.”

“I remember your saying once that the tragedy of Argentina is in the hands of old men.”

“The curtain’s already been rung down on that play,” Oliveira said. “It’s been just the opposite since Perón, the young ones call the tune and it’s almost worse, but what can you do. The idea of
age, generation, degrees, and class is a great joke. I suppose the reason that we’re so uncomfortable whispering like this is because Rocamadour is sleeping his sleep of the just.”

“Yes, he fell asleep before we began to listen to some music. You’re soaked to the skin, Horacio.”

“I went to a piano recital,” Oliveira explained.

“Oh,” said La Maga. “Well, that’s fine. Take off your lumberjacket and I’ll fix you a nice hot
mate
.”

“And a glass of
caña
, there still must be a half a bottle left around here.”

“What’s
caña
?” Gregorovius asked. “Is it the same as what they call
grappa
?”

“No, more like
barack.
Very good after concerts, especially in the case of first performances and indescribable consequences. Why don’t we light a dim and timid little light which won’t reach to Rocamadour’s eyes?”

La Maga lit a lamp and placed it on the floor, creating a sort of Rembrandt that Oliveira found quite appropriate. The return of the prodigal, the picture of a return, even though it was fleeting and momentary, although he had not really known why he had climbed the stairs slowly to slump by the door and listen to the distant sounds of the end of the quartet and the whispered conversation of Ossip and La Maga. “They must have made love already, like a pair of cats,” he thought, looking at them. But no, they must have suspected that he would be back that night, and they had all their clothes on, and Rocamadour was in the bed. If Rocamadour had been lying on a pair of chairs placed together, if Gregorovius had had his shoes and coat off … Besides, what the hell difference did it make, since he was the intruder there, his dripping lumberjacket, shot to hell.

“Acoustics,” Gregorovius observed. “It’s strange how sound gets into things and climbs from floor to floor, passing through a wall to the head of a bed, it’s unbelievable. Did you two ever duck underwater in a bathtub?”

“I’ve thought of it,” Oliveira said, tossing his lumberjacket in a corner and sitting down on a stool.

“You can hear everything the people downstairs are saying, all you have to do is put your head underwater and listen. The sounds come through the plumbing, I imagine. Once in Glasgow I discovered that the neighbors were Trotskyites.”

“When I think of Glasgow I think of bad weather, a port full of sad people,” La Maga said.

“Too many movies,” said Oliveira. “But this
mate
is like a pardon, something incredibly conciliatory. Good Lord, look how wet my shoes got. You see, a
mate
is like a period and a space. You take one and then you can start a new paragraph.”

“I’ll never know these delights of the pampas,” Gregorovius said. “But you also mentioned a drink, I believe.”

“Bring the
caña
,” Oliveira ordered. “I think there’s over a half-bottle left.”

“Did you two buy it here?” Gregorovius asked.

“Why the devil does he use the plural,” Oliveira thought. “They must have been rolling around here all night, it’s an unmistakable sign. But then.”

“No, my brother sends it to me. I have a wonderful brother in Rosario.
Caña
and reproaches, an abundance of both.”

He passed his empty gourd to La Maga, who had squatted by his feet. He began to feel good. He felt La Maga’s fingers on his ankle, on his shoelaces. He let her take off his shoe with a sigh. La Maga took off his wet sock and wrapped his foot in a page of the
Figaro Littéraire.
The
mate
was hot and very bitter.

Gregorovius liked the
caña
, it wasn’t just like
barack
but it was similar. He went through a catalogue of Hungarian and Czech drinks, some reminiscences. They could hear the rain falling softly and they felt comfortable, especially Rocamadour, who had been sleeping for more than an hour already without stirring. Gregorovius talked about Transylvania, about some adventures in Salonika. Oliveira remembered that there was a pack of Gauloises on the table and a pair of fleece-lined slippers. Feeling his way, he went over to the table. “In Paris, any mention of someplace beyond Vienna sounds like literature,” Gregorovius was saying, with a voice that seemed to be pleading. Horacio found the cigarettes and opened the drawer of the night-table to take out the slippers. In the darkness he could make out the figure of Rocamadour lying on his back. Without really knowing why, he stroked his forehead with a finger. “My mother didn’t like to talk about Transylvania, she was afraid that people would associate her with stories about vampires and all that … And Tokay, you know …” Horacio tried to get a better look, kneeling next to the bed. “You can imagine in Montevideo,” La Maga was saying. “You think that people are all alike,
but when you live on the Cerro side of town … Is
tokay
a kind of bird?” “Well, in a certain sense.” The natural reaction in cases like this. Let’s see: first…(“What does in a certain sense mean? Is it a bird or isn’t it?”) But all he had to do was put a finger on the baby’s lips, the lack of a response. “I was taking the liberty of using a trite image, Lucía. There is a bird sleeping in all good wines.” Forced breathing, idiocy. Another form of idiocy that his hands should be trembling so much, barefoot and wet (his feet would have to be rubbed with alcohol, vigorously if possible).
“Un soir, l’âme du vin chantait dans les bouteilles,”
Ossip scanned. “Just like Anacreon, I think …” And one could almost touch La Maga’s resentful silence, her mental note: Anacreon, a Greek writer no one ever reads. Everybody knows about him except me. And where was that line from,
un soir, l’âme du vin
? Horacio slipped his hand under the sheets, it was a great effort to bring himself to feel Rocamadour’s tiny stomach, the cold thighs, there seemed to be a little warmth left farther up, but no, he was so cold. “Fall into the pattern,” Horacio thought. “Shout, turn on the light, start the obligatory hustle and bustle. Why?” But maybe, still…“Then it means that this instinct is of no use to me, this thing I’m starting to discover from deep down inside of me. If I call out it will be Berthe Trépat all over again, the same stupid attempts, pity. Put the glove on, do what must be done in cases like this. Oh no, that’s enough. Why turn on the light and shout if it won’t do any good? An actor, a perfect fucking actor. All that can be done is …” He heard Gregorovius’s glass tinkle against the bottle of
caña.
“Yes, it’s quite like
barack
.” With a Gauloise in his mouth he struck a match, taking a good look. “You’ll wake him up,” La Maga said as she put some fresh
yerba mate
in his gourd. Horacio blew the match out brutally. It’s a known fact that if the pupils, under a bright light, etc.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
“Like
barack
, but a little less aromatic,” Ossip was saying.

“The old man is knocking again,” La Maga said.

“It must be a shutter,” said Gregorovius.

“This building doesn’t have shutters. He must have gone crazy.”

Oliveira put on the slippers and went back to the chair. The
mate
was wonderful, hot and very bitter. There was pounding upstairs, twice, weakly.

“He’s killing cockroaches,” Gregorovius suggested.

“No, he’s got blood in his eye and he doesn’t want to let us sleep. Go up and say something to him, Horacio.”

“You go up,” Oliveira said. “I don’t know why, but he’s more afraid of you than of me. At least he doesn’t come out with xenophobia, apartheid, and other forms of segregation.”

“If I go up there I’ll tell him so many things that he’ll call the police.”

“It’s raining too hard. Work on his moral side, praise the decorations he has on his door. Talk about your feelings as a mother and things like that. Go ahead.”

“I don’t feel like it,” La Maga said.

“Go ahead, sweetheart,” Oliveira said in a low voice.

“But why do you want me to go?”

“To please me. You’ll see, he’ll stop.”

There were two thumps, then one. La Maga got up and went out of the apartment. Horacio followed her, and when he heard her going upstairs he turned on the light and looked at Gregorovius. He pointed to the bed. After a minute he turned out the light while Gregorovius went back to his chair.

“It’s incredible,” Ossip said as he grabbed the bottle of
caña
in the dark.

“Incredible, of course. Inevitable, all that. No obituaries, old man. All I had to do was leave this flat for one day and the damnedest things happened. Anyway, one thing can be the consolation for the other.”

“I don’t understand,” Gregorovius said.

“You understand beautifully.
Ça va, ça va.
You can’t imagine how little I care.”

Gregorovius noticed that Oliveira was using the familiar form and this meant that things would be different, if it were still possible … He said something about the Red Cross, all-night drugstores.

“Do what you want to do, it’s all the same to me,” Oliveira said. “What a day this has been, brother!”

If he could only flop on the bed and go to sleep for a couple of years. “Chicken,” he thought. Gregorovius had caught his contagious immobility and was laboriously lighting his pipe. They could hear talking from far off, La Maga’s voice coming through the rain, the old man answering her with his shrill voice. The
door of some other apartment slammed, people going out to complain about the noise.

“Basically you’re right,” Gregorovius admitted. “But isn’t there some legal responsibility?”

“With everything that has happened we’re in it up to our necks,” Oliveira said. “Especially you two, I can always prove that I arrived too late. A mother lets her child die while she takes care of her lover on the floor.”

“If you’re trying to say …”

“It doesn’t really matter.”

“But it’s not true, Horacio.”

“It doesn’t make any difference to me, consummation is an after-effect. I don’t have anything to do with the whole business any more, I only came up because I was soaked and I wanted a
mate.
Hey, people are coming.”

“We ought to call an ambulance,” Gregorovius said.

“Go ahead then. Doesn’t that sound like Ronald’s voice?”

“I’m not going to sit here,” Gregorovius said. “We’ve got to do something, I tell you, we’ve got to do something.”

“But I’m quite aware of that. Action, always action.
Die Tätigkeit
, old man. Bang, there weren’t many of us left and grandmother gave birth. Keep your voices down, you’ll wake the baby.”

“Hello,” said Ronald.

“Hi,” said Babs, struggling to close her umbrella.

“Keep your voices down,” said La Maga, who was coming in behind them. “Why didn’t you close the umbrella outside?”

“You’re right,” Babs said. “The same thing always happens to me everywhere I go. Don’t make any noise, Ronald. We only stopped by to tell you about Guy, it’s unbelievable. Did you blow a fuse?”

“No, it’s because of Rocamadour.”

“Keep your voice down,” Ronald said. “And put that fucking umbrella down someplace.”

“It’s so hard to close,” Babs said. “It opens so easily.”

“The old man threatened to call the police,” La Maga said, closing the door. “He was ready to hit me, shrieking like a madman. Ossip, you really should see what’s in his apartment, you can see a little from the stairway. A table full of empty bottles and in the middle a windmill that’s so big it looks life-size,
just like the ones out in the country in Uruguay. And the windmill was turning from the draft, I couldn’t help peeping through the crack in the door, the old man was frothing at the mouth he was so mad.”