Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (26 page)

“Had La Maga said anything that would make you think she’d kill herself?”

“Well, you know women.”

“Anything concrete.”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Gregorovius. “She talked a lot about Montevideo.”

“She’s a fool. She doesn’t have a cent.”

“About Montevideo and that business of a wax doll.”

“Hmm, the doll. And she imagined that …”

“She was sure of it. Adgalle will be interested in this; what you called coincidence. Lucía doesn’t think it was coincidence. You either, deep inside. Lucía told me that when you found the green doll you threw it on the floor and stepped on it.”

“I hate stupidity,” said Oliveira virtuously.

“All the pins had been stuck in the breasts, except for one in the organs. Did you know already that Pola was sick when you trampled on the green doll?”

“Yes.”

“Adgalle will be fascinated. Do you know anything about poisoned portraits? You mix some poison with the paints and you wait for a favorable moon to paint the portrait. Adgalle tried it on her father, but there were interferences … In any case, the old man died of some kind of diphtheria three years later. He was alone in the castle. We had a castle in those days, and when he began to strangle he tried to perform a tracheotomy in front of the mirror by inserting a goose quill or something like that. They found him at the bottom of the stairs. But I don’t know why I’m telling you all this.”

“Because you don’t give a damn, I suppose.”

“Yes, maybe,” said Gregorovius. “Let’s have some coffee. You can feel night coming on at this hour, even though you can’t see it.”

Oliveira picked up the newspaper. While Ossip put the pot on the fire he began to read the news. “Blonde, about forty-two.” How stupid to think that … But, of course…
Les travaux du grand barrage d’Assouan ont commencé. Avant cinq ans, la vallée moyenne du Nil sera transformée en un immense lac. Des édifices prodigieux, qui comptent parmi les plus admirables de la planète
…

(–
107
)

“A MISUNDERSTANDING, like everything else. But the coffee is up to the occasion. Did you drink all the
caña
?”

“The wake, you understand …”

“Of course, the little corpse.”

“Ronald was drinking like a beast. He was really upset, nobody could figure out why. Babs was suspicious. Even Lucía was surprised at him. But the watchmaker on the sixth floor brought a bottle of brandy and it was enough for everybody.”

“Did many people come?”

“Well, let’s see, we were all here from the Club, you weren’t here,” (“No, I wasn’t here”) “the watchmaker from the sixth floor, the concierge and her daughter, a woman who looked like a moth, the telegraph man stayed a while, and the police were nosing around for evidence of infanticide, things like that.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t talk about an autopsy.”

“They mentioned it. Babs blew her top, and Lucía … A woman came and looked around, touching and feeling … There wasn’t enough room for all of us on the stairway, everybody outside and it was cold. They did something, but finally they left us alone. I don’t know how, but I’ve got the death certificate here in my wallet if you want to look at it.”

“No, tell me more. I’m listening, even if I don’t look like it. Come on, keep talking. I’m very upset. It doesn’t show, but you can believe me. I’m listening, come on. I can picture the scene perfectly. You’re not going to tell me that Ronald helped carry him downstairs?”

“Yes, he and Perico and the watchmaker. I went with Lucía.”

“Por delante.”

“And Babs brought up the rear with Étienne.”

“Por detrás.”

“Halfway between the fourth and third floors we heard a
tremendous thump. Ronald said it was the old man on the fifth floor getting his vengeance. When mother comes I’m going to have her get to know the old man.”

“Your mother? Adgalle?”

“She is my mother, after all, the Herzegovina one. She’s going to like this place, she’s quite receptive and things have happened here … I don’t mean just the green doll.”

“Come on now, let’s see, explain to me why your mother is receptive and about this place. Let’s talk, eh, we’ve got to get these pillows all stuffed. Give with the stuffing.”

(–
57
)

IT had been some time since Gregorovius had given up the illusion of understanding things, but at any rate, he still wanted misunderstandings to have some sort of order, some reason about them. No matter how many times the cards of the deck might be shuffled, laying them out was always a consecutive process, which would take place on the rectangle of a table-top or a bedspread. To get the
mate
drinker from the pampas willing to reveal the order behind his meanderings. In the worst moments to let him improvise for the moment; then it would be difficult for him to extricate himself from his own web. Between one and another
mate
Oliveira condescended to remember some moment from the past or answer questions. He would ask questions in turn with an ironic interest in the burial, in how people acted. He rarely referred directly to La Maga, but it was clear that he suspected some lying going on. Montevideo, Lucca, some corner of Paris. Gregorovius told himself that Oliveira would have gone running out if he had had any idea where Lucía was staying. He seemed to be a specialist in lost causes. Lose them first, then run after them like a madman.

“Adgalle is going to enjoy her stay in Paris,” Oliveira said, changing the
yerba mate
in his gourd. “If she’s looking for the gates of assorted hells, all you have to do is show her some of the things that go on here. On a modest level, of course, but hell has been cheapened too. The
nekias
of today: a trip on the Métro at six-thirty, or going to the police to get your
carte de séjour
renewed.”

“You would have liked to have found the main gate, eh? A dialogue with Ajax, with Jacques Clément, with Keitel, with Troppmann.”

“Yes, but the biggest hole so far is the one in the bathroom.
And not even Traveler understands, and that’s saying something. Traveler is a friend of mine you don’t know.”

“You’re hiding your cards,” said Gregorovius, looking at the floor.

“For example?”

“I don’t know, I’m just guessing. All the time I’ve known you, all you’ve done is search, but one gets the feeling that what you’re looking for is right in your pocket.”

“The mystics talked about that, but they didn’t mention pockets.”

“And in the meantime you mess up the lives of any number of people.”

“They’re willing, old man, perfectly willing. All I had to do was give a little shove, I walk through, and there I am. No evil intent.”

“But what are you after with all that, Horacio?”

“The freedom of the city.”

“Here?”

“It’s a metaphor. And since Paris is another metaphor (I’ve heard you say so sometimes) it seems perfectly natural to me that I came here for that reason.”

“But Lucía? And Pola?”

“Heterogeneous quantities,” Oliveira said. “Just because they’re women you think that you can add them up in the same column. Aren’t they looking for their happiness too? And you, so puritanical all of a sudden, haven’t you slithered in here as a result of meningitis or whatever it was they found the kid had? It’s lucky that you and I are not squares because otherwise one of us would be carried out dead and the other one with handcuffs on. Something just right for Cholokov, believe me. But we don’t even detest each other, it’s so protective in this apartment.”

“You’re hiding your cards,” said Gregorovius, looking at the floor again.

“Elucidate,
mon frère
, do me that small favor.”

“You,” insisted Gregorovius, “have an imperial notion in the back of your head. Freedom of the city? Rule of the city. Your resentment: a half-cured ambition. You came here to find a statue of yourself waiting for you on the edge of the Place Dauphine. What I don’t understand is your method. Ambition, why not? You’re outstanding enough in some ways. But up till
now all that I’ve seen you do has been just the opposite of what other ambitious people would have done. Étienne, for example, and we don’t even have to mention Perico.”

“Ah,” said Oliveira. “It seems your eyes are good for something after all.”

“Just the opposite,” Ossip repeated, “but without denying ambition. And that’s what I don’t understand.”

“Oh, understanding, you know … It’s all very mixed up. Take the bit that what you call ambition can only be productive if it’s denied. Do you like the formula? That’s not it, but what I want to say is something that really is unexplainable. You’ve got to turn round and round like a dog chasing his tail. All of this and what I said about the freedom of the city ought to satisfy you, you fucking Montenegran.”

“I understand in an obscure sort of way. Then you … It’s not a path, like Vedanta or things like that, I hope.”

“No, no.”

“A lay renunciation, could we call it that?”

“Not that either. I’m not renouncing anything, I simply do what I can so that things renounce me. Didn’t you know that if you want to dig a little hole you’ve got to shovel up the ground and toss it far away?”

“But freedom of the city, well …”

“You’ve put your finger right on it. Remember the dictum:
Nous ne sommes pas au monde.
Now get the gist of it, slowly.”

“An ambition to clear the table and start all over again, is that it?”

“A little bit, a touch of that, just a hair, a drop, oh stern Transylvanian, son of three witches.”

“You and the others …” murmured Gregorovius, looking for his pipe. “What a bunch, my God. Thieves of eternity, atmospheric frauds, hounds of God, cloud-chasers. It’s good we’ve got an education and can define them. Astral swine.”

“You do me honor with those definitions,” Oliveira said. “It’s proof that you’re beginning to understand it all fairly well.”

“Bah, I prefer breathing oxygen and hydrogen in the dose the Lord prescribes. My alchemy is much less subtle than what all of you practice; all that interests me is the philosopher’s stone. A trifle alongside your frauds and your bathrooms and your ontological deductions.”

“It’s been a long time since we had a metaphysical chat, eh?
They’re out of favor with our friends, they think you’re a snob. Ronald, for example, finds them ghastly. And Étienne never gets out of the solar spectrum. It’s nice being here with you.”

“We really could have been friends,” Gregorovius said, “if you had had something human about you. I suspect that Lucía must have told you that more than once.”

“Every five minutes, to be exact. You’ve got to see what mileage people can get from the word
human.
But why didn’t La Maga stay with you since you glow all over with humanity?”

“Because she wasn’t in love with me. Humanity takes in all kinds.”

“And now she’s going back to Montevideo and she’ll fall back into a life that …”

“She probably went to Lucca. She’ll be better off anywhere without you. The same goes for Pola, or me, or the rest of us. Please excuse my frankness.”

“But it fits you so well, Ossip Ossipovich. Why fool ourselves? It’s impossible to live with a puppeteer who works with shadows, a moth-tamer. Someone who spends his time making pictures out of the iridescent rings the oil makes on the Seine is unacceptable. Me, with my padlocks and keys that I make out of the air, me, writing with smoke. I’ll save the answer for you because I see it coming up: There is no substance more deadly than the one that can ooze in anywhere, that breathes without being aware of it, in words or in love or in friendship. It’s been a long time now since I should have been left alone to me, myself, and I. You’ve got to admit that I don’t go around kissing ass. Get lost, you son of a Bosnian. The next time you run into me on the street you’d better not even know me.”

“You’re crazy, Horacio. You’re stupidly crazy, because it suits you.”

Oliveira took a newspaper clipping out of his pocket that he had kept for God knows how long: a list of all-night drugstores in Buenos Aires. Ones that were open from eight o’clock on Monday until the same time on Tuesday.

“First district,” he read. “446 Reconquista (Tel. 31-5488), 366 Córdoba (Tel. 32-8845), 599 Esmeralda (Tel. 31-1700), 581 Sarmiento (Tel. 32-2021).”

“What’s all that?”

“Moments of reality. I’ll explain: Reconquista, something we did to the English. Córdoba, a learned city. Esmeralda, a gypsy
girl hanged because she was in love with an archdeacon. Sarmiento, he blew a fart and the wind carried it away. Second version: Reconquista, a street of harlots and Near Eastern restaurants. Córdoba, wonderful sweetshops. Esmeralda, a river in Colombia. Sarmiento, he never missed school. Third version: Reconquista, a drugstore. Esmeralda, another drugstore. Sarmiento, another drugstore. Fourth version …”

“And when I insist you’re crazy it’s because I don’t see any way out of your famous renunciation.”

“620 Florida (Tel. 31-2200).”

“You didn’t go to the burial because although you renounce many things, you’re still not capable of looking your friends in the face.”

“749 Hipólito Yrigoyen (Tel. 34-0936).”

“And Lucía is better off at the bottom of the river than in bed with you.”

“800 Bolívar. The phone number is hard to make out. If people in the neighborhood have a sick kid they won’t be able to buy him some terramycin.”

“Yes, at the bottom of the river.”

“1117 Corrientes (Tel. 35-1468).”

“Or in Lucca, or in Montevideo.”

“Or in 1301 Rivadavia (Tel. 38-7841).”

“Keep that list for Pola,” Gregorovius said, getting up. “I’m going out, you can do what you feel like. You’re not at home, but since nothing has any reality, and we have to start
ex nihil
, etc.… Help yourself to all these illusions. I’m going out to get a bottle of brandy.”

Oliveira caught up to him next to the door and put his hand on his shoulder.

“2099 Lavalle,” he said, looking him in the face and smiling. “1501 Cangallo. 53 Pueyrredón.”

“You forgot the telephone numbers,” Gregorovius said.