Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (33 page)

“You never talk very much about all that,” Traveler would say sometimes, without looking at Oliveira. He was stronger; when Traveler made up his mind to interrogate him he had to avoid his eyes, and he didn’t know why he was never able to mention the capital of France by name, but he always said “that” the way a mother works hard at inventing inoffensive names for her children’s pudenda, God’s little things.

“It doesn’t interest me,” Oliveira would answer. “You’ll find out.”

It was the best way there was to enrage Traveler, a failure as a nomad. Instead of pressing the point he would tune up the horrible guitar he had bought at the Casa América and start playing tangos. Talita would glance at Oliveira, a little resentful. Without making herself obvious. Traveler had convinced her that Oliveira was an oddball, and even though that was plain to be seen, his oddness must have been something else, must have been off somewhere else. There were nights when everybody seemed to be expecting something. They felt very good together, but it was like the eye of a hurricane. On nights like that, if they opened up the cemetery things would come out like
cisco, cisticerco, icito!, cisma, cístico
, and
cisión.
Finally they would go to bed with latent ill-humor, and spend the whole night dreaming about happy and funny things, which was probably a contradiction of terms.

(–
59
)

THE sun began to hit Oliveira in the face sometime after two in the afternoon. Besides the heat, it made it very hard for him to straighten out nails by hammering them on a tile on the floor (everybody knows how dangerous it is to straighten out a nail with a hammer, there is a moment when the nail is almost upright, but when you hit it with the hammer again it gives half a turn and pinches the fingers you’re holding it with; there’s a quick perverseness about it all), stubbornly hammering them on a tile (but everybody knows that) stubbornly on a tile (but everybody) stubbornly.

“There isn’t a straight one in the lot,” Oliveira was thinking as he looked at the nails scattered around on the floor. “And the hardware store is closed now, and they’ll throw me out if I pound on the door and ask them to sell me thirty cents’ worth of nails. I have to straighten them, there’s no other way out.”

Each time he managed to get a nail half-straightened, he would lift up his head and whistle in the direction of the open window for Traveler to appear. He could see part of their bedroom quite clearly from his room, and something told him that Traveler was in there, probably in bed with Talita. The Travelers slept a lot in the daytime, not so much because they were tired from working at the circus, but because of a certain principle of laziness that Oliveira respected. It was a shame to wake Traveler up at two-thirty in the afternoon, but the fingers Oliveira was using to hold down the nails were already turning purple, extravasation was setting in from the pounding the blood vessels were taking, giving his fingers the look of underdone meat, which was really repulsive. The more he looked at them, the more he felt like having some
mate
and he was all out of
yerba:
actually there was enough for half a
mate
and Traveler or Talita would have to wrap up what he needed in some
paper, using some nails as ballast, and toss it through the window. With some straight nails and some
yerba
, siesta-time would be more tolerable.

“It’s fantastic how loud I can whistle,” Oliveira thought in amazement. From the floor below where there was a brothel with three women and a girl to run errands, someone was imitating him with a pitiful counter-whistle, something in between a boiling kettle and a toothless hiss. Oliveira was fascinated by the admiration and rivalry aroused by his whistle; he never wasted it, but would save it for important occasions. During his reading hours, which were between one and five o’clock in the morning, but not every morning, he had come to the disconcerting conclusion that whistling was not an important theme in literature. There weren’t many authors who made their characters whistle. Practically none of them did. They would condemn them to a rather tiresome repertory of expression (say, answer, sing, shout, babble, mutter, pronounce, whisper, exclaim, and declaim), but no hero or heroine had ever crowned the high point of one of their epics with a magnificent whistle of the type that shatters glass. English squires would whistle to call their hounds and some characters in Dickens would whistle for a cab. As far as Argentine literature was concerned, there was very little whistling, and it was a disgrace. That’s why, although Oliveira had not read Cambaceres, he considered him a master because he had used “whistle” in one of his titles; sometimes he would think along subsequent lines in which whistling would insinuate itself into Argentina on the surface and underneath, would wrap it up in its glowing chirp and offer up to world-wide stupefaction a tight-rolled omelet, that would have little in common with the official version put forth by embassies and what one saw in the well-digested Sunday rotogravure put out by all the Gainza Mitre Pazes, and still less with the ups and downs of the Boca Juniors and the necrophilic cults of the
baguala
and the Boedo section. “Motherfucker” (to a nail), “they won’t even let me think in peace, God damn it.” Besides, these ideas were repulsive to him because they were so facile, even though he was convinced that the only way to get a hold on Argentina was to come up on it from the shameful side, find the blush hidden under a century of usurpations of all kinds, as writers had pointed out so well, and therefore the best way was to show it in some way in which it
didn’t have to take itself so seriously. Who could be the clown who could send such high and mighty national sovereignty off to hell? Who could laugh in its face to see it flush and maybe once in a while smile like someone who has a recognition? But, Jesus, old buddy, what a way to piss away a day. Let’s see now, maybe this nail won’t give me as much of a hard time as the others, it seems to be more tractable.

“God, it’s cold,” Oliveira said to himself, because he was a great believer in autosuggestion. Sweat was pouring over his eyes out of his hair and it was impossible to hold a nail with the hump up because the lightest blow of the hammer would make it slip out of his fingers which were all wet (from the cold) and the nail would pinch him again and he would mash his fingers (from the cold). To make things worse, the sun had begun to shine with full force into the room (it was the moon on snow-covered steppes, and he whistled to goad the horses pulling against their harnesses), by three o’clock the whole place was covered with snow, he would let himself freeze until he got to that sleepy state described so well and maybe even brought about in Slavic stories, and his body would be entombed in the man-killing whiteness of the livid flowers of space. That was pretty good: the livid flowers of space. Right then he hit himself full on the thumb with the hammer. The coldness that had got into him was so intense that he had to roll around on the ground in an attempt to fight off the stiffness that was coming on him from the fact that he was freezing up. When he managed to sit upright waving his hand around, he was wet from head to toe, probably from the melting snow or from that light drizzle that was mingling with the livid flowers of space and refreshed the wolves as it fell on their fur.

Traveler was tying up his pajama pants and from his window he was able to get a clear picture of Oliveira’s struggles with the snow and the steppes. He was about to turn around and tell Talita that Oliveira was rolling on the floor shaking his hand, but he realized that the situation was rather serious and that it would be better for him to be a stern and impassive witness.

“It’s about time, damn it,” Oliveira said. “I’ve been whistling at you for half an hour. Look what I’ve done to my hand.”

“You didn’t get that from selling bolts of gabardine,” Traveler said.

“Trying to straighten out nails. I need some straight nails and a little bit of
yerba
.”

“That’s easy to arrange,” Traveler said. “Wait a minute.”

“Wrap it up and throw it to me.”

“O.K.,” Traveler said. “But now that I think of it, it’s going to be hard getting into the kitchen.”

“Why?” asked Oliveira. “It’s not too far away.”

“No, but there’s a clothesline with stuff hung up to dry.”

“Duck under it,” Oliveira suggested. “Cut it down if you have to. The slap of a wet shirt landing on the floor is something unforgettable. If you want, I’ll toss you my jackknife. I bet I can stick it right on the window. When I was a kid I could stick a jackknife wherever I wanted to and from thirty feet away.”

“The trouble with you,” Traveler said, “is that every problem always brings you back to your childhood. I’m sick of telling you to read a little Jung. And look how it all comes back with that jackknife, you make it sound like an interplanetary missile. It’s impossible to mention anything to you without your hauling out your jackknife. Just tell me what the devil all this has to do with a little bit of
yerba
and a few nails.”

“You didn’t follow me,” Oliveira said, offended. “First I mentioned my mangled hand, then I mentioned the nails. Then you raised the barrier of a clothesline that was stopping you from going to the kitchen, and it was logical that the clothesline should remind me of my jackknife. You ought to read Edgar Allan Poe. Clothesline and all, you can’t follow the thread of anything, that’s what’s wrong with you.”

Traveler leaned on the windowsill and looked out into the street. The little shade that there was had spread out over the pavement, and the sunny part started from the second floor up, a yellow ecstasy grasping out in all directions and literally smacking Oliveira in the face.

“The sun is really screwing you up this afternoon,” Traveler said.

“It’s not the sun,” said Oliveira. “You ought to be able to see that it’s the moon and that the cold is just too much. This hand of mine has got all purple from the cold. Gangrene is setting in, and in a few weeks you’ll be bringing gladioli to me in the boneyard.”

“The moon?” Traveler said, looking up. “I’ll be bringing you wet towels in Vieytes, the booby hatch.”

“What they want most out there are cigarettes,” Oliveira said. “You’re full of incongruities, Manú.”

“I’ve told you a hundred times not to call me Manú.”

“Talita calls you Manú,” said Oliveira, shaking his hand as if he wanted to disconnect it from his arm.

“The difference between you and Talita,” Traveler said, “is something that is obvious to the touch. I don’t understand why you have to pick up her vocabulary. I’m repelled by hermit crabs, symbiosis in all its forms, lichens, and all other parasites.”

“My heart really bleeds for your sensitivity,” Oliveira said.

“Thank you. So it’s
yerba
and nails. What do you want the nails for?”

“I’m not sure yet,” Oliveira said, confused. “Actually, I took down the can of nails and found they were all twisted. I started to straighten them out, but with all this cold, you see … It’s my idea that as long as I have straight nails I’ll know what to use them for.”

“Interesting,” Traveler said, staring at him. “The strangest things happen to you. First the nails and then their ultimate use. It could be a tremendous lesson, old man.”

“You always did understand me,” Oliveira said. “And the
yerba
, you should know, I need it to brew up some good old bitter stuff.”

“O.K.,” Traveler said. “Hold on. If I take too long you can whistle. Talita likes your whistling.”

Shaking his hand, Oliveira went into the bathroom and wet his head and hair. He kept on wetting himself until his undershirt was all soaked, and then he turned to the window to test the theory that if the rays of the sun fall on a wet rag a violent sensation of cold will be produced. “To think that I shall die,” Oliveira said to himself, “without having read the headlines:
TOWER OF PISA FALLS
. It’s sad, if you really take a good look at it.”

He began to put headlines together, something that always helped to pass the time of day.
WOOL CLOGS LOOM AND SUFFOCATES IN WEST LANÚS
. He could add up two hundred possible headlines without coming upon any other one that was passable.

“I’m going to have to move,” Oliveira muttered. “This room is really too small. I really have to get into Manú’s circus and stay with them.
Yerba!”

Nobody answered.

“Yerba,”
Oliveira said softly. “Yes,
yerba.
Don’t come on like that, Manú. To think that we could chat from window to window, you and Talita and maybe Señora Gutusso would join in, or the errand-girl, and we could make up games with the cemetery and other things to play with.”

“After all,” Oliveira thought, “I can play games with the cemetery all by myself.”

He went to get the Dictionary of the Spanish Royal Academy, on the cover of which the word
Royal
stood out like an open wound, having been chipped away by a razor-blade; he opened it at random and worked out the following game from the cemetery for Manú.

“Fed up with the client and her climacteric, they clipped out her clitoris and gave her a clyster, clinically in her cloaca, and as she clucked about the clipping and the clinometric climb to get such clinkers, they sent her off to get some clerical clue to her clingy claim.”

“Shit,” Oliveira said with admiration. He thought that maybe shit could be a starting point, but he was mistaken because he couldn’t find it in the cemetery; but on the other hand the shipworm shirked among the shirts and shivered deep within the shittim wood; the worst of it was that the shifty shingle was shimmying up and down his shin, in some Shinto shire that could be shirred for a shilling.

“It’s really the necropolis,” he thought. “I can’t see how the binding has lasted so long on all this crap.”

He began to work out another game, but it didn’t come off. He decided to look into the typical dialogues and he looked for the notebook where he had been keeping them after getting inspiration in the subway, cafés, and bars. He had practically finished a typical dialogue between two Spaniards and he put down the finishing touches, but first he poured a pitcher of water over his undershirt.