Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (34 page)

A TYPICAL DIALOGUE BETWEEN TWO SPANIARDS

LÓPEZ
:    I had been living in Madrid for a whole year. You know, it was in 1925, and…

PÉREZ
:    In Madrid? Why, just yesterday I was saying to Dr. García…

LÓPEZ
:    From 1925 to 1926. I taught literature at the University.

PÉREZ
:    I was saying to him: “You know, old man, anybody who has lived in Madrid knows what it’s all about.”

LÓPEZ
:    A chair was established especially for me so I could give my lectures in Literature.

PÉREZ
:    Precisely, precisely. Why, just yesterday I was saying to Dr. García, who is a very good friend of mine…

LÓPEZ
:    Of course, as you know if you have lived there more than a year, the level of studies leaves much to be desired.

PÉREZ
:    He’s the son of Paco García, the one who was Minister of Trade and raised bulls.

LÓPEZ
:    A scandal, you can be sure, a real scandal.

PÉREZ
:    Yes, old man, of course. Well, this Dr. García…

Oliveira was already a little bored with the dialogue and closed his notebook. “Shiva,” he thought suddenly. “Oh, cosmic dancer, how would you shine, infinite bronze, in the light of this sun? Why did I think of Shiva? Buenos Aires. You get along. Funny thing. You end up owning an encyclopedia.
De qué te sirvió el verano, oh ruiseñor.
Of course it could be worse, specializing and spending five years in the study of the behavior of the Acrididae. But just look at this fantastic list, boy, take a look at this …”

It was a slip of yellow paper clipped from some document of vaguely international character. A publication of UNESCO or something of the sort, with a list of names from some Burmese council. Oliveira began to be absorbed in the list and he could not resist the temptation to take out a pencil and compose the following nonsense poem:

“The three Wunna Kyaw Htins are a little monotonous,” he said to himself as he looked at the lines. “It must mean
something like ‘His Excellency the Most Exalted.’ But the Thiri Pyanchi U Thant is good, that’s the one that sounds best. I wonder how you pronounce Htoon.”

“Hi,” Traveler said.

“Hi,” said Oliveira. “Cold enough for you?”

“I’m sorry you had to wait. The nails, you know …”

“Of course,” said Oliveira. “A nail is a nail, especially if it’s straight. Did you wrap them up?”

“No,” said Traveler, scratching a pap. “Jesus, what a day. It’s like an oven.”

“Look,” said Oliveira, touching his completely dry undershirt. “You’re like the salamander, you live in a world of perpetual pyromania. Did you bring the
yerba
?”

“No,” Traveler said. “I completely forgot about the
yerba.
I only brought the nails.”

“Well, go get it, make me up a bundle, and toss it over here.”

Traveler looked at his window, then at the street, and finally at Oliveira’s window.

“It’s going to be a close one,” he said. “You know I can never hit anything even six feet away. I’ve fooled myself twenty times in the circus.”

“But it’s practically like handing it to me,” Oliveira said.

“That’s what you say, that’s what you say, and the nails will land on top of somebody down in the street and we’ll be in trouble.”

“Toss me the package and then we can play some games with the cemetery,” Oliveira said.

“It would be better if you came over and got it.”

“Are you out of your mind? Go down three flights, cross the street through all that ice, climb up three more flights, they don’t even do that in
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
.”

“You’re not going to suggest that I undertake that bit of afternoon alpinism, are you?”

“The farthest from my mind,” Oliveira said virtuously.

“Or for me to look for a board in the pantry and make a bridge with it?”

“That’s not a bad idea at all,” Oliveira said, “and it would give us a chance to use the nails, you on your side and me on mine.”

“O.K., wait a minute,” Traveler said and disappeared.

Oliveira stayed there trying to think of a good insult to put Traveler down with the first chance he got. After consulting the
cemetery and pouring a pitcher of water over his undershirt, he leaned on the windowsill in the sunlight. Traveler reappeared soon, dragging an enormous plank, which he shoved little by little out of the window. Just then Oliveira noticed that Talita was helping to hold the board, and he greeted her with a whistle. Talita had on a green bathrobe and had it tied so tight that it was easy to see that she didn’t have anything else on underneath.

“You’re such a drag,” Traveler said with a snort. “You get us involved in the damnedest things.”

“Shut up, you myriapod from four to five inches in length, with a pair of feet on each of twenty-one rings dividing the body, four eyes, and horny hooked mandibles which on biting exude a very active poison,” he said in one breath.

“Mandibles,” Traveler commented. “Listen to the words he uses. Hey, if I keep pushing this board out the window the time will come when the force of gravity will drag Talita and me straight down to hell.”

“I can see that,” Oliveira said, “but don’t forget that the end of the board is too far away for me to grab.”

“Stretch out your mandibles a little,” Traveler said.

“Don’t put me on. Besides you know damned well that I suffer from
horror vacuis.
I’m a real
roseau pensant
, a
caña pensante.”

“The only
caña
I can see in you is the kind that comes from Paraguay,” Traveler said furiously. “I really don’t know what we can do, this board is beginning to get too heavy, you know of course that weight is a question of relativity. When we carried it out it was quite light, but of course the sun wasn’t shining on it the way it is now.”

“Pull it back into the room,” Oliveira said with a sigh. “This is what we’ll do: I have another board, not as long, but it is wider. We’ll put a rope around it like a noose and tie the two boards together. I’ll tie my end to my bed, you do whatever seems best with yours.”

“I think we’d better tie ours onto the handle of a dresser drawer,” Talita said. “You go get yours and we’ll get ours ready.”

“God, but they can get involved,” Oliveira thought as he went to get the board, which was in the hallway between the door of his place and that of a Levantine faith-healer. It was a cedar plank, smoothly planed but missing two or three knots that had fallen out. Oliveira stuck his finger through one of the knotholes
to see what it looked like from the other side, and he wondered whether the holes could be used to tie on the rope. The hallway was almost completely dark (it was really the contrast between the sunshine in his room and the shade there) and next to the Levantine’s door there was a chair on which he could make out a woman dressed in black. Oliveira nodded to her from behind the board, which he had lifted up and was holding like a huge (and ineffective) shield.

“Hello, mister,” the woman in black said. “Hot enough for you?”

“Quite the contrary, madam,” Oliveira said. “It’s terribly cold.”

“Don’t be funny,” the woman said. “Show some respect for people who are not well.”

“But there’s nothing wrong with you, madam.”

“Nothing wrong? How dare you!”

“All of this is reality,” Oliveira thought, grabbing the board and looking at the woman in black. “All of this that I accept as reality every minute and which can’t be, can’t be.”

“It can’t be,” Oliveira said.

“Go away and don’t be fresh,” the woman said. “You ought to be ashamed, coming out in your undershirt at this time of day.”

“It’s from Masllorens’, madam,” Oliveira said.

“Disgusting,” the woman said.

“All of this stuff I think makes up reality,” Oliveira thought, stroking the board, leaning on it. “This show window arranged and lighted up by fifty or sixty centuries of hands, imaginations, compromises, pacts, secret liberties.”

“Who would think that a man starting to turn gray …” the woman in black said.

“To get the idea that you are the center,” Oliveira thought, resting more comfortably on the board. “But it’s incalculably stupid. A center as illusory as it would be to try to find ubiquity. There is no center, there’s a kind of continuous confluence, an undulation of matter. All through the night I’m a motionless body, and on the other side of town a roll of newsprint is being converted into the morning paper, and at eight-forty I will leave the house and at eight-twenty the paper will have arrived at the newsstand on the corner, and at eight forty-five my hand and the newspaper will come together and begin to move together through the air, three feet from the ground, heading towards the streetcar stop …”

“Don Bunche is certainly taking his time with that other patient,” the woman in black said.

Oliveira lifted up the plank and carried it into his room. Traveler was signaling for him to hurry up, and to calm him down he answered with two shrill whistles. The rope was on top of the wardrobe, he had to bring a chair over and climb up on it.

“Can’t you hurry up a little?” Traveler said.

“O.K., O.K.,” Oliveira said, going to the window. “Is your board secured?”

“We’ve tied it to a drawer of the dresser, and Talita has put
Quillet’s Self-Teaching Encyclopedia
on top of it.”

“Not bad,” Oliveira said. “I’m going to put the yearly report of the
Statens Psykologisk-Pedagogiska Institut
on mine. They send it to Gekrepten, God knows why.”

“What worries me is how we’re going to connect them,” Traveler said as he began to move the dresser so that the board started to emerge from the window little by little.

“You look like two Assyrian generals armed with batteringrams and preparing to knock down some walls,” said Talita, who was not owner of the encyclopedia in vain. “Is that a German book you mentioned?”

“Swedish, stupid,” Oliveira said. “It talks about things like
Mentalhygieniska synpunkter i förskoleundervisning.
Splendid words, worthy of that young man Snorri Sturluson we hear so much about in Argentine literature. Real bronze breastplates, with the talismanic figure of the falcon.”

“The wild whirlwinds of Norway,” Traveler quoted.

“Are you really a cultured type, or are you just putting it on?” Oliveira asked, a little surprised.

“I won’t say the circus doesn’t take up a lot of time,” Traveler said, “but there’s always a little left for me to pin a star on my forehead. This talk of the star on my forehead always comes out when I talk about the circus, pure contamination. I wonder where I got it? Do you have any idea, Talita?”

“No,” said Talita, testing the strength of the board. “Probably from some Puerto Rican novel.”

“What bothers me is that in my subconscious I know where I read it.”

“In some classic?” Oliveira hinted.

“I can’t remember what it was about any more,” Traveler said, “but it was a book I’ll never forget.”

“So it seems,” Oliveira said.

“Our board is fine,” Talita said. “But I don’t see how we can fasten it to yours.”

Oliveira had finished unwinding the rope; he cut it in two, and with one half he tied the board to the bedsprings. Putting the end of the board on the windowsill, he moved the bed up and the board began to dip down like a lever, with the sill as its fulcrum, until little by little it came to rest on top of Traveler’s, while the legs of the bed lifted up about a foot and a half. “The worst part is that it’s going to keep on rising as soon as someone tries to cross the bridge,” Oliveira thought worriedly. He went over to the wardrobe and began to push it towards the bed.

“Don’t you have enough weight?” Talita asked as she sat on the edge of her window and looked over into Oliveira’s room.

“We’ve got to take every precaution,” Oliveira said, “so we won’t have any avoidable accidents.”

He pushed the wardrobe over next to the bed and slowly tipped it over on top of it. Talita marveled at Oliveira’s strength, almost as much as she did at Traveler’s astuteness and his inventions. “They’re really a pair of glyptodons,” she thought, enraptured. The antediluvian ages had always seemed to her to be a refuge of wisdom.

The wardrobe picked up speed as it fell and landed with a thump on the bed, making the whole room shake. There were shouts from down below and Oliveira thought that the Levantine next door must have been putting together some violent shamanistic pressure. He finished placing the wardrobe and then straddled the plank, inside the window, of course.

“Now it can take any weight,” he announced. “There won’t be any accident to please the girls downstairs who love us so much. None of this will make any sense to them until somebody gets killed down on the street. Life, as they say.”

“Aren’t you going to tie the boards together with your rope?” Traveler asked.

“Look,” Oliveira said. “You know very well that I get dizzy from heights. The very name of Everest makes me feel as if someone had kicked me in the crotch. I hate a lot of people, but no one the way I do Tensing the Sherpa, believe me.”

“In other words, we are going to have to tie the boards together,” Traveler said.

“That’s about the strength of it,” Oliveira admitted, lighting up a 43.

“See what we’ve got to do?” Traveler said to Talita. “Try crawling out to the middle of the bridge and tying the rope.”

“Me?” Talita said.

“That’s what I said.”

“Oliveira didn’t say I had to crawl out to the middle of the bridge.”

“He didn’t say so, but he implied it. Besides, it would have more style if you were the one who handed him the
yerba.
”