Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (37 page)

“Horacio is always like this,” Gekrepten said. “Don’t pay any attention to him, Traveler.”

“We’re so bland it’s unbearable, Manú. We let reality slip through our fingers like any ordinary trickle of water. We had it right there, almost perfect, like a rainbow between our thumb and our little finger. And the work that went into getting it, the time that was required, the way we had to make ourselves deserving of it … Boom, the radio says that General Pisotelli has made a declaration…
Kaput.
Everything
kaput.
‘Something serious at last,’ the errand-girl says, or this one, or maybe even you yourself. And me, because I don’t want you to think that I’m infallible. How should I know where truth is? I only know that I liked the feel of that rainbow, like a little toad between my fingers. And this afternoon … Look, in spite of the cold I think that we were beginning to hit upon something serious. Talita, for example, carrying out the amazing feat of not falling off into the street, and you over there, and me … One feels certain things, what the hell.”

“I’m not sure I understand you,” Traveler said. “That business about the rainbow is pretty good anyway. But why are you so intolerant? Live and let live, brother.”

“Now that you’ve had your fun, come get the wardrobe off the bed,” Gekrepten said.

“You see?” Oliveira said.

“I see what you mean,” Traveler said, convinced.

“
Quod erat demonstrandum
, old buddy.”

“
Quod erat
,” Traveler said.

“And the worst of it is that we hadn’t even got started.”

“What do you mean?” Talita said, tossing her hair back and looking to see if Traveler had pushed the hat far enough along.

“Don’t get nervous,” Traveler advised. “Turn around slowly, put out that hand, that’s the way. Wait, I’ll push it a little more … Didn’t I tell you? There it is.”

Talita grasped the hat and put it on, all in one motion. Down below there were two boys and a woman who were talking to the errand-girl and looking up at the bridge.

“Now I’ll toss the package to Oliveira and that’ll be it,” Talita said, feeling more sure of herself with the hat on. “Hold the boards tight, it’ll be easy.”

“Are you going to throw it?” Oliveira asked. “I bet you miss.”

“Let her try,” Traveler said. “If the package goofs off into the street I hope it hits old lady Gutusso on her nut, repulsive old owl.”

“So you don’t like her either,” Oliveira said. “I’m happy because I can’t stand her. What about you, Talita?”

“I’d rather toss the package to you,” Talita said.

“O.K., O.K., but I think you’re rushing it too much.”

“Oliveira’s right,” Traveler said. “You don’t want to ruin everything right at the end, after all the work that went into it.”

“But I’m so hot,” Talita said. “I want to come back, Manú.”

“You’re not so far away that you should be complaining like that. Somebody would think you were writing me a letter from Mato Grosso.”

“He’s thinking about the
yerba
when he says that,” Oliveira explained to Gekrepten, who was looking at the wardrobe.

“Are you going to play much longer?” Gekrepten asked.

“Odd point,” Oliveira said.

“Oh,” Gekrepten said. “That’s better.”

Talita had taken the package out of her bathrobe and was swinging it back and forth. The bridge began to vibrate, and Traveler and Oliveira held it down with all their strength. Tired of swinging the package, Talita began to wind up with her arm, holding it with her other hand.

“Don’t do anything silly,” Oliveira said. “Slower, do you hear me? Slower.”

“Here it comes,” Talita shouted.

“Slower, you’re going to fall off.”

“I don’t care!” Talita shouted, letting the package go. It went full force through the window and broke open as it hit the wardrobe.

“Splendid,” Traveler said, looking at Talita as if he were trying to keep the bridge in place with nothing but the strength of his look. “Perfect, my love. You couldn’t have made it clearer. That’s a
demonstrandum
for you.”

The bridge gradually stopped moving. Talita hung on with both hands and lowered her head. Oliveira could only see her hat and her hair hanging down over her shoulders. He raised his eyes and looked at Traveler.

“If you want to know,” he said. “I agree, she couldn’t have made it clearer.”

“At last,” Talita thought, looking down at the cobblestones and the sidewalks. “Anything is better than being out here like this in between the two windows.”

“You’ve got two choices,” Traveler said. “Keep going forward, which is easier, and go into Oliveira’s, or come back, which is harder, and save yourself going up and down the stairs and crossing the street.”

“Come over here, you poor thing,” Gekrepten said. “Your face is all covered with perspiration.”

“Drunks and little children,” Oliveira said.

“Let me rest a minute,” Talita said. “I feel a little nauseous.”

Oliveira lay prone over the sill and stretched out his hand. All Talita had to do was come forward two feet to touch his hand.

“A perfect gentleman,” Traveler said. “It’s obvious he’s read Professor Maidana’s manual of social graces. A real count. Don’t miss that, Talita.”

“It’s because of the extreme cold,” Oliveira said. “Rest a little, Talita, and then cover the distance in between. Don’t pay any attention to him, you know that the snow makes one delirious before the deep sleep sets in.”

But Talita had raised herself slowly, and leaning on both arms had worked her behind a half-foot backwards. Another grip, another half-foot. Oliveira, still holding out his hand, looked like a passenger on a boat which is slowly pulling away from the pier.

Traveler stretched out his arms and got his hands under
Talita’s armpits. She didn’t move, and then she threw her head back with such a quick movement that the hat went gliding down to the sidewalk.

“Just like at the bullfight,” Oliveira said. “Señora Gutusso is going to try to steal it.”

Talita had closed her eyes and was letting herself be held up, hauled off the board and through the window. She felt Traveler’s lips on the back of her neck, his quick, hot breath.

“You came back,” Traveler murmured. “You came back, you came back.”

“Yes,” Talita said, going over to the bed. “Didn’t you think I would? I threw him his god-damned package and I came back, I threw him the package and I came back, I …”

Traveler sat down on the edge of the bed. He was thinking about the rainbow between his fingers, those things that occurred to Oliveira. Talita slipped down beside him and began to cry quietly. “It’s her nerves,” Traveler thought. “She had a rough time.” He wanted to get her a tall glass of water with lemon juice, give her an aspirin, cover her face with a magazine, make her sleep a little. But first he had to pick up the self-teaching encyclopedia, put the dresser back where it belonged, and pull in the board. “This room is such a mess,” he thought, kissing Talita. As soon as she stopped crying he would ask her to help him clean up the room. He began to caress her, say things to her.

“At last, at last,” Oliveira said.

He left the window and sat down on the edge of the bed, using the space remaining next to the wardrobe. Gekrepten had finished picking up the
yerba
with a spoon.

“It was full of nails,” Gekrepten said. “How strange.”

“Very strange,” Oliveira said.

“I think I’ll go down and get Talita’s hat. You know how kids are.”

“A wise thought,” Oliveira said, picking up a nail and twirling it with his fingers.

Gekrepten went down to the street. The children had picked up the hat and were arguing with the errand-girl and Señora Gutusso.

“Give it to me,” Gekrepten said with a prim smile. “It belongs to the lady across the way, someone I know.”

“Everybody knows her, child,” Señora Gutusso said. “What a performance for this time of day, and with children watching.”

“There was nothing wrong about it,” Gekrepten said without much conviction.

“With her legs out in the air on that board, what an example for the children. You probably couldn’t see, but from down here it was quite a sight, I can assure you.”

“She had a lot of hair,” the smallest child said.

“There you are,” said Señora Gutusso. “Children tell what they see, poor things. And what in the world was she doing straddling a board, might I ask? At this hour, when respectable people are having their siesta or are busy at work. Would you straddle a board, madam, if it’s not too much to ask?”

“No, I wouldn’t,” Gekrepten said. “But Talita works in a circus. They’re all performers.”

“Were they rehearsing?” asked one of the boys. “What circus is that girl with?”

“It wasn’t a rehearsal,” Gekrepten said. “What happened was that they wanted to give my husband a little
yerba
, and so …”

Señora Gutusso looked at the errand-girl. The errand-girl put her finger to her temple and made a circle with it. Gekrepten took the hat in both hands and went back into the building. The boys formed a line and began to sing to the tune of the
Light Cavalry Overture:

(Repeat)

(–
148
)

THE job consisted of stopping kids from crawling under the tent, lending a hand with the animals when necessary, helping the man who worked the lights, writing copy for advertisements and the gaudy posters, getting them printed, dealing with the police, keeping the Manager informed of anything wrong that he should know about, helping Señor Manuel Traveler in his administrative work, helping Señora Atalía Donosi de Traveler in the box-office (if necessary), etc.

During this time, Dinu Lipatti had died in Europe at the age of thirty-three. They were talking about the job and about Dinu Lipatti all the way to the corner, because Talita thought that it was also good to collect tangible proofs of the nonexistence of God or at least of his incurable frivolity. She had suggested that they go out immediately and buy a Lipatti record and go to Don Crespo’s to listen to it, but Traveler and Oliveira wanted to have a beer at the corner café and talk about the circus, now that they were colleagues and quite content. Oliveira had-not-failed-to-notice that Traveler had had to make a-heroic-effort to convince the Boss, and that he had convinced him more by chance than for any other reason. They had already decided that Oliveira would give Gekrepten two of the three pieces of cashmere he hadn’t sold yet, and that Talita would make herself a
tailored suit with the third. A matter of celebrating his appointment. Consequently, Traveler ordered the beers while Talita went to prepare lunch. It was Monday, an off day. On Tuesday there would be a performance at seven and one at nine, with the presentation of 4
BEARS
4, a juggler who had just arrived from Colombo, and, of course, the calculating cat. Oliveira’s job would be all gravy at first, until the time came when he would have to pitch in. In the meantime he could watch the performance, which was no worse than any others. Everything was going very well.

Everything was going so well that Traveler lowered his eyes and began to drum on the table. The waiter, who knew them well, came over to argue about the Ferrocarril Oeste team, and Oliveira bet ten pesos on the Chacarita Juniors. As he beat out the rhythm of a
baguala
with his fingers, Traveler was telling himself that everything was perfectly all right this way, and that there was no other way out, while Oliveira was finishing up with the technicalities of his bet and drinking his beer. He had started to think about Egyptian phrases that morning, about Thoth, significantly the god of magic and the inventor of language. They argued for a while whether it wasn’t a fallacy to be arguing for a while, since the language they were using, as local and
lunfardo
as it might be, was perhaps part of a mantic structure that was by no means tranquilizing. They decided that all things considered, the double ministry of Thoth was a manifest guarantee of coherence in reality or unreality; it made them happy to have left more or less resolved the continuously disagreeable problem of the objective correlative. Magic or the tangible word, there was an Egyptian god who verbally harmonized subjects and objects. Everything was really going very well.

(–
75
)

EVERYTHING was perfect in the circus, a spangled fraud with wild music, a calculating cat who reacted to cardboard numbers that had been secretly treated previously with valerian, while ladies were so moved that they made sure that their offspring noticed such an eloquent example of Darwinian evolution. When Oliveira went out onto the still-empty sawdust on the first night and looked up at the opening at the highest point of the red tent, that escape-hatch to a maybe contact, that center, that eye like a bridge between the earth and liberated space, he stopped laughing and thought that someone else would probably have climbed up the nearest pole to the eye up there as if it were the most natural thing to do, and that that other person was not the one who was smoking and looking up at the high hole there, that other person was not the one who stayed down below smoking in the midst of all the circus shouts.

On one of those early nights he came to understand why Traveler had managed to get him the job. Talita had told him why without beating about the bush while they were counting money in the brick cubicle that served as treasury and office for the circus. Oliveira already knew why in another way, and it was necessary for Talita to tell him from her point of view so that out of the two things there could be born like a new time, a present in which he felt himself placed and obligated. He tried to protest, to say that they were things that Traveler had made up, he tried to feel himself once more outside of the others’ time (he, dying to agree, mix into things, be) but at the same time he understood that it was certain, that in one way or another he had transgressed the world of Talita and Traveler, without acts, without intentions even, nothing more than giving in to a nostalgic whim. Between one word and another from Talita he saw the shabby line of El Cerro become outlined, he heard the
ridiculous Lusitanian phrase that had unconsciously invented a future of packing plants and
caña quemante
rum. It brought out his laugh in Talita’s face, just as he had laughed that very morning at the mirror when he was about to brush his teeth.