Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (42 page)

“They’re a lot crazier here,” Traveler would say. “There won’t be any comparison.”

Oliveira would shrug-his-shoulders, incapable of saying that he felt the same way inside, and he would look up at the top of the tent, losing himself stupidly in uncertain ruminations.

“Of course you have changed as you went from place to place,” Traveler would grumble. “Me too, but always here, always in this meridian …”

He would stretch out his arm and take in the vague geography of Buenos Aires.

“Changes, you know …” Oliveira would say.

While they were talking that way they would choke with laughter, and the audience would look at them out of the corner of their eyes because they were distracting their attention.

In moments of confidence, the three of them would admit that they were admirably prepared for their new duties. For
example, the arrival of the Sunday edition of
La Nación
would provoke in them a sadness comparable only to people lined up at the movies and reprints from the
Reader’s Digest.

“Contacts are getting cut off more all the time,” Traveler would say with a note of prophecy. “You have to give great shouts.”

“Colonel Flappa already gave one last night,” Talita answered. “Result, a state of siege.”

“That’s not a shout, girl, just a death-rattle. I’m talking about the things Yrigoyen used to dream about, historic cuspidations, prophetic promissorations, those hopes of mankind that have reached such bad shape in these parts.”

“You’re talking just like the other one now,” Talita said, looking at him worriedly but hiding her characterological glance.

The other one was still at the circus, giving Suárez Melián some last-minute help and being surprised sometimes at the fact that he was becoming so indifferent to everything. He had the feeling that he had turned over the mana he had left to Talita and Traveler, who were getting more and more excited thinking about the clinic; the only thing he really liked doing those days was playing with the calculating cat, who had taken an enormous liking to him and would do additions for his exclusive pleasure. Since Ferraguto had given instructions that the cat was not to be taken into the street except in a basket and with an identification collar like army dog-tags from the Battle of Okinawa, Oliveira understood the cat’s feelings and as soon as they were two blocks away from the circus he would leave the basket in a delicatessen he could trust, take the collar off the poor animal, and the two of them would wander around inspecting empty cans in vacant lots or nibbling grass, a delightful occupation. After those hygienic walks it was almost tolerable for Oliveira to become involved in the gatherings in Don Crespo’s courtyard, in Gekrepten’s tender insistence on knitting him things for winter. The night that Ferraguto telephoned the boarding house to tell Traveler about the imminent date of the great transaction, the three of them were perfecting their notions of the Ispamerikan language, extracted with infinite joy from an issue of
Renovigo.
They became almost sad thinking that in the clinic seriousness, science, abnegation, and all of those things were waiting for them.

“¿Ké bida no es trajedia?”
Talita read in excellent Ispamerikan.

They went on like that until Señora Gutusso arrived with the latest radio news bulletin about Colonel Flappa and his tanks, something real and concrete at last that scattered them immediately, to the surprise of the informant, drunk with patriotic feelings.

(–
118
)

THE Calle Trelles was just a step away from the bus stop, a little over three blocks. Ferraguto and Cuca were already there with the superintendent when Talita and Traveler arrived. The great transaction was taking place in a room on the second floor, with two windows that opened onto the courtyard garden where the patients took their walks and a little stream could be seen rising and falling in a concrete fountain. To reach the room Talita and Traveler had to go through several hallways and rooms on the ground floor, where ladies and gentlemen had addressed them in correct Spanish, asking for the kind donation of a pack or two of cigarettes. The male nurse who accompanied them seemed to find this interlude perfectly natural, and the circumstances did not favor any preliminary question in the nature of an orientation. Practically out of cigarettes, they reached the room of the great transaction where Ferraguto pompously introduced them to the superintendent. Halfway through the reading of an unintelligible document Oliveira appeared, and they had to explain to him with whispers and hidden gestures that everything was going along fine and that nobody understood much of anything. When Talita succinctly whispered to him about her complicated arrival shh shh, Oliveira looked at her puzzled because he had come in through an entrance that led right to that door. As for the Boss, he was dressed in black as called for by the occasion.

The heat was the kind that lowered the pitch of the radio announcers’ voices as every hour they would first give the weather report and then the official denials of the uprising in Campo de Mayo and Colonel Flappa’s grim intentions. The superintendent had interrupted the reading of the document at five minutes to six to turn on his Japanese transistor radio in order to keep up, as he affirmed after begging their pardon,
with the news. That expression immediately brought on in Oliveira the classic look of one who has forgotten something in the hallway downstairs (and one that even the superintendent would have to recognize as another form of contact with facts), and in spite of the fierce looks from Traveler and Talita he tore out of the room by the first available door, which was not the one he had come in by.

From a couple of phrases in the document he had surmised that the clinic had five floors and in addition a summerhouse in the rear of the garden. The best thing to do would be to take a turn around the garden, if he could find his way, but he didn’t get the chance because no sooner had he gone twenty feet than a young man in shirtsleeves approached smiling, took him by the hand, and led him, swinging his arm the way children do, up to a corridor where there were many doors and something that must have been the opening of a freight elevator. The idea of getting to know the clinic in the care of a madman was exceedingly agreeable, and the first thing Oliveira did was to offer his companion a cigarette. He was an intelligent-looking young man who accepted a butt and whistled with satisfaction. Then it turned out that he was an attendant and that Oliveira was not a patient, the usual misunderstandings in cases like that. The episode was cute and didn’t have much to offer, but as they went from one floor to another, Oliveira and Remorino became friendly and the inside topography of the clinic was explained, with anecdotes, jibes at the rest of the personnel, and watch-out-fors between friends. They were in the room where Dr. Ovejero kept his guinea pigs and a picture of Monica Vitti when a cross-eyed boy appeared, running over to tell Remorino that if the gentleman with him was Señor Horacio Oliveira, etc. With a sigh, Oliveira went down two flights and returned to the room of the great transaction where the document was dragging along to its conclusions in the midst of Cuca Ferraguto’s menopausal blushes and Traveler’s rude yawns. Oliveira was still thinking about the figure dressed in pink pajamas he had glimpsed on turning the corner of the hallway on the fourth floor, a man who was getting old and who was walking along close to the wall petting a pigeon that seemed to be asleep in his hand. It was exactly at that moment that Cuca Ferraguto let out a kind of bellow.

“What do you mean, they have to okay it?”

“Be quiet, dear,” the Boss said. “The gentleman means …”

“It’s quite clear,” said Talita, who had always got along with Cuca and wanted to help her. “The transfer requires the approval of the patients.”

“But that’s crazy,” Cuca said, very
ad hoc.

“My dear lady,” the superintendent said, plucking at his vest with his free hand. “The patients here are very special, and the Méndez Delfino Act is quite clear in this respect. Except for eight or nine whom have families that have given their approval, the rest have spent all their lives between one asylum and another, if I may use the term, and no one is responsible for them. In these cases the law allows the superintendent to get from them in lucid moments their approval of the transfer of the clinic to a new owner. Here are their statements, waiting to be signed,” he added, showing her a book bound in red with strips cut from the comic section sticking out. “Read them, that’s all there is to it.”

“If I understand correctly,” Ferraguto said, “this negotiation has to be done right now.”

“And why do you think I’ve had you all come here? You as owner and these gentlemen as witnesses: let’s start bringing in the patients and we can get it all done this afternoon.”

“The point,” Traveler said, “is that the ones who sign have to be in what you call their lucid moments.”

The superintendent gave him a look of pity and pressed a buzzer. Remorino came in dressed in a smock; he winked at Oliveira and placed the enormous register on a small table. He placed a chair in front of the table, and folded his arms like a Persian executioner. Ferraguto, who had hastened to examine the register with the air of one who understood, asked if the approval should be signed at the bottom of the document, and the superintendent said yes, so now they would call the patients in in alphabetical order and ask them to give their stamp of approval under the influence of a large, round blue fountain pen. In spite of such efficient preparations, Traveler insisted on suggesting that maybe one of the patients would refuse to sign or would throw a sudden scene. Although they didn’t dare to back him openly, Cuca and Ferraguto were-hanging-on-his-every-word.

(–
119
)

REMORINO appeared just then with an old man who seemed rather startled, and who when he recognized the superintendent greeted him with a sort of bow.

“In pajamas,” said Cuca, dumfounded.

“I noticed when we came in,” Ferraguto said.

“They weren’t pajamas. More like …”

“Quiet please,” the superintendent said. “Come here, Antúnez, and put your signature where Remorino will show you.”

The old man examined the register closely while Remorino held the pen out to him. Ferraguto took out his handkerchief and dried his forehead with a few soft dabs.

“This is page eight,” Antúnez said, “and I think that I ought to sign on page one.”

“Right here,” said Remorino, showing him a place in the register. “Come on, your
café con leche
is getting cold.”

Antúnez signed with a flourish, bowed to everyone, and went out with little pink steps that delighted Talita. The second pair of pajamas was much fatter, and after circumnavigating the table he went over and shook hands with the superintendent, who took his hand grudgingly and pointed to the register with a curt gesture.

“You know all about it already, so sign the book and then return to your room.”

“My room hasn’t been swept out,” fat pajamas said.

Cuca made a mental note of the lack of cleanliness. Remorino tried to put the pen in the hand of fat pajamas, who drew back slowly.

“It’ll be cleaned right away,” Remorino said. “Sign your name, Don Nicanor.”

“Never,” said fat pajamas. “It’s a trick.”

“Don’t talk to me about tricks,” the superintendent said. “Dr.
Ovejero has already explained to you what it’s all about. You people sign now and starting tomorrow you get double rations of rice and milk.”

“I won’t sign unless Don Antúnez agrees,” fat pajamas said.

“It so happens he signed it just before you. Take a look.”

“I can’t make out the signature. This isn’t Don Antúnez’s signature. You got him to sign with an electric cattle prod. You killed Don Antúnez.”

“Go bring him back,” the superintendent ordered Remorino, who flew out and came back with Antúnez. Fat pajamas let out an exclamation of joy and went over to shake his hand.

“Tell him you agree and that he doesn’t have to worry,” the superintendent said. “Let’s go, it’s getting late.”

“Go ahead and sign, son, don’t be afraid,” Antúnez told fat pajamas. “After all, it won’t change you in the head in any way.”

Fat pajamas dropped the pen. Remorino picked it up with a grumble, and the superintendent got up furiously. Hiding behind Antúnez, fat pajamas was trembling and clutching at his sleeves. There was a soft knock on the door, and before Remorino could open it there entered without further ado a woman in a pink kimono, who went straight to the register and looked it all over as if it were a pickled shoat. Straightening up satisfied, she put her hand on the register.

“I swear to tell the whole truth,” the woman said. “You wouldn’t tell me a lie, Don Nicanor.”

Fat pajamas nodded in approval and suddenly accepted the pen that Remorino was offering him and signed just where his hand happened to fall, without taking time for anything.

“Animal,” they heard the superintendent mutter. “See if it came out in the right place, Remorino. Not too bad. And now you, Señora Schwitt, now that you’re here. Show her the place, Remorino.”

“Unless there’s some improvement in the social environment I won’t sign anything,” said Señora Schwitt. “Doors and windows have to be opened to the spirit.”

“I want two windows in my room,” fat pajamas said. “And Don Antúnez wants to go to the Franco-Inglesa drugstore to buy some cotton and lots of other things. This place is so dark.”

Turning his head a little, Oliveira saw that Talita was looking at him and he smiled at her. Both of them knew that the other
one was thinking that this was all a comedy of idiots, that fat pajamas and the rest of them were just as crazy as they were. Not very good actors, because they didn’t make any effort to appear like decent lunatics in front of people who had done a good job of reading their manual of psychiatry for the layman. For example, over there, gripping her purse in both hands with complete self-assurance and sitting stolidly in her easy chair, Cuca seemed a good deal crazier than the three signatories, who now had begun to complain about something that sounded like the death of a dog, about which Señora Schwitt spread herself around with a luxury of gestures. Nothing was too unforeseeable; the most pedestrian causality continued governing those voluble and loquacious relationships in which the roars of the superintendent served as a continuous bass to the repeated designs of complaints and demands and the Franco-Inglesa. Thus they saw successively how Remorino took away Antúnez and fat pajamas, how Señora Schwitt disdainfully signed the register, how a skeletal giant entered, a kind of gaunt flame in pink flannel, and behind him a young man with hair gone completely white and malignantly beautiful green eyes. These last two signed without any resistance, but then they decided that they wanted to stay until the end of the ceremony. To avoid any more disputes, the superintendent sent them over to a corner and Remorino went to bring in two more patients, a girl with bulky hips and a frightened man who would not lift his eyes from the floor. More surprising mention was made of the death of a dog. When the patients had signed, the girl curtsied like a ballerina. Cuca Ferraguto replied with a pleasant nod of the head, something that brought on a monstrous laughing attack in Talita and Traveler. There were already ten signatures in the register and Remorino continued bringing people in. There were greetings and a controversy here and there that interrupted things or changed protagonists; every so often a signature. It was already seven-thirty, and Cuca took out a compact and made up her face with the gestures of the wife of the head of a clinic, something in between Madame Curie and Edwige Feuillère. More wiggling on the part of Talita and Traveler, more restlessness on the part of Ferraguto, who alternately consulted the progress in the register and the face of the superintendent. At seven-forty a woman patient declared she would not sign until they killed the dog. Remorino promised her, winking in the direction of Oliveira,
who appreciated the confidence. Twenty patients had come through and there were only forty-five left. The superintendent came over to them to let them know that the most difficult cases had already been stamped (that’s how he put it) and the best thing to do would be to go into the next room for some beer and news reports. During the break they talked about psychiatry and politics. The revolt had been put down by the government forces, the leaders had surrendered in Luján. Dr. Nerio Rojas was at a conference in Amsterdam. The beer, delicious.