Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (43 page)

At eight-thirty, forty-eight signatures had been obtained. It was getting dark, and the room was heavy with smoke and people in the corners, with the coughing that every so often came from one of those present. Oliveira would have liked to go out into the street, but the superintendent was strict and unyielding. The last three signees had just demanded changes in the food (Ferraguto signaled Cuca to take notes, that’s all they needed, in his clinic meals would be impeccable) and the death of the dog (Cuca put the fingers of her hand together in an Italianate way and showed them to Ferraguto, who shook his head perplexed and looked at the superintendent, who was very tired and shading his eyes with a calendar from a cakeshop). When the old man with the pigeon in the hollow of his hand arrived, slowly petting it as if he wanted to make it sleep, there was a long pause while everyone stopped to contemplate the motionless dove, and it was almost a pity that the patient had to interrupt his rhythmic caresses on the pigeon’s back to reach out slowly for the pen that Remorino was holding out to him. After the old man, two sisters entered arm in arm and as soon as they were in the room demanded the death of the dog and other improvements in the establishment. The business of the dog made Remorino laugh, but Oliveira finally felt as if something was getting dammed up in him all the way up to his spleen, and getting up he told Traveler he was going to take a walk and that he would be right back.

“You have to stay,” the superintendent said. “You’re a witness.”

“I’m in the building,” Oliveira said. “Check the Méndez Delfino Act, it’s all provided for.”

“I’ll go with you,” Traveler said. “We’ll be back in five minutes.”

“Don’t leave the premises,” the superintendent said.

“Don’t worry,” said Traveler. “Come on, old man, I think we can get down to the garden this way. Disappointing, don’t you think?”

“Unanimity is boring,” Oliveira said. “Not one of them has done anything distinct. Look at the way they are about the dog. Let’s sit down by the fountain, the trickle of water has a lustral air about it that will do us good.”

“It smells like naphtha,” Traveler said. “Really lustral, as a matter of fact.”

“What did we expect, really? You can see how they all sign, there’s no difference between them and us. No difference at all. We’re going to be stupendously comfortable here.”

“Well,” Traveler said, “there is one difference: they go around in pink.”

“Look,” Oliveira said, pointing at the upper floors. It was already almost dark, and in the windows of the third and fourth floors lights were going on and off rhythmically. Light in one window and darkness in the one next door. Vice versa. Light on one floor, darkness on the one above, vice versa.

“It’s started,” Traveler said. “Lots of signatures, but now they’re beginning to show their worse side.”

They decided to finish their cigarettes next to the lustral trickle, talking about nothing and looking at the lights that were going on and off. That was when Traveler spoke about changes, and then after a silence he could hear Horacio laughing softly in the darkness. He kept on, wanting some certainty but not knowing how to bring up a subject that would slip out of the grasp of words and ideas.

“As if we were vampires, as if a single circulatory system united us—disunited us, that is. Sometimes you and I, sometimes the three of us, let’s not fool ourselves. I don’t know when it started, that’s the way it is and we have to open our eyes to it. I don’t think we’re here just because we came with the Boss. It would have been easy to have stayed on at the circus with Suárez Melián, we know the work and they appreciate us. But no, we had to come here. The three of us. I’m the first one to blame because I didn’t want Talita to think … Well, that I was putting you aside in this business of trying to get away from you. A matter of self-respect, you realize.”

“Actually,” Oliveira said, “I have no reason to take this job. I’m going back to the circus, or better still, away from everything.
Buenos Aires is a big place. I already told you all this once.”

“Yes, but you’ll be leaving after we had this conversation. I mean you’ll be doing it for me and that’s just what I don’t want.”

“In any case, explain what you mean by changes.”

“How should I know. If I tried to explain, it would get even hazier for me. Look, it’s something like this: as long as I’m with you there’s no problem, but as soon as I’m alone I get the feeling that you’re putting pressure on me, from your room, for example. Remember the other day when you asked me for the nails. Talita feels it too, she looks at me and I get the feeling that the look is meant for you; when the three of us are together, though, she can go for hours without noticing that you’re around. You must have spotted that, I suppose.”

“Yes. Go on.”

“That’s all, and that’s why I don’t think it would be any good for me to help you go off by yourself. It has to be something you decide alone, and now since I’ve been stupid enough to bring the matter up with you, you don’t even have the freedom to decide, because you’re going to raise the question from the responsibility angle and we’ll be done for. The ethical thing in this case would be to pardon the life of a friend, and I can’t accept that.”

“Oh,” said Oliveira. “So you won’t allow me to go away, and I can’t do it by myself. There’s a touch of pink pajamas about a situation like that, don’t you think?”

“There probably is.”

“Funny, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“All the lights went out at the same time.”

“They must have got the last signature. The clinic belongs to the Boss, Long Live Ferraguto!”

“I guess now we’ll have to satisfy them and kill the dog. It’s incredible the way they dislike it.”

“Not dislike,” Traveler said. “For the moment passions don’t seem to get very violent here either.”

“You have a need for radical solutions, old man. The same thing used to happen to me for a long time, and then …”

They began to walk back, carefully, because the garden was very dark and they couldn’t remember where the flowerbeds were located. When they stepped on the hopscotch, near the
doorway now, Traveler laughed softly and picking up one foot began to hop from square to square. The chalk design glowed weakly in the darkness.

“One of these nights I’m going to tell you about over there,” Oliveira said. “I don’t want to, but it’s probably the only way we can get to kill the dog, to use that image.”

Traveler jumped off the hopscotch, and at the same time the lights on the third floor suddenly went on. Oliveira, who was going to say something else, saw Traveler’s face come out of the darkness, and in the instant the lights stayed on before going out again, he was surprised by a grimace, a rictus (from the Latin
rictus
, the opening of a mouth: the contraction of the lips, similar to a smile).

“Talking about killing the dog,” Traveler said, “did you notice that the head doctor’s name is Ovejero? Sheepdog, crazy.”

“That’s not what you wanted to tell me.”

“Look who’s complaining about my silences or substitutions,” Traveler said. “Of course that’s not what I wanted to say, but what the hell’s the difference. It’s something that can’t be expressed. If you want to try to prove it … But something tells me it’s a little too late already, you know. The pizza’s cooled off, you can’t turn it over any more. The best thing for us would be to get to work right away, it’ll be a good distraction.”

Oliveira did not answer, and they went up to the room of the great transaction where the superintendent and Ferraguto were having a double shot of
caña.
Oliveira followed suit immediately, but Traveler went over and sat on the sofa where Talita was reading a novel with a sleepy face. After the last signature, Remorino had removed the register and the patients who had been witnessing the ceremony. Traveler noticed that the superintendent had turned off the ceiling light and was using instead a lamp on the desk; everything was bland and green, they were talking in low and satisfied voices. He heard them making plans to go have some tripe
genovese
in a restaurant downtown. Talita closed her book and looked at him sleepily, Traveler stroked her hair and he felt better. In any case, the idea of tripe at that hour and in that heat was insane.

(–
69
)

BECAUSE he really was unable to
tell
Traveler anything. If he began to pull at the ball of yarn he would get a thread of wool, yards of wool,
lana
, lanadir, lanagnorisis, lanaturner, lannapurna, lanatomy, lannuity, lanativity, lanationality, lanature,
lana ad lanauseam
but never the ball of yarn. He would have had to make Traveler suspect that what he was telling him did not make any direct sense (but what kind of sense did it make?) and that it wasn’t any kind of image or allegory either. The unbridgeable difference, a problem of levels that had nothing to do with intelligence or information, it was one thing to play
truco
or discuss John Donne with Traveler, everything took place in a territory of appearances in common; but the other way, to be a kind of monkey among men, to want to be a monkey for reasons that not even the monkey was capable of explaining, beginning with the fact that he had no reasons at all and his strength derived precisely from that, and so on down the line.

The first nights at the clinic were peaceful; the old employees were still doing their work and the new ones limited themselves to observing, gaining experience, and getting together in the pharmacy where Talita, dressed in white, was making the emotional rediscovery of emulsions and barbiturates. The problem was how to get out from under Cuca Ferraguto, who had installed herself in the office, because Cuca seemed to have decided to put her stamp on the clinic, and the Boss himself listened respectfully to the New Deal summarized in such terms as cleanliness, discipline, godcountryandhome, gray pajamas, and linden tea. Continually stopping by the pharmacy, Cuca kept-her-ears-open to the supposedly professional conversations of the new team. She had some confidence in Talita because the
girl had her diploma hung up there, but the husband and his buddy were suspect. Cuca’s problem was that in spite of everything she found them terribly charming, which obliged her to debate like Corneille between duty and Platonic balling, while Ferraguto organized the administration and little by little was getting used to the substitution of schizophrenics for swordswallowers and ampules of insulin for bales of hay. The doctors, three in number, came during the morning and were not much of a bother. The resident, a great poker player, had already become friendly with Oliveira and Traveler; in his office on the fourth floor they worked on possible royal flushes, and pots from ten to a hundred pesos would change hands like-a I wanna should tell you.

The patients much better, thank you.

(–
89
)

AND one Thursday, wham-bam, everybody settled at around nine o’clock in the evening. That afternoon the old personnel had left with a great slamming of doors (knowing laughs from Ferraguto and Cuca, firm on the question of severance pay) and a delegation of patients had said goodbye to the people who were leaving with shouts of “The dog is dead, the dog is dead!” which had not prevented them from presenting a petition with five signatures to Ferraguto, demanding chocolate, the afternoon paper, and the death of the dog. The new people were left behind, still a little unsure, and Remorino, who had taken charge of easing the transition, said that everything would run superbly. Radio El Mundo was feeding the sporting spirit of Buenos Aires with reports about the heat wave. A record breaker, you could sweat at your pleasure patriotically, and Remorino had already picked up four or five pairs of pajamas discarded in the corners. Between him and Oliveira the owners were persuaded to put them back on again, at least the pants. Before getting involved in a poker game with Ferraguto and Traveler, Dr. Ovejero had told Talita to distribute lemonade without anything to fear at all except to Numbers 6, 18, and 31. This had brought on such an attack of weeping by Number 31 that Talita had to give her a double ration of lemonade. It was already time to proceed
motu proprio
, death to the dog.

How had it been possible that one had begun to live that life so peacefully, without too much strangeness? Perhaps because there had been no previous preparation, because the manual of psychiatry acquired at the Tomás Pardo bookshop had not been exactly propedeutic for Talita and Traveler. Without experience, without any real desires, without anything: man was really the animal who gets accustomed even to not getting accustomed. The morgue, for example: Traveler and Oliveira did not know
about it and heretwas Tuesday night and Ovejero sent Remorino up to get them. Number 56 on the third floor had died just as they had expected; they needed help to move him and distract Number 31 who was getting telepalpitations from it all. Remorino explained to them that the outgoing personnel had been very vindictive and had just put in the minimum of work after they found out about the severance business, so there was nothing to do but start working hard, it would get easier as it went along.

How strange that in the inventory read on the day of the great transaction there had been no mention of a morgue. But they’ve got to keep their coldcuts somewhere until the family comes for them or the city sends its wagon. The inventory probably mentioned a storeroom, or a transfer room, or a cold chamber, euphemisms like that, or maybe it simply spoke of the eight freezers. A morgue, after all, was not a pretty thing to mention in a document, Remorino thought. And why eight freezers? Oh, that … Some requirement of the federal Department of Health or some arrangement the ex-superintendent had made when he was taking bids, but it hadn’t been a bad idea because sometimes there were streaks, like the year San Lorenzo had won the cup (what year was that? Remorino couldn’t remember, but it was the year San Lorenzo had ended up in first place), four patients suddenly kicked the bucket, all in one stroke, like nobody’s business. Not very usual, of course, with Number 56 you knew in advance, what could you do. Speak low along here so we don’t wake the bums up. What do you want at this time of night, back to bed with you, back to bed. He’s a good boy, look how he takes off. He gets the notion to come out in the hall at night, but don’t get the idea he’s after the women, we’ve got that business all taken care of. He comes out just because he’s crazy, that’s all, just like any one of us if you really think about it.