Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (46 page)

“The hard mental crust,” Traveler managed to think. Confusedly he heard that fear, that Horacio, that the freight elevator, that the dove; a communicable system was little by little entering his ear again. So the poor devil was afraid he would kill him, it was laughable.

“Did he really say that? It’s hard to believe, you know how proud he is.”

“It’s something else,” Talita said, taking the cigarette away from him and dragging on it with a sort of silent-movie eagerness. “I think the fear he feels is like a last refuge, the crossbar
he holds on to before jumping. He’s so happy to be afraid tonight, I know he’s happy.”

“That,” said Traveler, breathing like a real yogi, “is something Cuca would not understand, you can be sure. And I must be in an exceedingly intelligent mood tonight, because that business of happy fear is a little hard to take, my love.”

Talita slid up on the bed a little and leaned against Traveler. She knew that she was by his side again, that she had not drowned, that he was there holding her up on the surface of the water and that actually there was pity, a marvelous pity. They both felt it at the same moment, and they slid towards each other as if to fall into themselves, into the common earth where words and caresses and mouths enfolded them as a circumference does a circle, those tranquilizing metaphors, that old sadness satisfied with going back to being the same as always, with continuing, keeping afloat against wind and tide, against call and fall.

HE wondered where he had picked up the habit of always carrying pieces of string in his pockets, of putting colored threads together and placing them between the pages of books, of constructing all manner of figures with those things and gum tragacanth. As he wound a piece of black string around the doorknob, Oliveira wondered whether the delicateness of the threads didn’t give him some kind of perverse satisfaction, and he agreed that maybe
peut-être
and who could say. The only thing certain was that the pieces of string and thread made him happy, that nothing seemed more instructive to him than to construct for example a huge transparent dodecahedron, the work of many hours and much complication, to bring a match close to it later on and watch how a little nothing of a flame would come and go while Gekrepten wr-ung-her-ha-nds and said that it was a shame to burn something so pretty. Difficult to explain to her that the more fragile and perishable the structure, the greater the freedom to make and unmake it. To Oliveira threads seemed to be the only justifiable material for his inventions, and only once in a while, if he found it in the street, did he feel like using a piece of wire or some strap or other. He liked everything he made as full of free space as possible, the air able to enter and leave, especially leave; things like that occurred to him with books, women, obligations, and he did not expect Gekrepten or the cardinal primate to understand those celebrations.

The business of wrapping a black string around the doorknob began almost a couple of hours later, because in the meantime Oliveira made various things in his room and outside it. The idea of the basins was classic and he didn’t feel at all proud at having followed it, but in the darkness a basin of water on the floor works out a series of rather subtle defensive values;
surprise, terror perhaps, in any case the blind rage that follows the idea of having stuck a Fanacal or Tonsa shoe into the water, and the sock a little bit beyond the shoe, and that all of this drips water while the foot completely perturbed becomes agitated in the sock, and the sock in the shoe, like a drowning rat or one of those poor guys that jealous sultans used to throw into the Bosporus inside a bag that was sewn shut (with string, naturally: everything ended up meeting, it was rather amusing that the basin of water and the threads should come together at the end of his reasoning and not at the beginning, but here Horacio permitted himself the conjecture that the order of reasoning did not have to (
a
) follow physical time, the before and the after, and (
b
) that most likely the reasoning had been unconsciously fulfilled so that it would pass from the notion of thread to that of the watery basin). In short, no sooner was it analyzed a bit than it fell into grave suspicions of determinism; it would be best to keep on making barricades without paying too much attention to reasons or preferences. In any case, what came first, the thread or the basin? As execution, the basin, but the thread had been decided first. It wasn’t worth the trouble to keep on worrying when life hung in the balance; obtaining basins was much more important, and the first half-hour consisted of a cautious exploration of the third floor and part of the ground floor, from where he returned with five medium-sized basins, three spittoons, and an empty can that had contained a sweet-potato preserve, all brought together under the general denomination of basin. Number 18, who was awake, insisted on keeping him company and Oliveira ended up accepting, having made up his mind to throw him out as soon as the defensive operations reached a certain stage. As far as threads were concerned, Number 18 was very useful, because no sooner was he succinctly informed of the strategic necessities than he rolled his malignantly beautiful green eyes and said that Number 6 had boxes full of colored thread. The only problem was that Number 6 was on the ground floor, in Remorino’s wing, and if Remorino woke up there would be the devil’s own hell to pay. Number 18 also maintained that Number 6 was crazy, which would complicate the raid on her room. Rolling his malignantly beautiful green eyes, he suggested to Oliveira that he stand guard in the hallway while he took off his shoes and proceeded to seize the threads, but it seemed to Oliveira that this was going
too far and he decided that he would assume the personal responsibility of going into Number 6’s room at that time of night. It was rather amusing to think about responsibility while he invaded the bedroom of a girl snoring face up, exposed to the worst mischances; with his pockets and his hands full of balls of yarn and colored threads, Oliveira stood looking at her for a moment, but then he shrugged his shoulders as if to make the monkey of responsibility seem a little lighter. Number 18, who was waiting for him in his room contemplating the basins piled up on the bed, thought that Oliveira had not obtained thread in sufficient quantity. Rolling his malignantly beautiful green eyes, he maintained that to complete the defensive preparations adequately what was needed was a good supply of rulemans and a Heftpistole. The idea of the rulemans seemed good to Oliveira, although he didn’t have a clear idea of what they might be, but he rejected the Heftpistole completely. Number 18 opened his malignantly beautiful green eyes and said that a Heftpistole was not what the doctor thought it was (he said “doctor” in an obligatory tone so that anybody could see that he was saying it to be annoying) but in view of the negative response he would try to get only the rulemans. Oliveira let him go, with the faint hope that he would not come back because he felt like being alone. Remorino would get up at two o’clock to relieve him and he had to think of something. If Remorino didn’t find him in the hallway he would come looking for him in his room and that wouldn’t do, unless the first test of the defenses was made at his expense. He rejected the idea because the defenses were conceived with a determined attack in mind, and Remorino would enter with a completely different outlook. Now he was beginning to feel more and more fear (and when he felt fear he would look at his wristwatch, and the fear would grow with the hour); he started to smoke, studying the defensive possibilities of the room, and at ten minutes to two he went out to wake up Remorino in person. He handed over a list of instructions that was a gem, with subtle alterations on the temperature entries, the time for tranquilizers, and the syndromatic and eupeptic manifestations of the guests on the second floor, to such a degree that Remorino would have to spend almost all his time with them, while the ones on the third floor, according to the same report, would be sleeping peacefully and the only thing they would need was for no one to come and bother them during
the night. Remorino was interested in knowing (without much desire) if those attentions and lack of them came from the high authority of Dr. Ovejero, to which Oliveira replied hypocritically with the monosyllabic adverb of affirmation suited to the circumstances. After which they separated in friendly fashion and Remorino went yawning up one flight while Oliveira went trembling up two. But by no means would he accept the help of a Heftpistole, and they ought to be thankful that he agreed to the rulemans.

He still had a moment of peace, because Number 18 had not returned and it was necessary to go about filling up the basins and the spittoons, placing them in a first line of defense a little bit behind the first barrier of threads (still theoretical but already perfectly planned) and trying the possibilities of advance, the eventual collapse of the first line, and the efficiency of the second. In between two basins Oliveira filled the sink with cold water and put in his face and his hands, soaked his neck and his hair. He was smoking all the time, but he hadn’t finished half of any cigarette and he went to the window to throw out the butt and light another one. The butts fell on the hopscotch and Oliveira calculated so that each brilliant eye would burn for a moment in a different square; it was funny. It occurred to him at that hour to fill himself with outside thoughts,
dona nobis pacem, may the John that lays you have pesos that will last forever
, things like that, and also suddenly strips of mental material came to him, something in between a notion and a feeling, for example, that his digging in was the last of his stupidities, that the only mad thing, and therefore the one worth trying and maybe efficient, would have been to attack instead of defending himself, besiege instead of being there trembling and smoking and waiting for Number 18 to come back with the rulemans; but it didn’t last long, almost like the cigarettes, and his hands trembled and he knew that that was all he had left, and suddenly another memory that was like a hope, a phrase where somebody was saying that the hours of sleep and wakefulness have not been joined into unity yet, and that was followed by a laugh that he heard as if it were not his, and a grimace in which he showed himself once and for all that that unity was too far away and that no part of dreams would be any good to him while he was awake or vice versa. To attack Traveler as the best defense was a possibility, but it meant
invading what he felt more and more to be a black mass, a territory where people were sleeping and nobody at all expected to be attacked at that hour of the night and for nonexistent causes in terms of the black mass. But while he was feeling that way, it was disagreeable for Oliveira to have formulated it in terms of a black mass, feeling was like a black mass but through his fault and not that of the territory where Traveler was sleeping; that’s why it was best not to use words as negative as black mass, and simply call it territory, since one always ended up calling his feelings something. It meant that across from his room the territory began, and to attack the territory was ill-advised since the motives for the attack no longer had intelligibility or the possibility of being sensed by the territory. On the other hand, if he barricaded himself in his room and Traveler came to attack him, no one would be able to maintain that Traveler did not know what he was doing, and the one attacked was perfectly aware and had taken his measures, precautions, and rulemans, whatever these last might be.

Meanwhile one could stay at a window smoking, studying the disposition of the watery basins and the threads and thinking about the unity so much put to proof by the conflict of territory versus room. It was always going to pain Oliveira that he could not even get a notion of that unity that other times he called center, and which for lack of more precise dimensions was reduced to images like black shout, kibbutz of desire (so far away now, that kibbutz of dawn and red wine), and even a life worthy of the name because (he felt it while he threw his cigarette on square five) he had been just foolish enough to imagine the possibility of a dignified life coming after diverse minute indignities. Nothing at all that could be thought about, but on the other hand it could be felt in terms of stomach contraction, territory, deep or spasmodic breathing, sweat on the palms of his hands, lighting a cigarette, pulling in his guts, thirst, silent shouts that broke like black masses in his throat (there was always some black mass in that game), desire for sleep, fear of sleeping, anxiety, the image of a dove that had once been white, colored rags at the bottom of what could have been a passage, Sirius at the top of a tent, and enough, hey, enough please; but it was good to have felt one’s self deeply there for an unmeasurable time, without thinking anything, only being that which was there with tongs caught in his
stomach.
That
against the territory, waking against sleep. But to say
waking against sleep
was already a return into dialectics, it was to corroborate once more that there wasn’t the remotest hope of unity. That’s why the arrival of Number 18 with the rulemans became an excellent pretext to resume the preparations for defense at exactly three-twenty more or less.

Number 18 rolled his malignantly beautiful green eyes and undid a towel in which he had the rulemans. He said that he had spied on Remorino and that Remorino was so busy with Numbers 31, 7, and 45 that he wouldn’t even think of coming up to the third floor. Most probably the patients had resisted with indignation the therapeutic novelties that Remorino was trying to give them, and the distribution of pills and shots would take its own sweet time. In any event, Oliveira thought that it would be well not to lose any more time, and after telling Number 18 that he could use the rulemans in the way he saw most fitting, he began to test the efficacy of the watery basins, to do which he went out into the hallway, overcoming the fear he had of leaving his room and getting into the purple light of the hallway, and he came back in with his eyes closed, imagining himself to be Traveler and walking with his toes turned out a little like Traveler. On his second step (although he knew it) he put his left shoe into a watery spittoon, and when he quickly pulled it out he sent the spittoon flying through the air and luckily it fell on the bed so that it did not make the least noise. Number 18 was under the desk spreading out the rulemans; he jumped up and rolling his malignantly beautiful green eyes suggested a grouping of rulemans between the two rows of basins, in order to complete the surprise of the cold water with the possibility of a magnificent slip. Oliveira did not say anything but he let him do it, and when he had put the watery spittoon back in its place again, he began to wrap a black thread around the doorknob. He stretched this thread to the desk and tied it to the back of the chair; putting the chair on two legs, with the corner resting on the edge of the desk; all that was needed for it to fall on the floor was for someone to try to open the door. Number 18 went out into the hall to try it, and Oliveira held the chair so there would be no noise. He began to be bothered by the friendly presence of Number 18, who from time to time would roll his malignantly beautiful green eyes and try to tell him the story of his arrival at the clinic. Of course all that
was needed was to put a finger to one’s mouth so that he would be shamefully silent and stay with his back against the wall for five minutes, but at the same time Oliveira gave him a new pack of cigarettes and told him to go to bed without letting himself be seen by Remorino.