Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (61 page)

(–
144
)

EXPLORING like an ant, Wong turned up in Morelli’s library an inscribed copy of
Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless
, by Musil, with the following passage firmly underlined:

Ronald found this quotation from
Lord Chandos’s Letter
, by Hofmannsthal:

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45
)

NOR would Pola have understood why at night he held back his breath to listen to her sleep, spying out the sounds of her body. Face up, satisfied, she was breathing heavily, and hardly if ever, out of some uncertain dream, did she move a hand or exhale by raising her lower lip and blowing the air up towards her nose. Horacio remained still, his head a little raised or leaning on his fist, his cigarette hanging down. At three o’clock in the morning the Rue Dauphine was quiet, Pola’s breathing came and went, then there was something like a soft running, a minute instantaneous whirlwind, an interior agitation like a second life. Oliveira got up slowly and moved his ear close to the naked skin, rested it on the tense and warm curved drum, listened. Sounds, drops, and falls, Cartesian devils and murmurs, a walking of crabs and slugs, a black and muffled world sliding out over plush, running into things here and there and covering up again (Pola breathed heavily, moved a little). A liquid cosmos, fluid, in nocturnal gestation, plasmas rising and falling, the opaque and slow mechanism moving around grudgingly, and suddenly a rumbling, a mad race almost against the skin, a flight and a gurgling of contention or leaking, Pola’s stomach a black sky with fat and slow stars, glowing comets, a tumbling of immense vociferant planets, the sea like whispering plankton, its Medusa murmurings, Pola the microcosm, Pola the summing up of universal night in her small fermented night where yogurt and white wine were mixed with meat and vegetables, center of a chemistry infinitely rich and mysterious and remote and so near.

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108
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LIFE as a
commentary
of something else we cannot reach, which is there within reach of the leap we will not take.

Life, a ballet based upon a historical theme, a story based upon a deed that once had been alive, a deed that had lived based upon a real deed.

Life, a photograph of the noumenon, a possession in the shadows (woman, monster?), life, pimp of death, splendid deck of cards, ring of forgotten keys that a pair of palsied hands degrade into a sad game of solitaire.

(–
10
)

MORELLIANA

I think about forgotten gestures, the multiple signals and words of grandparents, lost little by little, not inherited, fallen one after the other off the tree of time. Tonight I found a candle on a table, and as a game I lit it and walked along the corridor with it. The breeze stirred up by my motion was about to put it out, then I saw my right hand come up all by itself, cup itself, protect the flame with a living lampshade that kept the breeze away. While the flame climbed up again alert, I thought that the gesture had belonged to all of us (I thought
us
and I thought well, or I felt well) for thousands of years, during the Age of Fire, until they changed it on us to electric lights. I imagined other gestures, the one that women make when they lift the hem of their skirts, the one that men make looking for the hilt of their swords. Like words lost in childhood, heard for the last time by old people who are heading towards death. In my home no one talks about the “camphor closet” any more, no one talks about “the triv”—the trivet—any more. Like music of the moment, 1920 waltzes, polkas that warmed grandparents’ hearts.

I think about those objects, those boxes, those utensils that sometimes would turn up in storerooms, kitchens, or hidden spots,
and whose use no one can explain any more.
The vanity of believing that we understand the works of time: it buries its dead and keeps the keys. Only in dreams, in poetry, in play—lighting a candle, walking with it along the corridor—do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.

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96
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*      *      *

(–
13
)

WRITTEN by Morelli in the hospital

The best trait my ancestors have is that of being dead; I am waiting modestly and proudly for the moment when I come into my inheritance from them. I have friends who would not fail to erect a statue of me in which they would represent me face down in the act of peeping into a puddleful of authentic little frogs. By putting a coin in the slot they will see me spit in the water and the frogs will get all stirred up and croak for a minute and a half, just enough time for people to lose all interest in the statue.

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113
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“LA cloche, le clochard, la clocharde, clocharder.
There’s even a thesis that was presented at the Sorbonne on the subject of the psychology of the
clochard.”

“Could be,” Oliveira said. “But they don’t have any Juan Filloy to write
Caterva
for them. What ever happened to Filloy?”

Naturally, La Maga was in no position to know, in the first place because she never knew he had existed. He had to explain to her why Filloy, why
Caterva.
La Maga liked the plot of the book very much, the idea that South American
linyeras
were in a class with
clochards.
She remained firmly convinced that it was an insult to confuse a
linyera
with a beggar, and her liking for the
clocharde
of the Pont des Arts had its roots in reasons that now seemed scientific. Especially in those days when she had discovered, walking along the riverbank, that the
clocharde
was in love, sympathy and the desire for everything to turn out well were for La Maga something like the arch of the bridges, which always brought out her feelings, or like those pieces of tin or wire that Oliveira would pick up as they walked along.

“Filloy, shit,” Oliveira said looking at the towers of the City Hall and thinking about Cartouche. “My country’s so far away, damn it, it’s incredible there could be so much salt water in this mad world.”

“On the other hand there’s not so much air,” La Maga answered. “Thirty-two hours’ worth, no more, no less.”

“That’s right. But where do you get the dough for the flight?”

“And the wish to go back, because I really don’t.”

“Me either. But let’s just suppose. There’s no way back. Irrefutable.”

“You never talked about going back,” La Maga said.

“No one talks about it, wuthering heights, nobody talks about
it. It’s only the feeling that everything is cool for the guy without bread.”

“Paris is free,” La Maga quoted. “You said so the day we met. Going to visit the
clocharde
is free, making love is free, telling you that you’re evil is free, not loving you … Why did you go to bed with Pola?”

“A matter of perfume,” Oliveira said, sitting down on the strip alongside the water’s edge. “I thought that she would smell like the Songs of Songs, cinnamon, myrrh, things like that. It was a sure thing, besides.”

“The
clocharde
won’t be along tonight. She would have been here already, she almost never misses.”

“Sometimes they arrest them,” Oliveira said. “To fumigate them, I suppose, or so the city can go to sleep peacefully alongside its impassive river. A
clochard
is a worse disgrace than a thief, that’s a well-known fact; basically, there’s nothing that can be done about them, they have to leave them in peace.”

“Tell me about Pola. We may see the
clocharde
in the meantime.”

“Night’s coming on, the American tourists are thinking about their hotels, their feet hurt, they bought a lot of crap, they’ve got their Sade, their Miller, their
Onze mille verges
, artistic pictures, pornographic snapshots, Sagans and Buffets. Look how they break up the sky on the bridge side. And leave Pola alone, that doesn’t matter. So, the painter folds up his stool, there’s no one to watch him any more. It’s incredible how clean everything gets, the air is washed like the skin of that girl running over there, look at her, dressed in red.”

“Tell me about Pola,” La Maga repeated, patting him on the shoulder with the back of her hand.

“Pure pornography,” Oliveira said. “You won’t like it.”

“But you must have told her something about us.”

“No. Just generally. What could I tell her? Pola doesn’t exist, you know. Where is she? Show her to me.”

“Pure sophistry,” La Maga said. She had learned the term in arguments with Ronald and Étienne. “She may not be here, but she’s on the Rue Dauphine, that’s for sure.”

“And where is the Rue Dauphine?” asked Oliveira.
“Tiens, la clocharde qui s’amène.
But look, hey, she’s wild.”

Coming down the steps, staggering under the weight of an
enormous bundle, out of which were sticking pieces of unraveled overcoats, red scarves, pairs of pants picked up in trash cans, pieces of cloth, and even a blackened roll of wire, the
clocharde
reached dock-level below and let out an exclamation somewhere between a grunt and a sigh. On top of an indecipherable base where there probably had been accumulated skin-tight blouses and a brassière capable of holding up a pair of ominous breasts, were being added two, three, maybe four dresses, a complete wardrobe, and on top of it a man’s jacket with one sleeve almost torn off, a scarf held together with a tin brooch that had one green and one red stone, and on her incredibly dyed blond hair a kind of gauzy green clasp hanging to one side.

“She’s marvelous,” Oliveira said. “She’s just seduced the people on the bridge.”

“It’s obvious that she’s in love,” La Maga said. “And the way she’s made up, look at her lips. And the rouge, she’s put on every bit she’s got.”

“She looks like Grock in one of his worst moments. Or some of Ensor’s figures. She’s sublime. How can they make love, the pair of them? Because you’re not going to tell me they do it by remote control.”

“I know a corner near the Hotel Sens where the
clochards
get together for that. The police leave them alone. Madame Léonie told me there’s always some police informer among them, secrets come out at times like that. It seems that the
clochards
know a lot about gangsters.”

“Gangsters, what a word,” Oliveira said. “Yes, of course they’d know. They’re on the edge of society, on the rim of fraud. They must know a lot about property owners and priests too. A scrutinizing look into garbage pails …”

“Here comes the
clochard.
He’s drunker than ever. Poor thing, the way she waits for him, see how she left the package on the ground as a signal, she’s so sentimental.”

“You can say all you want about the Hotel Sens, but I still wonder how they make it,” Oliveira muttered. “Look at all those clothes. Because she probably only takes off one or two things when it’s not so cold, but underneath she probably has on five or six more, not counting her underwear. Can you imagine what it must be like, and in a vacant lot? It’s easier for the guy, pants are more manageable.”

“They don’t get undressed, maybe,” La Maga conjectured. “The police wouldn’t allow it. And the rain, give a thought to that. They hide in corners, in that vacant lot there are some ditches about a foot deep, with rubbish around the edges, where workmen throw trash and bottles. I have the feeling they make love standing up.”

“With all those clothes? But that’s inconceivable. You mean the guy has never seen her naked? That’s a hell of a drag.”

“Look how they love each other,” La Maga said. “The way they look at each other.”

“The guy’s got wine coming out of his eyes. Eleven percent tenderness with lots of tannin.”

“They love each other, Horacio, they love each other. Her name is Emmanuèle, she used to be a whore in the provinces. She arrived on a
péniche
and stayed on the docks. We talked one night when I was feeling sad. She smells to high heaven, I had to leave after a little while. You know what I asked her? I asked her when she changed her clothes. That’s a silly thing to ask. She’s very good, she’s quite mad, that night she thought she saw wildflowers among the cobblestones, she was naming them for me.”

“Like Ophelia,” Horacio said. “Nature imitates art.”