Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (38 page)

Talita tied a piece of string around a bundle of ten-peso notes and mechanically began to count the rest.

“What did you expect,” Talita said. “I think Manú was right.”

“Of course he was,” Oliveira said. “But he’s an idiot just the same, as you know only too well.”

“Not too well. I know it, or rather I knew it when I was straddling the board. You two know it only too well, I’m in the middle like that part of a scale that I never know the name of.”

“You’re Egeria, our nymph, our bridge, our medium. Now that I think of it, when you’re present Manú and I fall into some sort of trance. Even Gekrepten has noticed it, and she told me so, using precisely the same gaudy expression.”

“It could be,” Talita said, entering the figures. “If you want me to tell you what I think, Manú doesn’t know what to do with you. He loves you like a brother, I suppose even you have noticed that, and at the same time he’s sorry that you’ve come back.”

“He had no reason to meet me at the dock. I didn’t even send him a postcard.”

“He found out from Gekrepten, who had filled the balcony with geraniums. Gekrepten found out from the ministry.”

“A diabolical process,” Oliveira said. “When I discovered that Gekrepten had found out by diplomatic channels, I saw that the only thing left for me to do was let her throw herself into my arms like a crazy calf. Just imagine such abnegation, such extremes of Penelopism.”

“If you don’t feel like talking about it,” Talita said looking at the floor, “we can shut the safe and go look for Manú.”

“I feel like it very much, but the complications your husband raises give me uncomfortable problems of conscience. And that, for me … In short, I don’t understand why you yourself don’t solve the problem.”

“Well,” Talita said, looking at him in a restful way, “it seems to me that the other afternoon anyone who wasn’t stupid would have realized.”

“Of course, but there’s Manú the next day going to talk to the
Boss and getting me this job. Precisely when I was drying my tears with a sample before going out to sell it.”

“Manú is a good person,” Talita said. “You’ll never know how good he is.”

“A strange goodness,” Oliveira said. “Leaving aside what I will never know, which, when all’s said and done, is probably true, allow me to insinuate that Manú probably wants to play with fire. If you look closely, you’ll see that it’s a circus trick. And you two,” Oliveira said, pointing his finger at her, “have accomplices.”

“Accomplices?”

“Yes, accomplices. First me, and then someone who’s not here. You think you’re the pointer on the scales, to use your pretty image, but you don’t know that you’re leaning your body over to one side. You ought to be aware of it.”

“Why don’t you go away, Horacio?” Talita asked. “Why don’t you leave Manú in peace?”

“I already explained to you, I was on my way out to sell cloth and that beast got me this job. Understand, I’m not going to do him dirty, that would be much worse. It’s stupid even to think about it.”

“And so you’re going to hang around here, then, and Manú won’t get any sleep.”

“Give him some Equanil, girl.”

Talita tied up the five-peso notes. When the calculating cat came on they always went out to watch him work because the animal was absolutely fantastic, twice already he had solved a multiplication before the fraud with the valerian had had time to work. Traveler was stunned, and asked his friends to watch. But that night the cat was stupid, he could barely add up to twenty-five, it was tragic. Smoking in one of the entrances to the arena, Traveler and Oliveira decided that the cat probably needed phosphated food, they would have to talk to the Manager. The two clowns, who hated the cat without anyone’s really knowing why, were dancing around the platform where the feline was cleaning his whiskers under a mercury lamp. The third time around, while they were singing a Russian song, the cat put out his claws and sprang at the face of the older one. As usual, the public applauded the number madly. In the wagon of the Bonettis, father and son, clowns, the Manager got the cat back and imposed a double fine on them for having provoked
the animal. It was a strange night; looking up as he always found himself doing at that hour, Oliveira could see Sirius in the center of the black hole and he speculated about the three days when the earth is open, when the manes ascend and there is a bridge between man and the hole on high, a bridge from man to man (because who climbs up to the hole unless it is to wish to come down changed and find one’s self again, but in a different way, with one’s people?). The twenty-fourth of August was one of the three days on which the earth opened up; of course, what was the use of thinking so much about that since they were only in February. Oliveira could not remember the other two days, it was strange remembering only one date out of three. Why that one precisely? Perhaps because it was an octosyllable, memory plays games like that. But then Truth was probably an Alexandrine or a hendecasyllable; perhaps the rhythms again marking the main stress and scanning the periods of the road. Some more themes for eggheads to write theses about. It was pleasurable watching the juggler, his incredible agility, the milky track on which the tobacco smoke roosted on the heads of hundreds of children from Villa del Parque, a section where luckily there are abundant eucalyptus trees to balance the scales, referring again to that adjudicating instrument, that compartment of the zodiac.

(–
125
)

IT was true that Traveler was not getting much sleep, in the middle of the night he would sigh as if he had a weight on his chest and he would embrace Talita who would receive him without saying anything, squeezing herself against him so that he would be able to feel her deeply near him. In the darkness they would kiss each other on the nose, on the mouth, on the eyes, and Traveler would stroke Talita’s cheek with a hand that came out from under the sheets and would go back into hiding as if it was cold, although both of them were sweating; then Traveler would murmur four or five numbers, an old habit to go back to sleep again, and Talita would feel his arms loosen, his breathing deepen, and he would settle down. During the day he went about happily and whistled tangos while he prepared
mate
or read, but Talita could not do any cooking without his appearing four or five times with various excuses and talking about something, especially about the insane asylum now that the negotiations seemed to be going well and the Manager was speeding up his plans to buy the nuthouse. Talita didn’t find the idea of the mental hospital very funny, and Traveler knew it. The two of them tried to find the humorous side, promising themselves spectacles worthy of Samuel Beckett, sneering at the poor circus which was winding up its performances in Villa del Parque and getting ready to open in San Isidro. Sometimes Oliveira would pop by to have a
mate
, although he generally stayed in his room taking advantage of the fact that Gekrepten had to go to work and he could read and smoke at his leisure. When Traveler was looking into Talita’s somewhat purple eyes while he was helping her pluck a duck, a biweekly luxury that enchanted Talita, a fan of the duck in all of its culinary possibilities, he would tell himself that things were not as bad as they had been, and he even would have preferred for Horacio
to come by and join in some
mates
, because they would immediately start to play a number game that they barely understood but which had to be played so that time would pass and the three of them would feel worthy of one another. They also used to read, because from a coincidentally socialist youth, a little theosophical on Traveler’s side, the three of them loved reading with commentaries, each in his own way, polemics from the Hispano-Argentine pleasure in wanting to convince and never accepting contrary opinion, and the undeniable possibilities of laughing like crazy and feeling themselves above suffering humanity under the pretext of helping it come out of its shitty contemporary situation.

But it was certain that Traveler was not sleeping well, Talita would repeat it rhetorically while she watched him shave in the light of the morning sun. One stroke, another, Traveler in his undershirt and pajama pants was whistling a drawn-out version of
La gayola
and then he proclaimed with a shout: “Music, moody food of us that trade in love!” and turning around he looked aggressively at Talita who had been plucking the duck that day and was very happy because the quills that came out were a delight and the duck had a benign air not often seen in those rancorous corpses, with their little eyes half open and an imperceptible band like a ray of light between the lids, unfortunate creatures.

“Why do you have such trouble sleeping, Manú?”

“
Music, moo…!
Me? Trouble? I don’t fall asleep directly, my love, I spend the night meditating on the
Liber penitentialis
in the Macrovius Basca edition that I lifted from Dr. Feta the other day when his sister wasn’t looking. Of course, I’m going to give it back to him, it must be worth a lot of dough. A
liber penitentialis
, I’ll have you know.”

“And what might that be?” Talita asked as she now began to understand certain sleight-of-hand tricks and a drawer that had a double lock. “You’ve been hiding your reading from me, it’s the first time that’s happened since we’ve been married.”

“There it is, you can look at it as much as you like, but always wash your hands first. I hide it because it’s valuable and you’re always going around with carrot-scrapings and things like that on your fingers, you’re so domestic that you’d ruin any piece of incunabula.”

“I don’t care about your book,” Talita said, offended. “Come
here and cut the head off this, I don’t like to, even if it is dead.”

“I’ll use my razor,” Traveler proposed. “It’ll give the whole business a truculent tone, and besides, it’s always good to practice, you never can tell.”

“No. Use this knife, it’s sharp.”

“My razor.”

“No. This knife.”

Traveler took his razor over to the duck and lopped off its head.

“You’ve got to learn,” he said. “If we take over the asylum it would be good to get experience along the lines of a double murder on the Rue Morgue.”

“Is that the way lunatics do their killing?”

“No, my dear, but once in a while they give it a try. Just like sane people, if you will allow me the poor comparison.”

“It’s cheap,” Talita admitted, making the duck into a sort of parallelepiped tied together with white cord.

“As far as my not sleeping well is concerned,” Traveler said, cleaning the razor with a piece of toilet paper, “you know perfectly well what’s behind it.”

“Let’s say I do. But you also know that there’s no problem involved.”

“Problems,” Traveler said, “are like Primus heaters, everything is fine until they blow up. I could tell you that there are teleological problems on this earth. They don’t seem to exist, like right now, and what happens is that the clock in the bomb is set for twelve o’clock tomorrow. Tick-tock, tick-tock, everything’s fine. Tick-tock.”

“The worst part,” Talita said, “is that you yourself are the one who winds it up.”

“My hand, pussycat, is also set for twelve o’clock tomorrow. In the meantime, let’s live and let live.”

Talita covered the duck with grease, a degrading spectacle.

“Do you have any reason to reproach me?” she asked, as if she were talking to the palmiped.

“Absolutely none at the moment,” Traveler said. “We’ll see at twelve o’clock tomorrow, if I can prolong the image right up to its climactic outcome.”

“You’re just like Horacio,” Talita said. “It’s incredible how much the two of you are alike.”

“Tick-tock,” Traveler said, looking for his cigarettes. “Tick-tock, tick-tock.”

“Yes, you’re just like him,” Talita insisted, letting go of the duck which fell to the floor with a revolting squashy sound. “He would have said tick-tock, he would have been talking in images all the time too. But are the pair of you ever going to leave me in peace? The reason I’m telling you that you’re both alike is so that once and for all we can quit all this absurdity. It can’t be possible that everything has changed like this just because Horacio came back. Last night I told him I couldn’t take any more, that you two were playing with me, like a tennis ball, you hit me from both sides, it’s not right, Manú, it’s not right.”

Traveler took her in his arms even though Talita was resisting, and after stepping on the duck and slipping so that both of them almost fell down, he managed to control her and kiss her on the tip of her nose.

“Maybe there’s no bomb for you, pussycat,” he said, smiling with an expression that softened Talita, made her try to get more comfortable in his arms. “Look, I’m not going around looking for lightning to strike me on the head, but I don’t feel I should wear a lightning-rod for protection; I think I ought to go out with my head uncovered until it’s twelve o’clock on some day. Only after that time, after that day, will I feel the same again. It isn’t because of Horacio, love, it isn’t only because of Horacio, even though he may have come like some sort of messenger. If he hadn’t come, something else like it would have happened to me. I would have read some disillusioning book, or I would have fallen in love with some other woman … Those folds of life, you understand, those unexpected evidences of something that a person hadn’t suspected and which suddenly turn everything into a crisis. You’ll have to learn to understand.”

“But do you really think he’s after me, and that I …?”

“He’s not after you in the least,” Traveler said, letting her go. “Horacio doesn’t care a damn about you. Don’t get offended, I know very well what you’re worth and I’ll always be jealous of everybody who looks at you or talks to you. But even if Horacio made a pass at you, even in that case, even if you think I’m crazy, I would repeat that he doesn’t care a damn about you, and that therefore you’ve got nothing to worry about. It’s something else,” Traveler said, raising his voice. “It’s something fucking else, God damn it!”

“Oh,” Talita said, picking up the duck and wiping off the footprint with a kitchen rag. “You’ve caved in its ribs. So it’s something else. I don’t understand at all, but you’re probably right.”