Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) (65 page)

It’s a terrible job, splashing around in a circle whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, to use the language of scholasticism. What is being searched for? What is being searched for? Repeat it fifteen thousand times, like hammer-blows on the wall. What is being searched for? What is that conciliation without which life doesn’t go beyond being an obscure joke? Not the conciliation of a saint, because if in the notion of going back to the dog, of starting over again from the dog or from the fish or from the ooze and the ugliness and the misery and any other disvaluation, there’s always something like a nostalgia for sainthood, it would seem that one yearns for a nonreligious sainthood (and here comes brainlessness), a state
without differentiation
, without saints (because a saint is always in some way a saint
and
those who are not saints, and that scandalizes a poor guy like the one admiring the calf of the girl absorbed in adjusting her twisted stocking), that is to say that if there is conciliation it must be something besides a state of sainthood, an exclusive state from the word go. It has to be something immanent, with no sacrifice of lead for gold, cellophane for glass, the least for the most; on the contrary, brainlessness calls for lead to be worth as much as gold, for the most
to be contained in the least. An alchemy, a non-Euclidian geometry, an up-to-date indetermination for the operations of the spirit and its benefits. It’s not a question of
rising
, an old mental image disproved by history, the old carrot that no longer fools the donkey. It’s not a question of perfecting, of decanting, of redeeming, of choosing, of free-willing, of going from the alpha to the omega.
One is already there.
Anybody is already there. The shot is in the pistol; but a trigger has to be squeezed, and it so happens that the finger is making motions to stop a bus, or something similar.

How he talks, how he does go on, this smoking suburban tramp. The girl has already fixed her stocking, all set. You see? Forms of conciliation.
Il mio supplizio
…Everything is probably so simple, a pull on the mesh, a finger wet with saliva passing over the part with the run. It would probably be enough to grab one’s nose and put it where one’s ear is, upset circumstance a little. But no, that wouldn’t do it either. Nothing easier than putting the blame on what’s outside, as if one were sure that outside and inside are the two main beams of the house. But the fact is that everything is in bad shape, history tells you that, and the very fact that you’re thinking about it instead of living it proves to you that it’s bad, that we’ve stuck ourselves into a total disharmony that the sum of our resources disguises with social structure, with history, with Ionic style, with the joy of the Renaissance, with the superficial sadness of romanticism, and that’s the way we go and they can turn the dogs on us.

(–
44
)

“WHY, with your infernal enchantments, have you torn from me the tranquillity of my early life … The sun and the moon shone for me without artifice; I awoke with gentle thoughts, and at dawn I folded my leaves to say my prayers. I saw nothing evil, for I had no eyes; I heard nothing evil, for I had no ears; but I shall have my vengeance!”

(–
21
)

THAT’S how the monsters would bug Cuca so she’d get out of the pharmacy and leave them in peace. Along the way and much more seriously they would discuss Ceferino Piriz’s system and the ideas of Morelli. Since Morelli was little known in Argentina, Oliveira loaned them his books and told them about some scattered notes he had seen at another time. They found out that Remorino, who was to stay on as an attendant and who would show up at
mate
and
caña
time, was a great initiate in Roberto Arlt, and that produced a considerable impression, so that for a whole week they spoke only of Arlt and how nobody had the right to step on his poncho in a country where carpets were preferred. But mostly they talked with great seriousness about Ceferino, and every once in a while it would occur to them to look at each other in a special way, raising their eyes at the same time, for example, and realizing that all three of them were doing it, that is to say, looking at each other in a special and inexplicable way, like certain looks in a game of
truco
or when a man who is desperately in love has to bear up under tea and pastries with several ladies and even a retired colonel who is explaining the reasons why everything is going badly in the country, and stuck in his chair the man looks at everyone the same way, the colonel, the woman he loves, and the woman’s aunts, he looks at them affably because in fact it is a shame the way the country is in the hands of a band of crypto-communists, then from the cream puff, the third one on the left in the tray, and the spoon lying face up on the tablecloth embroidered by the aunts, the affable look is raised for an instant and over the crypto-communists it joins in mid-air the other look that has risen from the Nile-green plastic sugar bowl, and there’s no longer anything else, a consummation outside of time becomes a soft, sweet secret, and if the men of today were real men and
not a bunch of god-damned fairies (“Why, Ricardo!” “It’s all right, Carmen, I just get so riled up, I get so pff riled at what’s going on in this country”),
mutatis mutandi
it was a little like the look the monsters gave when it occurred to them from time to time to look at each other with a look that was both furtive and total at the same time, secret and much clearer than when they would look at each other for a long time, but a person isn’t a monster without good reason, as Cuca would say to her husband, and the three of them would let out a laugh and feel enormously ashamed at having looked at each other that way when they weren’t playing
truco
and weren’t illicitly in love. Unless.

(–
56
)

NOUS sommes quelques-uns à cette époque à avoir voulu attenter aux choses, créer en nous des espaces à la vie, des espaces qui n’étaient pas et ne semblaient pas devoir trouver place dans l’espace.

ARTAUD
,
Le Pèse-nerfs

(–
24
)

BUT Traveler was not sleeping, after one or two attempts the nightmare kept circling around him and finally he sat up in bed and turned on the light. Talita was not there, somnambulist, geometrid of sleeplessness, and Traveler drank a glass of
caña
and put on his pajama top. The wicker easy chair looked cooler than the bed, and it was a good night to continue his studies of Ceferino Piriz.

A gallicized Ceferino! But there was no danger,
The Light of World Peace
, of which Traveler had some precious extracts, was written in admirable Spanish, the introduction, for example:

Much more clear than an equivalent text by Julián Marías, for example. With two glasses of
caña
contact was established, and we’re off. Traveler began to feel pleased that he had got up and that Talita was out there somewhere feeding her romanticism. For the tenth time he slowly got into Ceferino’s text.

So-so: a ministry of the simple. Oh, Ceferino, natural philosopher, herbalist of Uruguayan paradises, nephelibate…

As always, the wise man seemed to feel a nostalgia for prophecy and intuition, but right away the mania for classification of
Homo occidentalis
raided Ceferino’s little ranch and between
mates
it organized civilization into three periods:

First period of civilization

Second period of civilization

Third period of civilization

For Toynbee, obviously … But criticism turns mute in sight of Ceferino’s anthropological scheme:

The business of not thinking very much was rather certain,
beati pauperes spiritu
, and now Ceferino went on in the manner of Paul Rivet, running down a classification that had been the high point of afternoons in Don Crespo’s courtyard, to wit:

“Horacio should be here,” Traveler said to himself. “He could make some good comments on this part. After all, why not? Cefe has tripped over the classic difficulties of the Gummed Label, and he does what he can, like Linnaeus or the synoptic charts in encyclopedias. The business of the brown race is a solution worthy of genius, you’ve got to admit.”

Walking was heard in the hallway, and Traveler went to the door that opened onto the administrative wing. As Ceferino might have said, the first door, the second door, and the third
door were closed. Talita must have gone back to the pharmacy, it was incredible how enthusiastic she was about her return to science, scales, and antipyretic adhesives.

Alien to those trifles, Ceferino went on to explain his model Society of Nations:

And so on all the races, or maybe one could skip over the enumeration,
but it was not the same
after four glasses of
caña
(Mariposa and not Ancap, unfortunately, because patriotic homage would have been fitting); it was not at all the same, because Ceferino’s thought was crystallographic, ruled by symmetry and
horror vacui
, or in other words