Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) by Julio Cortázar

idea,” Oliveira said.
    (– 120 )

16
    “WHEN he left my room it was almost dawn and I didn’t even know how to cry any more.”
    “The dirty bastard,” Babs said.
    “Oh, La Maga richly deserved that homage,” said Étienne. “The only funny thing, as always, is the diabolical separation of form and content. Everything you’ve said is exactly the same as what happens between lovers, except for the slight resistance and the probably stronger aggression.”
    “Chapter 8, Section 4, Paragraph A,” Oliveira said.
“Presses Universitaires Françaises.”
    “Ta gueule,”
said Étienne.
    “Let’s cap it off,” Ronald said. “It’s about time we heard something like
Hot and Bothered.
”
    “A proper title for the reminiscences we’ve just heard,” said Oliveira, lifting up his glass. “That Negro was quite a guy.”
    “It’s not a subject for jokes,” Gregorovius said.
    “You were the one who dragged it out, friend.”
    “And you’re drunk, Horacio.”
    “Of course. It’s the great moment, the lucid moment. You, child, should have got a job in some gerontological clinic. Just look at Ossip, your pleasant recollections have taken twenty years off his age.”
    “He dragged it out,” said La Maga resentfully. “Now he’ll start saying how he didn’t enjoy it. Give me a vodka, Horacio.”
    But Oliveira didn’t seem disposed to get mixed up with La Maga and Gregorovius, who was muttering explanations that she was barely listening to. Wong got more of his attention as he offered to make some coffee. Very hot and very strong, a secret he had learned at the casino in Menton. The Club applauded unanimously. Ronald lovingly kissed the label on one record, started the turntable, put the needle on in a ritualisticsort of way. For a moment the Ellington machine obliterated them with that fabulous sparring between trumpet and Baby Cox, the subtle and easygoing entrance of Johnny Hodges, the crescendo (but the rhythm was already getting to be a little stiff after thirty years, an old tiger who could still ripple) with riffs which were both tense and loose at the same time, a difficult minor miracle: “I swing, therefore I am.” Leaning against the Eskimo pelt, looking at the green candles through his glass of vodka (we used to go to look at the fish on the Quai de la Mégisserie) it was almost easy to come to the conclusion that what was called reality deserved that disparaging phrase of the Duke’s, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing,” but why had the hand of Gregorovius stopped caressing La Maga’s hair, there was poor Ossip, sleeker than a seal, all broken up by that distant deflowering, it was pitiful to look at him, so tense in that atmosphere where the music was breaking down resistance and was weaving everything into a kind of common breathing, the peace of an enormous heart beating for all, drawing them all into itself. And now a cracked voice, making its way out of a worn-out record, suggesting unknowingly that old Renaissance invitation, that old Anacreontic sadness, a
carpe diem
from Chicago, 1922.
    Skin like darkness, baby, you gonna die some day,
    Skin like darkness, baby, you gonna die some day,
    I jus’ want some lovin’ be-fore you go your way.
    Every so often the words of the dead fit the thoughts of the living (if the one group is living and the other is dead). You so beautiful.
Je ne veux pas mourir sans avoir compris pourquoi j’avais vécu.
A blues song, René Daumal, Horacio Oliveira, but you gotta die some day, you so beautiful but— And that’s why Gregorovius insisted on knowing about La Maga’s past, so that she would die a little less from that other backward-moving death composed entirely of things dragged along by time, so as to put her in her own time, you so beautiful but you gotta, so as not to love a ghost who lets her hair be stroked under a green light, poor Ossip, and how terrible the night was turning out, everything so incredibly so, Guy