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

resisted to the last in the name of the cock he once had been, he let out a sigh of relief on hearing the theme of
Blue Interlude,
a record he had once owned in Buenos Aires. He couldn’t remember all of them, but he did know that Benny Carter was on it and maybe Chu Berry, and hearing the difficult simplicity of Teddy Wilson in his solo, he decided to wait for the end of the record. Wong had said it was raining, it had been raining all day. That must be Chu Berry, unless it was Coleman Hawkins in person, but no, it wasn’t Hawk. “It’s incredible how we’re cheating ourselves,” thought Oliveira looking at La Maga who was looking at Gregorovius who was looking at the air.“We’ll end up going to the Bibliothèque Mazarine to take notes on mandrakes, Bantu necklaces, or the comparative history of nail clippers.” Think of a repertory of insignificant things, the enormous work which goes into studying them and gaining a basic knowledge of them. A history of nail clippers, two thousand volumes to acquire the certain knowledge that until 1675 these small things had never received any mention. Suddenly in Mainz someone does a picture of a woman cutting a nail. It is not exactly a pair of nail clippers, but it looks like it. In the eighteenth century a certain Philip McKinney of Baltimore patents the first nail clippers with a spring attached: the problem is solved, the fingers can squeeze with all their strength to cut toenails, incredibly tough, and the clippers will snap back automatically. Five hundred notes, a year of work. If we were to turn now to the invention of the screw or to the use of the verb
gond
in eighteenth-century Pali literature. Anything would be more interesting than to guess the conversation between La Maga and Gregorovius. To find a barricade, anything, Benny Carter, nail clippers, the verb
gond,
another drink, a ceremonial impalement conducted carefully by an executioner attent to the smallest details, or Champion Jack Dupree lost in the blues, a better barricade than he because (and the needle was making a horrible noise)
    So long, whiskey, so long ver-mouth,
    Goodbye, goodbye, gin,
    So long, whiskey, so long ver-mouth,
    Goodbye, goodbye, gin.
    Jus’ want some good grass
    ’Cause I wanna turn on again—
    So that in all certainty Ronald would come back to Big Bill Broonzy, led by associations Oliveira knew about and respected, and Big Bill would tell them about another barricade with the same voice that La Maga was using to tell Gregorovius about her childhood in Montevideo, Big Bill without bitterness, “matter of fact,”
    If you’re an ofay, well, you’re okay,
    An’ if you’re tan, you’re all right, man,
    But if you’re brown or black, mmn,
    Step down, git back, git back.
    “I know already that nothing can come of it,” said Gregorovius. “Memories only change the least interesting part of the past.”
    “Yes, nothing can come of it,” La Maga said.
    “That’s why if I asked you to tell me about Montevideo it was because you’re like a queen of hearts to me, all front, no substance. I put it that way so that you’ll understand me.”
    “And Montevideo is the substance … Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense. What do you call the past? As far as I’m concerned everything that has happened to me happened yesterday, last night, no earlier.”
    “So much the better,” said Gregorovius. “Now you’re a queen, only not of hearts.”
    “It wasn’t so long ago for me. It’s far away, very far away, but not so long ago. The arcades of the Plaza Independencia, you know them too, Horacio, that sad square with all those restaurants, knowing there had been a killing that afternoon, the newsboys selling their papers in and out of the arcade.”
    “The lottery and all its prizes,” Horacio said.
    “The woman carved up in El Salto, politics, soccer …”
    “The boat to the racetrack, a drink of Ancap brandy. Local color, eh.”
    “It must have been quite exotic,” said