Read Online Hopscotch: A Novel (Pantheon Modern Writers Series) by Julio Cortázar - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Julio Cortázar
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time?”
“Oh, no,” said Wong smiling. “They’re all faded, they’re not worth looking at.”
“Do you really carry the worst one around in your wallet?”
“Oh, no,” Wong said.
“And did you show it to some women in a café?”
“They were so insistent,” said Wong. “The worst of it was they didn’t understand at all.”
“Let me see it,” said Oliveira, putting out his hand.
Wong began to look at the hand, smiling. Oliveira was too drunk to insist. He drank some more vodka and shifted his position. A piece of paper folded four times was placed in his hand. Instead of Wong he saw a kind of Cheshire cat smiling, sort of bowing in all the smoke. The post must have been six feet high, but there were eight posts, except that it was the same post repeated eight times in four series of two photos each, which went from left to right and from top to bottom, the post was the same in spite of slight differences in focus, all that was different was the prisoner tied to the post, the faces of the people around (there was a woman on the left) and the position of the executioner, standing to the left out of deference to the photographer, some American or Danish ethnologist who had a firm hand but a bad camera, an ancient Kodak that took bad pictures, so that except for the second picture, where the choice of knives had indicated work on the right ear, and the rest of the naked body could be seen clearly, the other pictures, because of the blood which was beginning to cover the body and the poor quality of the film or the development, were rather disappointing, especially from the fourth one on, in which the prisoner appeared as a blackish mass on which one could make out an open mouth and a very white arm, and the three last pictures were practically the same except for the position of the executioner, in the sixth picture crouching next to his bag of knives, taking out one at random (but he must have been cheating, because if he was going to begin with the deepest cuts…), and looking more closely one could see that the victim was alive because one foot was sticking out in spite of the pressure of his bonds, and his head was thrown back, his mouth still open, on the ground Chinese gentility must have spread an abundant amount of sawdust because the pool was no bigger, it made an almost perfect oval around the post. “The seventh is the critical one,” Wong’s voice came out from behind the vodka and the smoke, and one had to look closely because blood was pouring out around the paps which had been deeply excised (between the second and third pictures), but one could see in the seventh that a decisive cut had been made because the shape of the thighs which had been turned outward a bit had changed, and if one brought the picture up close he could see that the change was not in the thighs but in the groin, instead of the hazysplotch in the first picture it looked like something pouring out of a hole, something like a little girl who has been raped, with blood flowing down her thighs. And if Wong did not think highly of the eighth picture he must have been right because the victim could not have been alive any more, no one lets his head fall to the side that way. “According to what I have been told, the whole operation took an hour and a half,” Wong observed with ceremony. The piece of paper was folded in four, a black leather wallet opened its mouth like a crocodile and gobbled it up from amidst the smoke. “Of course, Peking is not what it used to be. I’m sorry I showed you something so primitive, but one cannot carry certain other documents in his billfold, there have to be explanations, an initiation …” His voice came from so far away it seemed to be a prolongation of the images, the gloss of a ceremonious scholar. Above or below, Big Bill Broonzy had begun to chant
See, See, Rider,
and as always everything came together from the unreconcilable forms, a grotesque collage which made its
“Oh, no,” said Wong smiling. “They’re all faded, they’re not worth looking at.”
“Do you really carry the worst one around in your wallet?”
“Oh, no,” Wong said.
“And did you show it to some women in a café?”
“They were so insistent,” said Wong. “The worst of it was they didn’t understand at all.”
“Let me see it,” said Oliveira, putting out his hand.
Wong began to look at the hand, smiling. Oliveira was too drunk to insist. He drank some more vodka and shifted his position. A piece of paper folded four times was placed in his hand. Instead of Wong he saw a kind of Cheshire cat smiling, sort of bowing in all the smoke. The post must have been six feet high, but there were eight posts, except that it was the same post repeated eight times in four series of two photos each, which went from left to right and from top to bottom, the post was the same in spite of slight differences in focus, all that was different was the prisoner tied to the post, the faces of the people around (there was a woman on the left) and the position of the executioner, standing to the left out of deference to the photographer, some American or Danish ethnologist who had a firm hand but a bad camera, an ancient Kodak that took bad pictures, so that except for the second picture, where the choice of knives had indicated work on the right ear, and the rest of the naked body could be seen clearly, the other pictures, because of the blood which was beginning to cover the body and the poor quality of the film or the development, were rather disappointing, especially from the fourth one on, in which the prisoner appeared as a blackish mass on which one could make out an open mouth and a very white arm, and the three last pictures were practically the same except for the position of the executioner, in the sixth picture crouching next to his bag of knives, taking out one at random (but he must have been cheating, because if he was going to begin with the deepest cuts…), and looking more closely one could see that the victim was alive because one foot was sticking out in spite of the pressure of his bonds, and his head was thrown back, his mouth still open, on the ground Chinese gentility must have spread an abundant amount of sawdust because the pool was no bigger, it made an almost perfect oval around the post. “The seventh is the critical one,” Wong’s voice came out from behind the vodka and the smoke, and one had to look closely because blood was pouring out around the paps which had been deeply excised (between the second and third pictures), but one could see in the seventh that a decisive cut had been made because the shape of the thighs which had been turned outward a bit had changed, and if one brought the picture up close he could see that the change was not in the thighs but in the groin, instead of the hazysplotch in the first picture it looked like something pouring out of a hole, something like a little girl who has been raped, with blood flowing down her thighs. And if Wong did not think highly of the eighth picture he must have been right because the victim could not have been alive any more, no one lets his head fall to the side that way. “According to what I have been told, the whole operation took an hour and a half,” Wong observed with ceremony. The piece of paper was folded in four, a black leather wallet opened its mouth like a crocodile and gobbled it up from amidst the smoke. “Of course, Peking is not what it used to be. I’m sorry I showed you something so primitive, but one cannot carry certain other documents in his billfold, there have to be explanations, an initiation …” His voice came from so far away it seemed to be a prolongation of the images, the gloss of a ceremonious scholar. Above or below, Big Bill Broonzy had begun to chant
See, See, Rider,
and as always everything came together from the unreconcilable forms, a grotesque collage which made its
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