I know perfectly well the traps and snares of memory, but I think that the story of this “suppressed chapter” (number 126) is approximately as follows.

Hopscotch was born from these pages; born as a novel, as the intention of a novel, because several short texts already existed (like those which later became chapters 8 and 132), texts that were trying to cluster around a story. I know I wrote this chapter in one go, and it was followed immediately and with equal violence by the one that would eventually be called “the title chapter” (number 41 in the book). In this way there first was a kind of early core in which the images of Oliveira, Talita, and Traveler became defined; suddenly the lurch subsided and there was a painful pause, until with the same initial violence I understood that I had to leave it all and wait and go back through a plot of which I knew next to nothing, and write, using as a point of departure the short texts mentioned, the whole of the Paris section.

From that “other side” I jumped effortlessly to “this side,” because Traveler and Talita had stayed there as if waiting, and Oliveira simply went to meet them, in exactly the way it is told in the book. And then one day I finished writing. I reread the mountain of papers, I added the host of elements that need to be included after a second reading, and I started to make a clean draft of the whole. It was then, I think, that I discovered that this initial chapter, which had set the novel itself in motion, was superfluous.

The reason was simple and yet mysterious. I had not realized, two years into the novel, that Horacio’s night in the mental institution, at the end of the book, took place within a make-believe equivalent to that of this first chapter; there, as well, someone was tying threads from one piece of furniture to another, from object to object, in a ceremony as inexplicable to Oliveira as it was to me. Suddenly the now-old first chapter became repetitious, even if in fact it had come first. I realized that I had to eliminate it, overcoming the unpleasant sense of having to pull away the cornerstone of the entire building. There was something like a feeling of guilt in that necessary act, something like ingratitude. That is why I began by looking for a possible solution, and when I wrote the clean draft I eliminated the names of Talita and Traveler—the main characters in the chapter—thinking that the faint enigma that would then surround them would deaden the flagrant parallel with the asylum chapter. An honest rereading was enough for me to understand that the threads had not moved an inch, that the ceremony was analogous and recurrent, and with no further thought I pulled out the cornerstone. As far as I know the house has not tumbled down.

These pages can’t add anything to (or, I hope, take anything from) a book that embodies me as I was then, at a time of change, of search, of birds in flight.

~ started because, after gulping down the last of the coffee, he signaled, but ~ stared at him blankly and went to get the paper to read the obituary column, as is only proper after coffee. ~ waited for a moment and then said he would make some more coffee because he still felt like drinking real coffee and not the whitish juice ~ made, with the excuse that there was no ground coffee left in the blue tin. To this ~ answered with an equally whitish look, and, when ~ made the sign again, her eyes allowed themselves to be lowered and began to search (in the morning paper) for Juan Roberto Figueredo, r.i.p., passed away peacefully on 13 January 195-, with the blessing of the Church and the benefit of last rites. His wife, et cetera. Isaac Feinsilber, r.i.p., et cetera. Rosa Sanchez de Morando, r.i.p. No one she knew, not today, not even one name that sounded like someone she knew and would allow her to speculate on the deceased’s identity and family connections. ~ came back with the coffeepot and started by spooning a good amount of sugar into the cup of ~, who wasn’t looking, deep in the paper, reading about Remigio Díaz, r.i.p. He then poured the coffee up to the rim of her cup and filled his own, while with the free hand he took out a packet of cigarettes and put it to his mouth as if he were about to bite it, but it was only to extract a cigarette dexterously without touching the others with his lips.

“I’m very sleepy,” said ~ after ten minutes.

“With the kind of news you read,” said ~, who had been waiting for those words and was beginning to get seriously worried.

~ yawned delicately.

“Take advantage now that the bed isn’t made,” said ~.

“You’ll save yourself work afterwards.” ~ looked at him as if she hoped he would do his signaling again, but ~ had begun to whistle, with his eyes glued to the ceiling—more precisely, on a cobweb. Then ~ thought ~ was miffed because she had not answered his signaling with the expected answer (passing her hand over her left ear as a sign of tenderness and compliance), and she went off to take her nap, leaving the table with the remains of a splendid casserole.

~ waited three minutes, took off his pajama top, and entered the bedroom. ~ was fast asleep, on her back. As it was hot, she had taken off the blanket as well as the top sheet; it was exactly what ~ wanted, along with the fact that ~ had nothing on except the nightdress in which she had gotten up that morning. The blue dressing gown was lying at the foot of the bed, covering her feet, and ~ hooked it on his slipper and kicked it into a corner. He missed his shot and the dressing gown almost flew out of the window, which would have been a nuisance.

Out of the left pocket of his trousers ~ took a tube of Secotine glue and a ball of black thread. The thread was shiny and rather thick, almost like wrapping string. Carefully, ~ put his hand inside the right pocket of his trousers and took out a razor blade wrapped up in a piece of toilet paper. The toilet paper was torn and the blade’s edge was visible. Sitting on the bed, ~ began to work while loudly whistling a bit from an opera. He was certain she would not wake up, because large quantities of coffee always made her sleep profoundly, and he would have been especially surprised if she woke up today, considering the penumbrate of oxtaline he had slipped in with the sugar. On the contrary, ~’s sleep was quite extraordinary; she huffed to take the air in, so that every five seconds her upper lip would blow up like the frill of a curtain, while the air blew underneath it in a noisy puff. ~ used this as a pacemaker to carry on whistling the opera while cutting the black thread, after calculating approximately how much he needed.

A tube of Secotine glue is opened by taking out the round--headed pin that serves both to pierce the tip and cover it, a detail that gives one an idea of the maker’s ability. Once the pin is out, it is more than likely that a drop will appear on the tip of the tube, a drop of a rather revolting substance, with its already famous smell and certified mucilaginous properties. Very carefully, and while he embroidered variations on Bella figlia dell’amore, ~ wet the top of the black thread with Secotine and, leaning over, ~ pressed the wet tip in the middle of her forehead, leaving his finger in place long enough for the thread to stick to the forehead without sticking to his finger, that is to say, about four seconds, more or less. He then climbed on a chair (after placing the tube, the pin, and the ball of thread on the chest of drawers) and stuck the other end of the thread to one of the cut-glass prisms of the chandelier that hung over the bed and that ~ had refused to throw out the window in spite of his (now past and not repeated) pleading.

Satisfied that the thread was sufficiently taut, because he loathed sagginess in any human creation, ~ placed himself on the left side of the bed armed with the razor blade, and cut with a single stroke ~’s nightdress, beginning with the armpit. Then he cut along the seam of one sleeve, and did the same on the other side. The sleeves fell like snakeskins, but ~ proceeded with a certain solemnity when he came to lifting the front of the nightdress, leaving ~ stark naked. There was nothing on ~’s body that could be unknown to him, but the sudden contemplation of her body always dazzled him, although the Great Custom always managed to stale the effect. ~’s navel, more than anything else, made him giddy at first glance; it had something of confectionery, of failed transplant, of a pillbox thrown into a drum. Every time he saw it from above, ~ felt the urgent desire to fill his mouth with saliva, very white and very sweet, and delicately spit on the navel, filling it to the rim with warm birthday lace. He had done so many times, but now was not the right moment, so he turned to look for the ball of thread and began cutting threads of different lengths, first measuring out certain distances. The first piece of thread (the one from the forehead to the chandelier was like an earlier pledge and therefore could not be taken into account) he stuck on the big toe of ~’s left foot; this piece went from the toe to the bathroom doorknob. The second piece of thread he stuck to the second toe and also to the doorknob; the third, to the third toe and also to the doorknob; the fourth, to the fourth toe and to a carving of a horn of plenty on the oak chest of drawers, split in three parts; the fifth thread was drawn from the little toe to another cut-glass prism of the chandelier. All this on the left side of the bed.

Satisfied, ~ stuck another piece of thread to ~’s left knee and fixed it to the top of the window frame that looked out onto the hotel courtyard. At precisely that moment an enormous bluebottle fly flew in through the open window and began to buzz over ~’s body. Without paying any attention to it, ~ stuck another thread to ~’s groin, at the top of her left thigh, and also to the upper rim of the window frame. He thought for a moment before making up his mind, and then took the tube of Secotine and squeezed it against ~’s navel until it was full. He immediately stuck six threads there and fixed five of them onto the cut-glass prisms hanging from the chandelier, and one onto the window frame. This did not seem enough, so he stuck eight more pieces of thread to the navel, which he stuck to seven more prisms and to the window frame. Stepping back two feet (he was somewhat cornered between the bed, the window, and the pieces of thread that led from ~ to the window frame), ~ gave the finished work an appreciative look and found it satisfactory. He took out another cigarette and lit it with the butt that was already burning his lips. Suddenly he cut another half-dozen pieces of thread and stuck one to ~’s left nipple, another among the hairs of the left armpit, another to the earlobe, another to the left corner of the mouth, another to the left nostril, and another to the corner of the left eye. The first three he stuck to the cut-glass prisms of the chandelier, and the others to the window frame, with a great deal of difficulty because he had hardly any room to move. After doing this, he stuck pieces of thread to each finger of the left hand, to the elbow, and to the shoulder on that same side. Then he closed the tube of Secotine with the pin provided for that purpose, wrapped the razor blade in the piece of toilet paper he had carefully kept in the hip pocket of his trousers, and tucked away both things and the ball of thread in the left pocket of the above-mentioned article of clothing. Bending over very carefully so as not to touch the threads, which looked amazingly taut, he crept under the bed until he came out on the other side, completely covered in fluff and dust. He shook himself against the window that opened onto the street, took out once again his working utensils, and cut a number of pieces of thread that he stuck successively to different parts of the right side of ~’s body, in general keeping a symmetry with the left side but allowing himself certain variations: for instance, the piece of thread corresponding to the right earlobe was drawn between the earlobe and the bathroom doorknob; the thread leaving the corner of the right eye was stuck to the window frame opening onto the street. Finally (even though he was under no obligation to finish the task in a hurry), ~ cut a fair number of pieces of thread, put a good quantity of Secotine on them, and plunged into a vehement improvisation, spreading them among ~’s hair and eyebrows and sticking most of them to the cut-glass prisms of the chandelier, but keeping some for the window frame opening onto the street, the bathroom doorknob, and the carved horn of plenty.

After putting away the tube, the razor blade, and the ball of thread in his trousers, ~ slid under the bed, dragged himself along till he came out at the foot, and kept sliding till he came to the bathroom door. Very slowly, so as not to touch any of the threads that led to the doorknob, he stood up and admired his work. Through the windows came a yellowish, rather dirty light, like the reflection of the peeling wall opposite that still held on to the remains of a painting depicting a baby sucking on something with a delighted look on his face; but the paint had come off in strips, and instead of a mouth the baby had a kind of purplish sore that seemed a poor recommendation for the nutritive product praised below in rather stuttering letters. The street was extremely narrow, and the windows on one side were no more than five feet away from the other side. At that time not one window was open, except ~’s, but ~ would probably not be there at that time, or would be napping. The fly began to bother ~ intensely, and he would have liked to shoo it out the window, but in order to do this he would have had to step forward to the foot of the bed and wave his hand next to the chandelier, which would have been impossible due to the large quantity of threads stretched in that
direction.

“It’s hot,” thought ~, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s really terribly hot.”

He would have liked to close the blinds, but quite apart from the fact that it was difficult to wind one’s way through the threads, he would not have had enough light to see ~’s body with the perfect clarity he needed. ~’s nakedness seemed cut out against the background, not so much because she lay with her back on the bed, but because the black threads seemed to converge from everywhere and fall upon her. Had they not been that taut, the overall effect would have been completely bungled, and ~ congratulated himself on his dexterity, even though his naturally demanding spirit led him to notice that the thread that led from the window frame to the corner of the right eye was slightly slack. For a moment he thought that ~ had moved, altering the general balance of tensions, but it was enough for him to eye the total array of threads to dismiss that possibility. Furthermore, the amount of sleeping powder he had put into ~’s coffee would not have allowed ~ even to blink. ~ thought of sliding down to the slackest thread and tightening it, but he would probably have spoiled some of the threads that met with this one on the window frame. He concluded that all in all the work was fine, and that he could allow himself a rest and another cigarette.

Eight minutes later he threw the butt out the window into the street, and took off his clothes without moving from where he was. His tall, thin body seemed to have come out of an engraving (an opinion ~ expressed frequently). Even though ~ could not see him, he gave the agreed-upon signal, and waited for an answer for about thirty seconds. Then he began to draw nearer the bed, little by little, avoiding with infinite care the threads that led to the bathroom doorknob. To do this he bent down and then stood up every time it was necessary, until he was standing exactly at the foot of the bed, closing a triangle formed by ~’s two feet and his own body. He waited a while, until ~ opened her eyes and stared at him. As soon as he was sure that she could see him (because sometimes the state of unconsciousness lasted a few minutes after waking up), he lifted a finger and pointed to one of the threads. ~’s eyes began to wander up and down the threads, beginning with the ones that sprang from her eyebrows and the corners of her eyes, and following the entire length of her body. They rose to the cut-glass prisms of the chandelier and came back to their starting point; they left again, traveling to the window that looked onto the courtyard, and then returned to fix themselves to a knee or a nipple; they followed the black track to the window that opened onto the street, and returned to the groin or to the toes. ~ was waiting with his arms crossed, his pose identical to that in a ~ painting of the blue period.

When ~ finished reconnoitering the threads, something like a sigh lifted her chest and projected her lips forward. Cautiously she moved her right arm, but she stopped when she heard the cut-glass prisms of the chandelier tinkle. The bluebottle fly flew sluggishly, slid among the threads, swirled around ~’s stomach, and was about to land on her mount of ~, but then it ascended to the ceiling and stuck to one of the moldings. ~ and ~ followed its flight with exasperated attention; they did not look at each other until they were sure that the fly had settled down on the ceiling with every intention of staying there.

Putting one knee down on the edge of the bed, ~ bent his head and began leaning forward toward ~, who stared at him, motionless. The other knee appeared on the edge of the bed, while the torso advanced horizontally and one of the hands tried to grip the mattress, exactly in between ~’s legs. The pieces of thread surrounded him, but his movements were so precise that he did not so much as touch one when he lifted a knee and put it on the mattress, then lifted the second knee, together with the other hand, and remained on bent knees, completely arched between ~’s legs, breathing heavily because the maneuver had been slow and difficult and his calves hurt him, still perched as he was on the edge of the bed.

Lifting his head, ~ looked at ~. Both were sweat-ing, but while the sweat wrapped ~ in a fine mesh of trans-parent droplets, both ~’s face and shoulders were sodden, even though her breasts and stomach were dry.

“One makes the signal, but the other plays with the clouds,” ~ said.

“Clouds are also an answer,” ~ said.

“A borrowed phrase.”

“Exactly what you deserve.”

~ waited.

“You did it, at last,” said ~. “You’ve been preparing me for months for this. First with your obsession with teaching me to recite filth, to dance like a Tibetan woman, to eat like an Eskimo, to make love like a dog. Then you forced me to cut my nails, you threw me into the street that day when it was hailing, you locked me in a wooden box with an infrared lamp, you bought me a stamp album. All that was nothing.”

“You know how much I love you,” said ~ in a voice so low that ~ opened her eyes as if in surprise. “My love is held tight in this fist, crumpled and broken till it becomes a screeching ball, a portable star that I can take out of my pocket and put next to your body, to burn it, to tattoo it. Every time I signal you, you don’t answer, and the star fries my legs, runs over my ribs like a storm in the Sargasso Sea, that inexistence where the kraken floats, where the jellyfish couple in thousands, slowly turning in the night, in a bath of phosphorus and plankton.”

“And is all that my fault?”

“You’ll move the threads,” said ~. “When you move your mouth, two of the threads change position.”

“So what, the threads?” said ~.

“What do you mean, so what the threads?” said ~. “They took half an hour’s work; I’m covered in dust and fluff. You never sweep under the bed. Even worse, you sweep the room and then hide the rubbish under the bed. I’ve just found out. My love is also like that, bits and pieces that come together and join and merge and stick to one another. But I sweat, which rubbish doesn’t.”

“It seems as if I’ve slept for a hundred years,” said ~. “How long did I sleep, ~?”

“A hundred years,” said ~.

“That’s a lot, a hundred years.”

“For the one who stays awake.”

“You must have been terribly bored.”

“Exactly,” said ~. “When you fall asleep you take the world away with you, and I am left in a sort of nothing crossed by lines of perspective. After a while it becomes boring.”

“That’s why you play like this,” said ~, staring at the threads.

“This is not playing. To be naked looking at one another.”

“I swear,” said ~. “I think I didn’t see the signal.”

“Of course you saw it.”

“Had I seen it I would have answered it. I’d rather be awake, with you.”

“Explanations never suckled bees,” said ~.

“Maybe I saw it and didn’t answer it, but that was because of the heat and because after all I’d have had to do the dishes before coming to bed.”

“First the dishes,” said ~. “An excellent motto. At the bottom of how many knifings lies this excuse that no judge would accept. You’d lick the dirty dishes rather than lick my chest like an industrious little snail. Leaving a track in the shape of a four or an eight. Or better still, a seven, a number drunk in sacredness. But no, first we’ll lick the dishes, as Queen Victoria would say. First we’ll lick the dishes.”

“But they’re so filthy, ~,” said ~. “It’s been fif-teen days since we’ve washed anything in the kitchen. You noticed we had our lunch on dirty dishes, we can’t go on like this.”

“You’re disturbing the threads,” said ~.

“And if now you’d signal to me, if even now you’d…”

A whistle was heard, in the shape of an S. It came in through the window that opened onto the street.

“It’s ~,” said ~. “Calling me.”

“Put on something before leaning out,” said ~. “You always forget you’re naked.”

“I’m always naked. You are the one who forgets that.”

“Fine,” said ~. “But at least put the pajama pants on. And till when do I have to stay like this?”

“I don’t know,” said ~. “First I’ve got to see what ~ wants.”

“To ask for something, I’m sure. A cigarette or matches, something like that.”

“He’s an addict.”

“But you protect him.”

“Well, if you’re going to protect normal people…”

“True,” said ~. “After all, ~ is a good guy. Listen how he whistles. It’s unbelievable how he can whistle. My mouth would fall to bits if I tried.”

“~ is an alchemist,” said ~. “He changes the air into a strip of mercury. Shit, he’s fucked up.”

“Why don’t you look out and see what he wants? I’m not too comfortable here with these threads.”

~ stood for a moment, silently studying ~’s words. “I know,” he said. “What you want is that I let you go so that you can wash those dirty dishes.”

“I swear I don’t. I’ll stay here with you. If you give me the signal. I swear I’ll…”

“Bitch, bitch, you bitch,” said ~. “If I give you the signal, eh? Now you come making up to me with the signal. Why should I care about the signal, if I had you any way I wanted while you slept? Even now all I have to do is slide down some twenty inches, making my way like a sea gull through that wonderful black web, those ropes on the mast of a galley, and enter you in one single thrust so that you scream out, because you always scream out when I take you by surprise. And you’re longing for it, I’ve been smelling you for the past five minutes and I know you’re longing for it, I could enter you like a hand into a used glove, you have the perfect level of dampness advised by the specialists in copulatory matters, you hot sea slug.”

“Did you really do it while I slept?” said ~.

“I did it in the most perfect way, but you would never understand,” said ~, looking at the threads in profound admiration. “Beyond the signal, beyond your dirty kitchen, and above all beyond your animal desire. Keep quiet, you’re moving the threads.”

“Please,” said ~. “Go and see what ~ wants, and then close the blinds and come to me. I swear I won’t move, but hurry up.”

~ once again studied ~’s words in silence.

“Maybe,” he said. “You don’t move. Do you want me to dry you a bit with a towel? You’re sweating like a stoat.”

“Stoats don’t sweat,” said ~.

“They sweat gallons,” said ~.

They always talked about stoats when they were making up.

“Now the problem is to see how I can get out of here,” said ~. “There are so many pieces of string that I could bump into one, and when you go backward you don’t have the same clairvoyance as when you go forward. It’s incredible how man was born for going forward. From behind we’re nothing. Like driving in reverse, even the cockiest will run over a mailbox at the first change of gears. Guide me. First I’ll take this leg out and put this knee on the edge of the bed.”

“A little further to the right,” said ~.

“I think I’m touching a thread with my foot,” said ~, looking behind him and correcting his movement.

“You hardly grazed it. Now put the other knee there, but slowly. You look beautiful, all in a sweat. And the light from the window seems to bathe you in green. You look like something rotten, I swear. I never saw you look so lovely.”

“Stop flattering me and guide me instead,” said ~, furious. “You think I should put my foot down on the floor or should I slide down? I’ll scrape my shins if I do that; this bed has a very sharp edge.”

“First put the right foot down,” said ~. “The thing is that I can’t see the floor; how can I guide you if I can’t even move? “

“There,” said ~. “Now I’ll bend down slowly and go back inch by inch, like in ~’s novels.”

“Don’t name that bird of ill omen,” said ~.

Crawling like an everglades alligator, ~ passed little by little under the threads that led to the window frame. He did not look up at ~ again, but concentrated on studying the chest of drawers’ horn of plenty, and the problem of overcoming the threads that went from the horn of plenty to one of the toes and to ~’s hair and eyebrows. Like that he passed under the greater part of the threads, but the last one he jumped. Only then, with his hand on the doorknob, did he look back at ~, who seemed asleep. He realized that instead of being at the window he was standing next to the door, and that from there it was easy to reach the head of the bed without disturbing the pieces of thread. Approaching her on tiptoes, he began to blow on her hair. The threads wavered, and the cut-glass prisms tinkled.

“Come here,” said ~ in a very low voice.

“Oh no,” said ~, walking away. “I signaled you and you didn’t answer.”

“Come, come here immediately.”

~ looked toward the door. ~ was breathing with difficulty, as if the black threads were sucking her blood.

The crystal-clear note of one last cut-glass prism was heard, and then the silence of the afternoon nap. From the house opposite came a terrible whistle, and it was answered from below by something very similar to someone breaking wind.

“They’ve sent him a splendid fart,” said ~. “He really deserves it.”

“Please come here,” she begged. “~. It’s painful to wait for you like this, I feel I’m going to die. Who’ll cook your steak tonight?”

~ opened his arms, took a deep breath, and jumped onto the bed, sweeping the threads with a fabulous swing. The racket made by the cut-glass prisms coincided with the crash of his feet touching the floor on the other side of the bed and with ~’s yell, clutching her stomach with both hands. ~ was still screaming in pain when ~ fell on her, squashing her, weighing her down, biting her and fucking her. “My belly button hurts terribly,” ~ managed to say, but ~ could not hear her, completely on the far side of words. The air smelled more and more of Secotine, and the bluebottle fly circled around the shaken chandelier. Bits of black thread twisted like insect legs all over the place, falling from the edge of the bed, crossing over each other and tearing with tiny snaps.

~ had bits of thread in his mouth, under his nose, another coiled around his neck, and ~ was moving her hands almost unconsciously, mingling caresses with desperate waves to rid herself of the threads that sprung from her everywhere. And all this seemed to last forever, and the horn of plenty was lying on the floor broken into three pieces, one bigger and the other two almost the same, as divine proportion requires.

—Translated by Alberto Manguel