Blow-Up (33 page)

“For God’s sake, that business is more than gone and forgotten,” Roland says, taking a turn at top speed.

“I thought so too. Almost seven years. And it has to pop up just now …”

“You’re mistaken there,” Roland says. “If there was any time it was going to pop up it’s now, given that it’s absurd, it’s really very logical. Even I … you know, sometimes I dream about all that. The way we killed that guy, you don’t forget things like that very easy. Anyway, you
couldn’t handle things any better in those days,” Roland says, pushing the gas pedal to the floor.

“She doesn’t know a thing,” Babette says. “Just that they killed him shortly afterwards. It was right to tell her at least that much.”

“I guess. But it didn’t seem right to him at all. I remember his face when we pulled him out of the car in the middle of the woods, he knew immediately he was a goner. He was brave, sure.”

“It’s always easier to be brave than to be a man,” Babette says. “To force himself on a child who … When I think that I had to fight to keep Michèle from killing herself. Those first nights … It doesn’t surprise me that she’s feeling the same thing again now, it’s almost natural.”

The car enters the street on which the house is located, doing seventy.

“Yeah, he was a pig,” Roland says. “The pure Aryan, that’s the way they saw it, those days. Naturally, he asked for a cigarette, the complete ceremony. Also, he wanted to know why we were going to liquidate him, we explained it to him, boy, we certainly explained it to him. When I dream about him, it’s that moment especially, his disdainful air of surprise, the almost elegant way of stuttering. I remember how he fell, his face blasted to bits among the dry leaves.”

“Don’t go on, please,” Babette says.

“He had it coming, besides, we didn’t have any other weapons. A shotgun properly used … It’s on the left, down there at the bottom?”

“Yes, on the left.”

“I hope there’s some cognac,” Roland says, coming down hard on the brake.

Julio Cortázar was born in Brussels to Argentinian parents in 1914, was raised in Argentina, and in 1952 moved to Paris, where he continued to live for the rest of his life. He was a poet, translator, and amateur jazz musician as well as the author of several novels and volumes of short stories. Ten of his books have been published in English:
The Winners
,
Hopscotch
,
Blow-Up and Other Stories
,
Cronopios and Famas
,
62: A Model Kit
,
All Fires the Fire and Other Stories
,
A Manual for Manuel
,
A Change of Light
,
We Love Glenda So Much
, and
A Certain Lucas
. Considered one of the great modern Latin American authors, he died in Paris in February, 1984.