Julio Cortázar

Julio Cortázar is known these days of course for his writing, particularly the form of the short story, of which he is an undisputed master, it is generally agreed. But his true talent, the one he was known for most of his life, at least among those of us who knew him well, or claimed to, was not writing (although we all acknowledged his unequivocal gifts in that area as well) but rather was in regards to the metro. Now I can only speak to this in terms of his relationship to the Paris metro, which was where I met him and knew him, and also where those who knew of his unique gift knew him. I cannot speak to whether this gift applied to other metros in other cities as well. But whenever Julio Cortázar rode the Paris metro he would always find a seat. Or perhaps I should say a seat would always be open for him. No matter the time of day, even in the thickest of rush hours. He himself was aware of this anomaly and would often comment upon it aloud, in passing; never, to my knowledge, did it appear in his writing though I must admit I have not yet read the entirety of his published work, even though we were dear friends and he would occasionally put a draft into my hands so that I might provide him my opinion, which he would immediately and irrevocably ignore, or do the opposite of – that was just his way, you have to understand – and I also admit I read Historias de Cronopios y de Famas under the influence of various potent medicines, which I had been taking at that time to counteract a severe but not, as proven by my continued existence here, fatal disorder of the brain; suffice to say, I don’t remember much from that text and what I do remember is cluttered and vague, and in no section of that clutterdness and vagueness is the metro mentioned. At any rate, although he did not to my knowledge address this rare gift of his directly in his work, I can’t imagine him having written “El Perseguidor,” “The Pursuer,” one of his most celebrated works, had he not possessed the ability to always have a seat in the metro open for him. When Johnny loses his saxophone in the metro (or perhaps not; the text becomes ambiguous about this; or does it?), it is a subconscious or surrealistic transposition of his gift of having a seat opened for him in the metro into his other, secondary gift of literature. If a man can become an axolotl in Julio Cortázar’s oeuvre, then certainly an open metro seat can become a missing saxophone. And the unfolding ambiguity of the saxophone being lost in the metro is a complication of this transposition. Even on the busiest days at the peak hours, entire cars would be crammed with people standing tightly against each other, unable even to breathe because there was no room for chests to expand outward, even then Julio Cortázar would board this car and immediately find an open seat. And he would take this open seat for himself, he would sit in it unapologetically. The elderly, the pregnant, the seriously ill or infirm, if they were standing they would have to remain standing so that Julio Cortázar could have his seat. This was not selfishness or cruelty on Julio Cortázar’s part. He did it as if obeying a physical law: And one does not apologize for returning to the Earth after one jumps, he once quipped, off-handedly and albeit during a conversation on entirely different matters and in no manner with regards to his gift in the metro. But the phrase always remained with me as a sort of explanation for this behavior that struck some as pitiless. Even when with friends or relations, when only one seat was available to us on the metro (Julio Cortázar’s seat!), he would never offer the seat to any of us first, but instead sat in it himself immediately while the rest of us stood. Those of us who knew him best knew not to be offended, those who did not know of Julio Cortázar’s gift never remained in his circle long enough to think anything of his behavior. He once told me, both of us drunk on brandy, it was very early morning and our throats were both scorched from the quantities of liquor and Gauloises we had both consumed, that he knew, he was certain of it beyond all evidence or explanation, that as soon as he gave up that open seat in the metro to someone, anyone else, his gift would be gone forever, he would never again have any seat opened for him, whenever he took the metro for the rest of his life he would have to stand. I told him it was ridiculous but yet made a certain sort of sense, and that there were worse things than having to stand in the metro. He replied that there were also worse things than———what had he said? I forget now but at the time I understood fully what he meant.