{"id":19847,"date":"2025-02-19T08:48:55","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T12:48:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/?p=19847"},"modified":"2025-02-19T08:48:57","modified_gmt":"2025-02-19T12:48:57","slug":"julio-cortazar-house-taken-over","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lecturia.org\/en\/short-stories\/julio-cortazar-house-taken-over\/19847\/","title":{"rendered":"Julio Cort\u00e1zar: House Taken Over"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Synopsis:<\/strong> In \u201cHouse Taken Over<\/em>\u201d by Julio Cort\u00e1zar, Irene and her brother live in an old, spacious house inherited from their ancestors. The house, full of family memories, is meticulously cared for by both, who lead a routine and quiet life. Irene spends her days knitting while her brother takes care of the housework. One day, strange noises begin to be heard from the farthest part of the house, forcing the siblings to leave certain rooms. The sounds intensify, and the siblings are forced to confine themselves to a smaller section of the house, living in a state of growing unease.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"Julio<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

House Taken Over<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

by Julio Cort\u00e1zar
(Full story)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We liked the house because, apart from its being old and spacious (in a day when old houses go down for a profitable auction of their construction materials), it kept the memories of great-grandparents, our paternal grandfather, our parents and the whole of childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Irene and I got used to staying in the house by ourselves, which was crazy, eight people could have lived in that place and not have gotten in each other\u2019s way. We rose at seven in the morning and got the cleaning done and about eleven I left Irene to finish off whatever rooms and went to the kitchen. We lunched at noon precisely; then there was nothing left to do but a few dirty plates. It was pleasant to take lunch and commune with the great hollow, silent house, and it was enough for us just to keep it clean. We ended up thinking, at times, that that was what had kept us from marrying. Irene turned down two suitors for no particular reason, and Mar\u00eda Esther went and died on me before we could manage to get engaged. We were easing into our forties with the unvoiced concept that the quiet, simple marriage of sister and brother was the indispensable end to a line established in this house by our grandparents. We would die here someday, obscure and distant cousins would inherit the place, have it torn down, sell the bricks and get rich on the building plot; or more justly and better yet, we would topple it ourselves before it was too late.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Irene never bothered anyone. Once the morning housework was finished, she spent the rest of the day on the sofa in her bedroom, knitting. I couldn\u2019t tell you why she knitted so much. I think women knit when they discover that it\u2019s a fat excuse to do nothing at all. But Irene was not like that, she always knitted necessities, sweaters for winter, socks for me, handy morning robes and bedjackets for herself. Sometimes she would do a jacket, then unravel it the next moment because there was something that didn\u2019t please her; it was pleasant to see a pile of tangled wool in her knitting basket fighting a losing battle for a few hours to retain its shape. Saturdays I went downtown to buy wool; Irene had faith in my good taste, was pleased with the colors and never a skein had to be returned. I took advantage of these trips to make the rounds of the bookstores, uselessly asking if they had anything new in French literature. Nothing worthwhile had arrived in Argentina since 1939.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s the house I want to talk about, the house and Irene, I\u2019m not very important. I wonder what Irene would have done without her knitting. One can reread a book, but once a pullover is finished you can\u2019t do it over again, it\u2019s some kind of disgrace. One day I found that the drawer at the bottom of the chiffonier, replete with mothballs, was filled with shawls, white, green, lilac. Stacked amid a great smell of camphor \u2013 it was like a shop; I didn\u2019t have the nerve to ask her what she planned to do with them. We didn\u2019t have to earn our living, there was plenty coming in from the farms each month, even piling up. But Irene was only interested in the knitting and showed a wonderful dexterity, and for me the hours slipped away watching her, her hands like silver seaurchins, needles flashing, and one or two knitting baskets on the floor, the balls of yarn jumping about. It was lovely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


How not to remember the layout of that house. The dining room, a living room with tapestries, the library and three large bedrooms in the section most recessed, the one that faced toward Rodr\u00edguez Pe\u00f1a. Only a corridor with its massive oak door separated that part from the front wing, where there was a bath, the kitchen, our bedrooms and the hall. One entered the house through a vestibule with enameled tiles, and a wrought-iron grated door opened onto the living room. You had to come in through the vestibule and open the gate to go into the living room; the doors to our bedrooms were on either side of this, and opposite it was the corridor leading to the back section going down the passage, one swung open the oak door beyond which was the other part of the house; or just before the door, one could turn to the left and go down a narrower passageway which led to the kitchen and the bath. When the door was open, you became aware of the size of the house; when it was closed, you had the impression of an apartment, like the ones they build today, with barely enough room to move around in. Irene and I always lived in this part of the house and hardly ever went beyond the oak door except to do the cleaning. Incredible how much dust collected on the furniture. It may be Buenos Aires is a clean city, but she owes it to her population and nothing else. There\u2019s too much dust in the air, the slightest breeze and it\u2019s back on the marble console tops and in the diamond patterns of the tooled-leather desk set. It\u2019s a lot of work to get it off with a feather duster; the motes rise and hang in the air, and settle again a minute later on the pianos and the furniture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


I\u2019ll always have a clear memory of it because it happened so simply and without fuss. Irene was knitting in her bedroom, it was eight at night, and I suddenly decided to put the water up for mat\u00e9<\/em>. I went down the corridor as far as the oak door, which was ajar, then turned into the hall toward the kitchen, when I heard something in the library or the dining room. The sound came through muted and indistinct, a chair being knocked over onto the carpet or the muffled buzzing of a conversation. At the same time or a second later, I heard it at the end of the passage which led from those two rooms toward the door. I hurled myself against the door before it was too late and shut it, leaned on it with the weight of my body; luckily, the key was on our side; moreover, I ran the great bolt into place, just to be safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I went down to the kitchen, heated the kettle, and when I got back with the tray of mat\u00e9<\/em> I told Irene:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had to shut the door to the passage. They\u2019ve taken over the back part.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She let her knitting fall and looked at me with her tired, serious eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou\u2019re sure?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I nodded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn that case,\u201d she said, picking up her needles again, \u201cwe\u2019ll have to live on this side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I sipped at the mat\u00e9<\/em> very carefully, but she took her time starting her work again. I remember it was a grey cardigan she was knitting. I liked that cardigan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


The first few days were painful, since we\u2019d both left so many things in the part that had been taken over. My collection of French literature, for example, was still in the library. Irene had left several folios of stationery and a pair of slippers that she used a lot in the winter. I missed my briar pipe, and Irene, I think, regretted the loss of an ancient bottle of liver tonic. It happened repeatedly (but only in the first few days) that we would close some drawer or cabinet and look at one another sadly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not here.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One thing more among the many lost on the other side of the house.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there were advantages, too. The cleaning was so much simplified that, even when we got up late, nine thirty for instance, by eleven we were sitting around with our arms folded. Irene got into the habit of coming to the kitchen with me to help get lunch. We thought about it and decided on this: while I prepared the lunch, Irene would cook up dishes that could be eaten cold in the evening. We were happy with the arrangement because it was always such a bother to have to leave our bedrooms in the evening and start to cook. Now we made do with the table in Irene\u2019s room and platters of cold supper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since it left her more time for knitting, Irene was content. I was a little lost without my books, but so as not to inflict myself on my sister, I set about reordering Pappa\u2019s stamp collection; that killed some time. We amused ourselves sufficiently, each with his own thing, almost always getting together in Irene\u2019s bedroom, which was the more comfortable. Every once in a while, Irene might say:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cLook at this pattern I just figured out, doesn\u2019t it look like clover?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After a bit it was I, pushing a small square of paper in front of her so that she could see the excellence of some stamp or another from Eupen-et-Malm\u00e9dy. We were fine, and little by little we stopped thinking. You can live without thinking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n


(Whenever Irene talked in her sleep, I woke up immediately and stayed awake. I never could get used to this voice from a statue or a parrot, a voice that came out of the dreams, not from a throat. Irene said that in my sleep I flailed about enormously and shook the blankets off. We had the living room between us, but at night you could hear everything in the house. We heard each other breathing, coughing, could even feel each other reaching for the light switch when, as happened frequently, neither of us could fall asleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from our nocturnal rumblings, everything was quiet in the house. During the day there were the household sounds, the metallic click of knitting needles, the rustle of stamp-album pages turning. The oak door was massive, I think I said that. In the kitchen or the bath, which adjoined the part that was taken over, we managed to talk loudly, or Irene sang lullabies. In a kitchen there\u2019s always too much noise, the plates and glasses, for there to be interruptions from other sounds. We seldom allowed ourselves silence there, but when we went back to our rooms or to the living room, then the house grew quiet, half-lit, we ended by stepping around more slowly so as not to disturb one another. I think it was because of this that I woke up irremediably and at once when Irene began to talk in her sleep.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Except for the consequences, it\u2019s nearly a matter of repeating the same scene over again. I was thirsty that night, and before we went to sleep, I told Irene that I was going to the kitchen for a glass of water. From the door of the bedroom (she was knitting) I heard the noise in the kitchen; if not the kitchen, then the bath, the passage off at that angle dulled the sound. Irene noticed how brusquely I had paused, and came up beside me without a word. We stood listening to the noises, growing more and more sure that they were on our side of the oak door, if not the kitchen then the bath, or in the hall itself at the turn, almost next to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We didn\u2019t wait to look at one another. I took Irene\u2019s arm and forced her to run with me to the wrought-iron door, not waiting to look back. You could hear the noises, still muffled but louder, just behind us. I slammed the grating and we stopped in the vestibule. Now there was nothing to be heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019ve taken over our section,\u201d Irene said. The knitting had reeled off from her hands and the yarn ran back toward the door and disappeared under it. When she saw that the balls of yarn were on the other side, she dropped the knitting without looking at it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid you have time to bring anything?\u201d I asked hopelessly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNo, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We had what we had on. I remembered fifteen thousand pesos in the wardrobe in my bedroom. Too late now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still had my wrist watch on and saw that it was 11 P.M. I took Irene around the waist (I think she was crying) and that was how we went into the street. Before we left, I felt terrible; I locked the front door up tight and tossed the key down the sewer. It wouldn\u2019t do to have some poor devil decide to go in and rob the house, at that hour and with the house taken over.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE END<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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