La autopista del sur
Life in the slow lane with the master of apotheosis, Julio Cortázar
Preamble
I was spurred to write this by a typically brilliant piece on
: On The Road - by Eleanor Anstruther.Having lived in Mexico City, Cairo and Shanghai, and having visited Istanbul on a regular basis at one stage in my life, I have been in a lot of epic traffic jams lasting hours.
But none have quite matched up to the one described in Julio Cortázar’s brilliant story, ‘La autopista del sur’ (‘The southern highway’), first published in 1966. If the story seems vaguely to familiar to you, that may be because Godard was apparently inspired by it to make ‘Week End’, though it’s not in the credits.
Cortázar is one of my favourite writers and one of the joys of learning Spanish was to be able to read him in his own language. Among his many qualities is his ability to make the truly bizarre seem normal and even mundane. And he is also the master of the apotheosis, developing a situation to its most extreme possibilities.
Here, in the spirit of experiment, I am going to present 14 bilingual fragments1 of the story (Spanish first), followed by a brief comment on the text and then by a personal experience or reflection - in italics, after the short, dotted divider - that this provokes.
I’ll leave it to you to work out how you want to read it.
La autopista del sur
Al principio la muchacha del Dauphine había insistido en llevar la cuenta del tiempo, aunque al ingeniero del Peugeot 404 le daba ya lo mismo. Cualquiera podía mirar su reloj pero era como si ese tiempo atado a la muñeca derecha o el bip bip de la radio midieran otra cosa, fuera el tiempo de los que no han hecho la estupidez de querer regresar a París por la autopista del sur un domingo de tarde
At first, the girl in the Dauphine had insisted on keeping track of the time, although the engineer of the Peugeot 404 didn't care anymore. Anyone could look at their watch, but it was as if the time that was tied to one’s right wrist or the beeping of the radio measured something else altogether; it was the time of those who hadn't committed the stupidity of wanting to return to Paris via the Southern Highway on a Sunday afternoon.
The opening lines set the scene perfectly. The situation is a familiar one - heavy traffic returning to a large city at the end of a weekend. But the bifurcation of time introduced casually here (casually introducing the extraordinary is a Cortázar trait) is telling, as the world of the traffic jam begins to take on its own reality. A key part of the way he creates this reality is by making the characters known by the car they are driving.
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When travelling long distances, especially by plane or train, I’ve noticed that the journey takes on the role of an alternative world. It becomes one’s only reality for the duration of the journey, an often welcome break from what you are leaving or what you are approaching. It’s like being given another brief life to play around with.
Sometimes you don’t want the journey to begin. Sometimes, you don’t want it to end.
Todo era olor a gasolina, gritos destemplados de los jovencitos del Simca, brillo del sol rebotando en los cristales y en los bordes cromados
Y con eso el gobierno, el calor, los impuestos, la vialidad, un tópico tras otro, tres metros, otro lugar común, cinco metros, una frase sentenciosa o una maldición contenida.
A las dos monjitas del 2HP les hubiera convenido tanto llegar a Milly-la-Fôret antes de las ocho, pues llevaban una cesta de hortalizas para la cocinera
It was all gasoline fumes, intemperate shouting from the young men in the Simca, the sun's glare bouncing off the windows and chrome edges.
And then there was the government, the heat, taxes, traffic, one cliché after another, three metres, another well-worn phrase, five metres, more pontification, or a stifled curse.
The two nuns in the 2CV just wanted to arrive in Milly-la-Fôret before eight, as they were carrying a basket of vegetables for the cook.
Cortázar beautifully imitates the stop-go nature of the traffic here: ‘el gobierno, el calor, los impuestos, la vialidad’; by design, there's no flow at all. We are now beginning to learn about this fleeting community of drivers as the characters begin to interact as they leave their vehicles during the longer pauses. But they are still just in a traffic jam, expecting to get back to Paris later that summer evening.
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I’ll admit here I am not very interested in cars - I don't think I even like them much any more. But as young boys we used to note down the makes of cars on long road trips, rather as Cortázar does. And the mention of the Simca here always takes me back to the shiny silver Simca that my eldest brother used to own when in his late teens/early twenties. It looked so cool, compared to the dowdy country vehicles I saw on the roads back then.
My brother sadly passed away, horribly young, 16 years ago. I don’t remember anything he drove after that time, but the memory of that exotic-looking vehicle remains a link, a way to access my memories of him.
A veces llegaba un extranjero, alguien que se deslizaba entre los autos viniendo desde el otro lado de la pista o desde la filas exteriores de la derecha, y que traía alguna noticia probablemente falsa repetida de auto en auto a lo largo de calientes kilómetros.
Sometimes a foreigner would arrive, someone who slid between the cars coming from the other side of the road or from the outer rows on the right, and who brought some probably false news repeated from car to car across the hot kilometres.
Cortázar (who lived in self-imposed exile for many years) carefully uses the word ‘foreigner’ here (he had access to other expressions in Spanish to express ‘outsiders’, but chose this). He has, already, not only created something that is slipping towards a parallel universe (official, reliable news from the radio is virtually non-existent), but a community has formed and is beginning to identify itself as such by clear delineation of who belongs to it and who doesn't. Ingroups and outgroups. Compatriots and foreigners. Citizens and migrants.
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On board for days at a stretch on the Trans-Siberian Express, heading from Beijing to Moscow at the end of my time in China, I recall the small communities that sprang up in the carriages. Other passengers passing through were viewed as outsiders.
Perhaps some degree of suspicion was justified, however, as we then found out that some of them were smugglers. One of them even asked, very politely, if we could store some ‘luggage’ for him. Needless to say, the community sent him on his way.
Mercedes Benz, ID, 4R, Lancia, Skoda, Morris Minor, el catálogo completo. A la izquierda, sobre la pista opuesta, se tendía otra maleza inalcanzable de Renault, Anglia, Peugeot, Porsche, Volvo.
Mercedes Benz, ID, 4R, Lancia, Skoda, Morris Minor, the complete catalogue. To the left, on the other side of the road, there was another unreachable thicket of Renault, Anglia, Peugeot, Porsche, Volvo.
Here, Cortázar is constructing his new world, with great economy, out of cars - a striking, almost bizarre but highly effective use of metonymy.
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I have never owned a fancy brand of car. Just a motley assortment of vehicles in a number of countries. No brand loyalty from me (unlike my paternal grandfather, who traded in his Volvo for a new one every year). I wasn’t even loyal to a country; I’ve had French, American, British, Japanese and German cars. But for over 10 years, I haven’t owned one at all.
En algún momento (suavemente empezaba a anochecer, el horizonte de techos de automóviles se teñía de lila) una gran mariposa blanca se posó en el parabrisas del Dauphine, y la muchacha y el ingeniero admiraron sus alas en la breve y perfecta suspensión de su reposo; la vieron alejarse con una exasperada nostalgia, sobrevolar el Taunus, el ID violeta de los ancianos, ir hacia el Fiat 600 ya invisible desde el 404, regresar hacia el Simca donde una mano cazadora trató inútilmente de atraparla, aletear amablemente sobre el Ariane de los campesinos que parecían estar comiendo alguna cosa, y perderse después hacia la derecha.
At some point (it was gently beginning to get dark, the horizon of car roofs was tinted lilac), a large white butterfly landed on the windshield of the Dauphine, and the girl and the engineer admired its wings during the brief and perfect suspension of its rest; they watched it fly away with exasperated nostalgia, fly over the Taunus, the violet ID of the elders, head towards the Fiat 600 already invisible from the 404, return to the Simca where a predatory hand tried in vain to catch it, flutter kindly over the Ariane of the peasants who seemed to be eating something, and then disappear to the right.
Time is passing and the situation has become more serious. But this passage is full of joy - the sudden irruption of the natural world, with its radical freedom; a sense of beauty in an ugly world. Of love, even? And the sentence floats (not uncharacteristically for him) rather like the flight of the butterfly he so beautifully describes. And just at the end of the sentence, Cortázar mentions food, prefiguring the next stage, the foraging stage.
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I lived in Mexico City for a number of years, so sat in traffic jams that seemed to last for afternoons at a time. The “periférico” there was sometimes described as the world’s largest car park. At certain times of year, the annual migration of the monarch butterflies will have come perilously close to the periférico while I sat in it with hundreds of thousands of other drivers. But I never saw them there. Some locals think of the butterflies, who arrive around the time of the Day of the Dead celebrations, as the souls of their ancestors returning. It would have been eerie to see them discovering their pre-deceased kin sitting in the great mausoleum of the periférico at rest.
El ingeniero no encontró a nadie que pudiera ofrecer agua, pero el viaje le sirvió para advertir que más allá de su grupo se estaban constituyendo otras células con problemas semejantes; en un momento dado el ocupante de un Alfa Romeo se negó a hablar con él del asunto, y le dijo que se dirigiera al representante de su grupo, cinco autos atrás en la misma fila.
The engineer couldn't find anyone who could offer water, but the trip helped him notice that beyond his group, other cells with similar problems were forming; at one point, the occupant of an Alfa Romeo refused to discuss the matter with him, and told him to speak to the representative of his group, five cars back in the same line.
The engineer had ventured further afield in search of water as the drivers’ own supplies began to run out. He finds no water and a world already divided into walled communities of mistrust. The focus is on the here and now. Even the progress of the traffic (which is minimal) becomes almost an afterthought compared to the interactions between the people and their efforts to survive.
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When travelling on the Trans-Siberian Express, I had miscalculated how much money to take in cash (no other form of payment being possible, for some reason; this was entirely predictable and I had entirely failed to predict it). So we began to ration food among us. But at least we knew the timetable. If the train didn’t break down in the middle of Siberia, we thought we’d be ok.
How often have I said those words: “I thought we’d be ok”.
A nadie se le hubiera ocurrido asombrarse por la forma en que se obtenían las provisiones y el agua. Lo único que podía hacer Taunus era administrar los fondos comunes y tratar de sacar el mejor partido posible de algunos trueques. El Ford Mercury y un Porsche venían cada noche a traficar con las vituallas... y salvo las transacciones oficiales con Ford Mercury y con Porsche no había relación posible con los otros grupos.
It would have occurred to nobody to be surprised by the way provisions and water were obtained. The only thing Taunus could do was manage the common funds and try to get the best possible deal from some trades. The Ford Mercury and a Porsche came every night to traffic with the provisions... and except for the official transactions with Ford Mercury and Porsche, there was no possible relationship with the other groups.
I enjoy the way that here what is actually a dangerous black market is casually referred to as “official transactions”… It’s a new economy, with its own new rules. The drivers develop new knowledge in this strange new world (for instance, they develop a sixth sense for when the traffic has stopped moving for the night). New reality, new skills.
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Decades ago, I found myself lost in the countryside in France after dark, making my way on a borrowed bicycle from the station to my “gîte”, a kind of 20th century Airbnb miles from the nearest town. I had no torch (being ever so well prepared) and, of course, no mobile phone. The only light on the bike was powered by a dynamo, which meant that when I stopped, I couldn’t study the signposts - which here on wooden posts in small letters - that could lead me to my destination. The technique I adopted to get round this was to cycle furiously at any signpost I could see and get close enough to read it in the pitch-black night, before violently braking to prevent myself from running through it.
Somehow, it never occurred to me that I should have simply upended the bike and operated the pedals (and thus the dynamo) by hand.
Sadly, in my case a new reality meant no new skills.
De la brusca desaparición del Ford Mercury se habló mucho tiempo sin que nadie supiera lo que había podido ocurrirle, pero Porsche siguió viniendo y controlando el mercado negro. Nunca faltaban del todo el agua o las conservas, aunque los fondos del grupo disminuían y Taunus y el ingeniero se preguntaban qué ocurriría el día en que no hubiera más dinero para Porsche.
The sudden disappearance of Ford Mercury was talked about for a long time without anyone knowing what could have happened to him, but Porsche continued to come and control the black market. Water and canned goods were never completely lacking, although the group's funds were diminishing, and Taunus and the engineer wondered what would happen the day there was no more money for Porsche.
Here we see the driver of the Ford Mercury disappear, presumably for some reason connected to the black market he was involved in. Violence is often under the surface in Cortázar. Again, it is handled casually and also seems a function of the system; capitalism in a brutal but temporarily effective form. But tension is created: there is a palpable fear of the day “there would be no money”.
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While running out of funds on the Trans-Siberian, I began to consider the possibility of bartering for more food with other passengers. But what did I have? A few used books, an old sweater. I was not in a strong position. I wondered, if things became desperate, would I be able to strike some deals? Even bring myself to steal? Or would I just fade away quietly and nobly in a corner of the carriage?
I was brought up on a farm. My father used to go to markets and auctions all the time and do deals, buy cattle, sheep, land even. Me, literature graduate and office worker - did I have the skills for this?
Why do I even ask?
Al ingeniero, que había acabado por ceder a una indiferencia casi agradable, lo sobresaltó por un momento el tímido anuncio de la muchacha del Dauphine, pero después comprendió que no se podía hacer nada para evitarlo y la idea de tener un hijo de ella acabó por parecerle tan natural como el reparto nocturno de las provisiones o los viajes furtivos hasta el borde de la autopista. Tampoco la muerte de la anciana del ID podía sorprender a nadie.
The engineer, who had ended up succumbing to an almost agreeable indifference, was startled for a moment by the timid announcement of the girl from the Dauphine, but then he understood that nothing could be done to prevent it and the idea of having a child with her ended up seeming as natural to him as the nightly distribution of provisions or the furtive trips to the edge of the highway. The death of the old woman from the ID could not surprise anyone either.
Love, new life and death all help to round out the picture of a new world that has taken on all the attributes of what we call, in our funny way, normal life. The “timid announcement” of the girl from the Dauphine comes as a surprise because her relationship with the engineer is only gently suggested also because it gives the sense that weeks if not months have passed. It’s uncertain at this stage how much time, exactly.
I admire how that first sentence (just 67 words in the Spanish) takes us through so much experience as well as the dancing thought process of the engineer. It’s a kind of summary of the whole story.
Summaries can be blunt and dry. But this one is diaphanous. It’s a summer cloud.
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Long journeys, usually one-way long-haul flights, have at times transported me into a new life; upon arrival, it seems that time is paused for a while and then reset, leaving me first suspended from the usual flow of events, and then one day abandoning me to a flux that I can barely comprehend, as if the world’s fast forward button had suddenly been hit.
Todo sucedía en cualquier momento, sin horarios previsibles; lo más importante empezó cuando ya nadie lo esperaba, y al menos responsable le tocó darse cuenta el primero. Trepado en el techo del Simca, el alegre vigía tuvo la impresión de que el horizonte había cambiado (era el atardecer, un sol amarillento deslizaba su luz rasante y mezquina) y que algo inconcebible estaba ocurriendo a quinientos metros, a trescientos, a doscientos cincuenta.
Everything would happen at any moment, with no reliable pattern; the most important thing began when no one expected it anymore, and the least responsible person just had to be the one to realise it first. Perched on the roof of the Simca, the cheerful lookout had the impression that the horizon had changed (it was dusk, a yellowish sun was sliding its frugal and grazing light) and that something inconceivable was happening five hundred metres away, three hundred, two hundred and fifty.
The beginning of the end comes suddenly and takes everyone by surprise. This is almost as if the end of a long sea voyage is at hand, with land having been spotted on the horizon.
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I remember the first time I drove past Stonehenge, along the A303. There was a huge line of traffic winding itself through the Wiltshire countryside. It seemed to have been stopped for hours and we had settled in for the afternoon when suddenly the road unblocked and we began to move forward quickly, hurriedly putting away provisions, closing flasks and peering out the window for a good look at the famous archaeological site. The traffic continued steadily and we craned our necks and… before we knew it, we were past it and queuing at a roundabout. A roundabout. Somehow, the wait had been more of an event than seeing Stonehenge...Or maybe Stonehenge was really just a roundabout with a carefully tended parterre?
Pensó que iban a llegar a París y que se bañarían, que irían juntos a cualquier lado, a su casa o a la de ella a bañarse, a comer, a bañarse interminablemente y a comer y beber, y que después habría muebles, habría un dormitorio con muebles y un cuarto de baño con espuma de jabón para afeitarse de verdad, y retretes, comida y retretes y sábanas, París era un retrete y dos sábanas y el agua caliente por el pecho y las piernas, y una tijera de uñas, y vino blanco, beberían vino blanco antes de besarse y sentirse oler a lavanda y a colonia, antes de conocerse de verdad a plena luz, entre sábanas limpias.
He thought how would get to Paris and they would bathe, that they would go anywhere together, to his house or hers to bathe, to eat, to bathe endlessly and to eat and drink, and then there would be furniture, there would be a bedroom with furniture and a bathroom with shaving foam for a real shave, and toilets, food and toilets and sheets, Paris was a toilet and two sheets and hot water up to one’s chest and legs, and a nail clipper, and white wine, they would drink white wine before kissing and feeling the smell of lavender and cologne, before truly getting to know each other in broad daylight, between clean sheets.
I love the way Cortázar conjures a fleeting future vision, an alternative life compared to whatever the characters’ original sense of Paris had been. It is constructed of the comforts that the drivers had most lacked; now that the wait seems almost over, what they had endured with patience now struck them an urgent need. The rhythm of the prose begins to gain pace in a way which perfectly matches the way the traffic is beginning to move towards its destination.
Or perhaps I should just say this passage is a love poem.
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Sometimes a destination will drag us to it, perhaps because we crave comfort that the journey denies us, perhaps because we are fleeing from a previous life and we need to feel a new life drawing us towards it.
A su izquierda se le apareaba un ID que empezaba a sacarle ventaja metro a metro, pero antes de que fuera sustituido por un 403, el 404 alcanzó a distinguir todavía en la delantera el 203 que ocultaba ya a Dauphine. El grupo se dislocaba, ya no existía.
To his left, an ID was drawing level with him, starting to gain an advantage metre by metre, but before it was replaced by a 403, the 404 managed to still distinguish in the lead the 203 that was already hiding the Dauphine. The group was dislocating, it no longer existed.
I think Cortázar is parodying marketing/bureaucratic prose here with the 403, 404 and the 203. But the bare numbers also help to increase the sense of isolation. The driver of the 404 is just the driver of the 404. The community has disbanded. He is surrounded by cars, by numbers, but is alone.
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I have had the experience of working intensely with a team of people in a particular city or country over the years, knowing that within 3 or 4 years, goodbyes would be said and I would leave that team forever. You spend years working intensively alongside people, sharing so much with them. Then, suddenly, it is all over and you are on a plane heading for the other side of the world.
I never got used to that.
13.
A la izquierda del 404 corría un Taunus, y por un segundo al 404 le pareció que el grupo se recomponía, que todo entraba en el orden, que se podría seguir adelante sin destruir nada.Pero era un Taunus verde.
Absurdamente se aferró a la idea de que a las nueve y media se distribuirían los alimentos, habría que visitar a los enfermos, examinar la situación con Taunus y el campesino del Ariane; después sería la noche, sería Dauphine subiendo sigilosamente a su auto, las estrellas o las nubes, la vida. Sí, tenía que ser así, no era posible que eso hubiera terminado para siempre.
To the left of the 404, there was a speeding Taunus, and for a second it seemed to the 404 that the group was reassembling, that everything was falling into order, that they could continue without destroying anything. But it was a green Taunus.
Absurdly, he clung to the idea that at nine-thirty the food would be distributed, they would have to visit the sick, examine the situation with Taunus and the peasant from Ariane; then it would be night, Dauphine would stealthily climb into his car, there’d be the stars or the clouds, life. Yes, it had to be like that, it was not possible that this had ended forever.
In his grief at the loss of the community he had, the sense of purpose and fulfilment he had felt, the driver of the 404 is in a kind of mourning. He needs the group to get back together. He is in denial about its absolute dissolution.
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Having lost both my parents in the last 3 years, I have recently been through grief. I recognise the sense of longing and of disbelief here.
Last year, staying in the house where my mother had died, I sometimes found myself believing that I all I needed to do was to open the door of her room and I would see her there.
It was not possible that she had ended forever.
14
Y en la antena de la radio flotaba locamente la bandera con la cruz roja, y se corría a ochenta kilómetros por hora hacia las luces que crecían poco a poco, sin que ya se supiera bien por qué tanto apuro, por qué esa carrera en la noche entre autos desconocidos donde nadie sabía nada de los otros, donde todo el mundo miraba fijamente hacia adelante, exclusivamente hacia adelante.
And on the radio antenna, the flag with the red cross fluttered wildly, and they were driving at eighty kilometres per hour towards the lights that were slowly growing, without really knowing why they were in such a hurry, why this race in the night among unknown cars where no one knew anything about the others, where everyone was staring straight ahead, just straight ahead.
With the end of the community, the drivers are in motion but are atomised, scattered, individual, unreflecting, alone, without hope. It's as if they have woken from a dream and are back in their own lives, with the memories of their dream already fading fast. The repetition of ‘straight ahead’ (‘hacia adelante’) suggests lives that are driven, that move at pace, but are essentially without agency, caught up by powers and processes they barely understand. To quote from Thom Gunn’s famous poem, ‘On the Move’, they are, “at best... always nearer by not keeping still”.
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I have had a lifetime of one-way tickets by plane, by train, even by boat. Gran Canaria, Quito, Shanghai, Mexico City, Türkiye, Hong Kong, Cairo and others. Beginnings, followed by endings. Belongings left behind, not belonging. A career, not a destination. Always on the move. Always staring straight ahead, just straight ahead. Not keeping still. Always straight ahead.
The translations are mine. They are fairly rough and ready, certainly not the finished product. But they should give you a good idea of what is happening in this text
Thank you. Yes, it was fun to go back to translation, which I hadn't done in a while. I hope you enjoy reading Cortázar. One of the masters of short fiction, for me.
Thank you, Nicola. You're very kind. With wonderful readers like you here, I'll stick around for a while 🙂.