Reading Notes on "Bestiario" ("Bestiary")
this isn't exactly reading notes, but rather Chapter 92 of my book ms. Living Invention, or, The Way of Julio Cortazar. But it does offer my reading of "Bestiary"
92. Inventing Survival in "Bestiary"
Isabel's Aunt Rema's house is ordinary in almost every detail. Her cousin Nino is alternately sweet and rude, her Uncle Luis, kind, but bookish, quiet, and somewhat distracted, and her Aunt Rema loving. There's only two elements in the house that disrupt this otherwise unremarkable home: the harsh temper of an adult called "the Kid" [Nene, in Spanish], and the tiger that roams free throughout the house and grounds. When Isabel arrives, it seems the family has developed more or less tacit ways of accommodating both of these elements. They check for the tiger before they go into a given room, informing other family members as to its whereabouts, and they carefully avoid irritating Nene.
The tiger just shares the house with the family. The system by which the family and staff avoid crossing its path is one based on trust and honesty. Any violation of this code could be lethal. Isabel settles comfortably into this peaceful rhythm of vigilance and communication. But the Kid is another story. Sensitive as outsiders often can be of the habits into which we've settled without really ever choosing them, Isabel can see that there's some kind of special tension between Luis, the Kid, and Rema. Perhaps something has happened between them that makes Luis quiet and Rema seem sad. Whatever might be the source of that tension, we see that the Kid, with almost every word and deed, rides roughshod over the ethics that keep the family alive. He never goes so far as to lie regarding the whereabouts of the tiger, but he is petulant, self-absorbed, bullying, and mocking. In this sense he undermines the basic trust on which survival depends in the Funés household. The family, however, seems locked into the groove of numbly appeasing his tantrums.
Not so Isabel. She's a child, and an outsider, and so we might suspect, if we've read enough Julio, that she's going to invent something [ Ù 4, 8, 78]. In fact, she invents the family's freedom by rearranging the existing relations among the elements in the household. In so doing, she also materializes one of the central truths of Julio's universe: what goes around comes around. She lies to the Kid: the tiger was in the Kid's study after all, and not in the library as she had told him. When the Kid stalks off, sullen that he has to go and read in his study instead of the library, he is in reality stalking angrily, and unwittingly, off to his horrible death. The tiger is an element in the household, a force that Isabel does not control. But she has made use of the tiger. She has exploited its own propensities to her advantage [ Ù 44, 76]. She also has made use the Kid's arrogance, exploiting his assumption that the code of trust he consistently violates will nonetheless operate on his behalf. It is true that she too violates the code by lying to the Kid, but the Kid had already, as she observed, put himself outside the scope of that code. Moreover the code, though it may have functioned to protect the family from the tiger, didn't protect them from the Kid anyway. It wasn't working and Isabel, true to her function as inventor, moves the family to a new condition.
Julio Cortázar, "Bestiario," Blow-Up and Other Stories , Trans. Paul Blackburn (New York: Collier, 1968), p. 67-84. In Spanish: "Bestiario," Bestiario [1951] Cuentos Completos/1 (Madrid: Alfaguara, 1994), pp. 165-176.
Sarah E. King offers a different reading in "Julio Cortázar: The Fantastic Child," Critical Essays on Julio Cortázar , Ed. Jaime Alazraki (New York: G. K. Hall, 1999), pp. 115-132.
