ANCHOR TEXT  |  SHORT STORY

House
Taken
Over
Julio Cortázar

BACKGROUND
In 1946, when this story was written, Julio Cortázar lived in Buenos Aires,
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SCAN FOR
MULTIMEDIA
Argentina. World War II had only recently ended, and Argentina was in a
state of political turmoil. Young people, including Cortázar, were critical
of a conservative element in the government that had refused to join
the Allied cause against Adolf Hitler until late in the war, by which time
communication with Europe had all but stopped. The young author left
Buenos Aires five years after writing this story, in protest against the policies
of Juan Peron, who was increasingly dominating Argentinian politics.

W e 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-
NOTES

spacious (SPAY shuhs) adj.

grandparents, our paternal grandfather, our parents and the whole of large; roomy

childhood.

House Taken Over  37

 2 Irene and I got used to staying in the house by ourselves, which
NOTES was crazy, eight people could have lived in that place and not have
gotten in each other’s 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 María Esther went and died
on me before we could manage to get engaged. We were easing into
unvoiced (uhn VOYST) adj. our forties with the unvoiced concept that the quiet, simple marriage
not spoken out loud or of sister and brother was the indispensable end to a line established in
expressed
this house by our grandparents. We would die here someday, obscure
obscure (uhb SKYAWR) adj. and distant cousins would inherit the place, have it torn down, sell the
not well-known
bricks and get rich on the building plot; or more justly and better yet,
we would topple it ourselves before it was too late.
CLOSE READ 3 Irene never bothered anyone. Once the morning housework was
ANNOTATE: Mark details finished, she spent the rest of the day on the sofa in her bedroom,
in paragraphs 3 and 4 that knitting. I couldn’t tell you why she knitted so much; I think women
relate to the idea of being knit when they discover that it’s a fat excuse to do nothing at all. But
necessary or unnecessary,
Irene was not like that, she always knitted necessities, sweaters for
useful or useless.
winter, socks for me, handy morning robes and bedjackets for herself.
QUESTION: Why might Sometimes she would do a jacket, then unravel it the next moment
concepts of necessity and because there was something that didn’t please her; it was pleasant
uselessness be important?
to see a pile of tangled wool in her knitting basket fighting a losing
CONCLUDE: What do these battle for a few hours to retain its shape. Saturdays I went downtown
details show about the to buy wool; Irene had faith in my good taste, was pleased with the
characters and their lives? colors and never a skein1 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.
4 But it’s the house I want to talk about, the house and Irene, I’m not
very important. I wonder what Irene would have done without her
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knitting. One can reread a book, but once a pullover is finished you
can’t do it over again, it’s 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—it was like a shop; I didn’t have the nerve to ask her what
she planned to do with them. We didn’t have to earn our living, there
was plenty coming in from the farms each month, even piling up. But

1. skein (skayn)  n. quantity of thread or yarn wound in a coil.

38  UNIT 1 • INSIDE THE NIGHTMARE

 Irene was only interested in the knitting and showed a wonderful
dexterity, and for me the hours slipped away watching her, her hands NOTES

like silver sea urchins, needles flashing, and one or two knitting
baskets on the floor, the balls of yarn jumping about. It was lovely.

5 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 Rodríguez recessed (rih SEHST) adj.
Peña.2 Only a corridor with its massive oak door separated that remote; set back
part from the front wing, where there was a bath, the kitchen, our
bedrooms and the hall. One entered the house through a vestibule vestibule (VEHS tuh byool) n.
with enameled tiles, and a wrought-iron grated door opened onto entrance room
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 Aires3 is a clean city, but she owes it to
her population and nothing else. There’s too much dust in the air, the
slightest breeze and it’s back on the marble console tops and in the
diamond patterns of the tooled-leather desk set. It’s a lot of work to
get it off with a feather duster; the motes4 rise and hang in the air, and
settle again a minute later on the pianos and the furniture.

6 I’ll 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 mate.5
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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 muffled (MUH fuhld) adj.
buzzing of a conversation. At the same time or a second later, I heard difficult to hear because
something is covering and
it at the end of the passage which led from those two rooms toward softening the sound
the door. I hurled myself against the door before it was too late and

2. Rodríguez Peña  fashionable street in Buenos Aires.

3. Buenos Aires  capital of Argentina.
4. motes  n. specks of dust or other tiny particles.
5. mate  (MAH tay) n. beverage made from the dried leaves of a South American
evergreen tree.

House Taken Over  39

 shut it, leaned on it with the weight of my body; luckily, the key was
NOTES on our side; moreover, I ran the great bolt into place, just to be safe.
7 I went down to the kitchen, heated the kettle, and when I got back
CLOSE READ with the tray of mate, I told Irene:
ANNOTATE: In paragraphs 8 ”I had to shut the door to the passage. They’ve taken over the back
8–13, mark the short part.”
sentences. 9 She let her knitting fall and looked at me with her tired, serious
QUESTION: Why does the eyes.
author use so many shorter 10 “You’re sure?”
sentences? 11 I nodded.
12 “In that case,” she said, picking up her needles again, “we’ll have
CONCLUDE: How do these
short sentences add to the to live on this side.”
portrayal of the characters’ 13 I sipped at the mate very carefully, but she took her time starting
reactions? her work again. I remember it was a gray vest she was knitting. I
liked that vest.

14 The first few days were painful, since we’d 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 Hesperidin.6 It happened repeatedly (but only in
the first few days) that we would close some drawer or cabinet and
look at one another sadly.
15 “It’s not here.”
16 One thing more among the many lost on the other side of the
house.
17 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
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leave our bedrooms in the evening and start to cook. Now we made do
with the table in Irene’s room and platters of cold supper.
18 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 papa’s stamp collection; that killed some
time. We amused ourselves sufficiently, each with his own thing,
almost always getting together in Irene’s bedroom, which was the
more comfortable. Every once in a while, Irene might say:
19 “Look at this pattern I just figured out, doesn’t it look like clover?”
6. Hesperidin  substance that comes from the rind of certain citrus fruits and is used for
various medicinal purposes.

40  UNIT 1 • INSIDE THE NIGHTMARE

 20 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 NOTES

Eupen-et-Malmédy.7 We were fine, and little by little we stopped

thinking. You can live without thinking.

21 (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.
22 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’s 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 irremediably8 and at once when Irene began to talk in her sleep.)
23 Except for the consequences, it’s 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
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turn, almost next to us.

24 We didn’t wait to look at one another. I took Irene’s 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.
25 “They’ve taken over our section,” Irene said. The knitting had
reeled off from her hands and the yarn ran back toward the door and

7. Eupen-et-Malmédy  (yoo PEHN ay mahl may DEE) districts in eastern Belgium.

8. irremediably  (ihr ih MEE dee uh blee) adv. in a way that cannot be helped or corrected.

House Taken Over  41

 disappeared under it. When she saw that the balls of yarn were on
NOTES the other side, she dropped the knitting without looking at it.
26 “Did you have time to bring anything?” I asked hopelessly.
27 “No, nothing.”
28 We had what we had on. I remembered fifteen thousand pesos9 in
the wardrobe in my bedroom. Too late now.
29 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’t do to
have some poor devil decide to go in and rob the house, at that hour
and with the house taken over.  ❧
9. fifteen thousand pesos  large sum of money at the time of the story.

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42  UNIT 1 • INSIDE THE NIGHTMARE