We all know Thing T. Thing, commonly referred to as just Thing, from The Addams Family. It's a mysterious and most helpful severed hand and a valued member of the family.
This week I've been reading a collection of Julio Cortazar short stories. (I don't think there is an English edition, at least I couldn't find one online, but the one I'm reading in Spanish is this: Cuentos Completos /1.)
This morning I stumbled upon a story called "Estación de la mano", or "Season of the Hand". The story is about a man who every night is visited in his room by a hand. The man is looking forward to these visits and every night he leaves the window open in anticipation of his disembodied friend. He names the hand, gives it (not sure which pronoun to use here, the text uses the Spanish "her" since the word for hand in Spanish is female - la mano) jewelery and buys books for it (the hand enjoys reading and does so using the index finger).
Every evening, the hand would return, often wet from the autumn rain, and I would observe her, stretched out on her back on the rug, meticulously drying one finger with another, sometimes taking small hops of satisfaction. During the winter sunsets, her shadow was tinged in violet. Then, I would out a heater at my feet, and she would curl up, barely moving, she would disdainfully get up just to receive an album of engravings or a ball of yarn that she liked to knot and twist. She was unable, I soon discovered, to remain still for a long time. One day, she found a tray with clay and rushed to this novelty. She modeled the clay for hours and hours, while I, with my back towards her, pretended to not pay attention to her work. Of course, she modeled a hand. I let it dry and put it on my desk to prove that her work had pleased me. It was a mistake: Dg was upset by the contemplation of this rigid and somewhat frantic self-portrait. When I hid it, she modestly pretended to not notice.
The story made me, of course, think of The Thing. A disembodied, sentient body part which (or who? it is sentient after all) walks on its fingers and is most helpful and smart.
I instantly wondered if The Thing was inspired by this story. After all, the story was written in 1943, while The Thing didn't appear in a book until 1954. According to Wikipedia though, Charles Addams, the creator of The Addams Family, was inspired by Phil Harris's 1950 song "The Thing" (a song about a man that finds a box with "something" inside and cannot get rid of it because everyone that looks at the contents of the box is terrified, including Saint Peter at the gates of Paradise when the man dies).
I kept looking but so far my Internet hunt has not yield any results about potential associations between Cortazar's story and Addams' inspiration. I do like my idea though (if you have watched The Thing and you read the story you will understand why) so I'm gonna keep on believing it.
You can find the story in Spanish here: Julio Cortázar - Estación de la mano.
I couldn't find online the complete story translated in English, but there is an excerpt here: Most Challenging Translation. If I piqued your interest you can find the translated story in the collection Around the Day in Eighty Worlds (what a title, I love Cortazar).
PS: During my Internet search I discovered that apparently Cortazar had a fascination with hands and he was dreaming of "hands... capable of independent life".