The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira

by Cesar Aira

  As opposed to other objects, texts withstand time only when they are associated with an author whose actions in life — of which their texts are the only tangible testimony — excite the curiosity of posterity. Such posthumous curiosity is created by a biography full of small, strange, inexplicable maneuvers, colored in with a flash of inventiveness that is always in action, always in a state of “happening.”

  In any case, one day, out of the blue, while he was watching television, it occurred to him how delightful it would be to fabricate some garments, though more than garments they would be wire frames that would hold colorful fabrics — as well as wreaths, horns, halos, and bells — that he could wear at home to relax in or to energize himself or for any other purpose that might occur to him; the purpose didn’t matter because the goal of this one-man theatrical wardrobe was to provide an interesting anecdote . . . The purpose would formulate itself, and it would fit perfectly into his aesthetic-theoretical-autobiographical system and contribute to the creation of his personal mythology. It didn’t matter what an enormous blunder this would be (even if in the privacy of his own family); at a certain point, he was willing to sacrifice himself for his work. Moreover, by taking this route he would reach a stage where the blunder, the fear of making a fool of himself, all of it, would be neutralized by being absorbed into the normalized and accepted figure of the Eccentric.

  The fact that these garments, according to his idea of them, were a kind of architectural construction made of wire and fabric he would have to get into, meant he had to think up a way to equip them with a system of pleats that would allow him to sit down or walk around or even sit in the lotus position or dance. As a result, the drawings became more and more complex. Moreover, as they would be very large and bulky, and the apartment he lived in with his family was already crowded, he would have to plan for a second system of pleats that would allow him to store them in small stackable boxes, or ideally, in a folder.

  The sketches he’d already made of these garments provided him with “ready-made” material he could use to illustrate the first installments; after that, he’d see. In any case, it wasn’t worth worrying about at this stage. First he had to focus on the texts, and the illustrations would naturally ensue from them. For now, it was enough to know that he would make them, and this knowledge was enough to fill his expectations with vague figures.

  As far as the text went, all he had to do was cull from his thousands of manuscript pages and begin to create the great collage. He could start anywhere; no introduction was necessary because the subject was already well defined in the collective imagination. Indeed, the charm of this material was like that of versions of a well-known story. Let’s take one from the Bible, Dr. Aira said to himself, the one about Samson . . . A funny story could have baldness as its central theme, which becomes a matter of state to the Philistines, and it would be funny because somehow or other everybody knows that Samson’s strength resided in his hair. The same thing was happening here: life, death, illness — there’s nobody who doesn’t know what they’re all about, which would allow him to create small, delightful variations that would seem like inventions even if they weren’t (thereby sparing the author the exorbitant effort of inventing a new story).

  Writing was something he couldn’t do in a single block, all at once. He had to keep doing it, if at all possible, every day in order to establish a rhythm . . . The rhythm of publication, so checkered due to the imponderables of the material aspects, could be regularized through the installment format, which also took care of the quantity of the product and its basic tone, that of “disclosure.” These symbolic rhythms materialized when they were used as a framework for the rhythm at which things actually occurred. For in the meantime, life, both public and private, was continuing, and this andante cantabile system prevented real life from transpiring as a marginal event; through this rhythm it recovered not only the general flow but also each and every anecdotal detail, even the most heterogeneous ones. In this way he could be sure he wouldn’t miss anything, nor would he fail to fully utilize anything. An episode like the one with the ambulance, which had left him very perturbed (so much so that it had been one of the triggers, along with his financial good fortune, for deciding to move into action), ceased to be merely one more “example” of Dr. Actyn’s persecution of him, and became a particularity of the Universe of facts where there were no hierarchies or generalizations.

  Given these characteristics of Dr. Aira’s method, the publication would have to be encyclopedic. And although the word “Encyclopedic” should never be written down, the open-ended and infinite totality of installments was nothing but a general and complete Encyclopedia. Therein lay the secret of the Cures, the secret he was aiming for, and therein lay the key to his entire enterprise: to give it maximum visibility.

  Seen from this angle — as the penning of an Encyclopedia of all things from all times — the work revealed itself as the ascetic practice of a Superman . . . There was so much to do! His life would have to last a thousand years . . . One of the ideas he had discarded in the course of his fanciful planning was to adapt the format of false publicity brochures selling prepaid access to healers. A lifelong monthly fee would allow members to benefit from a Miracle Cure whenever they might need one. Like all the other projects he was enthusiastic about briefly then dropped as soon as cold reason snuffed out the flames of his fantasy, this one had not passed without leaving its mark. Everything fit into the text, which was made of marks, and not only human marks.

  Basically, the discipline of writing consisted of limiting oneself to writing, to that work, with all its parsimony, its periodicity, its use of time. It was the only way to quell the anxiety that could otherwise overwhelm him, anxiety due to the immeasurable and self-propagating nature of the things that filled the world and continued to emerge each and every step of the way. There was a contrast, which could be defined as “curative,” between the constant periodicity of writing, which was always a partial process, and the totality of the present and of eternity.

  For many years it had been Dr. Aira’s habit to write in cafés, of which, fortunately, there were many in the Flores neighborhood. This unfortunate habit had combined with several practical imperatives until, during this period, he couldn’t write a single line unless he was sitting at a table at one of those hospitable establishments. The viciousness with which Dr. Actyn carried out his campaign against him put to the test his will to continue to frequent them, for they were public places, accessible to him as well as to his enemies. But he had no choice if he wanted to keep writing. A dark cloud of paranoia began to accompany him during each one of his outings. At moments he felt observed, and with good reason. There were no direct assaults, nor did he expect them. But indirect ones could take many forms, and during these writing sessions on the Camino Real or on Miraflores or San José streets, anything could happen, or could be happening without him noticing, while one of his frequent raptures of inspiration was isolating him from his surroundings. He was certain that Actyn could recruit any type of human, any formulation of the human, for his operations of vigilance and provocation; hence it was not a question of recognizing his adversary by his looks . . . He could not even say, just by looking, if somebody was observing him, because in a café it is easy to sit in a strategic position, avert the eyes, or stare at a reflection — dissemble in a thousand ways. He had developed at least one sure method for finding out if somebody was observing him: it consisted of yawning while secretly spying on th
e one he suspected; if he yawned in turn, it meant his eyes had been on him, because the contagious property of yawns is infallible. Of course, somebody who just happened to be looking at him at that moment might have yawned; and anyway, proof didn’t do him much good, though at least he knew what to expect, which was enough for him.

  Among the “practical imperatives” that forced him to go elsewhere to write was his wife’s superstitious disdain for his intellectual activities, disdain that had been slowly turning into horror ever since Dr. Actyn had mobilized the mass media in his campaign to destroy his prestige. More and more frequently she made a fuss, complaining that people recognized her, that they stared and pointed; she claimed that soon she would be too ashamed to leave her house . . . She said it didn’t bother him because he could always pick up and leave, as had so many other husbands who had gotten carried away. It didn’t take much, not even an increase in hysteria. All a sweet young thing had to do was walk past him and he’d fall in love . . . In fact, he wanted to love. His poor health no longer seemed like an obstacle. In fact, he wanted to love in sickness; suddenly this seemed to be the only true love.

  Thinking about this, he asked himself a question: Why hadn’t Dr. Actyn, who had tried his hand at so many options, ever considered tempting him with a woman? He had set him so many traps that were so baroque, so elaborate, sometimes quite absurd . . . but never the simplest and most classic. It couldn’t be due to ethical qualms, because he had done much worse things. Was this not, then, the decisive proof of reality? How could he possibly have failed to take that into account? Did he have too much respect for him? Did he consider him above such temptations? If so, how wrong he was! Because Dr. Aira’s thirst for love made this the temptation he was most likely to succumb to. He was perfectly capable of falling into that trap, even if he knew it to be a trap, because he trusted in the power of love. Would it not have been the perfect romance, the valiant adventure that would make manifest all his fantasies in the material world? In fact, he thought that losing that battle would be the same as winning the war. But for some incomprehensible reason, Actyn had abstained from attacking him along that flank. Did he fear that the missile of love would end up piercing him? Or was he saving it for when all else had failed?

  Without love, Dr. Aira was condemned to perpetual installments . . . But he had to think positively and concentrate specifically on the practical aspects. With the arrival of the winter solstice, he felt he had reached the point of no return. He should already be making models of the installments, drawing the diagrams, choosing the typeface, the paper . . . They would be installments, that was settled . . . But in hardcover. He could be reasonable, but not to such an extent; some of his madness must survive. He had considered a thick, very stiff cardboard for the covers that would make a nice contrast with the small number of pages they would contain, though he still hadn’t decided if there would be four or eight, but no more than that.

  Nor had he figured out the costs. He would, needless to say, have to spend the minimum amount possible; in fact, he couldn’t talk about “costs” because there would be nothing to offset them, that is, against which to measure them. The project didn’t include selling the installments; to do that he would have to set up a company, register as a publisher, pay value-added tax, and a thousand other things he would never dream of doing. He would give them away; nobody could stop him from doing that.

  The ideal thing would have been to operate with a dual monetary system, such as the one in Ancient China. There, they had official money for ordinary citizens and another for the poor, who were, of course, the vast majority of the population. The connection between the two, which never played out in reality, consisted of dividing the smallest unit of the official money — let’s say, a cent — into ten thousand units; that multiple was the sapek, the basic unit in the poor people’s system. A fistful of watermelon seeds cost a sapek. All business in the impoverished sectors was conducted with this money; the poor, the peasants, and children used no other, and these humble transactions met their survival needs. There was never any “exchange” because who would ever collect a million sapeks to exchange for one “cent” of the official money, a unit that had, on the other hand and on another level of life, a minute value, not even enough to pay for the cheapest item in a store, or the simplest dish in a restaurant? Whereas with much less money than that — under certain circumstances, a mere hundred sapeks! — a poor person could pay an entire month’s food, shelter, and all other necessities. And everybody was happy and well fed.

  III

  Even for people who lead a routine life without incident, for those who are sedentary and methodical, who have renounced adventure and planned their future, a colossal surprise is waiting in the wings, one that will take place when the moment arises and force them to start over again on a different basis. That surprise consists of the discovery that they are, in reality, one thing or another; in other words, that they embody one human type — for example, a Miser, or a Genius, or a Believer, or anything else — a type that until then they have only known through portrayals in books, portrayals they’ve never truly taken seriously, and in any case have never seriously considered applying to reality. This revelation is inevitable at a certain point in life, and the upheaval it creates (gaping mouth, wide eyes, stupor), the sensation of a personal End of the World, of “the thing I most feared is happening to me,” is tailor-made to the frivolity of everything that preceded it.

  There’s no set age, as we know: everything depends on individual variables, which all variables are because the process of living is nothing but their accumulation. But it usually happens around fifty, which these days is the time when one begins to think that everything is over. In the subsequent psychic reshuffling, the horrified victim has an additional reason to feel bitter when he realizes that this discovery will no longer do him any good, that it is now a useless cruelty; if it had happened thirty or forty years before, he would have lived knowing it; he would have boarded the train of the real.

  And this happens even when — especially when — the aforementioned subject has spent his life identified with the human type he later discovers he belongs to. In fact, in those cases the surprise turns out to be more disruptive and creates a deeper impression.

  This is what had happened to Dr. Aira during this period. It would have happened to him anyway because the time had come, but the fact is that the revelation was unleashed by an incident that interrupted his publishing project before he had had a chance to begin it.

  He received a call, which resulted in him attending a rather secret meeting in an elegant suite of offices in Puerto Madero . . . and contrary to all his expectations he found himself embarked on the process of a Miracle Cure. Only a few days earlier he would have been able to swear that he’d never do it, that he was already past all temptation, that he had it beaten. His decision to publish installments had emerged precisely from his conviction that he’d left behind the call to practice. But, as we can see, man proposes and God disposes.

  The people who contacted him were the brothers of an important businessman, the president of a petroleum holding company with vast influence on industry and finance, who had been unexpectedly stricken with a terminal illness. He was under sixty and of course didn’t want to die, not yet. Nobody wants to. Human beings always cling to life, whatever the circumstances, and whether or not it is worth it. In the case of such a wealthy man, with so many possibilities of squeezing the most out of each day, the desire to
prolong life burgeoned. The brothers tried, in their own way, to explain this to Dr. Aira, as if to justify themselves. Circumscribed by their professions and their education, they expressed it in their own terms: the holding company had embarked with great success on a process of privatization; it was one of a select group of local businesses that had managed to broaden its field of operations by reorganizing its assets. They were diversifying without losing strength and were on the verge of realizing the benefits of consolidation, the incorporation of Mercosur, the export stimulus, the retrofitting of their industrial plants with the latest technologies . . . They got excited as they were describing it, even though it was obvious they were repeating a speech they had learned by heart, and it was no less obvious that they were reciting it to a total layman. A bit embarrassed, they returned to the subject at hand, suggesting that they were not singing their own praises but rather those of their sick brother, the brains and engine behind the group’s entire operation,

  the natural head of the family. What they wanted to emphasize was the unacceptable injustice that he of all people would have to depart before seeing the fruits of his talents, his creativity in the business world, his boundless energy.

  Dr. Aira’s head was crackling, as if it were full of soda. He was also slightly embarrassed for having paid such close attention to the explanations, and he wanted to get back to the purpose of his being there. What was the illness? he asked. Cancer, regrettably. Cancer of everything. Large spreading masses, metastasis, the disease’s uncontrollable growth. They pointed to a file on the glass desktop.