The Seamstress and the Wind (11 page)

24

I NEVER KNEW
what I did that lost afternoon . . .

In loss everything comes together. Loss is all-devouring. A person can lose an umbrella, a piece of paper, a diamond, a bit of lint . . . It’s all metabolized. To lose is to forget things in cafés. Forgetting is like a great alchemy free of secrets, limpid, transforming everything into the present. In the end it makes our lives into this visible and tangible thing we hold in our hands, with no folds left hidden in the past. I seek it, to oblivion, in the insanity of art. I pursue forgetting as well-earned pay for my fatigue and my memories . . . What good is working? I’d rather be finished already. One more effort . . . I would like all the scattered elements of the fable to come together at the end in one supreme moment. Except maybe I don’t have to work to pull it off, in which case my efforts would be unnecessary. Or at least . . . I should have thought it through better . . . Instead of sitting down to write . . . about the seamstress and the wind . . . with that idea of adventure, of successiveness . . . I’m not saying, Renounce the successiveness that makes the adventure . . . but rather to imagine beforehand all the successive events, until I had the whole novel in my head, and only then . . . or not even then . . .
Th
e whole project like a single point, the Aleph, the monad totally unfolded but as a point, an instant . . . My life set in the present with everything that has happened in it, which isn’t much, which is hardly anything. Wasting time in cafés. I never found out what I did that lost afternoon . . .

En fin
. Now that I’m here, let’s finish.

I’d left Delia in the twilight, lost and waiting.
Th
e wind came back with a small, perfectly gray thing.

“I didn’t find the dress or the sewing kit. I’m sorry. I don’t know what you wanted them for anyway.”

“And this?”

“It’s the only thing I found. Is it yours?”

“Yes . . . It was mine . . .”

It was her silver thimble, a precious souvenir, in whose little hollow Delia thought her whole life might fit, her whole life since she was born. And now that it looked like her life was coming to an end, or that it was slipping into an unintelligible abyss, she saw it had been worth the trouble to live it, there in Pringles.

“It’s not just a common thimble,” said the wind. “I’ve transmuted it into a Patagonian
Th
imble. You’ll be able to pull anything you want out of it, whatever your desire tells you, whatever size it might be. All you’ll have to do is rub it until it shines every time you ask for something, and I’ll take care of that, I’m very good at rubbing.”

Delia was about to answer him, because she’d finally found a good response, when she heard a distant sound and looked up.

Th
ere were people coming, from all four sides. Miniatures. Distant things have been made small.
Th
e function of truly large places, and Patagonia is the largest of them all, is to allow things to become truly small.
Th
ey were toys. Four of them, and they came from the four cardinal directions, in a perfect cross whose center was Delia. Chiquito’s truck, the Paleomobile, the Monster, and the Snowman arm in arm with the empty Wedding Dress.
Th
ese last two came with little measured steps, like a bride and groom bound for the altar. But the speed of all four was the same, and it was obvious that in the end there would be a collision on the spot where Delia stood. She tried taking a step to the side, and the four right angles moved with her.
Th
e encounter would be simultaneous. (I could never have thought of such an appropriate image of the instant as catastrophe.)
Th
ere was nothing to do. She closed her eyes.

But even simultaneity has an internal hierarchy: it’s a law of thought. In this case, the principal thing, the irremediable problem, was that the Monster had found her. In the face of this circumstance it was pointless to close her eyes, so she looked at it.

It really was horrible. Like an abstract painting, a Kandinsky. And it was shrieking:

“I’m going to kill you! Carrion! Wretch!”

“No! No!”

“Yes! I’m going to kill you!”

“Aaaah!”

“Aaaaaaah!”

Delia fell to her knees. From that position she raised her eyes for the second time.
Th
e Monster was coming toward her. If motives for fear have already been given in the course of this adventure, this one trumped and transcended them all. She would have run away . . . but there was nowhere to go. She was in Patagonia, limitless Patagonia, and she had nowhere to go — not the smallest of the paradoxes of the moment.

“Don’t kill me!” she cried.

“Shut up, you whore!”

“I’m not that!
Th
at thing you said! I’m a seamstress!”

“Shut up! Don’t make me laugh! Grrragh!”

It had grown a lot. Only a few feet separated them . . . And then the wind came between them, as a last defense. He blew furiously, but the Monster only laughed harder. How little the wind could do against a transformation!
Th
e wind is wind, and nothing more. How could it have fallen in love with Delia? How could she have believed it? No one could be so innocent.
Th
e gentleman Sir Ventarrón, the wandering knight. He madly tried to slow the monster down, but he was nothing but air . . .

An instant, too, has its eternity. We’ll leave Delia in that eternity while I look after the other guests.

Chiquito and Ramón stopped their vehicles at a certain distance and studied each other for a moment.
Th
e former had Silvia Balero at his side, unhinged and dazed as a zombie. Only Ramón’s eyes were visible through the narrow half-moon over the horn at the front of the rolling armadillo. At last the truck driver opened his door and stuck out a leg . . . Ramón’s eyes disappeared from the slot, and a moment later he was getting out through the back of his vehicle.
Th
ey approached without taking their eyes off each other.

“Good afternoon,” said Chiquito. “I have to ask you a favor, if you’re going to Pringles; take this young lady with you. She had an accident , and it’s hard to find transportation from here.”

“And you?”

“I’m going to keep going south. I’m going to pick up a shipment, they’ve been waiting for me since this afternoon in Esquel. I’m already late.”

“But then you’re coming back, and surely you’ll have room for her.”

“
Th
e thing is, the lady urgently needs to be in Pringles. Tomorrow at ten she gets married.”

“Married?”

“
Th
at’s what she told me. You can imagine her state. She’s hysterical. I can’t stand her anymore.”

“We’ve all got problems.”

“True. Me too.”

“But taking on other people’s problems . . .”

“Listen, Siffoni, I found her there, all I did was open the door for her, I couldn’t leave her in the middle of nowhere like that.”

“Don’t lie!” roared Ramón, and he pulled the mask out of his shirt pocket for the other to see. “You won her playing poker. You won her from me.”

Chiquito sighed. He’d actually been aware of this, but he’d given it a shot anyway.
Th
ey were silent for a moment. Ramón, calmer, suggested:

“You can just leave her on the side of the road. Someone will come by.”

“Yes, I
can
. But she could make a lot of trouble for me.
Th
ere’s the matter of her wedding. Couldn’t you do me a favor?”

“You know me, Larralde. I don’t do favors for anybody.”

Th
is phrase was a password; it meant they had reached an agreement, without any need to go into details.
Th
e cards would decide. Not the matter of Silvia Balero, either; that was just an excuse. It was the other matter.

Th
e wind, impartial, brought everything they needed from beyond the horizon: a table, two chairs, a green tablecloth, fifty-two cards and a hundred red mother-of-pearl chips.
Th
ey sat down.
Th
e table was too big and they looked tiny across it, their eyes half-closed, like two Chinese.
Th
e wind shuffled and dealt.

Paris, July 5, 1991

Also by César Aira from New Directions

An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter

Ghosts

How I Became a Nun

The Literary Conference

Varamo