by Cesar Aira
Élida was the receptionist who worked there in the morning, a very nice lady.
“I had no idea.”
“It all began when Cynthia died . . .” said Jessica, but she stopped when she noticed that Maxi wasn’t listening.
In an almost telepathic way, they had become simultaneously aware of the picture they composed together. They looked at the mirror-wall. Jessica couldn’t help noticing that she was almost naked — her skin a pale glow in the midst of the shadowy gray-green splendor — and that she was lying in the arms of a young giant wrapped in a plastic raincoat. But she made no attempt to cover herself or move away. Circumstances, which might have arranged them in any number of ways, had placed them in precisely that position. The slightest variation in the events leading up to that moment would have produced a different result. Yet this was how it had turned out. It was as if the hero of a fable, who had set out to rescue a princess, had, in the course of his marvelous adventures, been wounded on the sea shore, and a drop of his blood, carried by a wave, had voyaged to the far depths of the ocean and slipped in through the half-open jaws of an oyster to produce the rarest and most beautiful gem in the world: the pink pearl.
Now they were looking at each other. Maxi and Jessica. Her and him. Maxi was shy. Who isn’t, deep down? Who hasn’t succumbed to a hopeless feeling more powerful than all the strength one might possibly muster, wondering how many first steps will have to be taken, how many actions performed and words spoken, how many labyrinths will have to be negotiated in order, finally, to reach the moment at which reality begins to happen. But when that moment comes, none of us are shy; we couldn’t be, even if we tried. Things were happening to him now. He leaned down as the sky leans over the earth and kissed her. Lips touched lips that it had seemed they could never hope to touch, and that was all it took for their bodies and souls to communicate. If the gym no longer existed, everything was allowed. Trembling and enraptured, Jessica just had time to think, as if from far away: “He didn’t ask anything, he didn’t say anything. All he did was kiss me.” And before she put her arms around him and shut her eyes, she came to this conclusion: “He’s so clever.”
VIII
All day the storm remained imminent, building steadily; the sky grew darker hour by hour, the temperature rose, the air thickened. At dusk, Maxi woke from the deep sleep of his siesta into a crepuscular limbo traversed by people making furtive dashes for the safety of their homes.
When his mother, who was working in the dining room, saw him heading for the door, she said, “Don’t go far; it’s going to start pouring any minute.” She taught crafts in a high school, and was making complicated paper cut-outs. Maxi came to the table and picked one up, to be polite.
“That’s pretty. What is it?” He turned it over and answered his own question: “A mushroom. A duster.”
“A fan,” said his mother. In fact it was a cluster of fans with a single handle, which opened out in turn to make another cluster, upside down. “A fan that fans itself.”
“And you get your students to make these?” asked Maxi, intrigued by the artifact.
“It’s an advanced class. But yes, they have to ‘get it out.’ Otherwise they fail.”
“It must be hard for them,” said Maxi, before adding ironically: “But you’re right to be tough; they need skills to equip them for life.”
His mother just smiled. It was a topic they often debated: the usefulness of what she taught. He was amusing himself with the cut-out, opening and closing the fans.
“It’s pretty. I like it.”
“Can you leave it alone, Maxi? You’re going to wreck it. One little twist and it’s ruined for good. They can’t be fixed, these things.”
He put it down on the table, suspecting (with good reason) that the damage was already done.
“Do you still have to keep practicing? Don’t you know it off by heart?”
“I’m always inventing something new. Sometimes I don’t even know myself what it will turn out to be.”
“You must have folded so many sheets of paper, Mom. It’s amazing you don’t have calluses on your fingers.”
With that, he left. He headed for Rivadavia and crossed it, as usual. The weather was threatening, and people were in a hurry. Two or three times he emerged from his daydreams, thinking that it had begun to rain, but it was a false alarm each time. “If it starts, I’ll go back home when I get to Bonifacio,” he thought, before remembering that he had an appointment or, rather, two. He shook his head, smiling indulgently at himself: “What can you do? Head in the clouds.” But then he saw the hitch. The rain could spoil everything. He shrugged his shoulders.
It didn’t matter! What he had planned was beyond those contingencies. Anyway, he wasn’t afraid of the rain . . . or was he? He couldn’t actually remember. He couldn’t remember a time when it had rained. It’s true that he was constantly distracted by one preoccupation or another, but it was still odd that he couldn’t recall a single experience of rain. And yet he knew perfectly well what rain was. “And if I don’t, I’m about to find out,” he thought. He did have some excuse, however: it hadn’t rained in Buenos Aires for months. And when a kind of weather isn’t happening, we tend to forget what it’s like.
In the vacant lots beside the railway he found someone who needed his help. But it was such an unusual day and he was so absorbed in his thoughts that he almost kept on walking. It was a woman, with a two- or three-year-old child; she was looking through the bags of trash and pushing a supermarket trolley. He stopped abruptly when he’d already passed her, and turned around. In general he didn’t offer to help women on their own, for fear that that it might be taken the wrong way. But his fame must have spread among the collectors in the neighborhood, because it seemed that none of them could take it the wrong way now. Fame is always based on some kind of misunderstanding, but misunderstanding is everywhere: nothing is more universal. In any case, the woman was very mannish; her body, draped in an oversize nylon jacket, betrayed no signs of femininity. She was small and nervous, no doubt undernourished, with disheveled hair spilling out from under a woolen cap. Maxi took charge of the vehicle, and she seized the opportunity to speed up her rummaging, almost oblivious to the little girl, who trotted about on her own, until Maxi hoisted her into the trolley.
They headed west for a while until they got to the square, where the woman slipped in through the service entrance of a restaurant after dismissing her “draught horse,” with whom she had exchanged no more than a few indistinct syllables. Perhaps because of the weather, she was in a hurry, on edge, like the two little guys with their super-size cart who were next in line for Maxi’s help, and the family after that, with whom he crossed back over Rivadavia. The little guys specialized in cardboard, and had gathered a huge amount of it. Maxi liked to feel the weight of a really heavy load: it meant money for them, a good day’s trading, although they’d never make a fortune. He loved to feel the transformation of such a light material into a serious weight, as the boxes piled up to form a mass.
What he didn’t know was that, from a certain point on, two pairs of eyes had been watching him. They belonged to two girls: his sister, Vanessa, and her inseparable friend, Jessica, who were half a block behind, not letting him out of their sight. They had planned this operation carefully and decided to go through with it, in spite of the impending storm. They were determined to follow him all the way, and find out just what was going on; and the pursuit was meant to end with a confrontation in which they would lay all their cards on the table. They couldn’t, or wouldn’t, wait any longer: the time had come to enlist Maxi in the battle against the dark forces that were threatening them.
It was a task that required superhuman patience. The forward movement of their target was painfully slow and subject to all sorts of interruptions. They pretended to be looking in storefronts, or hid in doorways, or even turned around and went for a little walk to the corner and back. They weren’t afraid that Maxi would notice them because he
was so vague, and he’d never guess they were on his tail. But they couldn’t lose sight of him or let him get too far away: they’d already seen how erratic his route was, and how he went from one scavenger to another without any warning or anything, just like that.
To pass the time, they chatted. That was nothing new: the substance of their friendship was endless conversation. They wouldn’t have been able to explain how they kept coming up with topics but they never ran out. It was one of the reasons why they always made up after their frequent quarrels: their tongues missed the exercise, and with their other friends, there wasn’t the same continuous flow. In fact, one of the richest topics or sets of topics was what had happened to them during the intervals when they hadn’t been speaking to each other. Which was a reason to multiply those intervals, and now the fights were almost superfluous: all they needed to accumulate material was an instant, the tiniest gap.
On this occasion, there was no shortage of topics. They had been in a flurry putting their plan into action, so there were some really important stories still waiting to be told, and now, with Maxi and his damn scavengers stopping and starting all the time, they had an opportunity to catch up.
“This morning,” said Jessica, “I ran into him at the gym and I realized something. You’re not going to believe this — I didn’t — but your brother hasn’t realized that I’m me. He’s an alien.”
“He doesn’t know that you. . . ? I don’t understand.”
“He hasn’t realized that the ‘Jessica’ he knows from the gym is the same ‘Jessica’ who’s friends with his sister. For him, they’re, I mean we’re, two different people.”
“No way. That is com-plete-ly . . .” Vanessa was left gaping and gazing off into space, with the expression of someone who has just been apprised of an amazing fact and must hurriedly reorganize everything she knows to make a place for it.
Jessica knew exactly how she felt.
“I’ve been trying to work it out all day, and in the end I realized it’s actually not impossible. I don’t go to your place very often, and usually he’s not there, and when he is, he doesn’t pay attention to me. He’s been ignoring his little sister’s friends ever since he was a kid; they’ve become invisible to him. And when I call on the phone and he answers, I’m just a voice: ‘Jessica,’ his sister’s friend. He puts you on and forgets all about it. It’s not like the name’s going to give it away; there are so many Jessicas. For him, the gym must be a world apart, separate from everything else, especially from you.”
“And you never said anything?”
“Well, we’ve never talked much. Once he gets going on the machines, it’s like other people don’t exist. Today was the first time we really talked, and only because I had an accident.”
“So did you tell him?”
Jessica hesitated for a moment:
“Listen, this is going to sound crazy, but it was only thinking about it later that I realized it myself. And I don’t know if I would have told him anyway: it would spoil the fun, don’t you think? It’s like having a secret identity, without all the bother of having to lie.”
They took a few steps in silence. Maxi’s cart had turned the corner; they crossed to the opposite sidewalk to keep their distance and avoid running into him in case he hadn’t gone far. But no: he was thirty yards away, standing still, while a bunch of ragged children rushed around opening up bags of trash as quickly as they could. The girls pretended to be looking in the window of a hairdressing salon. Something had been bothering Vanessa:
“Why do you say you don’t come to my place very often? We’re together all day long!”
“Because it’s true. Haven’t you noticed how we hardly ever go to each other’s places? I think it’s because we live so close.”
“And what about when you sleep over?”
“Well, OK, yeah . . . it is kind of hard to believe, but that’s what he’s like, your brother.”
“And what about when you went into his room?”
Jessica laughed. The incident, caused by a combination of sleepwalking and hallucination, had kept them up laughing all night at the time.
“He was asleep, and he didn’t wake up.”
“Just as well!”
They laughed again. Jessica had forgotten that episode, and remembering it now only added to the magic of the whole misapprehension. It made her realize how close she had been to Maxi, how they had shared a kind of intimacy, and yet she had remained a stranger to him. Vanessa’s thoughts had gone in another direction:
“Maybe he was pulling your leg?”
“No, because we didn’t talk about that. I’m sure, Vanessa.”
“Are you going to say something?”
“Huh?”
“Are you going to say something, tomorrow, or the day after, at the gym?”
It took Jessica a moment to understand, and when she did, she was still surprised.
“Say something? Tell him that it’s me? I don’t know . . . I don’t know if there’s anything to say. . . . And anyway, we’re going to confront him tonight, aren’t we? Isn’t that what we agreed?”
“Yeah, that’s right. He’ll realize, when he sees you. Or maybe not.”
Jessica remembered something and gave a start:
“But the gym’s finished, Vanessa! Didn’t I tell you? Chin Fu is closed, for good.”
“Really?” said her friend, with a show of indifference, which was also largely genuine. She regarded going to the gym as ridiculous and unhealthy, a waste of time. It was a reaction against her brother, but also, perhaps, a sincere conviction on her part. Months back, when Jessica had joined up, Vanessa had explained exactly why it was a dumb idea, and there had even been a brief cooling of their friendship as a result. After that, Vanessa had made a point of never asking about the exercise program, and if Jessica brought it up, she pretended not to have heard or talked about something else. Now, watching Maxi, who had set off again, she said absently: “Good. Maybe they’ll find something better to do with their time.”
“But it’s not like every gym in Buenos Aires is going to close, Vanessa! There are millions . . .”
“Ugh.”
“Though actually . . . it’s not the only one that’s closing. That’s something else we have to talk about with Maxi tonight.”
“Why? What’s he got to do with it?”
“I don’t really know how this happened, but it’s another indirect result of Cynthia’s death. You remember her father was involved with those evangelical sects and their business deals? Well, after the crime, which they exploited to the hilt, their financial backer started kicking out all the gyms that used to rent spaces from him, and turning them into churches. And now he’s gone and done it to Chin Fu, one of the last ones left in the neighborhood.”
“How did they exploit Cynthia’s death? I had no idea.”
“They turned her into a saint! They pray to her, they ask her for help. . . . Didn’t you know?”
“Are you serious? Like with Gilda?”
“Exactly!”
“They’re crazy!”
They laughed. But something was still bothering Vanessa. They had walked on, following Maxi, and now they were in the middle of a dark block. Because of the stopping and starting and their fluctuating attention, it was one of those erratic conversations: they kept leaving loose ends and then, all of a sudden, going back to pick them up.
“What accident?”
“Huh?”
“You said you talked to Maxi in the gym today because of an accident? Did you twist your wrist, or get a weight caught on your nipple or something?” Vanessa inquired venomously.
But the sarcasm was lost on Jessica, who, as soon as she remembered the morning’s events, launched enthusiastically into the story:
“You’ll never guess what happened to me. I almost died! What a dickhead! You know I’ve been buying proxidine from Saturno, the guy who works at the bar. With the gym closing down it was getting complicated, so he asked me
to go there first thing, before anyone else turned up. So I go there really early this morning, and would you believe it, the son of a bitch gives me bad proxidine . . .”
Vanessa reacted with a horrified grimace.
“How do you mean bad? Fake?”
“How do I know? I wish it had just been fake. It had the opposite effect . . . I don’t know . . . I began to feel like everything was getting further away instead of coming closer. . . . It was like the end of the world, or falling down a well. I fainted and when I came to, your brother was there.”
“What a fuck-up! What did you say to him?”
“Nothing. That my blood pressure had dropped. But it’s not Saturno’s fault; they sold him bad stuff. I know because he took some, and it had the same effect on him, or worse: it messed with his heart. It must have something to do with all these changes: he buys from that guy they call the Pastor, who works as an informer for the sect that’s going to take over the place. Later on he swapped what he’d sold me for some good stuff that he had from before.”
Vanessa’s interest, which had been flagging over the previous minutes, picked up suddenly.
“Have you got some here?”
“Of course.” She put her hand in her pocket.
“Are you sure it’s the good stuff?”
“Don’t worry. I’ve tried it.”
They looked in Maxi’s direction to check that he wasn’t going to get away from them, saw that he was standing still, and ducked into a doorway.
“Now they’re getting high, the little whores,” said Cabezas to himself in the darkness of his car, from which he had been observing their every move. Not to be outdone, he reached into his pocket and took out his own supply of proxidine. He kept it in a small red crystal flask, the size of an egg, which felt very hot. And it wasn’t just a feeling: inside the crystal, the drug was in a gel solution, which, so he had been told, increased the proximity of the atoms, generating real heat. On the underside of the flask was a gold-plated spring-release mechanism, as on a lighter, which flicked out a needle a quarter-inch long. He pressed the needle into the lobe of his ear, frowning slightly as he felt the prick, and left it there for a few seconds, allowing the drug to penetrate. By a strange coincidence, just at that moment a wild bolt of lightning ripped across the sky, from one side of the windshield to the other, like a camera flash lighting up the policeman’s bloated face, his dazed expression, and the crystal attached to his ear like a carnation of phosphorescent fire.