by Cesar Aira
“A little more . . . here . . . slowly . . .”
Poor Nelly was panting from the effort. We stood the Exoscope up in front of the worm and carefully turned the glass panels. A fraction of an inch in either direction would make all the difference. I saw the worm’s reflection and touched its image in the cold glass with the tips of my fingers. Though threatening, brutal, as lethal as a soft skyscraper come to life, it was beautiful, a masterpiece. I am fascinated by what is huge, excessive. Perhaps never before had such a creature trodden upon the earth, a being made of blue silk, so artificial and at the same time so natural. All its fascination resided in its magnification. It was still a miniature, on which the limitless freedom of size had operated.
I turned to look at it directly. It had moved closer. Though it had no face, it had a vague expressiveness that seemed to speak of its horror at having been born, its feeling of not being welcome, of having landed where it wasn’t wanted. I could have stayed there for hours contemplating it. After all, I had good reason to believe it to be my masterpiece. I would never again create anything like it, even if I wanted to. What gave it that particular blue hue was the depth of its materiality, the fact that each cell was composed of reality and unreality. As if my gaze were stimulating it, it began to move, though most likely it had never stopped moving. It covered the distance between us with what was probably, for it, no more than a shudder. Nelly took refuge behind me; the audience held its breath. I lifted my eyes to its formidable mass — the height of a five-story building. It was now or never.
Just as it was supposed to happen, at that instant a ray of sun shone through a break in the mountains and in a straight line onto the glass of the Exoscope. I expertly moved the panels so that the yellow point would draw a tiny square. I knew well the effect this action of the light would have on the cloned cells. And, indeed, the worm began to get reabsorbed into its own reflection in the glass. It was very quick, very fluid, but it was not without incident. The structure of the Exoscope shook, and I was afraid it would fall over. I held one end with all my strength and asked Nelly to do the same on the other. She obeyed me, in spite of her fear. It seemed as if it were going to break apart, but we held firm, and the worm kept going and going . . . When less than a tenth of its mass was still materialized, it coiled up around us. I closed my eyes. I felt it slipping, almost brushing up against me, and the blue color penetrated me even through my lowered eyelids. When I lifted those lids, it had finished its reentry . . . Or, rather, it hadn’t. One last fragment of blue substance remained, which, perhaps because it was the last, rose up in a violent whirlwind on Nelly’s end then quickly got sucked into the glass. The movement made one of her shoes fly off, and I saw that her foot was wounded.
The Exoscope was still. I leaned over to look into the glass. There it was, a transparent blue phylactery dissolving into atoms and mixing up with the golden atoms of the sun in a furious battle, in an inoffensive, artistic game that dispersed in seconds. But one drop of blood on Nelly’s foot had splashed onto the glass. In a swish, the atomic beam carried it away into the depth of the transparency.
I stood back. It was over. The audience applauded and cheered, joyous honking began to resound throughout the city. The entire herd of gigantic worms had disappeared, dissolved into the dawn air. People took it as some kind of miracle, but I, of course, knew that clones were like that: one is all.
I examined my friend’s foot, which was bleeding profusely. Men and boys were climbing down the gorge, and the first to arrive offered to carry her up; the wound wasn’t serious, but she needed to be taken to the emergency room to be bandaged. I climbed up behind them, and when they’d gotten her into the car, I told her that I was leaving on the morning flight, as planned. She promised to come to the airport to say goodbye.
March 8, 1996
The New Directions Pearls
César Aira, The Literary Conference
Jorge Luis Borges, Everything and Nothing
Federico García Lorca, In Search of Duende
Javier Marías, Bad Nature, or With Elvis in Mexico
Yukio Mishima, Patriotism
Tennessee Williams, Tales of Desire
Forthcoming
Sir Thomas Browne, Urn Burial
William Carlos Williams, Spring and All
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Part 1 ON A RECENT trip to
Part II I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII The New Directions Pearls