The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira by César Aira

I
    One day at dawn, Dr. Aira found himself walking down a tree-lined street in a Buenos
Aires neighborhood. He suffered from a type of somnambulism, and it wasn’t all
that unusual for him to wake up on unknown streets, which he actually knew quite
well because all of them were the same. His life was that of a half-distracted,
half-attentive walker (half absent, half present) who by means of such
alternations created his own continuity, that is to say, his style, or in other
words and to close the circle, his life; and so it would be until his life
reached its end — when he died. As he was approaching fifty, that endpoint,
coming sooner or later, could occur at any moment.
    A beautiful Lebanese cedar along the verge of a
pretentious little street lifted its proud rounded crown into the pinkish-gray
air. He stopped to contemplate it, overwhelmed with admiration and affection. He
addressed it
in pectore
with a short speech that combined eulogy,
devotion (a request for protection), and, oddly enough, a few descriptive
features; for he had noticed that after a time, devotion tended to become
somewhat abstract and automatic. In this case, he noticed that the crown of the
tree was both barren and leafy; the sky could be seen through it, yet it had
foliage. Standing on his tiptoes to look more closely at the lower branches (he
was very nearsighted), he saw that the leaves, which were like small,
olive-green feathers, were partially coiled around each other, it was the end of
fall, and the trees were struggling to survive.
    “I honestly don’t believe that humanity can continue much
longer on this path. Our species has reached a point of such dominance on the
planet that it no longer has to confront any serious threat, and it seems that
all we can do is continue to live, enjoying what we can without having to risk
anything. And we keep moving forward in that direction, securing what is already
safe. With each advance, or retreat, no matter how gradual, irreversible
thresholds are crossed, and who knows which we have already crossed or are
crossing at this very moment. Thresholds that could make Nature react, if we
understand by Nature, life’s general regulatory mechanism. Maybe this frivolity
we’ve achieved has irritated Her; maybe She cannot allow one species, not even
our own, to be freed from its most basic needs . . . Of course I am
personalizing this quite perversely, reifying and externalizing forces that
exist within us, but it doesn’t matter because I understand myself.”
    Such things to say to a tree!
    “It’s not that I’m prophesying anything, especially not
catastrophes and plagues, not even subtle ones, no way! If my reasoning is
correct, the corrective mechanisms are at work within our present state of
well-being and as a part of it . . . I just don’t know how.”
    He had started walking and was already at some distance
from the tree. Every now and then he would stop again, and with a look of deep
concentration he would stare at some random spot in his surroundings. These were
abrupt stops, which lasted about half a minute and did not occur with any
discernible regularity. He alone knew what they were in response to, and it was
improbable that he would ever tell anybody. They were stops of embarrassment;
they coincided with a memory, which emerged out of the folds of his idle
digressions, of a blunder. It wasn’t as if he enjoyed these memories, on the
contrary; he simply could not prevent them from rising suddenly in his mental
tide. And such an appearance was powerful enough to paralyze his legs, make him
stand still, and he would have to wait for a fresh impetus to start walking
again. Time lifted him out of the shame of the past . . . It had already done
so; it had already carried him into the present. Such blunders were cessations
of time, where everything coagulated. They were mere memories, stored away in
the most impregnable of safe boxes, one no stranger could open.
    They were small,