The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira by César Aira Page A

ridiculous, and perfectly private
disgraces — a moment of awkwardness, a faux pas, which had affected nobody but
himself; they had made strong impressions on him, clots of meaning that blocked
the flow of events. For some reason, they were irreducible. They resisted
translation, such as a transfer to the present. Whenever they appeared, they
paralyzed him in the middle of his somnambulistic activities, which is what
would bring them out of their labyrinthine lair of the past. The more he walked,
the greater the chance that he would catch one, against his will. This turned
his endless strolls into trajectories through the bifurcated maze of his
youthful past. Perhaps, after all, there was some kind of regularity that drew a
pattern through space-time, these cessations creating an empty distance . . .
But he would never be able to find a solution to his strange theorem if he
couldn’t explain why his steps stopped whenever a memory of this kind made its
appearance; standing still and staring at one spot could be explained as an
attempt to dissemble, perhaps pretend that this spot interested him so much that
he had no choice but to stop. But the cessation in itself, the relationship
between the blunder and paralysis, remained obscure, as long as he did not
resort to psychological interpretations. Perhaps the key could be found in the
very nature of those embarrassing moments, in their essence or common
denominator. If that were the case, what was happening was a repetition
compulsion in its most purely formal aspect.
    Digging deeper into the issue, of course, was the fact
that these blunders had occurred. They happen to everybody. They are the
inevitable result of sociability, and the only solution is to forget. Truly, the
only one, because time doesn’t go backwards, so they cannot be fixed or erased.
And because he could not depend on forgetting (he had the memory of an
elephant), he had taken recourse in solitude, in almost complete isolation from
his fellows, in this way guaranteeing at least the minimization of the effects
of his incurable awkwardness, his bewilderment. And his somnambulism, which
existed on a different level of his consciousness and his intentionality, should
move in the same direction, like an a posteriori redemption, if in fact a
somnambulist acted with the elegance of perfect efficiency.
    To be honest with himself, he had to admit that
blunders were not the only issue; the common denominator actually was spread
along a rather sinuous path, which turned out to be not so easy to follow. Or
perhaps one had to broaden the definition of a blunder: it could also include
small infamies, acts of stinginess, accounting errors, cowardice; in other
words, anything that feeds retrospective and private shame. And it was not as if
he blamed himself (though during those stops a voice inside would shout: “What
an idiot! What an idiot!”), for he had admitted they were inevitable at the
moment they had occurred. At least he took comfort in their insignificance, for
they had never been crimes, nor had there ever been any victims other than his
own self-esteem.
    In any case, he had promised himself they would never
happen again. To achieve this he didn’t need to do anything but remain alert and
avoid precipitous behavior, always acting within the rules of honor and a proper
upbringing. In his practice as a miracle healer, a blunder could have dire
consequences.
    In a novel, blunders are set up with great
deliberation, with ingenuity and care, which is quite paradoxical, for it turns
out to be more natural and spontaneous to write a scene in which everybody
behaves properly. Dr. Aira equated every act that was morally, intellectually,
or socially wrong with an act of violence, one that left a scar on the eminently
smooth skin of his ideal behavior. He was one of those men who could not
conceive of violence. Although he knew this to be absurd, he could not help
imagining that were he to find himself in a robbers’