César Aira - The Musical Brain - And Other Stories

This relief, however, lasted only the few seconds it took him to focus (anxious sweat was running into his eyes, blurring his vision) and read the date in question, written by hand at the top of the cover. Those cheap comic books were almost never dated, and collectors like him had to determine the year of publication indirectly, by means of stubborn, laborious research. They calculated and triangulated, comparing the styles of the cartoonists and the themes of the scriptwriters, using providential references to current affairs that had found their way into the timeless extravagance of the adventures. A wealth of idle, playful erudition was mobilized, with no prestige or award to be won, but that only made it more enjoyable.

The date showed that the comic was forty years old, published when both of them had been children (the criminal and the cartoonist were roughly the same age). That explained the yellowish color of the paper, the neat grid of panels, the old-fashioned layout, and the dog-eared pages. It also explained, compellingly, why the cartoonist’s syllogism had made no impression on the criminal. How could you argue that a comic published forty years ago was based on events reported by the press in the last few months?

Because of its age, this element was, paradoxically, too new for the cartoonist to absorb straightaway. He tried to step back and consider it from a distance, not only to see it in perspective, but also to put the exchange, if he could, on a more civilized footing, and above all to buy time, which, in the circumstances, was the only thing that really mattered:

“I’m a comic book collector. .”

The criminal interrupted him:

“Don’t lie.”

His leitmotif again! But this time the cartoonist had visible proof to back his claim.

“I’ve got lots of comic books, from the forties on, I’ve been collecting since I was a kid. . You can’t say I’m lying, because you saw them and you took this one. . I don’t know how you found it so easily, just like that, among the thousands of comics in my collection. . though they are well organized, it’s true, by year, by publisher, by title. .”

“Shut up and explain—”

This time it was the cartoonist who interrupted:

“Creating and collecting are parallel activities for me. They’re separate, but they nourish each other, inevitably. Most of my colleagues are collectors too.”

“What do I care? Why are you lying? This”—the criminal shook the comic book violently, scrunching it up with no regard for its value as a collector’s item—“didn’t come out of the newspapers, son of a. .!”

“That comic, I swear. . I’d forgotten all about it. You saw yourself how many I’ve collected: thousands and thousands. . That’s how it is with collectors, we can never have enough. . There must be lots I haven’t even read. . All I take from the masters is the form, insofar as I can. For the plots, I use the newspapers, the crime reports. .”

The criminal exploded in fury (miraculously, his shouts were not accompanied by a jerking of the wrist: the slightest movement could have been fatal).

“What the fuck do you mean? The police didn’t know who I was, and the journalists had no idea! Now they know, thanks to you!”

“But I followed the cases in the newspapers!”

“Well, the papers are going to follow you now, smart-ass, bullshit artist! And they won’t have any work to do, because you showed it all just like it happened, and it’s obviously me in the drawings.”

“No. . I don’t know. . you’re confusing me. Now you mention it, maybe I used the Identi-Kit pictures. .”

“Ha!”

The criminal laughed sardonically, full of contempt for those crude sketches patched together by the police. Although the cartoonist shared his opinion, he attempted a lukewarm defense:

“I don’t know. Sometimes they get it right.”

“Come on! Don’t make me angrier than I already am. . No, do! Go on lying, so I lose control and get it over with, since I’m going to do it anyway.”

“No.”

It was a cry from the soul, and the vibration of the cartoonist’s vocal cords perilously tensed the part of his neck on which the blade was pressing. The men were in an uncomfortable, strained position, both standing in the middle of the semidark studio, the criminal’s massive body pressing against the cartoonist’s back, his right arm bent, elbow out, so as to place the knife in exactly the right position for throat-slitting, the left arm around the other side, extended, holding up the comic book. It was almost like a sculptural group, except for the trembling of one figure, the other’s expressive little jolts, and of course the moving lips of both. It was hard to see how the composition could remain stable, given the turbulent passions to which it was subject (revenge, terror). But it wasn’t all that strange: statues hold still too, although they often represent, in a direct or allegorical way, volcanic passions, including, precisely, vindictiveness and fear.

“No,” the cartoonist repeated. “Are you accusing me of plagiarism? No way. . Not because I care about bourgeois morality or property rights. . I’m not like that. .” He was trying, crazily, to win over his attacker by taking the outlaw’s side. “What I care about is innovation, invention, creation. . Anyway, the world of comics is a kind of fan club; like I said, we’re all collectors, we know our stuff, and we can tell a copy at a glance. . You even have to watch out for unconscious memories!”

“What are you talking about? Why should I give a shit about any of that? My life is on the line here! Don’t you understand? No, of course you don’t: you’re stuck in childhood; you know nothing about real life.”

The cartoonist seized the opportunity to change the subject, and said with a stutter that came (like his earlier cry) from the soul:

“The ch-child is fa-father to the m-man.”

“Don’t I know it, jerk! I used to read this comic book when I was a kid; I bought it when it came out, at the stand on the corner of Lavalleja and Bulnes, where the tenement is. I used to wait for them to come out every week. I wasn’t some stupid snobby collector; I bought it because it was the only way I could escape from the dismal reality of my life: we were poor, my father was in prison, and my mother had tuberculosis. And this comic, this one”—he shook it savagely, engrossed in the past—“I read it very carefully, I’m telling you. That’s why I spotted it straightaway among the thousands of others, the tons of old paper you’ve piled up.”

The cartoonist, who should have been comforted by the revelation of this common ground, this comic they had both read, because it was something he shared with a being who until then had seemed entirely other, jumped instead to a higher level of fear and alienation. Apart from fellow members of the trade, who had an artistic or professional investment in the medium, he wasn’t used to dealing with people who actually read comics. People who read them for their content. He knew they existed, of course. But he had shut them out of his consciousness. And to find himself suddenly in the hands of such a person, literally in his hands and at his mercy, paralyzed him with terror. To make things worse, the terror was irrational, without a reason that he could identify and articulate. What happened next deepened the strangeness. Up until then, the criminal had been tight-lipped, but something must have pressed his talk button:

“Yes, I remembered it clearly, panel by panel, drawings and text, every line, every word. Even though I read it when I was. . I don’t know, ten or twelve, and I hadn’t reread it until today. I remembered it so well because I didn’t actually have to remember. It wasn’t just another comic for me, like it is for you, with your thousands; for you, they’re just a fetish, or at best a source of ‘inspiration.’ ” When he put the quotation marks into his speech, a slow music began to play in the distance, a melody made of detached notes, deep in pitch, plucked on some string instrument, distant but curiously loud. “For me it had real importance. I don’t know why God and the Devil set it up like that, or why I read it just at the point in my psychophysical development when it was bound to have the biggest effect on me. And what an effect! That comic strip has been my life, right up to this day. Each one of its panels has become reality: each crime, each flight, each abyss. My features have even come to resemble those of the protagonist, and now no one could deny it’s me. .”