César Aira - The Musical Brain - And Other Stories

Reason, or logic, the mechanical logic that blindly governs the events of this world, indicated that eventually, at some point, the conditions for my liberation would be fulfilled. There would be no need for a cataclysm or a revolution or a titanic effort of the will: everyday permutations would suffice. Which meant that the conditions could be fulfilled at any moment, perhaps very soon. Perhaps it had happened already, and all I had to do was open my eyes and see it.

But first I would have had to know what I was supposed to be seeing. I had no idea what those conditions might have been; I couldn’t conceive of them, although this shouldn’t have been inherently difficult. Again, as always, it was a matter of “seeing”: that was the key. But seeing wasn’t as simple as keeping your eyes open. A mental operation was involved. Thought had to blaze a path through the dense jungle of the visible. .

And then one day it struck me that the giant feet of one man and the giant hands of the other had begun to shrink. I’d been so distracted or blind that I hadn’t noticed them reverting to almost normal, or completely normal, dimensions. I found the idea strangely confusing. Only time could have provided a confirmation of what was happening, but it was the action of time, precisely, that obliterated the traces, or scrambled them, tying them into a knot. It wasn’t impossible. Every impossibility has a basis in the possible. After all, one of the men had always had normal-size feet, and the other, normal-size hands. This alternation, or distribution, or asymmetrical symmetry, might have been the source of my confusion. There was something in them that had always resisted clarification: for me they had always been an inseparable pair. I mentioned that they tried to avoid being seen singly; so my memory or perception of them (my “idea” of them) was double; but at the same time the difference between the members of the pair could not have been greater. I could only recognize them by means of that difference: one of them was “the one with the feet”; the other, “the one with the hands.” The prodigious enlargement of those extremities was so striking that it made any other characterization impossible or superfluous. So if the monstrous element had disappeared, would I have been able to say which was which, or, more precisely, which had been which? Through all those years, maybe ever since I’d first seen them or (this comes to the same thing) grasped what made them special, I must have been under the unconscious impression that they were a single man. One man in two manifestations. First impressions, of course, are crucial. That’s why I never considered the question of individuality. It wouldn’t arise until the hypothetical moment, on time’s farthest horizon, when the hands of one man and the feet of the other had shrunk to normal dimensions, when both, that is, had the same size feet and hands. In that scenario there was at once a possibility and something impossible.

By transporting myself in imagination to that far horizon of time, I could ask how the change might have come about. In such cases, the question is typically whether it took place in a gradual, continuous, and imperceptible way, or occurred by leaps from one stage to the next, or happened all at once. They say that habit has a blinding effect. The brain, which is always looking for ways to save energy, cancels or dulls the perceptions that are most frequently repeated in everyday life, skipping over them, taking them for granted, the better to concentrate on what’s new, which might be important for survival, whereas familiar features of the environment have been ruled out as potential threats.

The misplaced tact that had always governed my relationship with the two men prevented me from fixing my gaze, in an obvious way at least, on the enormous hands and feet, but I was also inhibited by the very common reluctance (which, in my case, was particularly strong, almost a taboo) to look in detail at anything monstrous, deformed or horrible, for fear it might become an obsession, or prove to be unforgettable (when everything beautiful is forgotten). Perhaps this is a remnant of ancestral superstitions. Attention skirts around whatever might “leave an impression.” To shut my eyes would have been impolite, as well as impractical. Which left me with only one option: peripheral vision.

This might seem a contrived and twisted solution, but it can be exemplified by a situation from everyday life that’s familiar to all of us (or at least to all men): finding yourself face-to-face with a naked man, in the locker room of a gym, for example. You don’t fix your gaze on his genitals, do you? But I should add that what I’m offering as an example, that is, as a rhetorical device to convey my meaning, is actually no such thing. Because it was incontrovertibly the case that the two men were naked, and their genitals exposed.

These associations of ideas might have led me to suspect that the two men got dressed and went out to work, or even that each of them lived with his family, and that the house was their secret place, to which they went in the afternoon, just in time to strip off and be there waiting for me when I arrived. An absurd and impossible fantasy, but it did cross my mind, like so many others. Fantasies I tried, in vain, to use as arms against the mental void into which the hopelessness of my life had cast me. It was enough to make me hate the human race and turn me into a misanthrope, if I wasn’t one already. At certain moments, trapped in the circles of my partial, peripheral vision, I felt a fierce irritation, a stifled, suffocating fury. Why were they enslaving me? What did they need me for? They were younger and stronger than I was, more resolute and free. If they’d been real invalids, they would have aroused pity, and I would have had a good reason for taking care of them. But as they were — athletic, statuesque, proud — what I felt for them, rather than pity, was admiration: in them I saw the beauty of the savage and the terrible.

AUGUST 22, 2007

WHEN A PRIEST IS SENT to exercise his ministry in an economically depressed area, his first duty is to alleviate the poverty of his flock through acts of charity. Those acts will earn the gratitude of his beneficiaries, and, in due course, open the gates of heaven for him. He should remember, however, that poverty will not (alas!) be eradicated by the donations that his conscience, his vocation, and the directives of his superiors oblige him to make. Although charity may effectively address a temporary crisis or a specific case of need, it is not a long-term solution. Its provisional nature means that it has to be renewed over time, in the form of a continuous flow of material goods, for which a source must be found. The clergy, backed up by an institution that has, over the course of its millenary history, accumulated ample resources, is more than capable of meeting the demands of charity. But it should also be kept in mind that the minister of divine consolation has to live as well, with the dignity appropriate to his office, and the comforts that his upbringing and habits have rendered indispensable. These arrangements cost money, money that could, and really should, be used for charity. There has to be a balance, and common sense, combined with the priest’s good judgment and sense of propriety, will find that balance and maintain it. And yet it remains the case that the less a priest spends on himself and his relatives, the greater the means at his disposal for helping the needy, and the closer he will be to obtaining the corresponding heavenly reward. And this, on reflection, may prompt a suspicion: isn’t the exercise of charity shadowed by self-interest, pride, and vanity? Aren’t the poor being used as stepping-stones to sainthood? The suspicion is justified, and easy to confirm, but dangerously corrosive like all doubts, and finally paralyzing, because the alternative would be an egotistical indifference to the suffering of others. Here again, prudence, tempered in this case with trust in divine providence, will determine the right course of action.