César Aira - The Musical Brain - And Other Stories

But the future has not arrived, not by a long way. Well before the completion of the house, the priest began work on its surroundings, which are at least as important, in his eyes, as the edifice itself. The planting of the gardens, under the supervision of expert landscape architects, began at the same time as the digging of the foundations. And now that the house is furnished and ready, he turns his attention to the outside. From the splendid curved staircases at the rear of the building, a formal French garden will stretch away for two hundred yards: carefully clipped pyramidal box plants, paths of fragrant herbs, flower beds, little round-topped trees alternating with statues, and, in the middle of the central roundabout, an imposing fountain with a profusion of crisscrossing jets and a large group of sculpted figures visible through the spray and the rainbows. Two long arbors open their arches like wings, giving onto the grounds proper, with their hectares of lawn, copses of exotic trees, bamboo thickets, flower-lined paths that wind among knolls made from earth dug up for the artificial lake, rocks transported from faraway places to create picturesque crags, and densely wooded tracts with undergrowth. Birds gladden these wild corners, and the priest populates the lake with carp, pike, and silvery trout.

Busy with these open-air tasks, he finds that he has more time, not because there is less work, but because the time of the plant kingdom, to which he attunes himself, is bountiful. Daylong walks on the thousand paths of the grounds compensate him now for the reclusion he imposed on himself while attending to the needs of the house. He stops here and there to admire a flower or a mushroom, to hear the trilling of a bird or meditate on the example of the laborious ant. And he is delighted to catch glimpses of the dream palace he has built, displaying its various aspects when seen from different angles, or modestly veiled and revealed by foliage.

But walkers naturally tend to range farther afield, and one day he reaches the outer edges of the grounds and continues until he comes to the houses (so to speak) of his parishioners. He is horrified by what he sees. He has been isolated for a long time, absorbed in his work, and although he has kept these poor people in mind as an objective or a mission, their concrete reality has become hazy. Now, with a shudder of surprise, he realizes that time has been passing for the poor as well, with devastating effects. Suspicious gazes, as dark as the shadows they inhabit, emerge from the black holes of the huts, along with the stench of human and animal cohabitation. Women aged by deprivation, physical abuse, and constant childbearing run away to hide their ragged clothing and their bare feet, gnarled by cold. Naked children with bulging bellies and fearful wide-open eyes watch him pass. The old (which, here, means people over forty) display the signs of their decrepitude: paralysis, blindness, dementia of various kinds. Sickness reigns, and those it doesn’t kill are not strengthened by the ordeal, quite the contrary. Full of shame, the men avoid his gaze. Groans of suffering, tubercular coughs, and wails of mourning are the only music in these places of affliction. It seems to him that the conditions have worsened abysmally, although an exact comparison is impossible because so much time has passed since his last assessment and he has been so preoccupied with other problems in the meantime that his memories are rather confused. Reasonably, he reflects that, however it is measured, poverty is always poverty.

The shock caused by this vision, in contrast with the recent experience of seeing his work (the house) visibly there in a concrete, realized form, if not completely finished, makes him stop and think. It’s true that for the price of just one of the expensive pieces of furniture in the house, one of the Bokhara rugs, a single painting or statue, even a single fork crafted by a Florentine silversmith, a whole neighborhood of decent little dwellings could be built, with sewage and heating. In his heart of hearts, he knows that he is doing the right thing, but he wonders if in the eyes of the world he might appear to be egotistical. . Egotistical, him? Everything he’s done has been for someone else. His bowels writhe at the thought of that monstrous accusation. And an evil or mischievous inner spirit tempts him to even greater self-mortification, for fear that, of all people, his successor, the beneficiary of all his efforts, might reprove him on precisely those grounds. . And yet, in the depths of the anxiety provoked by this speculation, he finds the way out: he has never intended to explain himself, for example by leaving a message for his successor; the true nature of his work is not to be disclosed; all its merit shall remain a secret between himself and God. What does imperfect human justice matter? But he backs away from these thoughts, not wanting to fall into the trap of sanctimonious pride or the temptation of martyrdom.

He also backs away from the vision of those harsh realities whose contemplation posed a threat to his equanimity. He returns to his house, where there is still quite a lot to do, and the wretched of the earth will be hidden from his sight.

There really is something missing from the house: that lived-in feel. He doesn’t want his successor to move into an impersonal, purely material structure. Lived-in houses, full of things that have been used and loved, have a warmth that can’t be faked. And that’s what he decides to work on now; it’s a restful way of passing the time, a reward for the long, exhausting tasks that went before.

As he lives his own life there, the priest discovers that certain things required for the future incumbent to be fully at home are still missing from the house, or perhaps from life itself. Small things, which become apparent only when the need arises. And supplying them, lovingly, one by one, occupies the rest of the earthly sojourn granted him by Providence. Every day he feels he is a little closer to that intuited center, a point in time, not space, which both encloses and reveals the mystery of Charity. He has come to identify that center with a man, the man he has created by thinking of him constantly, and, in a sense, obeying him. The house is full of that beloved, long-awaited stranger: it has all been done for him, so it’s hardly surprising that his absence informs every nook and cranny of the house. Although he is a single man, he is many men in one, all men, in a way. Which is why nothing can be alien to him, a priori. Anything that happens to cross the priest’s mind might be relevant. One day, for instance, a chance association of ideas leads him to chess. . What if his successor likes chess? Why not? And immediately he orders a board and a set of pieces and a little table, and even a timer in case the next priest is a serious player (why not?), and another portable, magnetic board, for traveling or taking on walks in the grounds, and a small but comprehensive set of chess books. . And since he wants it all to have been experienced already, he refreshes his knowledge of the game and starts playing. .

Death surprises him in the midst of another such task (although it’s not really a surprise, because with the passing years he has gone into decline, the maladies of age arriving along with the inner peace that comes from having achieved one’s goal). Ill now, confined to his room and his bed, he remembers that briefly, as a child, he was a passionate stamp collector. And since it has become second nature to turn every thought to the future incumbent, he thinks of what a joy it would be for that priest to find a fine stamp collection on arriving at the house, and how it would free him to spend more time bringing material and spiritual succor to the faithful. He contacts specialist dealers and acquires sets of stamps, collections from various countries, albums, tweezers, catalogs. With loving care, he files away those tiny squares of paper with their perforated edges, marveling at the colors, the figures, the way they evoke distant lands and, at the same time, recall his childhood. The final purchase: a Chinese chest with many drawers and compartments in which to keep the albums and boxes.