César Aira - The Literary Conference

The strangeness that made everything sparkle came from me. Worlds rose out of my bottomless perplexity.

“So, am I capable of love?” I asked myself. “Can I really love truly, like in a soap opera, like in reality?” The question surpassed the thinkable. Love? Me, love? Me, the brain man, the aesthete of the intellect? Wouldn’t something need to happen to make it possible, some cosmic sign, an event that would turn the course of events around, an eclipse of a kind. .? Inches away from my shoe, one more atom crystallized in a blaze of transparency, then another. . If I could love, just like that, without the universe getting turned upside down, the only persistent condition that made reality real was contiguity: that things were next to things, in rows or on plates. . No, it was impossible, I couldn’t believe it. Nevertheless. . Plop! Another atom of air, in front of my face, initiating another spiral of splendid combustion. If all conditions can be reduced to a single condition, it is this: Adam and Eve were real.

Nelly and I, sitting on a stone bench under the trees, were as pale as a sheet of paper. My features were as drawn as could be, an old man’s face, pale, bloodless, my hair sticking out. I knew this because I was looking at my reflection in the glass of the Exoscope we had in front of us. The actors of the University Theatre had brought it to the disco at the end of the party, to pay me a goodbye homage; we danced around it like savages enacting a rain dance, watching our reflections in miniature and upside down. Afterward, drunk as they were, they left it behind, and I made the effort to carry it to the plaza, thinking that sooner or later they would remember it and come get it — they needed it for the show’s official opening.

I had to admit they had done a good job. The dawn was fully reflected in the Exoscope, and in that dawn, the two of us, as if after the end of the world. With great effort I turned my eyes away from the instrument’s glass and looked directly at Nelly. Without knowing why, I asked her a stupid question.

“What are you thinking about?”

She remained quiet but alert for a moment, her eyes lost in the void.

“Do you hear that, César? What’s going on?”

I could have sworn the silence was absolute, though as a foreigner I was unable to determine what was normal or abnormal within that silence. In any case, it was not the silence that was puzzling Nelly. Awakening from my reverie, I heard shouts of alarm, cars suddenly accelerating, sirens, all in a kind of dull buzz that pulsated around me, still not disturbing the otherworldly peace of the city center, though approaching.

“The birds have stopped singing,” Nelly whispered, “even the flies have gone into hiding.”

“Could it be an earthquake?” I ventured.

“Could be,” she said noncommittally.

A car drove past the plaza at full speed. Behind it came a military truck full of armed soldiers, one of whom saw us and shouted something, but they were driving so fast we couldn’t understand him.

“Look!” Nelly shouted, pointing up.

I looked up and saw a crowd of people on the roof terrace of a building, all staring off into the distance and shouting. The same thing was happening on the balconies of the other buildings around that plaza. Right in front of us the cathedral bells began to ring. In a flash the streets were thronging with cars filled with entire families. . It seemed like collective madness. As far as I was concerned, it might have been normal: I didn’t know the customs of that city, and nothing precluded this from being what happened every Sunday at dawn: the locals coming out onto their balconies and terraces to check the weather, and shouting out joyfully that it was a beautiful day for their outings and sporting events; the cathedral bells, for their part, calling people to morning services; families leaving early for their picnics. . If I hadn’t been with Nelly I could have taken it as the normal Sunday routine. But she was extremely puzzled, and even a bit alarmed.

It was obvious that whatever was happening was happening far away, and far away in this small, enclosed valley meant the surrounding mountains. We couldn’t see them from the plaza, but there were panoramic views from any of the adjacent streets, one of the city’s great tourist attractions. I stood up. Nelly must have been thinking the same thing because she also got up and quickly figured out the closest spot where we could find out what was happening.

“Let’s go to the archway on Humboldt Street,” she said, already starting off. That archway, which I was familiar with, was about one hundred yards away; it stood at the foot of a very long public stairway that was so steep you could see half the valley from there. I started to follow her, then stopped her with my hand.

“Should we leave this monstrosity here?” I asked, pointing to the Exoscope.

She shrugged. We left it and walked off quickly. In the brief time it took us to get to the archway, just a short distance away, the activity in the streets had increased so much it was difficult to make our way through the crowds. Everybody was nervous, some were terrified, most were rushing around as if their lives depended on it. Everyone was talking, but I couldn’t understand a word, as if they were speaking foreign languages, which must be a natural effect of panic.

When we got there, we saw it. It was so astonishing it took a while for me to absorb. To begin with, we saw that the alarm was justified, to say the least. I don’t know exactly how to describe it. At first, it was otherworldly; it was still dawn, the sun hadn’t yet appeared, the sky was very clear and very empty, bodies projected no shadows. . and colossal blue worms were slowly descending from the mountain peaks. . I’m aware that stating it like this might bring automatic writing to mind, but stating it is my only choice. It seems like the insertion of a different plot line, from an old B-rated science fiction movie, for example. Nevertheless, the seamless continuity had at no time been interrupted. They were living beings, of this I was certain: I had too much experience manipulating life forms to make that mistake. There are some movements no machine can imitate. I calculated the size of the worms: they were approximately one thousand feet long and seventy feet in diameter; they were almost perfect cylinders, with no heads or tails, although their geometric form had to be mentally reconstructed because they were coiling and twisting and changing shape as they moved across the anfractuous mountain terrain. They also looked soft and slimy, but their formidable weight could be deduced by observing them displace enormous rocks along their way, sunder the mountainside, and reduce whole trees to splinters. The most extraordinary thing, which would have been worthy of admiration had the circumstances not added an extra touch of terror, was their color: a phosphorescent blue with watery tones, like an almost darkened sky, a blue that seemed dampened by fresh placentas.

Nelly grabbed my arm. She was horrified. I swept my eyes along the perimeter of this great Andean amphitheater: there were hundreds of worms, all descending toward the city. From the shouts, which I quickly began to understand, I learned that the same thing was occurring in the mountains behind us, the ones we couldn’t see from where we stood. I’ve already said that Mérida is completely surrounded by mountains. This meant only one thing: very soon we would be crushed by the monsters. The landslides they were provoking were cataclysmic; the entire valley shook as stones the size of houses tumbled down the slopes, and there was probably already vast destruction on the outskirts. A simple projected calculation revealed that the city was doomed. Two or three of these worms would be enough to leave no brick standing. And there were hundreds of them! Moreover, with horror and despair I realized that the quantity was indefinite. . and increasing. It was as if they kept being born, and the process showed no signs of stopping.