César Aira: The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira

But, according to the law of the circle, everything flowed into its opposite, and the lie moved in a great curve toward the truth, theater toward reality. . The authentic, the spontaneous, were on the reverse side of these transparencies.

Be that as it may, the ambulance kept driving, the dog kept barking like crazy at the wheels (the sound waves of the siren, which continued wailing, must have carried the ultrasound frequency of the television broadcast, which the animal perceived), and the two dimwits kept holding forth. Now their alternating discourses focused on the patient — his personal circumstances, his history. How had that poor devil ended up in the state he was in? In the usual way, one any doctor could discover on a daily basis in the majority of the population: an unnatural diet and the exacerbation of the passions. This was the deadly duo that caused more premature deaths than war. Dr. Aira was struck by this old-fashioned and solemn vocabulary, but he reflected that this anachronism was enough to suggest a second interpretation on the next level into which everything would be translated if he succumbed: the “deadly duo” would turn into the abuse of minors and the enthusiasm for televised soccer.

In any case, whatever they were saying served no purpose other than as visual backup for the dubbing they would add subsequently to the film. It might even have been planned in order to provoke from him certain responses that in the dubbed version would become replicas of other sentences; because the only voice they wouldn’t dub over would be his, but they could radically change the meaning based on the context, which they did plan to change.

One concept was repeated more often than the others: “vegetative state.” In fact, the organism had already passed into the realm of brainlessness, after which all that remained was to continue to exist, no longer act, only react to the environment; at this point it could absorb only the effect of the medicine, without any further possibility of assimilating it in order to transform its effects. Of course, the phrase could be erased from the tape, but if it was uttered in the ambulance it was in order to provoke a certain response. Actyn must have been aware of his conversations with trees (how did he find out, the rascal?) and was attacking on that flank.

He was reminded of an episode in an old gothic novel: a monk with apostatizing tendencies demanded a miracle in order to remain in the monastery, an impossible condition for he was sure there would be no miracle. His interlocutor told him that if it was necessary, God would produce a miracle to keep him in the fold, and he told him to suggest one. They were sitting in the monastery garden, at the foot of a majestic tree. . The monk, somewhat at random, said he wanted “this tree to dry up.” Needless to say, the next morning the tree was desiccated (the monks, true infernal Actynes, used a lethal chemical). Dr. Aira, that impenitent flaneur, would have asked to “dry up all the trees in Buenos Aires,” the entire forest of strange crisscrossing lines he got lost in on a daily basis. And the miracle could occur! Or directly did occur. . After all, they were at the end of autumn.

He startled.

“Hey!”

Where were they? Where were they taking him? Had they gone mad? Would desperation have led Actyn to seriously consider violence? José Bonifacio Street kept going, on and on, always in a straight line. . Everybody thought the streets of Buenos Aires actually continued beyond the city limits, into the countryside, there turning into the streets of faraway towns, then again continuing into the countryside. . Past the small windows, which he looked through out of the corner of his eye so as not to take his eyes off the two little doctors, he glimpsed an infinite expanse, which must have been the Pampa. If it was, something had happened, something far beyond a joke. Nothing could be more realistic or more normal than a straight line, but following it one could also move into the marvelous. He had a miniature vision inside his head: the ambulance driving through an infinite and empty desert, and the dog running alongside the wheel, barking. . Finally he spoke, interrupting some elaborate nonsensical explanation in mid sentence — and they stopped talking, because this is what they wanted: for him to talk.

“The answer is no.”

“No what, doctor?”

“I’m not going to do anything for this man, or for anybody else. I never have and you know that very well.”

“But your gift, Dr. Aira. . The Miracle Cures. . ”

“No cures or curates, and no monks, either. I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“What do you mean, you have no idea? So why are you famous? Why do all the terminal cases beg for you?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never. . ”

“Is it an invention of the media? Why did we spend half the morning looking for you, wasting time we could have spent performing brain surgery? You’re not going to tell us we’ve been duped.”

“I’ve got nothing to do with it. I want to get out.”

They suddenly changed tactics. The screens all turned red and began to emit blood-curdling beeps (surely they had secretly pushed some button). They threw themselves over the stretcher, shouting:

“A systemic collapse! He’s failing! There’s nothing to be done!”

In spite of their pessimism, they worked like the devil, shouting at each other, even swearing, all in an attack of hysteria. They applied electric paddles to the poor man, who was turning blue, seizing, writhing. The odor of strange chemical substances made it impossible to breathe. At the same time, the huge nurse stepped on the gas, as if he’d also been infected, and shouted incoherent orders over the siren’s loudspeakers. Even the dog was going nuts. In the midst of this indescribable chaos, Ferreyra turned to him and shouted:

“Dr. Aira, this is our last chance. Do something! Save a life!”

“No, no. . I have never. . ”

“Do something! We’re losing him!”

He was groping behind him for the door handle. He had decided to throw himself out the door, if necessary while still in motion. Again they changed tactics. Suddenly, all the screens went blank, and everybody calmed down, as if by magic.

“We’ll take you home, don’t worry. The patient has died.”

“You’re going to have to sign a form. . ”

“No.”

“. . to explain the use of the ambulance.”

“I’ve got nothing to do with it.”

“Okay, good-bye.”

They had stopped. They opened the door. As he was getting out, the dead man said:

“Jackass.”

He could have sworn it was Actyn’s voice, which he’d only ever heard on television. He stepped onto the sidewalk and looked around. The dog had disappeared, and the ambulance had already taken off, accelerating loudly. It was only at that moment that he felt a wave of adrenaline washing over his insides. This lag, like jet lag, had rendered him ineffectual, for the chance to beat the hell out of those charlatans had already passed. The same thing always happened to him: his indignation, which was torturous, came afterwards when he was alone, when he couldn’t fight with anybody but himself. Always the same concatenation between time and blunders. A civilized person like him couldn’t lament not having engaged in a knock-down-drag-out, but there remained a question about whether he was a Real Man or a scurrying rat. He was two blocks away from his house. He looked at the trees, the large banana trees along José Bonifacio Street, and it occurred to him that they were machines designed to crush the world until the atoms were released. That’s how he felt, and this was the natural effect of theater. Who said that lies lead to the truth, that fiction flows into reality? Theater’s misfortune was this definitive and irreversible dissolution. That was also its gravity, above and beyond the iridescent lightness of fiction.