Cesar Aira: How I Became A Nun

I was a victim of the terrible cyanide contamination … the great wave of lethal food poisoning that was sweeping Argentina and the neighboring countries that year … The air was thick with fear, because it struck when least expected; any foodstuff could be contaminated, even the most natural … potatoes, pumpkin, meat, rice, oranges … In my case it was ice cream. But even food lovingly prepared at home could be poisoned … Children were the most vulnerable … they had no resistance. Housewives were at their wit’s end. A mother could kill her baby with baby food. It was a lottery … So many conflicting theories … So many deaths … The cemeteries were filling up with little tombstones, tenderly inscribed … Our angel has flown to the arms of the Lord … signed: his inconsolable parents. I got off lightly. I survived. I lived to tell the tale … but in the end I had to pay a high price … like they say: Buy cheaply, pay dearly.

My illness duplicated itself. I should have expected it … had I been capable of expecting anything, which I certainly wasn’t. The affliction manifested itself as a kind of cruel equivalence. While my body writhed in physical pain, elsewhere, for different reasons, my soul was subjected to an equivalent torture. My soul … the fever … In those days it wasn’t standard practice to control fever with medication … They let it run its course, interminably … I was in a state of unremitting delirium, with plenty of time to concoct the most baroque stories … I had my ups and downs, I suppose, but the stories followed one another in a sustained rush of invention … They fused into one, which was the reverse of a story … because my anxiety was the only story I had, and the fantasies didn’t settle or hang together … So I couldn’t even enter them and lose myself …

One of the forms the story took was the Flood. I was at home … back in Pringles, in the house we had left to come to Rosario … which was no longer ours … we would never live there again. The water was rising, and I was in bed, staring at the roof, rigid with fear … I couldn’t even turn my head to see the water … but reflections from the rising surface were making whitish loops on the ceiling … It was pure fiction, with no basis in reality, because we had never even come close to being flooded …

Another form of the story: I was offering poisoned chocolates to my parents … Chocolate on the outside, then a very thin layer of glass, and, inside, a solution of arsenic in alcohol … There was no antidote … No way back … Dad took one, Mom too … I wanted to rewind time, I was sorry, but it was too late … They were going to die … The police would have no trouble establishing the cause of death … they would interrogate me … I decided to confess everything, to cry rivers of tears and let the current sweep me away … But even death was no consolation, since without Mom and Dad how could I live anyway? And the worst thing was that it was unheard of for a little girl to kill her parents … absolutely unheard of …

And another (but this was an alternative version of the Flood): an animal swimming in the inundated house, an otter … It would bite our feet if we tried to walk in the rising water … If my hand slipped from the sheet it would eat my fingers one by one …

Yet another: I was still rigid with fear, my head propped up on a thick pillow, and my mother went to open the cupboard with green glass doors opposite the bed, in which I kept my books… To tell the truth I didn’t have any books: I was too young, I hadn’t learnt to read … I began to panic … I could hardly breathe … What had Mom gone to get from the cupboard? Could she have known? She was taking advantage of my helplessness to … Any moment now she would find it, my secret … Stop, Mom! Don’t do it! It will only bring you grief, the most terrible grief of your life! A grief to match my shame and terror …

Needless to say there was no secret … I never had any secrets, although, at the same time, everything was a secret, but not on purpose … Delirium provided a model, and not just a model … Mom was rummaging through the cupboard … as the waters rose … instead of doing something useful, like picking me up and carrying me in her arms across the fields, over the flooded plains to a safe place! I hated her for that … She went on searching, in a daze, although the otter, who had suddenly become my accomplice, was gnawing at her ankles under the water … and I knew that she had only minutes left to live, the poison would already be taking effect … that is, if she had eaten the chocolate. And I hoped to God she had!

I hoped … if only … But no. It wasn’t a matter of this or that happening … but of how the events were combined, or rather the order in which they occurred … The ordering was different … They were repeating themselves … Or rather, drifting free … When it was really bad, I wondered if I was going crazy.

Over all these stories hovered another, more conventional in a way, but more fantastic too. Separate from the series, it functioned like a “background,” always there. It was a kind of static story … a chilling episode, with a wealth of horrific details … It filled me with dread, making the four-part delirium seem like light entertainment by comparison … Except that it wasn’t just one more element, a bolt of lightning in a stormy sky … it was everything that was happening to me … everything that would happen to me in an eternity that had not yet begun and would never end … I was the girl in an illustrated book of fairy tales; I had become a myth … I was seeing it from inside …

From inside … I was alone in the house. Mom and Dad had gone to a wake and they had left me shut inside … in that little old house in Pringles where we no longer lived … alone with my four cartoon stories going round and round in my head … my crown of thorns … the two doors were locked, the wooden shutters closed … a safe for my parents’ living treasure: me. The realism was meticulous, hermetic … But when I say that I was alone, that the house was locked, that it was night, these are not circumstances, or sundry elements that could be linked in a series … The series (the flood, the otter, the chocolates, the secret) was out there, using up all the delirium my fever could generate… The only thing left in here was reality, in one great cumbersome, wildly plausible block …

I had been sternly instructed not to open the door to anyone, under any circumstances. As if I needed to be told! My life depended on it, and not only my life. It was the first time I had been left on my own (this never happened in reality) but it was unavoidable … The first time is always frightening, because of the unknown … I was confident, the instructions were simple … Don’t open the door. I could do that. It was easy. They could trust me. Anyway, who would come, at midnight …? My life and my safety depended on the answer to that question … Who, who, who could it be?

But someone was knocking at the front door! Beating as if they wanted to break it down! They weren’t just knocking: they were trying to get in … Why would they want to do that, if not to kill me? And I was alone …! They must have known … they knew perfectly well; that was why they had come … At best, they were burglars … The security of the house was in my hands, but my hands were so feeble. I was shaking like a leaf, on the other side of the door … Why had they left me on my own? What was so important that they had to abandon me?

The worst thing was … it was them … it was Mom and Dad knocking at the door! The monsters had taken on the appearance of my Mom and Dad … I don’t know how I saw them, through the keyhole, I guess, standing on tiptoe … I got goose-pimples from head to foot, I froze … the likeness was amazing … they had stolen their faces, their clothes, their hair … not much hair from Dad because he was bald, but all Mom’s red curls … They were perfect imitations, flawless … The trouble they had gone to! Those beings who had no form, or wouldn’t reveal it to me … those simulacra … with their sinister intentions … Terror froze my blood, I couldn’t think …