Read Online The Conversations (New Directions Paperbook) by César Aira - Free Book Online Page B

difficulties. Who would spend months working to obtain such a trivial piece of information? We would have to pay a private detective, who would need assistants, perhaps also pay bribes, and, moreover, take certain precautions because a spy might be subject to legal reprisals for violations of privacy. And the result, laborious and expensive, would be merely the first link; it would all have to be started over with a second, then a third, a fourth . . .
    One had to admit, however, that it was possible. Th e two of them, with all their experience, and with the experience of having survived, were living proof. Th at ordinary man who combed through the urban labyrinth to find the Grail of scissors was the image of the destiny they had chosen, or that had chosen them. The fleeting nature of information leaped from head to head, and resignation to imperfection was merely another maneuver in the search for perfection. How ascetic
espionage was!
    This simile, like any well-wrought allegory, allowed for further expansion. Th at chain, which would lead through its series of human links to the best of all possible barbers, could be cut (precisely, be cut!) before it had gotten very far if one of the barbers in the chain was bald and had no need for the services of a colleague. Or, by mere accident, for example, if barber number X found a colleague who created true disasters on the heads of his clients, but who could cut his, and only his, hair perfectly because of the particular shape of his head or the nature of his curls. (Though in this case, the chain would not need to be cut, because that defective barber who by accident got it right would also need to find a barber to cut his own hair.) Or, it could be cut if two barbers simply cut each others’ hair, whereby the chain would end in a little circle, a “ringlet,” to use the terminology of the profession. ( Th e circle could also be large, and by carrying things to their ultimate consequences, could “link up” all the barbers in the world.) Th ey had — Bradley reminded his friend, who nodded with a sad smile — lived through all these possibilities, and those “cuts” had left their marks on them, like scars on their brains.
    In spite of my best intentions to move along quickly and sum things up so I could get to my point as soon as possible, I took my time in this detailed account of their conversation, and when I reconstructed ours at night, I went over it again, word by word. It was my favorite moment in the movie, the one that vindicated it, even if the producers had included it merely as filler, or to create a moment of calm to contrast with the vertigo of the action that for them and the mass audience justified the movie. The logic Bradley brandished, though ingenious, was really quite off the wall. But I liked that there had been a conversation, an exercise in intelligence between friends, which was similar to ours. The whisky was a good detail. It placed things in a different dimension, which is where things should be.
    Quickly, slowly — what did these words mean in this context? Events happened at the velocity reality dictated they should happen. It was only in the telling that they could be sped up or stopped altogether, and there were probably people who transformed their lives into stories in order to be able to change speeds. But thought moved forward at a static pace, always doubling back upon itself to stop better, or rather to find better reasons to stop. Th ose of us who had made the voluptuousness of thought the raison d’être of our lives, like my friend and I, watched the velocities from the outside, as a spectacle. That’s why we could enjoy, even for a moment, the cheap spectacle of a movie on television. In a certain way one could say that at the peak of prejudice against popular culture, one ceased to have prejudices and no longer cared about anything.
    Bradley and his old friend did not enjoy the calm of their conversation for very long. For