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from expressive restrictions, took on their own velocity.
In a way, the exterior world could be deemed void: the nurses, the relatives who
took their seats as if expecting to listen to a concert, and a small group of
teenagers who looked at him with vague disapproval. What did he care! Relieved
of naturalness, he felt as if anything was allowed.
    He walked over to the bed. The man was lying on his back,
his head and upper back propped against large pillows and with an orthopedic
brace around his neck. His arms were stretched out on top of a sky-blue sheet,
which was folded down over his heart. He was not wearing a watch. A thick gold
wedding band was on the ring finger of his right hand.
    His features were frozen into a somewhat ill-tempered,
irritable grimace. He had not a single hair on his head. He was staring back at
him, but his pupils were not moving. Dr. Aira tried to read those eyes that were
locked on his, and the only thing that occurred to him was the melodramatic idea
that they had the texture of death. Death is always nearby, and its shapes and
colors inhabit all drawings of the world, in full view but also hidden, all too
visible, acting like a narcotic on one’s attention. One sees only what one wants
to see. As if disappearance formed part of appearance. Sometimes one needs a
word (the word “death”) to make volumes and perspectives stand out. On this
occasion the word had been spoken, and Dr. Aira understood that only through it
did he have any chance of success. The only course of action was to take the man
for dead, the activities of his life spent; not only could he consider it over,
along with all the treatments and spiritual remedies, but he should, then begin
from the other side. There was no other way to begin.
    An idea was dawning on him, and its phases were cascading
toward him. In reality, nobody was rushing him, but he had been thrust upon
time. He wondered if he’d have enough space. When he turned his eyes away from
the patient’s, where they’d been glued, he felt as if he’d lost some of his
strength. Even so, out of inertia, he kept figuring things out. To his right, on
the wall facing the street, was a large French door covered with a thick,
dark-red velvet curtain. He went over to it and pulled on the cord, which opened
the panels sideways. There was a balcony. He didn’t go out (he was afraid they’d
think he was going to jump), but he glanced up. Right in front, between two tall
building, he could see a strip of star-studded sky. He returned to the bed,
leaving the door open. In the room the cold night air began to be felt, but
nobody objected. He looked back into the patient’s eyes to recharge his
batteries. He needed all his strength for what he was planning to attempt.
    It was an old idea, which had remained latent in the
depths of his mind all the years he had devoted to the Miracle Cures. He had
never kept files with a strict chronology, and his papers had gotten mixed up
again and again, a thousand times (his ideas were annotations on his ideas), so
he couldn’t be absolutely certain, but he had the impression that it had been
his first idea, the original Miracle Cure. In that case, and in accordance with
the law of Decreasing Output, it was his best. It was based on the following, if
somewhat simplified, reasoning:
    A miracle, in the event that one occurred, should mobilize
all possible worlds, for there could not be a rupture in the chain of events in
reality without the establishment of another chain, and with it a different
totality. As long as the operation dealt with alternative worlds, however, it
would be an impractical fantasy. As far as facts were concerned, there was only
one world, and that was where the insurmountable veto against miracles arose.
And the truth is, there were no miracles, as anybody with a little common sense
could ascertain. Someone like Dr. Aira, who didn’t even believe in God, could
not entertain the least shadow of a doubt in that