Read Online The Seamstress and the Wind by César Aira - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: César Aira
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coiling in her veins. It was then that darkness fell (it must have been midnight) and the sky filled with stars.
She could no longer see her object, but still, she saw it. She hurried. She didn’t care if she was running toward her downfall. Th ere were so many downfalls! She’d never been lost in the dark before, rushing toward the first shape she saw in the last light to beg for refuge and consolation . . . but there’s a first time for everything. Nothing else mattered to her.
Delia was a young woman; she was barely past thirty. She was small, strong, well formed. It’s not a mere literary device to only say it now. For us children (I was her eleven-year-old son’s best friend), she was a señora, one of the mothers, an ugly and threatening old lady . . . But there were other perspectives. It is the child’s point of view that makes women look ridiculous; more precisely, it makes them look like transvestites, and therefore somewhat comical, like social artifacts whose only purpose, once the child’s perspective is pushed aside a little, is to make us laugh. And even so, they are real women, sexual, desirable, beautiful . . . Delia was one. Now, writing this, I ought to perform the readjustment, and it’s not easy. It’s as if my whole life were exhausted by the effort, and there remained no man with pen in hand, only a ghost . . . Now as I say “Delia was one” I am falsifying things, making ghosts of them. No, Delia is not the luminous miniature in the reels of any movie projector. I said she was a real woman, and I submit myself to my words, to some of them at least . . . to the words before they make sentences, when they are still purely present.
Suddenly she saw the enormous rectangles rise before her, like black walls that mercifully blocked her way. For most of the last three hundred feet she had believed that they were walls, but on arriving she saw her mistake: it was a truck, one of those gigantic tractor trailers, like the one that parked on her block, Chiquito’s truck . . . She was so distraught it didn’t occur to her even for a moment that it might be the same one (as it actually was), which would have ended her search . . .
Its lights were off, it was dark and silent, like a natural formation emerging from the plateau. Its thirty wheels, as tall as Delia, inflated with pounds of black pressure, rested on perfectly level earth. Th at’s what must have given it the appearance of a building.
Th e castaway marched toward the front of the truck, and on coming to the cabin she went carefully around, walking on tiptoe to see inside. Th e windshield, the size of a movie screen, covered the upper half of the truck’s flat front end. Th e constellations were reflected in the glass, and there was also a collection of butterflies smashed across it that the driver had not taken the trouble to clean off. Th e little pieces of wing, pale blue, orange, yellow, all with a metallic brilliance that intensified the light from the sky — were stuck there by their phosphorescent gel, tracing out capricious shapes in which Delia, even in her distraction, recognized lambs, tiny cars, trees, profiles, even butterflies.
Inside she saw no one, but that didn’t surprise her. She knew that truck drivers, when they parked for the night to sleep, went to bed in a little compartment behind the cabin, sometimes with room for two people or more. People said they were pretty comfortably arranged. She’d never seen one, but she’d heard about them. Omar, her son, had told her about the personal comforts Chiquito had in his truck, which we were always climbing on when we played. Even after making the appropriate deprecations for fantasy and the relative dimensions of a child, she’d believed him, because others had confirmed it and it was reasonable anyway. She was sure this nocturnal truck, so large and modern, would be no smaller than the one in her neighborhood (she didn’t know it was the same one).
She went to
She could no longer see her object, but still, she saw it. She hurried. She didn’t care if she was running toward her downfall. Th ere were so many downfalls! She’d never been lost in the dark before, rushing toward the first shape she saw in the last light to beg for refuge and consolation . . . but there’s a first time for everything. Nothing else mattered to her.
Delia was a young woman; she was barely past thirty. She was small, strong, well formed. It’s not a mere literary device to only say it now. For us children (I was her eleven-year-old son’s best friend), she was a señora, one of the mothers, an ugly and threatening old lady . . . But there were other perspectives. It is the child’s point of view that makes women look ridiculous; more precisely, it makes them look like transvestites, and therefore somewhat comical, like social artifacts whose only purpose, once the child’s perspective is pushed aside a little, is to make us laugh. And even so, they are real women, sexual, desirable, beautiful . . . Delia was one. Now, writing this, I ought to perform the readjustment, and it’s not easy. It’s as if my whole life were exhausted by the effort, and there remained no man with pen in hand, only a ghost . . . Now as I say “Delia was one” I am falsifying things, making ghosts of them. No, Delia is not the luminous miniature in the reels of any movie projector. I said she was a real woman, and I submit myself to my words, to some of them at least . . . to the words before they make sentences, when they are still purely present.
Suddenly she saw the enormous rectangles rise before her, like black walls that mercifully blocked her way. For most of the last three hundred feet she had believed that they were walls, but on arriving she saw her mistake: it was a truck, one of those gigantic tractor trailers, like the one that parked on her block, Chiquito’s truck . . . She was so distraught it didn’t occur to her even for a moment that it might be the same one (as it actually was), which would have ended her search . . .
Its lights were off, it was dark and silent, like a natural formation emerging from the plateau. Its thirty wheels, as tall as Delia, inflated with pounds of black pressure, rested on perfectly level earth. Th at’s what must have given it the appearance of a building.
Th e castaway marched toward the front of the truck, and on coming to the cabin she went carefully around, walking on tiptoe to see inside. Th e windshield, the size of a movie screen, covered the upper half of the truck’s flat front end. Th e constellations were reflected in the glass, and there was also a collection of butterflies smashed across it that the driver had not taken the trouble to clean off. Th e little pieces of wing, pale blue, orange, yellow, all with a metallic brilliance that intensified the light from the sky — were stuck there by their phosphorescent gel, tracing out capricious shapes in which Delia, even in her distraction, recognized lambs, tiny cars, trees, profiles, even butterflies.
Inside she saw no one, but that didn’t surprise her. She knew that truck drivers, when they parked for the night to sleep, went to bed in a little compartment behind the cabin, sometimes with room for two people or more. People said they were pretty comfortably arranged. She’d never seen one, but she’d heard about them. Omar, her son, had told her about the personal comforts Chiquito had in his truck, which we were always climbing on when we played. Even after making the appropriate deprecations for fantasy and the relative dimensions of a child, she’d believed him, because others had confirmed it and it was reasonable anyway. She was sure this nocturnal truck, so large and modern, would be no smaller than the one in her neighborhood (she didn’t know it was the same one).
She went to
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