Read Online The Seamstress and the Wind by César Aira - Free Book Online Page B

the driver’s side door and knocked. She waited a moment, and as there was no response, she knocked again. She waited. Nothing. She knocked again. Toc toc. No one answered. Th e truck driver did not awake. But . . . what a smell of fried eggs! Delia had not had a bite to eat in an enormous number of hours, so that more than surprising her, she was beside herself with indignation that that incongruous smell taunted her so impishly, and it roused her to knock on the door again. “I’m going in,” she said to herself, as the silence persisted. Even so, she waited a little, and knocked again. It was useless. She knocked once more, now without much hope, and stood there for another moment, intent and expectant. She caught the smell again. It seemed obvious that it was coming from inside the truck; the truck driver must have been making dinner. And with her outside, dead from hunger and exhaustion, hundreds of miles from home! “I’m going in there, I don’t care,” she thought, but a remaining scrap of courtesy made her knock again, three times with her knuckles on the solid metal of the door, which felt like iron. She waited to see if he happened to hear her this time, but he didn’t.
    Getting in, once the decision was made, was not so easy. Th ose trucks seemed to be made for giants. Th e door was extremely high. But it had a kind of foothold and from there she managed to reach the handle. It wasn’t locked, but activating the hydraulic door handle demanded almost superhuman strength. In the end she managed it by hanging from it with all her weight. Th e door of a truck, like any vehicle, inverse to that of a house, opens out. And this one opened all the way, welcoming her, but also carrying her along on its arc . . . Th e foothold disappeared from beneath her feet and she was left swinging there, hanging from the handle, six feet off the ground. She couldn’t believe she was pirouetting like this, like a naughty child. “And now what do I do?” she wondered with alarm. Th ere did not appear to be a solution. She could let herself fall, trusting that she wouldn’t break a leg, and then climb up again by the foothold, in which case she didn’t see how she would be able to shut the door again, although that was the least of her problems. In any case, she did it the hard way: she stretched out a leg and pushed off hard from the wall of the cab, so the door began to swing shut; and then before it could make contact, at just the right moment, she let go of the handle and grabbed the side mirror. Hanging there she managed to get her body far enough into the opening to place a foot inside, and with a second act of risky acrobatics she let go of the door handle for good and got hold of the steering wheel. Th is was not as firm as her previous supports; it turned, and Delia, surprised, was suddenly horizontal, and in the rush of falling she opened both hands and brought them to her face. Luckily she fell inside, on the floor of the cab, but with her head hanging out, and the door, on its last swing, was coming toward her . . . It would have neatly decapitated her if an unknown force hadn’t stopped it a millimeter from her neck. Th e sharp metal edge retreated softly and Delia, without waiting for it to come back, pulled her head out of the way. She moved around, extremely uncomfortable, trying to get onto the seat. Th e space was so large, or she was so small, that she was able to stand up, with her back to the windshield.
    She tried to turn halfway around to sit and wait for her heart to calm down, but she couldn’t. With terror she felt a steely pressure that circled her waist and kept her from moving. If she had fainted — and it wouldn’t have taken much more of that paralyzing fear to make her do it — she would have stayed on her feet, held up by the pitiless ring. And it wasn’t an illusion, or a cramp; she put both hands on her waist and felt a kind of rigid snake, hard and smooth to the touch, circling her