The Divorce E-Book

César Aira

• Herausgeber: And Other Stories
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 147

Beschreibung

A divorce leads a man to Buenos Aires. In a trendy cafe he witnesses a minor accident involving Enrique; the owner of his guest house; this accident reunites Enrique with a childhood friend; with whom he had miraculously escaped from a raging fire in a miniature replica of a boarding school. So starts a true master-yarn from Booker finalist Aira.

Leseprobe

This edition published in 2021 by And Other Stories Sheffield – London – New Yorkwww.andotherstories.org

Originally published as El Divorcio by Mansalva in 2010

Copyright © César Aira, 2010 Translation copyright © Chris Andrews, 2021 Introduction copyright © Patti Smith, 2021

Arranged with Literarische Agentur Michael Gaeb, Berlin, Germany

All rights reserved. The rights of César Aira to be identified as author of this work, of Chris Andrews to be identified as the translator of this work, and of Patti Smith to be identified as the author of the introduction to this work have been asserted.

This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or places is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 9781913505042 eBook ISBN: 9781913505059

Editor: Stefan Tobler; Copy-editor: Emma Warhurst; Proofreader: Sarah Terry; Typesetting and eBook: Tetragon, London; Cover Design: Edward Bettison.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s PEN Translates programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org

And Other Stories gratefully acknowledge that our work is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Contents

A Kind of Introduction by Patti SmithTHE DIVORCE

‌A Kind of Introduction

I had some trepidation about accepting this task: in truth, I felt a bit like Zelig, popping up yet again in César Aira’s realm – first in the form of a blurb, and then with a book review, and now writing a kind of introduction, albeit a small one. But the personal upside would be winning such a unique privilege, this trifecta of admiration for a beloved and deserving writer. Unlike this marvellous work’s title (indicating a profound disassociation), nothing could please me more than the unique privilege of being associated with the cosmically mischievous and profound mind of César Aira.

I first collided with the author some time ago at a benevolently pristine literary festival in Denmark. I accosted him on a pathway and rambunctiously declared his book An Episode in the Life of a Landscape Painter a masterpiece, which he flatly denied. It was inexcusable of me, stopping the writer in his tracks to single out one novella within his prolific body of work, but the book had so beguiled me that I could not contain myself.

It wasn’t until I read and reviewed The Musical Brain that I realised why he’d been so cavalier about the merits of the book that I had fervently pedestalled. César Aira is gifted with a vastly flexible, kaleidoscopic mind: he can see the equation and the proofs simultaneously. He sets one crystal in place and a whole structure manifests. Reading the many tales in The Musical Brain, it became clear that the qualities I had so admired in An Episode were commonplace to his process: just something he does. He draws you – by a tap on the shoulder or by the scruff of your neck – into a cascading nightmare, filled with a brightness you cannot resist entering.

Which brings me to the genesis of the task at hand. It was mid-April, at the height of the pandemic in New York City, and I was sitting at my desk before the blank pages of my journal when the doorbell rang. I had been thinking of emptiness. I was thinking about how millions of the faithful would be denied the pilgrimage to Mecca. I was thinking of ghost towns and empty cathedrals and empty opera houses and empty playgrounds and the empty apartments of my Covid-fled neighbours.

I fitted my mask, opened the door, and there at the top of my stoop was a cloth bag. I looked around just in time to receive a wave from my masked benefactor heading uptown on an old-fashioned bicycle. The bag, which had been sanitised, was filled with books and a slim, innocent-looking galley. Seeing that it was a new work of César’s, I bounded up the stairs, pushed my work aside and began reading so hastily that I failed to remove my mask. The musical brain eats the keys, I mused, conscious that with César’s new book in hand I would most likely not get my own work done.

As I read The Divorce it started to snow. By page seven I was drawn from the pandemic emptiness into a world filled to the brim, where rooms are overflowing, as are mirror images of the rooms, as are multiple reflections, and reflections of reflections of projections of the rooms. I read as the April snow continued to fall. I read on and on, in tandem with the sudden spreading of full sun, dissolving that unexpected blanket of white. Needless to say, as I read the last words, I melted.

It is not my desire to spoil things for the reader by attempting to pin down the plot but let me offer some small selected sentences, scattered jewels from the sections I’ll call fire, evolution club, manual and ice.

FIRE:It had been a meeting and a parting in one, precipitated by an accident or an adventure that, over time, had grown in their memories, taking on cosmic proportions, like a galactic explosion.

EVOLUTION CLUB:There was nothing inside, except for an almost invisible object.

MANUAL:That would have explained the hollow mother-of-pearl stars that kept brushing her forehead, supported by nothing, like real stars.

ICE:The ice of Heaven was no less dangerous.

In the section I call manual, a search is on for an enigmatic handbook filled with all the necessary instructions to fulfil a certain occupation’s simplest duties. In a parallel fashion, The Divorce itself outlines the process for those wishing to comprehend or to experience the expansive possibilities of a single moment. That is his wondrous gift, and The Divorce is the personification of that gift.

I am writing these words at my desk, having been transformed by the work of another. Suddenly, I have new goals, and a plan to transform my own room, with its dusty skylight and piles of books and talismans, into the energised space of the book’s Evolution Club.

The wheel is turning. The wheel is the contained life of the book. Each spoke is an episode or a character. All are part of the same story, hitting the ground at different moments, setting off vibrations at various frequencies, created by whichever spoke or section of a spoke is the most prevalent at any given moment. Everything happens simultaneously. The empty frame contains a multitude of images: the end of sleep, the epic dream, the projection of the day ahead, the memory of the night before. All in the blink of an eye – and it’s up to the writer to break it down, with incredible stamina, spoke by spoke, and give us a story.

His book is his own. Nothing said here could truly add to the smallest effort from the master himself. César Aira is a psychedelic geometer, and it is certain that The Divorce will leave you breathless, and that is all I have left to say.

PATTI SMITHNew York City, October 2020

‌The Divorce

When I left Providence (Rhode Island) in early December, the first fall of snow already lay buried beneath the second, and the second fall beneath the third. I didn’t care what Henriette’s mother said, or the child psychologist at her kindergarten. It would be easier for her to accept my absence for a whole month than to have me show up on the doorstep of what had once been our house, knocking at the door like a stranger on Christmas morning or Boxing Day or Christmas Eve, after calling to make and confirm the arrangements, not to mention the parting that would have to follow. The divorce was still recent, and a new routine was gradually and painfully taking shape. I didn’t feel ready, in my new situation, to face the season’s cloying formalities. A temporary withdrawal on my part would be the kindest thing, for me and for my daughter. When I returned, all smiles and gifts, we would re-establish our relationship on the terms laid down by the judge.

This, in revised and summary form, is what I was saying to myself as the plane took off. What the explanation doesn’t convey, with its clear and reasonable wording, is the emotional turmoil that I had been going through for months, or the crisis that had led to my departure. Those feelings began to wane as the summer days went by in the beautiful city that I had chosen as the destination for my break. In the absence of significant others, I had the liberating sensation of being absent from myself. Sunny and rainy days alternated within a changeless continuum of light, a light that was always fine and delicate, touching things with fingertips, and lingering… This impression might have been caused by the lengthy evenings, and the leaves on the trees, whose high branches met over the streets, and the air washed clean by daily showers.

I had chosen Buenos Aires almost by accident: I wanted to go somewhere far away and with completely different weather; it was the only city I could think of that satisfied both conditions and in which I had acquaintances. I called them before travelling. Although I didn’t know them well, and hadn’t even met some of them in person, they swung into action and came to my aid with the hospitality so characteristic of those latitudes. They arranged my accommodation, and soon after arriving I had settled into a pleasant guest house in a neighbourhood that was so quiet and yet so full of attractions that I felt no need or desire to leave it during my stay. I was grateful for that practical help, of course, but even more so – and I reaffirm my gratitude here, in these pages – for the company, the conversation, the time those people spent with me.

Habits of leisure and relaxed sociability, without any discernible goal and all the more charming for their transience, established themselves within a few days. They were habits in the full sense of the word, as placid and reassuring as any others, but without that aftertaste of life imprisonment that habits generally have. The most regular – and in a way it included all the rest – was the habit of conversing at a pavement table belonging to one of the numerous cafés in the neighbourhood.

One morning it so happened that I was at a table outside El Gallego, chatting with a young woman named Leticia, a talented video artist I had met two nights earlier at a dinner in the same establishment. El Gallego was a charming little restaurant, run by its founder, owner and driving force, an old Spanish immigrant who had always been known simply as El Gallego. When lunch and dinner weren’t being served and even when they were, since the place was run in a fairly informal manner, it functioned as a café, bar and club for a varied local clientele, which I had been able to join without difficulty.

At one point we saw El Gallego himself come out onto the pavement. He was a tiny man; an inch shorter and he would have been a dwarf. In spite of his eighty years, he was still very active and in excellent physical condition. And I knew from my conversations with him that he was as mentally sharp as ever. The previous night, after saying goodbye to my dinner companions (they were heading home; my guest house was just around the corner – I didn’t even have to cross the road), I had stayed on, talking with him over a last drink until the small hours of the morning.

He came out onto the pavement, with his quick step and his purposeful air, to extend the canvas awning in front of the restaurant. At that time of day, nearly noon, the sun shone through a gap in the foliage, and a blinding band of light was advancing towards the tables and their occupants. Like a benevolent spirit, forever mindful of his customers’ comfort, El Gallego would not let anything bother us.

Absorbed in conversation with my young friend, I didn’t notice his presence until the incident occurred. It all happened quickly. As soon as El Gallego inserted the crank handle and started turning it, and the first fold of the awning opened out, a mass of water fell onto the pavement. It had rained overnight and the water had pooled in the canvas. Luckily it came down well away from the line of tables, and didn’t even splash us. Perhaps it wouldn’t have splashed us even if we had been closer, because it was as if every last drop had been absorbed by the victim: a young man with a bicycle. He wasn’t riding his bicycle but wheeling it; he had probably just got off and stepped up onto the pavement. The water doused him as if it had been expertly aimed. And it was no small amount. No shower of separate drops. It was a solid bucketful, gallons of it plunging with the force of gravity, right down onto him.

He stood there transfixed by surprise, fright and wetness. Especially wetness, which overpowered all the rest. He was drenched, down to the last thread of his clothes, the last strand of his hair and the last cell of his skin. He seemed to go on getting wetter, in a process that transcended the temporality of the accident. The water ran over his face and down his arms (eddying around his watch); smooth waves of it passed under his T-shirt, swelling and rippling the fabric; it flowed down inside his Bermuda shorts, formed little translucent curtains like glass tubes around his calves, and bubbled coldly all over his sandalled feet.

We stared in fascination, frozen like him. He was right there in front of our table. A moment passed, the briefest of moments, perhaps. Time is especially hard to measure in such circumstances. Perhaps no time passed at all, or only the infinitesimal fraction of a second required for the eye of the totally soaked young man to communicate with his brain. He didn’t have to look around because chance, as I said, had put him right there in front of our table; the same chance that had placed him beneath that cascade at just the right moment. He opened his mouth, parting the veils of water that were still flowing over his lips, and cried:

‘Leticia!’

The young video artist who was sitting with me, and had seen it all happen, suddenly found herself having to make a psychological readjustment. I know, because I was looking at her and could see the mental process reflected in her face. The protagonist of this episode had been a stranger, like every victim of a mishap witnessed in the street. It’s never Juan or Pedro but the guy who tripped or was mugged or got run over. But now, with the help of memory, she had to reassign the stranger to the category of people whose names she knew. This too was a very rapid operation. It happened in a flash, before all the water had fallen from the awning, or so it seemed:

‘Enrique!’

She leapt up, went straight over and hugged him, oblivious to getting wet. Then they stepped back to take each other in, to finish recognising one another, after all that time.