Free The Miracle Cures of Dr. Aira by César Aira

were rife with miracles, and others
had none.
    Also left hanging, until now, was the practical aspect per
se, that is, how to do it once it had been proven to be possible. When the
theory is solid, the practice comes on its own. He simply had to dig in, and if
he hadn’t done so before now it was because he hadn’t had the opportunity. Now
the moment had arrived, and it was futile for him to reproach himself for having
left the delicate question of the practice, in its entirety, to be improvised at
the scene of events, especially considering the long stretches of free time he’d
had over the years; because experience had taught him that practice couldn’t be
thought about like theory, or if it was, its nature changed, it became theory,
and practice itself remained un-thought about. It was futile to have regrets,
above all because he was already seeing the solution arrive on time for its
appointment, and although it was very complicated, it appeared to him all at
once, in an avalanche whose movement he knew well. Like a philosophical
handyman, he carried ideas and fragments of ideas from other fields around in
his head, and the way they instantaneously adapted to his needs elated him, as
if all his problems had come to an end.
    The operational tool came from the field of
publishing. It was the “foldout” we’ve already mentioned, which had figured on
his list of luxurious and unrealizable fantasies for his installments. Here the
page foldout turned into the form of a foldout screen, with indefinite though
not unlimited panels. Using the “foldout screen format” he could quickly and
easily compartmentalize the Universe: thin and made of a very fine plastic film
with wire stays, the screen could pass between two contiguous elements that were
almost touching; flexible, it could make all the turns necessary; and its
ability to continue to unfold made it possible to connect the most remote points
as well as the closest one, and to divide up immense as well as tiny areas. All
he had to do was pull the panels, this way and that, excluding areas of reality
that were incompatible with the survival of this man. In other words: the
Universe was now a single room, and the direct and indirect causes of his
inevitable death were flocking indiscriminately toward the sickbed. All he had
to do was raise the screen and stop them in their tracks. It was doable because
these causes did not include everything that constituted reality, only a small
part — well chosen, that’s true — of the totality, which is why no sector could
be excluded a priori. Once a “security zone” had been configured, the patient
would rise from his bed, cured and happy, ready to live another thirty years. In
the “open” world, such as it was now, he couldn’t live; all the factors
contributing to this impossibility had to remain on the other side of the
screen. Or better said: not all, because that would be to fall once again into
the divinity requirement; “all” that were humanly possible to find and isolate,
those necessary to obtain the desired result, which, after all was said and
done, was fairly modest: an individual cure.
    He began to unfold the first screen without knowing where
to put it . . .
    But I don’t think I’ve explained myself well. I’ll try
again using other words. The work he was undertaking was nothing less than the
identification of all the facts that made up the Universe, the so-called “real”
ones in the narrow sense as well as in all the others: imaginary, virtual,
possible; as well as groupings of facts, from the simplest pairs to the
multitudes; and fragments of facts, that is, a thousand-year-old empire as well
as one’s first attempt to drink a beer. Facts had to be considered one by one;
when they were grouped together it was to constitute another fact as particular
as any one of its individual components and did not exclude the separate
consideration of each of these; they were not grouped by genre or species