Free The Seamstress and the Wind by César Aira

like an impious belt. She tried to scream, but no sound came from her open mouth. She could turn right and left, but always in the same spot — the thing didn’t give even an inch, although curiously it allowed itself to make a quarter-turn with her every time she tried it. It took her several agonizing seconds to understand that when she’d gotten to her feet she’d put her body through the steering wheel, which now had her by the waist.
    She clambered up out of it and let herself fall on the seat, which smelled like leather and grease, and curled up panting, wondering for the thousandth time why such disagreeable things had to happen to her. She was so worn out she might have fallen asleep if it hadn’t been for the frying smell, which was, she noticed only now, even more intense inside the truck.
    It took her a moment to calm down and reconsider her situation. She’d landed facing the windshield, and what she saw through it made her raise her head. Before her lay marvelous nighttime Patagonia, whole and limitless. It was a plateau as white as the moon, under a black sky filled with stars. Too big, too beautiful, to be taken in with a single gaze; and yet it must be, because no one has two gazes. Th e panorama appeared to repose against the pure black of the night, and at the same time it was pure light. It was scored with little black marks, like holes in space, that traced out sharp, capricious shapes, in which chance seemed to have been the determining factor in representing all of the things a fluctuating consciousness might want to recognize, but without recognizing them completely, as if the plethora of figures exceeded the existence of objects. Th ose marks were the reverse side of the pieces of butterfly wing stuck to the glass of the windshield.
    When Delia could finally take her eyes off this splendid spectacle, she admired the instruments that adorned the dashboard. Th ere were hundreds of gauges, little clocks, needles, switches, dials, buttons . . . Would a person need all that to drive a truck? Th ere wasn’t one gear shift: there were three, and ten more bristled from the crossbar of the steering wheel. Th e wheel itself was so enormous it didn’t seem strange that she’d gotten stuck in it by accident; it would have been strange if she’d missed it. Underneath, in the shadows, she could make out a jumble of pedals. She felt very small, very diminished; she remembered to take her feet off the seat.
    But then she had to put them on it again, and even worse, stand on it, to reach the trucker’s compartments. She knew from Omar’s descriptions that the entrance was above the headrest, and she leaned in to look. A double horizontal partition, which cut twice across a golden light. She thought of calling out, but some faint noises and the muffled echo of a voice made her suddenly afraid. Th e truth was she didn’t know what she had gotten herself into, what lion’s den. But it was no longer a question of retreat. With the ever-flawed logic of polite intruders, she preferred not to call out but to enter on tiptoe instead, to temper the surprise a bit; she didn’t want to give the unprepared trucker a heart attack, or fail to give him time to put on his pants.
    She climbed in, legs first. When she let go she fell further than expected. She slid down one of the screens, which was on an incline, being attached by hinges to the back wall of the cab. In this highway bedroom she could now see what she had heard so much about. Th ere were two beds very close together, both unmade. Th e disorder and filth were indescribable: comic books, clothes, dissected birds, knives, shoes . . . A lit candle on the bureau illuminated the little room. For a lost woman, alone, like Delia was, such an atmosphere could have presaged anything. Part of her consciousness knew that, and another part was occupied with trying to see what would happen next, and that part took the initiative: she went through one of the two doors at