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garments, according to his idea of
them, were a kind of architectural construction made of wire and fabric he would
have to get into, meant he had to think up a way to equip them with a system of
pleats that would allow him to sit down or walk around or even sit in the lotus
position or dance. As a result, the drawings became more and more complex.
Moreover, as they would be very large and bulky, and the apartment he lived in
with his family was already crowded, he would have to plan for a second system
of pleats that would allow him to store them in small stackable boxes, or
ideally, in a folder.
    The sketches he’d already made of these garments provided
him with “ready-made” material he could use to illustrate the first
installments; after that, he’d see. In any case, it wasn’t worth worrying about
at this stage. First he had to focus on the texts, and the illustrations would
naturally ensue from them. For now, it was enough to know that he would make
them, and this knowledge was enough to fill his expectations with vague
figures.
    As far as the text went, all he had to do was cull from
his thousands of manuscript pages and begin to create the great collage. He
could start anywhere; no introduction was necessary because the subject was
already well defined in the collective imagination. Indeed, the charm of this
material was like that of versions of a well-known story. Let’s take one from
the Bible, Dr. Aira said to himself, the one about Samson . . . A funny story
could have baldness as its central theme, which becomes a matter of state to the
Philistines, and it would be funny because somehow or other everybody knows that
Samson’s strength resided in his hair. The same thing was happening here: life,
death, illness — there’s nobody who doesn’t know what they’re all about, which
would allow him to create small, delightful variations that would seem like
inventions even if they weren’t (thereby sparing the author the exorbitant
effort of inventing a new story).
    Writing was something he couldn’t do in a single block,
all at once. He had to keep doing it, if at all possible, every day in order to
establish a rhythm . . . The rhythm of publication, so checkered due to the
imponderables of the material aspects, could be regularized through the
installment format, which also took care of the quantity of the product and its
basic tone, that of “disclosure.” These symbolic rhythms materialized when they
were used as a framework for the rhythm at which things actually occurred. For
in the meantime, life, both public and private, was continuing, and this
andante cantabile
system prevented real life from transpiring as a
marginal event; through this rhythm it recovered not only the general flow but
also each and every anecdotal detail, even the most heterogeneous ones. In this
way he could be sure he wouldn’t miss anything, nor would he fail to fully
utilize anything. An episode like the one with the ambulance, which had left him
very perturbed (so much so that it had been one of the triggers, along with his
financial good fortune, for deciding to move into action), ceased to be merely
one more “example” of Dr. Actyn’s persecution of him, and became a particularity
of the Universe of facts where there were no hierarchies or generalizations.
    Given these characteristics of Dr. Aira’s method, the
publication would have to be encyclopedic. And although the word “Encyclopedic”
should never be written down, the open-ended and infinite totality of
installments was nothing but a general and complete Encyclopedia. Therein lay
the secret of the Cures, the secret he was aiming for, and therein lay the key
to his entire enterprise: to give it maximum visibility.
    Seen from this angle — as the penning of an Encyclopedia
of all things from all times — the work revealed itself as the ascetic practice
of a Superman . . . There was so much to do! His life would have to last a
thousand years . . . One