But if my best-kept secret is what I did in the past, perhaps that secret is revealing itself in what is happening now, since, logically, the present must be the result of the past, a result that, for an analytic mind, displays the traces of all the events that played a part in producing it. But any attempt to unmask me with the classic “by their fruit shall ye know them” would backfire, because what I’m trying to hide is precisely the fact that in my case the process operated in reverse: the fruits remained in the past, and no one could deduce their nature from observations of the flower that is open in the present. This curious aberration could be due to the nature of my original action, which was a separation, a “distancing” with respect to my own person. I thought that I was seriously ill (I’m not going to go into details) and I did something disgracefuclass="underline" I abandoned my wife and young children. . The years went by, I adopted a new personality, I lived. I realized the dream of living. As a young man I knew nothing of life, and as an older man too. All I knew was that life existed, and love, and adventure; that there was something beyond the world of books. And since I’d always been an optimist and trusted my intelligence, I reached the alarming conclusion that I, too, could come to know what life was and how it should be lived.
So, in desperation, I broke with my past, before it was too late. When the curtain rises, I am the double of the man I was, a duplicate of myself, my identical twin. Twenty years have gone by, but I’m still at the same point (I can’t fool myself), in spite of being an other, my own other. I have learned computing, and channeled the intellectual brilliance that characterized my writing into politics and betrayal, and now it turns out that I am a double agent working undercover for both the high command of the forces occupying Argentina and the secret Committee of the Resistance. The action takes place in the palatial salons of the Quinta de Olivos, around midnight, during a reception for the ambassadors of Atlantis. I’m wearing a dinner jacket, looking very stylish: cool, competent, and hypocritical as ever. The most amazing thing is that I haven’t aged; the mirrors show me as I was at thirty, but I know that old age is just a step away, behind a door. I’ve always thought that my youthful appearance (which, even at thirty, was very marked) is a symptom of my failure to live. The sentence has only been suspended — for how long? The biological process follows its inexorable course, but if the suspension continues after a change of name, personality, and occupation, I really don’t know what I should do.
I’m a leading man, the finest flower of humanity, open in the present, in the theater of the world. “By my fruits” I shall not be known, because I left them in another life. And yet those fruits are coming back, in the most unexpected way. They are coming back tonight, at this very moment, so punctually that the timing seems too good to be true; but such is the law that governs the theater of the world. If a man lives happily and peacefully with his family for decades, and one day a psychopath bursts into his house and takes them all hostage, and rapes and kills them, when will the film that tells the story be set? The day before?
There’s an extra guest at the reception, the most surprising of all for me: Liliana, my wife (or I should say: my ex-wife, the wife of the man I was). She doesn’t know I’m here, of course, or that I’m the gray eminence of the High Command; everyone thinks I’m dead, or that I’ve disappeared. My break with the past was so clean that I’ve had no news of Liliana in twenty years: she could have been dead and buried, but no, she’s alive, and here she is. . I see her by chance, in the distance, on the far side of the gilded salon, but she doesn’t see me. I send a secretary to investigate, and slip away to other salons in that labyrinthine palace. Pretexts are easy enough to find: during the “real time” of the reception, meetings are underway behind closed doors. The situation is explosive; imminent upheavals are expected; the atmosphere is charged with anxiety.
Liliana has snuck in to make an appeal to the ambassadors of Atlantis. She won’t have another opportunity because they will only be in the country for a few hours; they have come to sign off on a bridging loan and will leave at midnight. The motors of the limousines that will take them from the party straight to the airport are already running. Liliana’s plan is to plead for the safe return of her son, who (I now discover) has been arrested. Her son is my son too: Tomasito, my firstborn, whom I haven’t seen since I walked out, when he was still a child; I’d forgotten all about him. A simple calculation reveals that he must be twenty-two by now. Hmm. . so he became a dissident and joined the resistance and got caught. That kind of involvement in politics must have been a result of his mother’s influence; and now I remember Liliana’s aversion to Menem, Neustadt, Cavallo, and Zulemita. And I see how she was able to get into the villa tonight: the Resistance Command, to which I belong, must have organized it. I sent them a pair of invitations myself, as I always do, in case they want to plant a bomb or kidnap someone. And she hasn’t come on her own (they’ve used both the invitations I sent): she’s accompanied by a lawyer from the local branch of Amnesty International, whose presence is considered inoffensive; but I know that he has been, and still is, in contact with the Coordinating Committee of the Resistance.
There’s something else, something that defies imagination, which I have discovered by eavesdropping on conversations from behind doors and curtains: Liliana has gone crazy. I have good reason to be amazed. Liliana, of all people! She’s so sensible, so logical! When we were together, she counterbalanced my follies. But the most organized minds are the first to collapse in a major crisis, and hers must have given way under the stress caused by the disappearance of her son. My eavesdropping soon yields irrefutable proof of her madness, when I hear her say that she has been assisted in this mission by her lawyer. . and her husband! Maybe she has remarried? But no, because she mentions me by name: César Aira, the famous writer (she’s exaggerating). She says I got held up in the salon, talking to someone who asked for an autograph, that I’ll be coming soon. . She’s crazy, she’s hallucinating, poor thing. On the spur of the moment I make a bold decision: to realize her illusion, to resume my old identity and go with her to meet the ambassadors. This is not just a sympathetic gesture; it has a practical objective, too: I know exactly what to say to make the ambassadors of Atlantis take action and exert pressure on the occupying forces to return Tomasito: without me the mission is doomed to fail. And this is the least I can do, because although I’ve abandoned and disowned my family, he’s still my son, my blood.
I have a room in the Quinta de Olivos, for use during the frequent crises that require me to be on call twenty-four hours a day. I hurry to my room and change, choosing casual clothes to re-create the way I remember dressing in my former life; then I mess up my hair and put on a pair of glasses, and I’m done! I make my appearance: “Good evening, my apologies for the delay, I’m César Aira, the father of the young man who has disappeared.” The crazy woman doesn’t bat an eyelid, which is proof of her craziness: twenty years of absence mean nothing to her deranged mind. She scolds me out of the corner of her mouth for not changing my sweater: You have another one, that one’s all stained. . people will think I make no effort. . you could have put on your other pants, they’re ironed. . The same as ever! My whole marriage comes back in waves; a marriage is a sum of little details, and any one of them can represent all the others.