The Musical Brain: And Other Stories (5 page)

So, predictably, we began to consider a first issue that would be thirty-six-fold, so
to speak. An issue made up of numbers
1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9–10–11–12–13–14–15–16–17–18–19–20–21–22–23–24–25–26–27–28–29–30–31–32–33–34–35–36.
That would allow for an almost total flexibility. Why hadn’t we thought of it
before? Why had we wasted our time with “triples” and “quadruples” and “decuples”
when there was such an obvious solution right under our noses? The printer’s “sheet”
should have shown us the way right from the start, from the moment we discovered its
existence, the famous “sheet” that was unfolding now before our eyes, like a rose in
time.

The problem was how to fit those numbers on the cover. Would there be enough room for
them all, and the dashes, between the title and the date? Wouldn’t it be a bit
ridiculous? There was the option of replacing them with an austere “Nos. 1–36,” but
for some reason we found that unsatisfactory. Defiantly, we decided to go the
opposite way: filling the cover with numbers, big ones, in nine rows of four.
Without any explanation, of course: we’d never have dreamed of explaining our
contingency plan to the readers.

This confronted us with a serious problem: whether or not we provided explanations,
people would look for them anyway—that’s just how the human mind is made. And a
thirty-six-fold issue would suggest an obvious explanation, which everyone would
find convincing: that the numbers on the cover had something to do with the number
of pages. As they did, in fact, but not in what would seem to be the obvious way.
This connection completely spoiled the fun of the idea, which we abandoned
immediately. At that point I think we felt that we’d never really been satisfied
with thirty-six.

Freeing ourselves of that bad idea freed us completely. We leaped to really big
numbers, first a thousand, then ten thousand, which had a special prestige because
of its Chinese associations. China, with the Cultural Revolution in full swing, was
much in vogue at the time.

Any more moderate number would have seemed insufficient. Ten thousand. But no more
than ten thousand. We could have gone wild and continued up into the millions, or
the billions; but we were engaged in a very concrete and practical task—producing
a magazine—not in wild speculation. We weren’t intending to abandon realism,
though a mediocre, storekeeper’s realism had never been a part of our intellectual
outlook. Ten thousand guaranteed total originality, without tipping over into
unworkable folly. We made sure of this with pencil and paper, setting it all out in
black and white.

Making an issue composed of ten thousand numbers meant that the “single” issue would
be 0.0036 of a page. We weren’t math wizards. We had to do the calculations step by
step, visualizing it all. This made the process infinitely more interesting; it
became an adventure among strange and novel images. How did we arrive at 0.0036?
Like this: if we reduced the magazine by a factor of ten, it would have 3.6 pages;
if we reduced it by a factor of one hundred, it would have 0.36 pages, that is, a
bit more than a third of a page or three tenths of a page; if the factor was a
thousand, the magazine would be 0.036 pages long, that is, a bit more than three
hundredths of a page; and if we increased the factor to ten thousand, thus reducing
the magazine to a “single” issue, that issue would consist of 0.0036 of a page, in
other words a little more than three and a half thousandths of a page. We had to
visualize this too, to get a clear idea of what it meant. Referring to the budget
prepared for us by the printers, we saw that the page size we had chosen for the
first issue, in accordance with our means, was 8 by 6 inches. So the area of each
page would be 48 square inches. Divided by ten thousand, that gave 0.0048 square
inches, which had to be multiplied by 3.6 (that is, by the number of ten thousandths
produced by the previous calculation). The result was 0.01728 square inches . . .
Should we round up? No, exactitude was the key, or one of the keys, to the
enchantment that transported us. And unless we were mistaken (we covered a lot of
paper with our calculations), 0.01728 square inches was the area of a rectangle
0.1516 inches high and 0.1140 inches wide. That wasn’t so easy to visualize. It was
futile trying to use the imagination as a microscope to see that molecule, that
speck suspended in a moment of sunlight (it didn’t seem heavy enough to settle). We
had leaped beyond the sensory and the intuitive into the realm of pure science, and
yet—this was the supreme paradox—it was there that we found the true, the real
Athena
, in the form of a “single” issue, springing from our heads just
as the goddess whose name we had borrowed had sprung from the head of her
father.

MAY 21, 2007

The Dog

I WAS IN A BUS,
sitting by the window, looking out at the street.
Suddenly a dog started barking very loudly nearby. I tried to see where it was. So
did some other passengers. The bus wasn’t very full: the seats were all occupied,
but there were just a few people standing up; they had the best chance of seeing the
dog, because they were looking from higher up and could see out both sides. Even for
someone sitting, as I was, buses provide an elevated view, as horses did for our
ancestors:
la perspective cavalière
. That’s why I prefer buses to cars,
which carry you so low, so close to the ground. The barks were coming from my side,
the sidewalk side, which was logical. Even so, I couldn’t see the dog, and since we
were going fast I figured it was too late; we would already have left him behind. He
had provoked the mild curiosity that always surrounds an incident or an accident,
but in this case, except for the volume of the barking, there was little to indicate
that anything had happened: the dogs that people walk in the city rarely bark except
at other dogs. So the attention of the passengers was already beginning to dissipate
. . . when suddenly it was refocused: the barking started up again, louder than
before. Then I saw the dog. He was running along the sidewalk and barking at the
bus, following it, racing to keep up. This really was strange. In the old days, in
country towns and on the outskirts of cities, dogs would run beside cars, barking at
their wheels; it’s something I remember well from my childhood in Pringles. But you
don’t see it anymore; it’s as if dogs had evolved and grown used to the presence of
cars. And besides, this dog wasn’t barking at the wheels of the bus but at the whole
vehicle, raising his head, staring at the windows. All the passengers were looking
now. Had the owner got onto the bus, perhaps, forgetting the dog or abandoning him?
Or maybe it was someone who’d attacked or robbed the dog’s owner? But no, the bus
had been driving along Avenida Directorio without stopping for several blocks, and
it was only in the current block that the dog had begun his chase. More elaborate
hypotheses—for example, that the bus had run over the dog’s owner, or another
dog—could be set aside, because there’d been nothing like that. It was a
Sunday afternoon and the streets were relatively empty: an accident could not have
gone unnoticed.

The dog was quite big, and dark gray in color, with a pointed muzzle, halfway between
a purebred and a street dog, though street dogs are a thing of the past in Buenos
Aires, at least in the neighborhoods we were passing through. He wasn’t so big that
the mere sight of him was scary, but he was big enough to be threatening if he got
angry. And he seemed to be angry or, rather, desperate and distraught (for the
moment, anyway). The impulse that was driving him was not (or not for the moment, at
least) aggression but an urgent desire to catch up with the bus, or stop it, or . .
. who knows?

The race continued, accompanied by barking. The bus, which had been held up by a red
light at the previous corner, was accelerating. It was driving along close to the
sidewalk, on which the dog was running, losing ground. We’d almost reached the next
intersection, where it seemed the pursuit would come to an end. But, to our
surprise, when we got there, the dog crossed to the next block and went on chasing
us, accelerating too, and barking all the while. There weren’t many people on the
sidewalk, otherwise he would have bowled them over, charging along like that, his
gaze fixed on the windows of the bus. His barks became louder and louder; they were
deafening, drowning out the noise of the motor, filling the world. Something that
should have been obvious right from the start was finally sinking in: the dog had
seen (or smelled) someone who was traveling on the bus, and he was after that
person. A passenger, one of us . . . This explanation had evidently occurred to
others; people started looking around with inquisitive expressions. Did someone know
the dog? What was it about? An ex-owner, or someone the dog had once known . . . I
was looking around too, and wondering, Who could it be? In a case like this, the
last person you think of is yourself. It took me quite a while to realize. And the
realization was indirect. Suddenly, moved by what was still a vague presentiment, I
looked ahead, through the windscreen. I saw that the way was clear: ahead of us a
row of green lights stretched off almost to the horizon, promising rapid,
uninterrupted progress. But then, with anxiety rising inside me, I remembered that I
wasn’t in a taxi: a bus has fixed stops every four or five blocks. It was true that
if there was no one at the stop and if no one rang the bell to get off, the bus
would keep going. No one had approached the back door, for the moment. And with a
bit of luck there would be no one at the next stop. All these thoughts occurred to
me at once. My anxiety continued to mount and was about to find the words with which
to declare itself. But this was delayed by the very urgency of the situation. Would
chance allow us to drive on without stopping until the dog abandoned his chase?
Having averted my gaze for barely a fraction of a second, I looked at him again. He
was still keeping up, still barking as if possessed . . . and he was looking back at
me. Now I knew: I was the one he was barking at, the one he was chasing. I was
seized by the terror that attends the most unexpected catastrophes. I had been
recognized by that dog, and he was coming to get me. And although, in the heat of
the moment, I was already resolving to deny it all, and not confess to anything,
deep in my heart I knew that he was right and I was wrong. Because I had once
mistreated that dog; what I’d done to him was truly, unspeakably disgraceful. I have
to admit that I’ve never had very firm moral principles. I’m not going to try to
justify myself, but the lack can be explained in part by the ceaseless battle that
I’ve had to fight, from the tenderest age, simply to survive. It has gradually
dulled my sense of rectitude. I’ve allowed myself to do things no decent man would
ever do. Or would he? We all have our secrets. Besides, my misdeeds were never all
that serious. I didn’t commit actual crimes. Nor did I forget what I had done, as a
real scoundrel would have. I told myself I’d make amends, though I never really
stopped to think about how. This was the last thing I was expecting: to be
recognized in such a bizarre way, confronted with a past that had been buried so
deeply it seemed forgotten. I realized that I had been counting on a certain
impunity. I had assumed, as anyone in my place might have done, that a dog being
first and foremost a dog, its individuality would be reabsorbed by the species and
finally disappear. And with that disappearance my guilt would vanish too. My
despicable betrayal had individualized the dog for a moment, but only for a moment.
There was something supernatural and terrifying about the idea that the moment had
lasted so many years. But, as I thought it over, a hope appeared, and I grasped at
it: too much time had passed. Dogs don’t live that long. If I multiplied the years
by seven . . . These thoughts were tumbling in my head, colliding with the muffled
barks that kept getting louder and louder. No, it wasn’t true that too much time had
gone by; doing the sums would just have been a way of prolonging my self-deception.
My last hope was the classic psychological reaction of retreat into denial when
faced with something that is too much to bear: “It can’t be, this can’t be
happening, I’m dreaming, I must have misinterpreted the data.” This time it wasn’t a
just psychological reaction; it was real. So real I couldn’t look at the dog; I was
scared of what he might be expressing. But I was too nervous to pretend to be
indifferent. I looked straight ahead. I must have been the only one; all the other
passengers were following the race, including the driver, who kept turning his head
to look, or using the rear-view mirror, and joking with the passengers at the front.
I hated him for that: the distraction was making him slow down; otherwise how could
the dog have kept pace all the way to the second intersection? But what did it
matter if he was keeping up? What could he do, apart from bark? He wasn’t going to
get onto the bus. After the initial shock, I began to assess the situation in a more
rational way. I had already decided to deny that I knew the dog, and I held firmly
to that decision. An attack, which I thought unlikely (“his bark is worse than his
bite”), would cast me in the victim’s role and prompt onlookers, and the forces of
order if necessary, to come to my aid. But, of course, I wouldn’t give him the
opportunity. I wasn’t going to get out of the bus until he disappeared from sight,
which was bound to happen sooner or later. The 126 goes right out to Retiro, along a
route that twists and turns after it leaves Avenida San Juan, and it was
inconceivable that a dog could follow it all that way. I dared to glance at him, but
immediately looked away again. Our gazes met, and what I saw in his eyes was not the
fury I’d been expecting but a limitless anguish, a pain that wasn’t human because it
was more than a human could bear. Was the wrong I’d done him really so grave? It
wasn’t the moment to embark on an analysis. And anyway, there could be only one
conclusion. The bus went on accelerating. We crossed the second intersection, and
the dog, who’d fallen back, crossed too, in front of a car that had stopped for the
lights; but if the car had been moving, he would have crossed just the same, he was
running so blindly. I’m ashamed to admit it, but I was hoping he’d be killed. Such
things have been known to happen: there’s a film in which a Jew in New York
recognizes a kapo from a concentration camp forty years before, starts chasing him,
and is run down and killed by a car. Remembering this depressed me, rather than
affording some relief as precedents usually do, because it happened in fiction and
made the reality of my situation all the more evident, by contrast. I didn’t want to
look at the dog again, but the sound of his barking indicated that he was falling
behind. The bus driver, no doubt tiring of the joke, had put his foot to the floor.
I dared to turn around and look. There was no risk of drawing attention to myself
because everyone else in the bus was doing the same; on the contrary, it might have
seemed suspicious if I’d been the only one who wasn’t looking. I was also thinking
it might be my last glimpse of him; a chance encounter like that wouldn’t occur
again. Yes, he was definitely fallin
g behind. He seemed smaller, more pitiful,
almost ridiculous. The other passengers began to laugh. He was an old, worn-out dog,
on the brink of death, perhaps. The years of resentment and bitterness that lay
behind that outburst had left their mark. The race must have been killing him. But
he’d waited so long for that moment to arrive, he wasn’t going to give up. And he
didn’t. Even though he knew he’d lost, he kept on running and barking, barking and
running. Perhaps, when he lost sight of the bus in the distance, he’d go on running
and barking forever, because there would be nothing else he could do. I had a
fleeting vision of the dog’s figure in an abstract landscape (infinity) and felt
sad, but it was a calm, almost aesthetic feeling, as if the sorrow were seeing me in
the far distance as I imagined I was seeing the dog. Why do people say the past
doesn’t return? It had all happened so quickly, I’d had no time to think. I’d always
lived in the present because simply taking it in and reacting to it used up
practically all my physical and mental energy. I could manage the immediate, but
only just. I always felt that too many things were happening at once and that I had
to make a superhuman effort and summon more strength than I possessed simply to cope
with the now. That’s why whenever an opportunity arose to free myself of a burden in
any way at all, I didn’t bother with ethical scruples. I had to get rid of anything
that wasn’t strictly necessary for my survival; I had to secure a bit of space, or
peace, at any cost. How this might harm others didn’t trouble me because the
consequences weren’t immediate, so I couldn’t see them. And once again the present
was ridding me of a troublesome guest. The incident left a bittersweet taste in my
mouth: on one hand, there was relief at having escaped so narrowly; on the other, an
understandable remorse. How sad it was to be a dog. To live with death so close at
hand, and so implacable. And sadder still to be
that
dog, who had thrown
off resignation to the destiny of his kind, but only to show that the wound once
inflicted on him had never healed. His silhouette against the light of a Buenos
Aires Sunday, in a state of constant agitation, racing and barking, had played the
role of a ghost, returning from the dead or, rather, from the pain of living, to
demand . . . what? Reparation? An apology? A pat? What else could he have wanted? It
can’t have been revenge, because he would surely have learned from experience that
he was powerless against the unassailable world of humans. He could only express
himself; he’d done that, and all it had achieved was to strain his weary old heart.
He’d been defeated by the mute, metallic expression of a bus driving away, and a
face watching him through the window. How had he recognized me? I must have changed
a lot too. His memory of me was obviously vivid; perhaps it had been present in his
mind all those years, never fading for a moment. No one really knows how a dog’s
mind works. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that he’d recognized my
smell; there are amazing stories about the olfactory powers of animals. For example,
a male butterfly smelling a female miles away, through all the thousands of
intervening smells. I was beginning to speculate in a detached, intellectual way.
The barking was an echo, varying in pitch, now higher now lower, as if it were
coming from another dimension. Suddenly I was jolted from my thoughts by a hunch
that I could feel all through my body. I realized that I had been too quick to
declare victory. The bus had been speeding up, but now it was slowing down again: it
was what the drivers always did when the next stop came into sight. They
accelerated, gauging the distance still to go, then lifted their foot, and let the
bus glide to the stop. Yes, it was slowing down, pulling over to the sidewalk. I sat
up straight and looked out. An old lady and a child were waiting to catch the bus.
The barking was getting louder again. Could the dog have kept running? Hadn’t he
given up? I didn’t look, but he must have been very close. The bus had already
stopped. The child jumped in, but the woman was taking her time; that high step was
difficult for a lady of her age. I was silently shouting, Come
on
, old bag!
and anxiously watching her movements. I don’t normally speak or think like that; it
was because of the stress I was under, but I got a grip on myself immediately. There
was really no need to worry. Maybe the dog would make up some lost ground, but then
he would lose it again. In the worst case, he’d come and bark right in front of my
window in a very obvious way, and the other passengers would see that I was the one
he was chasing. But all I had to do was deny any knowledge of the animal, and no one
would contradict me. I gave thanks for words and their superiority over barks. The
old woman was lifting her other foot onto the step; she was almost in. A burst of
barking deafened me. I looked out to the side. He was coming, quick as a shot, fur
flying, loud as ever. His stamina was incredible. Surely he must have had arthritis,
at his age, like all old dogs. Maybe he was firing his last rounds. Why keep
anything in reserve if he was closing the circle of his fate by venting his
resentment, having found me after all those years? At first (this all happened in a
crazy shattering of seconds), I didn’t understand what was going on, I only knew it
was strange. But then I realized: he hadn’t stopped in front of my window, he’d kept
going. What was he doing? Could he be . . . ? He’d already drawn level with the
front door and, agile as an eel, he turned, leaped and dodged. He was getting onto
the bus! No, he was on the bus already, and without having to bowl the old lady
over—she just felt something brush against her legs—he turned again and,
barely slowing down, still barking, ran down the aisle . . . Neither the driver nor
the passengers had time to react; the cries were rising in their throats but hadn’t
yet come out. I should have said to them: Don’t be afraid, it’s not about you, it’s
me he’s after . . . but I didn’t have time to react either, except to freeze and
stiffen with fear. I did have time to see him rushing at me, and I could see nothing
else. Close up, face on, he looked different. It was as if when I’d seen him before,
through the window, my vision had been filtered by memory or my idea of the harm I’d
done to him, but there in the bus, within arm’s reach, I saw him as he really was.
He looked young, vigorous, supple: younger than me and more alive (the life had been
leaking out of me all those years, like water from a bathtub), his barks resounding
inside the bus with undiminished force, his jaws with their dazzling white teeth
already closing on my flesh, his shining eyes that had not, for one moment, stopped
staring into mine.