Artforum by César Aira

Author:César Aira [Aira, César]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811230568
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 2020-03-30T00:00:00+00:00

The Clothespins

Within the daily routine of the household, small inexplicable incidents also occur. Why did it happen, why didn’t it happen? Nobody knows.

All we know is that something happened. What? Well . . . so many things! Something is always happening, and it’s difficult to set one incident, one anecdote, apart. How to know what deserves mention? One should talk all the time, or remain silent forever. The trifles that feed innocent chatter sink into the subsoil of the silence of the responses. Sometimes a chance repetition insinuates a meaning.

“Another clothespin broke! What bad luck!”

“I’ll fix it.” (I thought that the spring that connects the two halves had gotten detached.)

“No. It broke. It can’t be fixed.”

“Throw it away!”

“Throw it away!”

The laundry room is to the left of my study, which was originally the servants’ quarters. Presiding over the ceiling of the laundry room is the clothesline, a rack of parallel wires with a tubular metal frame. It is set up and taken down with a complicated system of pulleys. That’s where we hang the clothes to dry — usually the northern light filters through a jungle of damp garments before it reaches my chair in front of the computer. On the rare occasions when there are no clothes hanging, I like to look at the empty parallel lines above me, the idle many-colored clothespins sitting like little birds on the wires.

“Another clothespin broke!”

The feeling of repetition. Hadn’t it already broken? No, this is another one! That makes three. That makes four! We’ve got to talk about this.

Suddenly, in the silence of inspiration . . . Snap! I look, and a clothespin is lying on the floor, broken, and at the same time a wet shirt drops a sleeve, then shakes it for an instant as it drips, as if pointing to itself as it falls. An insignificant accident: not sufficient to modify my taciturn habits. Nonetheless, it registers, and returns later when the washing machine is opened, and comments and complaints can be heard while the clothes are being hung up.

“Another one! What are they making them out of? Oh, no, one more!”

“Huh? What? What’s going on?”

“These clothespins, in the last few days I can’t count how many have broken . . . It’s unbelievable. Ten years go by, and the same clothespins are still working, I forget . . . What am I saying ten years! Twenty, thirty. I have clothespins from before we got married. And now they’re all breaking at the same time.”

“Hmm . . . Now that I remember . . . Today I was writing and suddenly, snap! One broke, and plink! plank! The pieces fell on the floor.”

“Did it break on its own?”

“On its own.”

“You didn’t walk underneath and your head got caught on the clothes and . . . ?”

“On its own, on its own! I was just sitting here.”

“How weird. But it’s true, I picked up the pieces and threw them in the garbage.”

“No, I picked up the pieces, and I threw them out.

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