Jorge Luis Borges - Collected Fictions Part 28

He hesitated for a moment, and then said: " 'I am sworn not to reveal it. And besides, no one can teach another anything. You must seek it on your own. We must hurry, for your life is in danger. I will hide you in my house, where they will not dare come to look for you. If the wind is with you, you shall sail tomorrow to the South.'

"Thus began the adventure that was to last for so many winters. I shall not tell its hazards, nor shall I attempt to recall the true order of its vicissi- tudes. I was oarsman, slave merchant, slave, woodcutter, robber of caravans, cantor, a.s.sayer of deep water and of metals. I suffered a year's captivity in the mercury mines, which loosens the teeth. I fought with men from Swe- den in the militia of Mikligarthr- Constantinople. On the banks of the Azov I was loved by a woman I shall never forget; I left her, or she left me, which is the same. I betrayed and was betrayed. More than once fate made me kill. A Greek soldier challenged me to fight him, and offered me the choice of two swords. One was a handspan longer than the other. I realized that he was trying to intimidate me, so I chose the shorter. He asked me why. I told him that the distance from my hand to his heart did not vary. On the sh.o.r.e of the Black Sea sits the runic epitaph I carved for my com- rade Leif Arnarson. I have fought with the Blue Men of Serkland, the Sara- cens. In the course of time I have been many men, but that whirlwind of events was one long dream. The essential thing always was the Word. There were times when I did not believe in it.

I would tell myself that renouncing the lovely game of combining lovely words was foolish, that there was no reason to seek the single, perhaps illusory, One. That argument failed. A missionary suggested the wordG.o.d, which I rejected. One sunrise, on the banks of a river that widened into the sea, I believed that the revelation had been vouchsafed me.

"I returned to the land of the Urns, and with difficulty found the poet's house.

"I entered and said my name. Night had fallen. Thorkelsson, from his place upon the ground, told me to light the candle in the bronze cande- labrum. His face had aged so greatly that I could not help thinking that I myself was now old. As was the custom, I asked after the health of the king.

" 'His name is no longer Gunnlaug,' he replied. 'Now his name is other. Tell me of your travels.'

"I did so in the best order I could, and in verbose detail, which I shall here omit. Before I came to the end, the poet interrupted me.

" 'Did you often sing in those lands?' he asked.

"The question took me by surprise.

" 'At first," I said, 'I sang to earn my bread. Then, from a fear that I do not understand, I grew distant from the singing and the harp.'

" 'Hmm.' He nodded. 'Now, go on with your story.'

"I complied. Then there fell a long silence.

" 'What were you given by the first woman you slept with?' he asked." 'Everything,' I answered.

" 'I, too, have been given everything, by life. Life gives all men every- thing, but most men do not know this. My voice is tired and my fingers weak, but listen to me....'

"He spoke the wordUnar,which meanswonder.

"I was overwhelmed by the song of the man who lay dying, but in his song, and in his chord, I saw my own labors, the slave girl who had given me her first love, the men I had killed, the cold dawns, the northern lights over the water, the oars. I took up the harp and sang-a different word.

" 'Hmm,' said the poet, and I had to draw close to hear him. 'You have understood me.' "

A Weary Man's Utopia

He called it "Utopia," a Greek word which means "there is no such place."

Quevedo

No two mountain peaks are alike, but anywhere on earth the plains are one and the same. I was riding down a road across the plains. I asked myself without much curiosity whether I was in Oklahoma or Texas or the region that literary men call "the pampas." There was not a fence to left or right. As on other occasions, I slowly murmured these lines, more or less fromEmilio Oribe: Riding through the ongoing, ongoing and interminable Terrifying plains, near the frontier of Brazil...

The road was rutted and uneven. Rain began to fall. Some two or three hundred yards down the road, I saw the light of a house. It was squat and rectangular and surrounded by trees. The door was opened by a man so tall it almost frightened me. He was dressed in gray. I sensed that he was waiting for someone.

There was no latch or lock on the door.

We went inside, into a long room with walls of exposed wood. From the ceiling hung a lamp that gave a yellowish light. The table seemed odd, some- how. There was a water clock on the table, the first I'd ever seen, save for the occasional steel engraving in dictionaries and encyclopedias. The man mo- tioned me to one of the chairs.

I tried several languages, but we couldn't make ourselves understood to each other. When he spoke, it was in Latin. I gathered my recollections of my distant student days and girded myself for conversation.

"By your clothing," he said, "I can see that you have come from another time. The diversity of languages encouraged the diversity of nations, and even encouraged war; the earth has returned to Latin. There are those who fear that it will degenerate into French, Limousine, orPapiamento,but thedanger is not imminent. And in any case, neither that which has been nor that which is to be holds any interest for me."

I said nothing; the man went on.

"If it does not repulse you to see another person eat, would you like to join me?"

I realized that he had seen that I was at an utter loss, so I said I would.

We went down a corridor with several doors leading off it and came into a small kitchen in which everything was made of metal. We returned to the first room with our dinner on a tray: bowls of cornflakes, a bunch of grapes, a fruit that was unknown to me but whose taste was something like a fig, and a large pitcher of water. I don't believe there was any bread. My host's features were sharp, and there was something peculiar about his eyes. I shall never forget that stern, pale face that I shall never see again. He did not gesture with his hands when he talked.

I was a bit tongue-tied by having to speak Latin, but at last I said: "You are not astounded by my sudden appearance here?"

"No," he replied, "every century or so we receive these visits. They do not last long; you will be back home by tomorrow, at the latest."

The certainty in his voice relieved me. I thought it proper to introduce myself: "I am Eudoro Acevedo. I was born in 1897 in the city of Buenos Aires. I am now seventy years old, aprofessor of English and American literature and a writer of tales of fantasy."

"I remember having read without displeasure," he said, "two tales of fantasy-the Travels of Captain Lemuel Gulliver, which many people believe to have really taken place, and theSumma Theologica.But let us not talk of facts. No one cares about facts anymore. They are mere points of depar-turefor speculation and exercises in creativity. In school we are taught Doubt, and the Art of Forgetting- especially forgetting all that is personal and local. We live in time, which is successive, but we try to live sub specieternitatis.There are a few names from the past that are still with us, though the language tends to forget them. We avoid pointless precision. There is no chronology or history; no statistics, either. You told me your name is Eudoro; I cannot tell you mine, because everyone calls me 'somebody'

or 'you.' "

"But what was your father's name?"

"He had none."

On one of the walls I noticed a bookshelf. I opened a volume at ran- dom; the letters were clear and indecipherable and written by hand. Their angular lines reminded me of the runic alphabet, though it had been usedonly for inscriptions. It occurred to me that the people of the future were not only taller, they were more skilled as well. I instinctively looked at the man's long elegant fingers.

"Now," he said to me, "you are going to see something you have never seen before."

He carefully handed me a copy of More'sUtopia, the volume printed in Basel in 1518; some pages and ill.u.s.trations were missing.

It was not without some smugness that I replied: "It is a printed book. I have more than two thousand at home, though they are not as old or as valuable."

I read the t.i.tle aloud.

The man laughed.

"No one can read two thousand books. In the four hundred years I have lived, I've not read more than half a dozen. And in any case, it is not the reading that matters, but the rereading. Printing, which is now forbid- den, was one of the worst evils of mankind, for it tended to multiply unnec- essary texts to a dizzying degree."

"In that strange yesterday from which I have come," I replied, "there prevailed the superst.i.tion that between one evening and the next morning, events occur that it would be shameful to have no knowledge of. The planet was peopled by spectral collectives-Canada, Brazil, the Swiss Congo, the Common Market. Almost no one knew the prior history of those Platonic ent.i.ties, yet everyone was informed of the most trivial details of the latest conference of pedagogues or the imminent breaking off of relations be- tween one of these ent.i.ties and another and the messages that their presi- dents sent back and forth-composed by a secretary to the secretary, and in the prudent vagueness that the form requires.

"All this was no sooner read than forgotten, for within a few hours it would be blotted out by new trivialities. Of all functions, that of the politician was without doubt the most public. An amba.s.sador or a minister was a sort of cripple who had to be transported in long, noisy vehicles sur- rounded by motorcyclists and grenadiers and stalked by eager photogra- phers. One would have thought their feet had been cut off, my mother used to say. Images and the printed word were more real than things.

People be- lieved only what they could read on the printed page. The principle, means, and end of our singular conception of the world wasesse estpercipi-'to be is to be portrayed.' In the past I lived in, people were credulous; they be- lieved that a piece of merchandise was good because the manufacturer ofthat piece of merchandise said it was. Robbery was also a frequent occur- rence, though everyone knew that the possession of money brings with it neither greater happiness nor greater peace of mind."

"Money?" my host repeated. "No one any longer suffers poverty, which must have been unbearable- nor suffers wealth, for that matter, which must have been the most uncomfortable form of vulgarity.

Every person now has a job to perform."

"Like rabbis," I said.

He seemed not to understand; he continued on.

"There are no cities, either. To judge by the ruins...o...b..hia Blanca,*which curiosity once led me to explore, it's no great loss. Since there are no possessions, there is no inheritance. When a man reaches ahundred years of age, he is ready to confront himself and his solitude. He will have engen- dered one child."

"One child?" I asked.

"Yes. One. It is not advisable that the human race be too much encour- aged. There are those who think that awareness of the universe is a faculty that comes from the deity, yet no one knows for a certainty whether this deity exists. I believe that what is being discussed now is the advantages and disadvantages of the gradual or simultaneous suicide of every person on earth. But let us return to the matter at hand."

I nodded.

"When the individual has reached a hundred years of age, he is able to do without love and friends.h.i.+p.

Illness and inadvertent death are not things to be feared. He practices one of the arts, or philosophy or mathematics, or plays a game of one-handed chess. When he wishes, he kills himself. When a man is the master of own life, he is also the master of his death."

"Is that a quotation?" I asked.

"Of course. There is nothing but quotations left for us. Our language is a system of quotations."

"What about the great adventure of my times-s.p.a.ce travel?" I asked.

"It's been hundreds of years since we have done any of that traveling about-though it was undoubtedly admirable. We found we could never escape the here and now."

Then, with a smile he added: "And besides, every journey is a journey through s.p.a.ce. Going from one planet to another is much like going to the farm across the way. When you stepped into this room, you were engaging in s.p.a.ce travel."

"That's true," I replied. "There was also much talk of 'chemical sub- stances' and 'zoological animals.' "

The man now turned his back to me and looked out the windows. Out- side, the plains were white with silent snow and moonlight.

I emboldened myself to ask: "Are there still museums and libraries?"

"No. We want to forget the past, save for the composition of elegies. There are no commemorations or anniversaries or portraits of dead men. Each person must produce on his own the arts and sciences that he has need for."

"In that case, every man must be his own Bernard Shaw, his own Jesus Christ, and his own Archimedes."

He nodded wordlessly.

"What happened to the governments?" I inquired.

"It is said that they gradually fell into disuse. Elections were called, wars were declared, taxes were levied, fortunes were confiscated, arrests were or- dered, and attempts were made at imposing censors.h.i.+p -but no one on the planet paid any attention. The press stopped publis.h.i.+ng pieces by those it called its 'contributors,' and also publis.h.i.+ng their obituaries. Politicians had to find honest work; some became comedians, some witch doctors-some excelled at those occupations. The reality was no doubt more complex than this summary."

Then his tone changed, and he said: "I have built this house, which is like all other houses. I have built these furnis.h.i.+ngs and made these household goods. I have worked in the fields, though other men, whose faces I have not seen, may well have worked them better. I can show you some things."

I followed him into an adjoining room. He lighted a lamp, which also hung from the ceiling. In one corner I saw a harp; it had very few strings. On the walls hung rectangular paintings in which the color yellow pre- dominated. They did not look as if the same hand had painted them all.

"This is my work," he said.

I examined the paintings, and I stopped before the smallest of them, which portrayed, or suggested, a sunset, though there was something of the infinite about it.

"If you like it, you may take it back with you, as a souvenir of a future friend," he said serenely.

I thanked him, but the other canvases disturbed me. I will not say that they were blank, but they were almost blank.

"They are painted with colors that your ancient eyes cannot see."His delicate hands plucked the strings of the harp and I could hear faint occasional notes.

It was then that the banging began.

A tall woman and three or four men came into the house. One would have said they were brothers and sister, or that time had made them resem- ble one another. My host spoke first to the woman: "I knew you would not fail to come tonight. Have you seen Nils?"

"Every few evenings. He is still mad about painting."

"Let us hope he has better luck at it than his father had."

Ma.n.u.scripts, paintings, furniture, household goods-we left nothing in the house.

The woman worked as hard as the men. I felt embarra.s.sed at my own weakness, which kept me from being much help to them. No one closed the door as, loaded down with our burden, we left. I noticed that the house had a peaked roof.

After about fifteen minutes of walking, we turned toward the left. In the distance I saw a kind of tower, crowned with a dome.

"It is the crematory," someone said. "The death chamber is inside. They say it was invented by a philanthropist whose name, I believe, was Adolf Hitler."

The caretaker, whose height did not take me aback, opened the gate to us.

My host whispered a few words. Before going in, he waved good-bye.

"There'll be more snow," the woman announced.

In my study onCalle Mexicostill hangs the canvas that someone will paint, thousands of years from now, with substances that are now scattered across the planet.

The Bribe

The story I shall tell is about two men, or rather about an incident in which two men played a part. The event, which is not at all singular or fantastic, is less important than the character of the two men involved. Both were vain, though in very different ways and with very different results. The anecdote (for it's really very little more than that) took place a short time ago in one of the states of the United States.

In my opinion, it couldn't have happened anywhere else. In late 1961, at the University of Texas in Austin, I was fortunate enough to have a long conversation with one of the two men, Dr. Ezra Winthrop.

Dr. Winthrop was a professor of Old English (he did not approve of call- ing it Anglo-Saxon, which suggests an artifact cobbled together out of two separate pieces). I recall that without ever actually contradicting me he cor- rected my many errors and presumptuous temerities. I was told that on oral examinations he never put questions to the candidate-instead he invited the candidate to chat about this or that subject, leaving to the person being examined the choice of the topic to be discussed. Of old Puritan stock, a na- tive of Boston, he'd found it hard to adapt to the customs and prejudices of the south.