Only once in my lifetime have I had occasion to examine the fifteen thousand dodecasyllables of the Polyalbion -that topographical epic in which Michael Drayton recorded the fauna, flora, hydrography, orography, military and monastic history of England-but I am certain that Drayton"s ma.s.sive yet limited oeuvreis less tedious than the vast enterprise conceived and given birth by CarlosArgentino.He proposed to versify the entire planet; by 1941 he had already dispatched several hectares of the state of Queensland, more than a kilometer of the course of the Ob, a gasworks north of Veracruz, the leading commercial establishments in the parish ofConcepcion,Mariana Cambaceresde Alvear"svilla onCalle Once de Setiembrein Belgrano,and a Turkish bath not far from the famed Brighton Aquarium. He read me certain laborious pa.s.sages from the Australian re- gion of his poem; his long, formless alexandrines lacked the relative agita- tion of the prologue. Here is one stanza:
"I do, however, recall these lines from a satire in which he lashed out vehemently against bad poets:
This one fits the poem with a coat of mail Of erudition; that one, with gala pomps and circ.u.mstance.
Both flail their absurd pennons to no avail, Neglecting, poor wretches, the factor sublime-its LOVELINESS!
It was only out of concern that he might create an army of implacable and pow- erful enemies, he told me, that he did not fearlessly publish the poem.
278 JORGE LUIS BORGES.
Hear this. To the right hand of the routine signpost (Coming-what need is there to say?-from north-northwest) Yawns a bored skeleton-Color? Sky-pearly.- Outside the sheepfold that suggests an ossuary.
"Two audacious risks!" he exclaimed in exultation, "s.n.a.t.c.hed from the jaws of disaster, I can hear you mutter, by success! I admit it, I admit it. One, the epithetroutine, while making an adjective of a synonym for "highway," nods,en pa.s.sant, to the inevitable tedium inherent to those ch.o.r.es of a pas- toral and rustic nature that neither georgics nor our own belaureledDonSegundoever dared acknowledge in such a forthright way, with no beating about the bush. And the second, delicately referring to the first, the force- fully prosaic phraseYawns a bored skeleton, which the finicky will want to excommunicate without benefit of clergy but that the critic of more manly tastes will embrace as he does his very life. The entire line, in fact, is a good 24 karats. The second half-line sets up the most animated sort of conversa- tion with the reader; it antic.i.p.ates his lively curiosity, puts a question in his mouth, and then ...voila,answers it... on the instant. And what do you think of that coupsky-pearly? The picturesque neologism justhints at the sky, which is such an important feature of the Australian landscape. With- out that allusion, the hues of the sketch would be altogether too gloomy, and the reader would be compelled to close the book, his soul deeply wounded by a black and incurable melancholy."
About midnight, I took my leave.
Two Sundays later, Daneri telephoned me for what I believe was the first time in his or my life. He suggested that we meet at four, "to imbibe the milk of the G.o.ds together in the nearby salon-bar that myestimable land- lords, Messrs. Zunino and Zungri, have had the rare commercial foresight to open on the corner. It isacafeyou will do well to acquaint yourself with." I agreed, with more resignation than enthusiasm, to meet him. It was hard for us to find a table; the relentlessly modern "salon-bar" was only slightly less horrendous than I had expected; at neighboring tables, the ex- cited clientele discussed the sums invested by Zunino and Zungri without a second"s haggling. CarlosArgentinopretended to be amazed at some inno- vation in the establishment"s lighting (an innovation he"d no doubt been apprised of beforehand) and then said to me somewhat severely: "Much against your inclinations it must be that you recognize that this place is on a par with the most elevated heights ofFlores."*
Then he reread four or five pages of his poem to me. Verbal ostentation was the perverse principle that had guided his revisions: where he had for- merly written "blue" he now had "azure," "cerulean," and even "bluish." The word "milky" was not sufficiently hideous for him; in his impetuous de- scription of a place where wool was washed, he had replaced it with "lactine," "lactescent," "lactoreous," "lacteal." ... He railed bitterly against his critics; then, in a more benign tone, he compared them to those persons "who possess neither precious metals nor even the steam presses, lamina-tors, and sulfuric acids needed for minting treasures, but who canpoint out to others theprecise location of a treasure." Then he was off on another tack, inveighing against the obsession for forewords, what he called"prologo-mania,"an att.i.tude that "had already been spoofed in the elegant preface to theQuixote by the Prince of Wits himself." He would, however, admit that an attention-getting recommendation might be a good idea at the portals of his new work-"an accolade penned by a writer of stature, of real import." He added that he was planning to publish the first cantos of his poem. It was at that point that I understood the unprecedented telephone call and the invitation: the man was about to ask me to write the preface to that pedantic farrago of his. But my fear turned out to be unfounded. CarlosAr- gentinoremarked, with grudging admiration, that he believed he did not go too far in saying that the prestige achieved in every sphere by the man of lettersAlvaro MelianLafinur was "solid," and that if I could be persuaded to persuade him,Alvaro"might be enchanted to write the called-for fore- word." In order to forestall the most unpardonable failure on my part, I was to speak on behalf of the poem"s two incontrovertible virtues: its formal perfection and its scientific rigor-"because that broad garden of rhetorical devices, figures, charms, and graces will not tolerate a single detail that does not accord with its severe truthfulness." He added thatBeatrizhad always enjoyed Alvaro"s company.
I agreed, I agreed most profusely. I did, however, for the sake of added plausibility, make it clear that I wouldn"t be speaking withAlvaroon Mon- day but rather on Thursday, at the little supper that crowned each meeting of the Writers Circle. (There are no such suppers, although it is quite true that the meetings are held on Thursday, a fact that CarlosArgentinomight verify in the newspapers and that lent a certain credence to my contention.) I told him (half-prophetically, half-farsightedly) that before broaching the subject of the prologue, I would describe the curious design of the poem. We said our good-byes; as I turned downCalleBernardode Irigoyen,I con- templated as impartially as I could the futures that were left to me: (a) speak withAlvaroand tell him that that first cousin ofBeatriz"(the explanatorycirc.u.mlocution would allow me to speak her name) had written a poem that seemed to draw out to infinity the possibilities of cacophony and chaos; (b) not speak withAlvaro.Knowing myself pretty well, I foresaw that my indolence would opt for (b).
From early Friday morning on, the telephone was a constant source of anxiety. I was indignant that this instrument from whichBeatriz"irrecover- able voice had once emerged might now be reduced to transmitting the fu- tile and perhaps angry complaints of that self-deluding CarlosArgentinoDaneri.
Fortunately, nothing came of it-save the inevitable irritation in- spired by a man who had charged me with a delicate mission and then forgotten all about me.
Eventually the telephone lost its terrors, but in late October CarlosAr- gentinodid call me. He was very upset; at first I didn"t recognize his voice. Dejectedly and angrily he stammered out that that now unstoppable pair Zunino and Zungri, under the pretext of expanding their already enormous"cafe"were going to tear down his house.
"The home of my parents-the home where I was born-the old and deeply rooted house onCalleGaray!"he repeated, perhaps drowning his grief in the melodiousness of the phrase.
It was not difficult for me to share his grief. After forty, every change becomes a hateful symbol of time"s pa.s.sing; in addition, this was a house that I saw as alluding infinitely toBeatriz.I tried to make that extremely delicate point clear; my interlocutor cut me off. He said that if Zunino and Zungri persisted in their absurd plans, then Zunni, his attorney, would sue themipsofactofor damages, and force them to part with a good hundred thousand for his trouble.
Zunni"s name impressed me; his law firm, on the corner ofCaserosand Tacuari, is one of proverbial sobriety. I inquired whether Zunni had already taken the case. Daneri said he"d be speaking with him that afternoon; then he hesitated, and in that flat, impersonal voice we drop into when we wish to confide something very private, he said he had to have the house so he could finish the poem-because in one corner of the cellar there was an Aleph. He explained that an Aleph is one of the points in s.p.a.ce that contain all points.
"It"s right under the dining room, in the cellar," he explained. In his dis- tress, his words fairly tumbled out. "
It"s mine, it"s mine;I discovered it in my childhood, before I ever attended school. The cellar stairway is steep, and my aunt and uncle had forbidden me to go down it, but somebody said you could go around the world with that thing down there in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Theperson, whoever it was, was referring, I later learned, to a steamer trunk, but I thought there was some magical contraption down there. I tried to sneak down the stairs, fell head over heels, and when I opened my eyes, I saw the Aleph."
" The Aleph?" I repeated.
"Yes, the place where, without admixture or confusion, all the places of the world, seen from every angle, coexist. I revealed my discovery to no one, but I did return. The child could not understand that he was given that privilege so that the man might carve out a poem! Zunino and Zungri shall never take it from me-never,never! Lawbook in hand, Zunni will prove that my Aleph isinalienable."
I tried to think.
"But isn"t the cellar quite dark?"
"Truth will not penetrate a recalcitrant understanding. If all the places of the world are within the Aleph, there too will be all stars, all lamps, all sources of light."
"I"ll be right over. I want to see it."
I hung up before he could tell me not to come. Sometimes learning a fact is enough to make an entire series of corroborating details, previously unrecognized, fall into place; I was amazed that I hadn"t realized until thatmoment that CarlosArgentinowas a madman. All the Viterbos, in fact___Beatriz(I myself have said this many times) was a woman, a girl of implaca- ble clearsightedness, but there were things about her-oversights, distrac- tions, moments of contempt, downright cruelty-that perhaps could have done with apathological explanation. Carlos Argentine"s madness filled me with malign happiness; deep down, we had always detested one another.
OnCalle Garay,the maid asked me to be so kind as to wait-Sr. Daneri was in the cellar, as he always was, developing photographs. Beside the flowerless vase atop the useless piano smiled the great faded photograph ofBeatriz,not so much anachronistic as outside time. No one could see us; in a desperation of tenderness I approached the portrait.
"Beatriz, BeatrizElena,BeatrizElena Viterbo," I said. "BelovedBeatriz, Beatrizlost forever-it"s me, it"s me,Borges."
Carlos came in shortly afterward. His words were laconic, his tone in- different; I realized that he was unable to think of anything but the loss of the Aleph.
"A gla.s.s ofpseudocognac," hesaid, "and we"ll duck right into the cellar. I must forewarn you: dorsal decubitus is essential, as are darkness, immo- bility, and a certain ocular accommodation. You"ll lie on the tile floor andfix your eyes on the nineteenth step of the pertinent stairway. I"ll reascend the stairs, let down the trap door, and you"ll be alone. Some rodent will frighten you-easy enough to do! Within a few minutes, you will see the Aleph. The microcosm of the alchemists and Kabbalists, our proverbial friend themultum inparvo,made flesh!
"Of course," he added, in the dining room, "if you don"t see it, that doesn"t invalidate anything I"ve told you.... Go on down; within a very short while you will be able to begin a dialogue withall the imagesofBeatriz."
I descended quickly, sick of his vapid chatter. The cellar, barely wider than the stairway, was more like a well or cistern. In vain my eyes sought the trunk that CarlosArgentinohad mentioned. A few burlap bags and some crates full of bottles cluttered one corner. Carlos picked up one of the bags, folded it, and laid it out very precisely.
"The couch is a humble one," he explained, "but if I raise it one inch higher, you"ll not see a thing, and you"ll be cast down and dejected. Stretch that great clumsy body of yours out on the floor and count up nineteen steps."
I followed his ridiculous instructions; he finally left. He carefully let down the trap door; in spite of a c.h.i.n.k of light that I began to make out later, the darkness seemed total. Suddenly I realized the danger I was in; I had allowed myself to be locked underground by a madman, after first drinking down a snifter of poison. Carlos" boasting clearly masked the deep-seated fear that I wouldn"t see his "miracle"; in order to protect his delirium, in order to hide his madness from himself,he had to kill me. I felt a vague discomfort, which I tried to attribute to my rigidity, not to the operation of a narcotic. I closed my eyes, then opened them. It was then that I saw the Aleph.
I come now to the ineffable center of my tale; it is here that a writer"s hopelessness begins. Every language is an alphabet of symbols the employ- ment of which a.s.sumes a past shared by its interlocutors.
How can one transmit to others the infinite Aleph, which my timorous memory can scarcely contain? In a similar situation, mystics have employed a wealth of emblems: to signify the deity, a Persian mystic speaks of a bird that some- how is all birds; AlaindeLille speaks of a sphere whose center is everywhere and circ.u.mference nowhere; Ezekiel, of an angel with four faces, facing east and west, north and south at once. (It is not for nothing that I call to mind these inconceivable a.n.a.logies; they bear a relation to the Aleph.) Perhaps the G.o.ds would not deny me the discovery of an equivalent image, but then this report would be polluted with literature, with falseness. And besides, the cen- tral problem-the enumeration, even partial enumeration, of infinity-is irresolvable. In that unbounded moment, I saw millions of delightful andhorrible acts; none amazed me so much as the fact that all occupied the same point, without superposition and without transparency. What my eyes saw wa.s.simultaneous; what I shall write is successive, because language is successive. Something of it, though, I will capture.
Under the step, toward the right, I saw a small iridescent sphere of al- most unbearable brightness. At first I thought it was spinning; then I real- ized that the movement was an illusion produced by the dizzying spectacles inside it. The Aleph was probably two or three centimeters in diameter, but universal s.p.a.ce was contained inside it, with no diminution in size. Each thing (the gla.s.s surface of a mirror, let us say) was infinite things, because I could clearly see it from every point in the cosmos. I saw the populous sea, saw dawn and dusk, saw the mult.i.tudes of the Americas, saw a silvery spider-web at the center of a black pyramid, saw a broken labyrinth (it was Lon- don), saw endless eyes, all very close, studying themselves in me as though in a mirror, saw all the mirrors on the planet (and none of them reflecting me), saw in a rear courtyard onCalle Solerthe same tiles I"d seen twenty years before in the entryway of a house in FrayBentos,saw cl.u.s.ters of grapes, snow, tobacco, veins of metal, water vapor, saw convex equatorial deserts and their every grain of sand, saw a woman in Inverness whom I shall never forget, saw her violent hair, her haughty body, saw a cancer in her breast, saw a circle of dry soil within a sidewalk where there had once been a tree, saw a country house inAdrogue,saw a copy of the first English translation of Pliny (Philemon Holland"s), saw every letter of every page at once (as a boy, I would be astounded that the letters in a closed book didn"t get all scrambled up together overnight), saw simultaneous night and day, saw a sunset inQueretarothat seemed to reflect the color of a rose in Ben- gal, saw my bedroom (with no one in it), saw in a study in Alkmaar a globe of the terraqueous world placed between two mirrors that multiplied it endlessly, saw horses with wind-whipped manes on a beach in the Caspian Sea at dawn, saw the delicate bones of a hand, saw the survivors of a battle sending postcards, saw a Tarot card in a shopwindow in Mirzapur, saw the oblique shadows of ferns on the floor of a greenhouse, saw tigers, pistons, bisons, tides, and armies, saw all the ants on earth, saw a Persian astrolabe, saw in a desk drawer (and the handwriting made me tremble) obscene, in- credible, detailed letters thatBeatrizhad sent CarlosArgentino,saw a beloved monument inChacarita,*saw the horrendousremains of what had once, deliciously, beenBeatriz Viterbo,saw the circulation of my dark blood, saw the coils and springs of love and the alterations of death, saw the Aleph from everywhere at once, saw the earth in the Aleph, and the Alephoncemore in the earth and the earth in the Aleph, saw my face and my vis- cera, saw your face, and I felt dizzy, and I wept, because my eyes had seen that secret, hypothetical object whose name has been usurped by men but which no man has ever truly looked upon: the inconceivable universe.
I had a sense of infinite veneration, infinite pity.
"Serves you right, having your mind boggled, for sticking your nose in where you weren"t wanted," said a jovial, bored voice. "And you may rack your brains, but you"ll never repay me for this revelation-not in a hundred years. What a magnificent observatory, eh,Borges!"
Carlos Argentino"s shoes occupied the highest step. In the sudden half-light, I managed to get to my feet.
"Magnificent... Yes, quite ... magnificent," I stammered.
The indifference in my voice surprised me.
"You did see it?" CarlosArgentinoinsisted anxiously. "See it clearly? In color and everything?"
Instantly, I conceived my revenge. In the most kindly sort of way- manifestly pitying, nervous, evasive -I thanked CarlosArgentino Danerifor the hospitality of his cellar and urged him to take advantage of the de- molition of his house to remove himself from the pernicious influences of the metropolis, which no one-believe me, no one!-can be immune to. I refused, with gentle firmness, to discuss the Aleph; I clasped him by both shoulders as I took my leave and told him again that the country-peace and quiet, you know-was the very best medicine one could take.
Out in the street, on the steps of theConst.i.tucionStation, in the sub- way, all the faces seemed familiar. I feared there was nothing that had the power to surprise or astonish me anymore, I feared that I would never again be without a sense ofdeja vu.Fortunately, after a few unsleeping nights, for-getfulness began to work in me again.
Postscript (March i, 1943):Six months after the demolition of the building onCalle Caray,Procrustes Publishers, undaunted by the length of CarlosArgentino Daneri"ssubstantial poem, published the first in its series of "Ar- gentine pieces." It goes without saying what happened: CarlosArgentinowon second place in the National Prize for Literature.
2.
2.
"I received your mournful congratulations," he wrote me. "You scoff, my lamen- table friend, in envy, but you shall confess-though the words stick in your throat!- that this time I have crowned my cap with the most scarlet of plumes; my turban, with the most caliphal of rubies."
The first prize wentto Dr.Aita;third, to Dr. Mario Bonfanti; incredibly, my own workThe Sharper"s Cards did not earn a single vote. Once more, incomprehension and envy triumphed! I have not managed to see Daneri for quite a long time; the newspapers say he"ll soon be giving us another volume. His happy pen (belabored no longer by the Aleph) has been consecrated to setting the compendia of Dr.
Acevedo Diaz to verse.*
There are two observations that I wish to add: one, with regard to the nature of the Aleph; the other, with respect to its name. Let me begin with the latter: "aleph," as well all know, is the name of the first letter of the al- phabet of the sacred language. Its application to the disk of my tale would not appear to be accidental. In the Kabbala, that letter signifies the En Soph, the pure and unlimited G.o.dhead; it has also been said that its shape is that of a man pointing to the sky and the earth, to indicate that the lower world is the map and mirror of the higher. For theMengenlehre,the aleph is the symbol of thetransfinitenumbers, in which the whole is not greater than any of its parts. I would like to know: Did CarlosArgentinochoose that name, or did he read it,applied to another point at which all points converge, in one of the innumerable texts revealed to him by the Aleph in his house? Incredible as it may seem, I believe that there is (or was) another Aleph; I believe that the Aleph ofCalle Garaywas afalse Aleph.
Let me state my reasons. In 1867, Captain Burton was the British con- sul in Brazil; in July of 1942, Pedro Henriquez Urena*discovered a manu- script by Burton in a library in Santos, and in this ma.n.u.script Burton discussed the mirror attributed in the East to Iskandar dhu-al-Qarnayn, or Alexander the Great of Macedonia. In this gla.s.s, Burton said, the entire universe was reflected. Burton mentions other similarartifices-the sev- enfold goblet ofKaiKhosru; the mirror thatTriq ibn-Ziydfound in a tower(1001 Nights, 272); the mirror thatLucianof Samosata examined on the moon(True History, 1:26); the specular spear attributed by the first book of Capella"sSatyricon to Jupiter; Merlin"s universal mirror, "round and hollow and . .. [that] seem"d a world ofglas"(Faerie Queene,111:2,19)-and then adds these curious words: "But all the foregoing (be- sides sharing the defect of not existing) are mere optical instruments. The faithful who come to the Amr mosque in Cairo, know very well that the universe lies inside one of the stone columns that surround the central courtyard.. .. No one, of course, can see it, but those who put their ear to the surface claim to hear, within a short time, the bustling rumour of it. ... The mosque dates to the seventh century; the columns were taken from other, pre-Islamic, temples, for asibn-Khaldunhas written:In therepublics founded by nomads, the attendance of foreigners is essential for all those things that bear upon carpentry."
Does that Aleph exist, within the heart of a stone? Did I see it when I saw all things, and then forget it?
Our minds are permeable to forgetfulness; I myself am distorting and losing, through the tragic erosion of the years, the features...o...b..atriz.
ForEstelaCanto
Afterword.
Aside from "Emma Zunz" (whose wonderful plot-much superior to its timid execution-was given me by CeciliaIngenieros)and "Story of the War- rior and the Captive Maiden" (which attempts to interpret two supposedly real occurrences), the stories in this book belong to the genre of fantasy. Of them, the first is the most fully realized; its subject is the effect that immor- tality would have on humankind. That outline for an ethics of immortality is followed by "The Dead Man"; in that story,Azevedo Bandeirais a man from Rivera orCerroLargo and also an uncouth sort of deity-a mulatto, renegade version of Chesterton"s incomparable Sunday. (Chapter XXIX ofThe Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire tells of a fate much like Otalora"s, though con- siderably grander and more incredible.) About "The Theologians," suffice it to say that they are a dream-a somewhat melancholy dream-of personal ident.i.ty; about the "Biography of TadeoIsidoro Cruz,"that it is a gloss on theMartin Fierro.I owe to a canvas painted by Watts in 1896 the story called "The House ofAsterion"and the character of its poor protagonist. "The Other Death" is a fantasy about time, which I wove under the suggestion of some of Pier Damiani"s arguments. During the last war, no one could have wished more earnestly than I for Germany"s defeat; no one could have felt more strongly than I the tragedy of Germany"s fate;"DeutschesRequiem"is an at- tempt to understand that fate, which our own"Germanophiles"(who know nothing of Germany) neither wept over nor even suspected. "The Writing of the G.o.d" has been judged generously; the jaguar obliged me to put into the mouth of a "priest of the Pyramid of Qaholom" the arguments of a Kabbalist or a theologian. In "The Zahir" and "The Aleph," I think I can detect some in- fluence of Wells" story "TheCristalEgg"
(1899).
J.L.B. Buenos Aires, May3,1949
Postscript (1952):I have added four stories to this new edition. "Ibn-Hakam al-Bokhari, Murdered in His Labyrinth" is not (I have been a.s.sured) memo- rable, in spite of its bloodcurdling t.i.tle. We might think of it as a variation on the story of "The Two Kings in Their Two Labyrinths," interpolated into the looi Nights by the copyists yet pa.s.sed over by the prudentGalland.About "The Wait" I shall say only that it was suggested by a true police story that AlfredoDoblasread me, some ten years ago, while we were cla.s.sifying books-following the manual of the Bibliographic Inst.i.tute of Brussels, I might add, a code I have entirely forgotten save for the detail that G.o.d can be found under the number 231. The subject of the story was a Turk; I made him an Italian so that I could more easily get inside his skin. The momen- tary yet repeated sight of a long, narrow rooming house that sits around the corner ofCalle Parana,in Buenos Aires, provided me with the story t.i.tled "The Man on the Threshold"; I set it in India so that its improbability might be bearable.
J.l.b.
The Maker (1960).
Foreword.
ForLeopoldoLugones*
The sounds of the plaza fall behind, and Ienferthe Library. Almost physically, I can feel the gravitation of the books, the serene atmosphere of orderliness, time magically mounted and preserved. To left and right, absorbed in their waking dream, rows of readers" momentaryproles inthe light of the "scholarly lamps," as a Miltonian displacement of adjectives would have it. 1 recall having recalled that trope here in the Library once before, and then that other adjective of setting-theLunario"s"arid camel," and then that hexameter from theJEneid that employs, and surpa.s.ses, the same artifice: Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbram.
These reflections bring me to the door of your office. I go inside. We ex- change a few conventional, cordial words, and I give you this book. Unless I am mistaken, you didn"t dislike me, Lugones, and you"d have liked to like some work of mine. That never happened, but this time you turn the pages and read a line or two approvingly, perhaps because you"ve recognized your own voice in it, perhaps because the halting poetry itself is less important than the clean- limbed theory.
At this point, my dream begins to fade and melt away, like water in water. The vast library surrounding me is onCalleMexico, notRodriguez Pena,and you, Lugones, killed yourself in early "38. My vanity and my nostalgia have confected a scene that is impossible. Maybe so, I tell myself, but tomorrow I too will be dead and our times will run together and chronology will melt into an orb of symbols, and somehow it will be true to say that I have brought you this book and that you have accepted it.
J.L.B. Buenos Aires, August 9,1960
The Maker*
He had never lingered among the pleasures of memory. Impressions, mo- mentary and vivid, would wash over him: a potter"s vermilion glaze; the sky-vault filled with stars that were also G.o.ds; the moon, from which a lion had fallen; the smoothness of marble under his sensitive, slow fingertips; the taste of wild boar meat, which he liked to tear at with brusque, white bites; a Phoenician word; the black shadow cast by a spear on the yellow sand; the nearness of the sea or women; heavy wine, its harsh edge tem- pered by honey-these things could flood the entire circuit of his soul. He had known terror, but he had known wrath and courage as well, and once he had been the first to scale an enemy wall. Keen, curious, inadvertent, with no law but satisfaction and immediate indifference, he had wandered the various world and on now this, now that seash.o.r.e, he had gazed upon the cities of men and their palaces. In teeming marketplaces or at the foot of a mountain upon whose uncertain peak there might be satyrs, he had lis- tened to complex stories, which he took in as he took in reality-without asking whether they were true or false.
Gradually, the splendid universe began drawing away from him; a stub- born fog blurred the lines of his hand; the night lost its peopling stars, the earth became uncertain under his feet. Everything grew distant, and indis- tinct. When he learned that he was going blind, he cried out. ("Stoicism" had not yet been invented, and Hector could flee without self-diminution.) Now (he felt)Iwill not be able to see the sky filled with mythological dread or this face that the years will transfigure. Days and nights pa.s.sed over this de- spair of his flesh, but one morning he awoke, looked (with calm now) at the blurred things that lay about him, and felt, inexplicably, the way one might feel upon recognizing a melody or a voice, that all this had happened to himbefore and that he had faced it with fear but also with joy and hopefulness and curiosity. Then he descended into his memory, which seemed to him endless, and managed to draw up from that vertigo the lost remembrance that gleamed like a coin in the rain-perhaps because he had never really looked at it except (perhaps) in a dream.The memory was this: Another boy had insulted him, and he had run to his father and told him the story.
As though he weren"t paying attention, or didn"t understand, his father let him talk, but then he took a bronze knife down from the wall-a beautiful knife, charged with power, that the boy had furtively coveted. Now he held it in his hands, and the surprise of pos- session wiped away the insult that he had suffered, but his father"s voice was speaking:Let it be known that you are a man, and there was a command in the voice. Night"s blindness was upon the paths; clutching to himself the knife in which he sensed a magical power, the boy descended the steep rough hillside that his house stood on and ran to the seash.o.r.e, dreaming that he wasAjaxand Perseus and peopling the dark salt air with wounds and battles. It was the precise flavor of that moment that he sought for now; the rest didn"t matter-the insulting words of his challenge, the clumsy combat, the return with the bloodied blade.