Short Stories of Jorge Luis Borges - The Giovanni Translations (37 page)

Avelino Arredondo

The event took place in Montevideo in 1897.

Every Saturday, in the way of the honest poor who know they cannot invite people home or else are trying to escape home, a group of young men occupied the same side table at the Café del Globo. They were all from Montevideo, and they had found it hard at first to make friends with Arredondo, a man from the interior, who neither confided in others nor encouraged others to confide in him. A little over twenty years old, he was lean and dark, rather short, and maybe a bit clumsy. His would have been an almost anonymous face had his eyes at one and the same time sleepy and lively not rescued it. He worked as a clerk in a drygoods store on Buenos Aires Street, studying law in his spare time. When the others condemned the war that ravaged the country and that, according to general opinion, the president was prolonging for unworthy reasons, Arredondo remained silent. He also remained silent when they made fun of him for being stingy.

A short while after the battle of Cerros Blancos, Arredondo told his companions that they would not be seeing him for a time, since he had to travel to Mercedes. The news stirred no one. Somebody told him to watch out for the gaucho rabble of Aparicio Saravia, the rebel leader of the Whites. With a smile, Arredondo answered that he was not afraid of the Whites. The other man, who was a White himself, said nothing.

His goodbye to Clara, his fiancée, Arredondo found harder. He made it in almost the same words he had used with his friends, warning her not to expect letters, as he would be very busy. Clara, who was not in the habit of writing, accepted the explanation without a protest. The two were very much in love.

Arredondo lived on the outskirts of town. He was looked after by a mulatto woman who bore the same surname as he, since her forebears had been slaves of his family many years earlier, at the time of the Great War. Clementina was completely trustworthy, and he ordered her to tell anyone who came looking for him that he was away in the country. He had already collected his last pay from the dry goods store.

He moved into a back room of his house one that opened onto the earth-paved third patio. It was a pointless measure, but it helped him to initiate his self-imposed reclusion. From the narrow iron bed, in which he was beginning to take naps again, he looked with a touch of melancholy at a bare shelf. He had sold his books even his textbooks. All he had left was a Bible that he had never read before and that he would never finish reading. He leafed through it page by page sometimes out of interest, sometimes out of boredom and he took upon himself the task of learning by heart some chapter or other of Exodus and the end of Ecclesiastes. He made no effort to understand what he read. He was a freethinker, but he never let a single night pass without saying the Lord’s Prayer, which, on coming to Montevideo, he had promised his mother he would do. To fail in this filial promise, he thought, might bring him bad luck. Arredondo knew that his goal was the morning of the twenty-fifth of August. He knew the exact number of days he had to get through. Once his goal was attained, time would cease, or, rather, nothing that happened after that would matter. He awaited the date like someone awaiting a boon or a liberation. He had let his clock run down so as not to be forever looking at it, but every night, on hearing the twelve dark strokes of midnight on a town clock, he tore a leaf out of the calendar and thought,
One day less
.

In the beginning he worked to build up a routine brewing maté, smoking Turkish cigarettes that he rolled himself, reading and rereading a set number of pages, trying to converse with Clementina when she brought him his meals on a tray, and, before putting out the candle, repeating and embellishing the speech he planned to give. Talking to Clementina, a woman well along in years, was not at all easy, for her memory had remained rooted in the countryside and in its daily life. Arredondo also laid out a chessboard, on which he played haphazard games that never came to a conclusion. He was missing a rook, which he replaced with a bullet or with a two-cent coin. To fill time, he cleaned his room every morning, chasing away spiders with a dust cloth and broom. The mulatto woman did not like his doing these menial tasks, which were her domain and which, in addition, he was not especially good at. He would have preferred waking with the sun already high, but his habit of getting up at dawn was stronger than his will. He missed his friends a good deal but, without feeling bitter about it, he knew that, given his invincible reserve, they were not missing him. One evening, one of them came to ask for him and was turned away from the door. Clementina did not know the caller, and Arredondo never learned who it was. He had been an avid reader of newspapers, and now he found it hard giving up these museums of ephemeral tidbits. He was not a man cut out for deep thinking or for deliberating. His days and his nights were all the same, but Sundays weighed most on him. Towards the middle of July, he suspected that it had been a mistake to parcel out time, which in some way bears us along. Presently, he let his imagination wander over the length and breadth of Uruguay, then running with blood over the rolling fields of Santa Irene, where he had flown kites; over a certain pinto, which by now would be dead; over the dust raised by cattle when they are herded by drovers; over the weary stagecoach that came from Fray Bentos once a month with its hoard of trinkets; over the bay of La Agraciada, where the Thirty-Three, the country’s national heroes, had disembarked; over the Hervidero; over the hill ranges, the woods, and the rivers; over the Cerro, where he had climbed up to the lighthouse, thinking that on either bank of the Plate there was no other hill like it. From this hill overlooking the bay of Montevideo his thoughts passed on to the hill of the Uruguayan national emblem, and he fell asleep.

Every night the breeze off the sea brought a coolness propitious to sleep. He was never wakeful. He loved his fiancée completely, but it had been said that a man should not think about women above all when they are not there. Life in the country had accustomed him to chastity. As for this other business, he tried to think as little as possible about the man he hated. The din of the rain on the flat roof kept him company.

To a man in jail or to a blind man, time flows downstream, as if along an easy slope. Halfway through his reclusion, Arredondo experienced more than once that almost timeless time. In the first of the house’s three patios there was a cistern with a frog in it. It never occurred to Arredondo to think that the frog’s time, which borders on eternity, was what he himself sought.

When the date was not far off, his impatience began again. One night, unable to bear it any longer, he went out into the street. Everything seemed different, larger. Turning a corner, he saw a light and entered a saloon. To justify his presence, he ordered a bitter rum. Some soldiers, leaning on the wooden bar, were holding forth.

‘You know it’s absolutely forbidden to give out news of battles,’ one of them said. ‘Listen to what happened yesterday evening. This will amuse you. A few of us were passing by
La Razón
, when we heard a voice inside defying the order. Losing no time, we marched in. The office was pitch-dark, but we riddled with bullets whoever was doing the talking. We wanted to drag him out by the heels. When it was quiet, we searched the place for him, but what we found was one of those machines they call a phonograph, which speaks by itself.’

All of them laughed. ‘What do you think of a dodge like that, farmer?’ the soldier said to Arredondo, who had been eavesdropping. Arredondo kept silent.

The uniformed man brought his face close to Arredondo’s and said, ‘Quick! Let me hear you shout, “Long live the president of our country Juan Idiarte Borda!”’

Arredondo did not disobey, and amid mocking applause he managed to reach the door. He was in the street when a final insult was hurled at him. ‘Fear’s no fool,’ he heard. ‘It kills anger.’ Arredondo had behaved like a coward, but he knew he was not one. Slowly he made his way back home.

On the twenty-fifth of August, Avelino Arredondo woke up at a little after nine. He thought first of Clara and only later of the date. ‘Goodbye to waiting,’ he told himself then, relieved. ‘Today’s the day.’

He shaved without hurrying, and in the mirror he found his everyday face. He chose a red necktie and put on his best clothes. He ate a late lunch. The overcast sky threatened drizzle. He had always imagined the sky would be bright and blue. A touch of sadness came over him as he left his damp room for the last time. In the arched entranceway he met Clementina and gave her his few remaining pesos. On the sign over the hardware store he saw the coloured diamond shapes, meaning paint was sold there, and he reflected that for over two months he had not given them a thought. He walked towards Sarandi Street. It was a holiday and very few people were about.

The clock had not struck three when he reached the Plaza Matriz. The ‘Te Deum’ was already over. A group of dignitaries government officials, Army officers, and prelates was coming down the slow steps of the church. At first sight, the tall hats some still in hand the uniforms, the gold braid, the arms, and the tunics created the illusion that the group was large; in reality, there were no more than about thirty people. Arredondo, who felt no fear, was filled with a kind of respect. He asked someone which was the president.

‘You see the archbishop, with his mitre and crosier the one beside him,’ he was told.

Arredondo drew a revolver and opened fire. Idiarte Borda took one or two steps, fell headlong, and said distinctly, ‘I’ve been shot!’

Arredondo gave himself up to the authorities. Later he was to declare, ‘I am a Colorado, a Red, and I say it with pride. I’ve killed the president, who betrayed and tainted our party. I broke with my friends and my fiancée, so as not to implicate them. I did not look at the newspapers, so that nobody could say they had incited me. I claim this act of justice as my own. Now let me be judged.’

This is the way it probably happened, although in a more involved fashion; this is the way I imagine it happened.

The Disk

I am a woodcutter. My name does not matter. The hut where I was born and where I shall probably soon die stands at the edge of the forest. It is said of the forest that it stretches as far as the sea, which rings the whole earth and on which wooden huts like mine wend their way. Never having seen this sea, I don’t know. Nor have I ever seen the other side of the forest. When we were boys my elder brother made me vow that between us we would chop down the entire woods until not a single tree was left. My brother died, and what I seek now and what I shall go on seeking is something else. To the west runs a stream that I know how to fish with my hands. In the forest there are wolves, but wolves do not scare me, and my axe has never been untrue to me.

Of my years I have never kept count. I know they are many. My eyes no longer see. In the village, where I venture no more, since I would lose my way, I am known as a miser. But how much treasure can a mere woodcutter have laid up?

To keep snow out, I shut tight the door of my house with a stone. One evening long ago, I heard laboured footsteps approach, and then a knock. I opened, and a stranger came in. He was old and tall, and he was wrapped in a threadbare blanket. A scar marked his face. His years seemed to have given him more authority than frailty, but I noticed that he was unable to get about without the aid of a staff. We exchanged a few words that I no longer remember. At the end, he said, ‘I am homeless and sleep wherever I can. I have traveled the length and breadth of this land of the Saxons.’

These words testified to his years. My father had always spoken of the Saxon land, which nowadays people call England.

I had bread and fish. We did not speak a word during the meal. Rain began to fall. With a few skins I made him a pallet on the earth floor, where my brother had died. When night fell, we went to sleep.

Day was dawning when we left the hut. The rain had stopped and the ground was covered with new-fallen snow. My companion’s staff slipped from his hand and he ordered me to pick it up.

‘Why must I obey you?’ I asked him.

‘Because I am a king,’ he answered.

I thought him mad. Picking up the staff, I handed it to him. He spoke with a different voice.

‘I am king of the Secgens,’ he said. ‘Often in hard-pitched battle I carried my people to victory, but at the fateful hour I lost my kingdom. My name is Isern and I am of the race of Odin.’

‘I do not worship Odin,’ I said. ‘I worship Christ.’

He went on as if he had not heard me. ‘I travel the paths of exile, but I am still king, for I have the disk. Do you want to see it?’

He opened the palm of his bony hand. There was nothing in it. Only then did I recall that he had always kept the hand closed.

Staring hard at me, he said, ‘You may touch it.’

With a certain misgiving, I touched my fingertips to his palm. I felt something cold, and saw a glitter. The hand closed abruptly. I said nothing. The man went on patiently, as if speaking to a child.

‘It is Odin’s disk,’ he said, ‘It has only one side. In all the world there is nothing else with only one side. As long as the disk remains mine, I shall be king.’

‘Is it golden?’ I said.

‘I don’t know. It is Odin’s disk and it has only one side.’

Then and there I was overcome with greed to own the disk. If it were mine, I could trade it for an ingot of gold and I would be a king. I said to the vagabond, whom to this day I go on hating, ‘In my hut I have buried a box of coins. They are of gold and they shine like an axe. If you give me Odin’s disk, I’ll trade you the box.’

He said stubbornly, ‘I don’t want to.’

‘Then,’ I said, ‘you may continue on your path.’

He turned his back to me. One blow with the axe at the back of his neck was more than enough to bring him down, but as he fell his hand opened, and in the air I saw the glitter. I took care to mark the spot with my axe, and dragged the dead man to the stream, which was running high. There I threw him in.

Coming back to my hut, I searched for the disk. I did not find it. That was years ago, and I am searching still.