Oy, Caramba!

by Ilan Stavans

  “In your labyrinth there are three lines too many,” he said at last. “I know of one Greek labyrinth that is a single straight line. Along that line so many philosophers have lost themselves that a mere detective might well do so too. Scharlach, when in some other incarnation you hunt me, pretend to commit (or do commit) a crime at A, then a second crime at B, eight kilometers from A, then a third crime at C, four kilometers from A and B, halfway between the two. Wait for me afterward at D, two kilometers from A and C, again halfway between both. Kill me at D, as you are now going to kill me at Triste-le-Roy.”

  “The next time I kill you,” replied Scharlach, “I promise you that labyrinth, consisting of a single line that is invisible and unceasing.” He moved back a few steps. Then, very carefully, he fired.

  The Secret Miracle

  JORGE LUIS BORGES

  Translated from the Spanish by Harriet de Onís

  This tale, also from Ficciones (1944; included in its English translation in Labyrinths, 1962), recalls Ambrose Bierce’s “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” which takes place during the American Civil War. Suspending the pace of nature, the two are dazzling visions of death in which the protagonists are allowed to return to their past sub specie aeternitatis. But a religious element is added here: Jaromir Hladik, a Czech playwright and translator of Kabbalistic literature, imprisoned by the Nazis in Prague, whose intellectual plight recalls that of Kafka, asks God, before dying, for enough time to finish a drama he has begun. Borges’s ending is troublesome: Can a miracle, in the biblical sense, be truly secret? Other possible conclusions have been suggested. In one, the manuscript of Hladik’s The Enemies is found in a rare book room of a New York City library.

  And God had him die for a hundred years and then

  revived him and said:

  “How long have you been here?”

  “A day or a part of a day,” he answered.

  —KORAN, II, 261

  THE NIGHT OF March 14, 1943, in an apartment in the Zeltnergasse of Prague, Jaromir Hladik, the author of Vindication of Eternity, the unfinished drama The Enemies, and a study of the indirect Jewish sources of Jakob Böhme, had a dream of a long game of chess. The players were not two persons but two illustrious families; the game had been going on for centuries. Nobody could remember what the stakes were, but it was rumored that they were enormous, perhaps infinite; the chessmen and the board were in a secret tower. Jaromir (in his dream) was the firstborn of one of the contending families. The clock struck the hour for the game, which could not be postponed. The dreamer raced over the sands of a rainy desert and was unable to recall either the pieces or the rules of chess. At that moment he awoke. The clangor of the rain and the terrible clocks ceased. A rhythmic, unanimous noise, punctuated by shouts of command, arose from the Zeltnergasse. It was dawn, and the armored vanguard of the Third Reich was entering Prague.

  On the nineteenth, the authorities received a denunciation; that same nineteenth, toward evening, Jaromir Hladik was arrested. He was taken to an aseptic white barracks on the opposite bank of the Moldau. He was unable to refute a single one of the Gestapo’s charges; his mother’s family name was Jaroslavski, he was of Jewish blood, his study on Böhme had a marked Jewish emphasis, his signature had been one more on the protest against the Anschluss. In 1928 he had translated the Sepher Yezirah for the publishing house of Hermann Barsdorf. The fulsome catalog of the firm had exaggerated, for publicity purposes, the translator’s reputation, and the catalog had been examined by Julius Rothe, one of the officials who held Hladik’s fate in his hands. There is not a person who, except in the field of his own specialization, is not credulous; two or three adjectives in Gothic type were enough to persuade Julius Rothe of Hladik’s importance, and he ordered him sentenced to death pour encourager les autres. The execution was set for March 29 at 9:00 a.m. This delay (whose importance the reader will grasp later) was owing to the desire on the authorities’ part to proceed impersonally and slowly, after the manner of vegetables and plants.

  Hladik’s first reaction was mere terror. He felt he would not have shrunk from the gallows, the block, or the knife but that death by a firing squad was unbearable. In vain he tried to convince himself that the plain, unvarnished fact of dying was the fearsome thing, not the attendant circumstances. He never wearied of conjuring up these circumstances, senselessly trying to exhaust all their possible variations. He infinitely anticipated the process of his dying, from the sleepless dawn to the mysterious volley. Before the day set by Julius Rothe, he died hundreds of deaths in courtyards whose forms and angles strained geometrical probabilities, machine-gunned by variable soldiers in changing numbers, who at times killed him from a distance, at others from close by. He faced these imaginary executions with real terror (perhaps with real bravery); each simulacrum lasted a few seconds. When the circle was closed, Jaromir returned once more and interminably to the tremulous vespers of his death. Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation of it; with a logic of his own he inferred that to foresee a circumstantial detail is to prevent its happening. Trusting in this weak magic, he invented, so that they would not happen, the most gruesome details. Finally, as was natural, he came to fear that they were prophetic. Miserable in the night, he endeavored to find some way to hold fast to the fleeting substance of time. He knew that it was rushing headlong toward the dawn of the twenty-ninth. He reasoned aloud: “I am now in the night of the twenty-second; while this night lasts (and for six nights more), I am invulnerable, immortal.” The nights of sleep seemed to him deep, dark pools in which he could submerge himself. There were moments when he longed impatiently for the final burst of fire that would free him, for better or for worse, from the vain compulsion of his imaginings. On the twenty-eighth, as the last sunset was reverberating from the high barred windows, the thought of his drama, The Enemies, deflected him from these abject considerations.

  Hladik had rounded forty. Aside from a few friendships and many habits, the problematic exercise of literature constituted his life. Like all writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged or planned. All the books he had published had left him with a complex feeling of repentance. His studies of the work of Böhme, of Ibn Ezra, and of Fludd had been characterized essentially by mere application; his translation of the Sepher Yezirah, by carelessness, fatigue, and conjecture. Vindication of Eternity perhaps had fewer shortcomings. The first volume gave a history of man’s various concepts of eternity, from the immutable Being of Parmenides to the modifiable Past of Hinton. The second denied (with Francis Bradley) that all the events of the universe make up a temporal series, arguing that the number of man’s possible experiences is not infinite and that a single “repetition” suffices to prove that time is a fallacy . . . Unfortunately, the arguments that demonstrate this fallacy are equally fallacious. Hladik was in the habit of going over them with a kind of contemptuous perplexity. He had also composed a series of expressionist poems; to the poet’s chagrin they had been included in an anthology published in 1924, and no subsequent anthology inherited them. From all this equivocal, uninspired past, Hladik had hoped to redeem himself with his drama in verse, The Enemies. (Hladik felt the verse form to be essential because it makes it impossible for the spectators to lose sight of irreality, one of art’s requisites.)

  The drama observed the unities of time, place, and action. The scene was laid in Hradcany, in the library of Baron von Roemerstadt, on one of the last afternoons of the nineteenth century. In the first scene of the first act, a strange man visits Roemerstadt. (A clock was striking seven, the vehemence of the setting sun’s rays glorified the windows, a passionate, familiar Hungarian music floated in the air.) This visit is followed by others; Roemerstadt does not know the people who are importuning him, but he has the uncomfortable feeling that he has seen them somewhere, perhaps in a dream. They all fawn upon him, but it is apparent—first to the audience
and then to the Baron—that they are secret enemies, in league to ruin him. Roemerstadt succeeds in checking or evading their involved schemings. In the dialogue, mention is made of his sweetheart, Julia von Weidenau, and a certain Jaroslav Kubin, who at one time pressed his attentions on her. Kubin has now lost his mind and believes himself to be Roemerstadt. The dangers increase; Roemerstadt, at the end of the second act, is forced to kill one of the conspirators. The third and final act opens. The incoherencies gradually increase; actors who had seemed out of the play reappear; the man Roemerstadt killed returns for a moment. Someone points out that evening has not fallen; the clock strikes seven, the high windows reverberate in the western sun, the air carries an impassioned Hungarian melody. The first actor comes on and repeats the lines he spoke in the first scene of the first act. Roemerstadt speaks to him without surprise; the audience understands that Roemerstadt is the miserable Jaroslav Kubin. The drama has never taken place; it is the circular delirium that Kubin lives and relives endlessly.

  Hladik had never asked himself whether this tragicomedy of errors was preposterous or admirable, well thought out or slipshod. He felt that the plot I have just sketched was best contrived to cover up his defects and point up his abilities and that it held the possibility of allowing him to redeem (symbolically) the meaning of his life. He had finished the first act and one or two scenes of the third; the metrical nature of the work made it possible for him to keep working it over, changing the hexameters, without the manuscript in front of him. He thought how he still had two acts to do and that he was going to die very soon. He spoke with God in the darkness: “If in some fashion I exist, if I am not one of Your repetitions and mistakes, I exist as the author of The Enemies. To finish this drama, which can justify me and justify You, I need another year. Grant me these days, You to whom the centuries and time belong.” This was the last night, the most dreadful of all, but ten minutes later sleep flooded over him like a dark water.

  Toward dawn he dreamed that he had concealed himself in one of the naves of the Clementine Library. A librarian wearing dark glasses asked him, “What are you looking for?” Hladik answered: “I am looking for God.” The librarian said to him, “God is in one of the letters on one of the pages of one of the four hundred thousand volumes of the Clementine. My fathers and the fathers of my fathers have searched for this letter; I have grown blind seeking it.” He removed his glasses, and Hladik saw his eyes, which were dead. A reader came in to return an atlas. “This atlas is worthless,” he said, and he handed it to Hladik, who opened it at random. He saw a map of India as in a daze. Suddenly sure of himself, he touched one of the tiniest letters. A ubiquitous voice said to him, “The time of your labor has been granted.” At this point Hladik awoke.

  He remembered that men’s dreams belong to God and that Maimonides had written that the words heard in a dream are divine when they are distinct and clear and the person uttering them cannot be seen. He dressed: two soldiers came into the cell and ordered him to follow them.

  From behind the door, Hladik had envisaged a labyrinth of passageways, stairs, and separate buildings. The reality was less spectacular; they descended to an inner court by a narrow iron stairway. Several soldiers—some with uniforms unbuttoned—were examining a motorcycle and discussing it. The sergeant looked at the clock; it was 8:44. They had to wait until it struck nine. Hladik, more insignificant than pitiable, sat down on a pile of wood. He noticed that the soldiers’ eyes avoided his. To ease his wait, the sergeant handed him a cigarette. Hladik did not smoke; he accepted it out of politeness or humility. As he lit it, he noticed that his hands were shaking. The day was clouding over; the soldiers spoke in a low voice as though he were already dead. Vainly he tried to recall the woman of whom Julia von Weidenau was the symbol.

  The squad formed and stood at attention. Hladik, standing against the barracks wall, waited for the volley. Someone pointed out that the wall was going to be stained with blood; the victim was ordered to step forward a few paces. Incongruously, this reminded Hladik of the fumbling preparations of photographers. A big drop of rain struck one of Hladik’s temples and rolled slowly down his cheek; the sergeant shouted the final order.

  The physical universe came to a halt.

  The guns converged on Hladik, but the men who were to kill him stood motionless. The sergeant’s arm eternized an unfinished gesture. On a paving stone of the courtyard, a bee cast an unchanging shadow. The wind had ceased, as in a picture. Hladik attempted a cry, a word, a movement of the hand. He realized that he was paralyzed. Not a sound reached him from the halted world. He thought, “I am in hell. I am dead.” He thought, “I am mad.” He thought, “Time has stopped.” Then he reflected that if that was the case, his mind would have stopped too. He wanted to test this; he repeated (without moving his lips) Virgil’s mysterious fourth eclogue. He imagined that the now remote soldiers must be sharing his anxiety; he longed to be able to communicate with them. It astonished him not to feel the least fatigue, not even the numbness of his protracted immobility. After an indeterminate time, he fell asleep. When he awoke the world continued motionless and mute. The drop of water still clung to his cheek, the shadow of the bee to the stone. The smoke from the cigarette he had thrown away had not dispersed. Another “day” went by before Hladik understood.

  He had asked God for a whole year to finish his work; His omnipotence had granted it. God had worked a secret miracle for him; German lead would kill him at the set hour, but in his mind a year would go by between the order and its execution. From perplexity he passed to stupor, from stupor to resignation, from resignation to sudden gratitude.

  He had no document but his memory; the training he had acquired with each added hexameter gave him a discipline unsuspected by those who set down and forget temporary, incomplete paragraphs. He was not working for posterity or even for God, whose literary tastes were unknown to him. Meticulously, motionlessly, secretly, he wrought in time his lofty, invisible labyrinth. He worked the third act over twice. He eliminated certain symbols as overobvious, such as the repeated striking of the clock, the music. Nothing hurried him. He omitted, he condensed, he amplified. In certain instances he came back to the original version. He came to feel an affection for the courtyard, the barracks; one of the faces before him modified his conception of Roemerstadt’s character. He discovered that the wearying cacophonies that bothered Flaubert so much are mere visual superstitions, weakness and limitation of the written word, not the spoken . . . He concluded his drama. He had only the problem of a single phrase. He found it. The drop of water slid down his cheek. He opened his mouth in a maddened cry, moved his face, dropped under the quadruple blast.

  Jaromir Hladik died on March 29 at 9:02 a.m.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The new edition of this anthology benefited from the assistance of Daniel Canizares, Derek García, and Saúl Grullón. Muchas gracias to my editor, Elise McHugh, for her sustained devotion to this project; to Lauren Gladu at Amherst College for her administrative support; to John W. Byram, director of the University of New Mexico Press, for his unflagging enthusiasm; to Peg Goldstein for her wonderful job in copyediting; and to Frederick T. Courtright for helping to secure all the permissions.

  I gratefully acknowledge permission to reprint the following works:

  “Jesus” by Pinkhes Berniker, translated by Alan Astro. From Yiddish South of the Border: An Anthology of Latin America Yiddish Writing, edited by Alan Astro. © 2003 by University of New Mexico Press. Reprinted by permission of the translator.

  “The Closed Coffin” by Marcelo Birmajer, translated by Sharon Wood. © 2008. Reprinted by permission of the author and the translator.

  “Death and the Compass” by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Donald A. Yates, from Labyrinths, © 1962, 1964 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. UK, Commonwealth, and European rights for extracts from Labryinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges reprinted by pe
rmission of Pollinger Limited on behalf of the Estate of Jorge Luis Borges.

  “Emma Zunz” by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Donald A. Yates, from Labyrinths, © 2007 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. UK, Commonwealth, and European rights for extracts from Labryinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges reprinted by permission of Pollinger Limited on behalf of the Estate of Jorge Luis Borges.

  “The Secret Miracle” by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Harriet de Onís, from Labyrinths, © 1962, 1964 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. UK, Commonwealth, and European rights for extracts from Labryinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings by Jorge Luis Borges reprinted by permission of Pollinger Limited on behalf of the Estate of Jorge Luis Borges.

  “Celeste’s Heart” by Aída Bortnik. Translation © 1989 by Alberto Manguel, care of Guillermo Schavelzon & Asociados, Agencia Literaria, www.schavelzon.com. First published in Toronto Life Magazine 23, no. 12 (August 1989).

  “Temptation” by Salomón Briansky, translated by Moisés Mermelstein. From Yiddish South of the Border: An Anthology of Latin America Yiddish Writing, edited by Alan Astro. © 2003 by University of New Mexico Press. Reprinted by permission of the translator.

  “Asylum” by Ariel Dorfman, originally published in Playboy. © 2008 by Ariel Dorfman. Used by permission of the Wylie Agency LLC.

  Excerpt from Cláper by Alicia Freilich, translated by Joan E. Friedman. © 2002. Reprinted by permission of the University of New Mexico Press.