The Book of Fantasy

by Jorge Luis Borges

  Just as the varied and sharp sounds of door hinges will never become music, my animal frenzy, shrillness in creation, could not reconcile itself to the silent and serene activity of plants, with their subdued ease. And the only thing I understood was precisely what the latter don’t know: that they are elements in the landscape.

  Their innocence and tranquillity, their possible ecstasies, are perhaps equivalent to the intuition of beauty the ‘scenery’ they all go to make up offers to man.

  . . . However highly human activity, change and movement are valued, in most cases man moves, walks, comes and goes in a long, filiform cage. He who has four very familiar walls as a horizon isn’t so very different from he who travels along the same roads every day to fulfil tasks which are always the same, in much the same circumstances. All this tiring oneself is not worth the mutual, tacit kiss between a plant and the earth.

  . . . But all this is nothing but a sophism. Each time I die more like a man and that death covers me in thorns and layers of chlorophyll.

  . . . And now, opposite the dusty cemetery, opposite the anonymous ruin, the cactus ‘to which I belong’ disintegrates, its trunk cut by an axe. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust! Neutral? I don’t know, but it will take quite some ferment to work again with matter like ‘mine’, so riddled with disappointments and defeat!

  A Parable of Gluttony

  Alexandra David-Neel, French orientalist born in Paris. Lived in Tibet for many years, and was very familiar with Tibetan life, hagiography and customs. Author of Initiations Lamaiques; Le Lama aux Cinq Sagesses; le Boudisme, ses Doctrines et ses Methodes; Les Theories Individualistes dans la Philosophie Chinoise.

  A holy monk, so runs the story, met on his way a man who was boiling, near a river, a broth made with the fishes he had just caught. The monk, without uttering a word, took the pot and swallowed the boiling broth. The man was astonished to see how he could bear the touch of the boiling liquid, but yet scoffed at him reproaching him for his sinful gluttony. (Chinese and Korean Buddhist monks never eat animal food.) But the monk, still keeping silent, entered the river and micturated. And, then, with his water the fishes came out living and went away swimming in the river.

  The Persecution of the Master

  Then, in his eagerness to learn the doctrine that could save him from the purgatories, Naropa wanders from town to town, with the only result that each time he reaches a place where Tilopa is said to be staying, the latter had, invariably, just left it a little before his arrival.

  Once, knocking at the door of a house, to beg food, a man comes out who offers him wine. Naropa feels deeply offended and indignantly refuses the impure beverage. The house and its master vanish immediately. The proud Brahmin is left alone on the solitary road, while a mocking voice laughs: ‘That man was I: Tolopa.’

  Another day, a villager askes Naropa to help him to skin a dead animal. Such work, in India, is done only by untouchable outcastes. The mere approach of such men makes a hindu, belonging to one of the pure castes, unclean. Naropa flees, utterly disgusted, and the invisible Tilopa scoffs at him: ‘That man was myself.’

  Again, the traveller sees a brutal husband who drags his wife by her hair, and when he interferes, the cruel fellow tells him: ‘You had better help me, I want to kill her. At least, pass your way and let me do it.’ Naropa can hear nothing more. He knocks the man down on the ground, sets free the woman . . . and lo! once more the phantasmagoria disappears while the same voice repeats scornfully: ‘I was there, I: Tilopa.’

  One evening, after a long tramp, he reaches a cemetery. A crumbled-down pyre is smouldering in a corner. At times, a dark reddish flame leaps from it, showing shrivelled-up carbonized remains. The glimmer allows Naropa to vaguely discern a man lying beside the pyre. He looks at him . . . a mocking laugh answers his inspection. He understood, he falls prostrate on the ground, holding Tilopa’s feet and placing them on his head. This time the yogin does not disappear.

  The Idle City

  Lord Dunsany (Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett), Irish author, born in London in 1878; died in Ireland in 1957. Fought in the Boer War and in World War I. Author of Time and the Gods (1906); The Sword of Welleran (1908); A Dreamer’s Tales (1910); King Argimenes and the Unknown Warrior (1911); Unhappy Far-off Things (1919); The Curse of the Wise Woman (1934); and an autobiography, Patches of Sunlight (1938). He also published his memoirs of World War II.

  There was once a city which was an idle city, wherein men told vain tales.

  And it was that city’s custom to tax all men that would enter in, with the toll of some idle story in the gate.

  So all men paid to the watchers in the gate the toll of an idle story, and passed into the city unhindered and unhurt. And in a certain hour of the night when the king of that city arose and went pacing swiftly up and down the chamber of his sleeping, and called upon the name of the dead queen, then would the watchers fasten up the gate and go into that chamber to the king, and, sitting on the floor, would tell him all the tales that they had gathered. And listening to them some calmer mood would come upon the king, and listening still he would lie down again and at last fall asleep, and all the watchers silently would arise and steal away from the chamber.

  A while ago wandering, I came to the gate of that city. And even as I came a man stood up to pay his toll to the watchers. They were seated cross-legged on the ground between him and the gate, and each one held a spear. Near him two other travellers sat on the warm sand waiting. And the man said:

  ‘Now the city of Nombros forsook the worship of the gods and turned towards God. So the gods threw their cloaks over their faces and strode away from the city, and going into the haze among the hills passed through the trunks of the olive groves into the sunset. But when they had already left the earth, they turned and looked through the gleaming folds of the twilight for the last time at their city; and they looked half in anger and half in regret, then turned and went away forever. But they sent back a Death, who bore a scythe, saying to it: ‘Slay half in the city that forsook us, but half of them spare alive that they may yet remember their old forsaken gods.’

  ‘But God sent a destroying angel to show that He was God, saying unto him: “Go down and show the strength of mine arm unto that city and slay half of the dwellers therein, yet spare a half of them that they may know that I am God.”

  ‘And at once the destroying angel put his hand to his sword, and the sword came out of the scabbard with a deep breath, like to the breath that a broad woodman takes before his first blow at some giant oak. Thereat the angel pointed his arms downwards, and bending his head between them, fell forward from Heaven’s edge, and the spring of his ankles shot him downwards with his wings furled behind him. So he went slanting earthward through the evening with his sword stretched out before him, and he was like a javelin that some hunter hath hurled that returneth again to the earth: but just before he touched it he lifted his head and spread his wings with the under feathers forward, and alighted by the bank of the broad Flavro that divides the city of Nombros. And down the bank of the Flavro he fluttered low, like to a hawk over a new-cut cornfield when the little creatures of the corn are shelterless, and at the same time down the other bank the Death from the gods went mowing.

  ‘At once they saw each other, and the angel glared at the Death, and the Death leered back at him, and the flames in the eyes of the angel illumined with a red glare the mist that lay in the hollows of the sockets of the Death. Suddenly they fell on one another, sword to scythe. And the angel captured the temples of the gods, and set up over them the sign of God, and led into them the ceremonies and sacrifices of the gods; and all the while the centuries slipped quietly by going down the Flavro seawards.

  ‘And now some worship God in the temple of the gods, and others worship the gods in the temple of God, and still the angel hath not returned again to the rejoicing choirs, and still the Death hath not gone back to die with the dead gods; but all through Nombros they fight up and down, and still on
each side of the Flavro the city lives.’

  And the watchers in the gate said,‘Enter in.’

  Then another traveller rose up, and said:

  ‘Solemnly between Huhenwazi and Nitcrana the huge grey clouds came floating. And those great mountains, heavenly Huhenwazi, and Nitcrana, the king of peaks, greeted them, calling them brothers. And the clouds were glad of their greeting for they meet with companions seldom in the lonely heights of the sky.

  ‘But the vapours of evening said unto the earth-mist, ‘What are those shapes that dare to move above us and to go where Nitcrana is and Huhenwazi?’

  ‘And the earth-mist said in answer unto the vapours of evening, ‘It is only an earth-mist that has become mad and has left the warm and comfortable earth, and has in his madness thought that his place is with Huhenwazi and Nitcrana.’ “Once,” said the vapours of evening, “there were clouds, but this was many and many a day ago, as our forefathers have said. Perhaps the mad one thinks he is the clouds.’

  ‘Then spake the earthworms from the warm deeps of the mud, saying ‘O, earth-mist, thou art indeed the clouds, and there are no clouds but thou. And as for Huhenwazi and Nitcrana, I cannot see them, and therefore they are not high, and there are no mountains in the world but those that I cast up every morning out of the deeps of the mud.”

  ‘And the earth-mist and the vapours of evening were glad at the voice of the earthworms, and looking earthward believed what they had said.

  ‘And indeed it is better to be as the earth-mist, and to keep close to the warm mud at night, and to hear the earthworm’s comfortable speech, and not to be a wanderer in the cheerless heights, but to leave the mountains alone with their vast aspect over all the cities of men, and from the whispers that they hear at evening of unknown distant Gods.’

  And the watchers in the gate said, ‘Enter in.’

  Then a man stood up who came out of the west, and told a western tale. He said:

  ‘There is a road in Rome that runs through an ancient temple that once the gods had loved; it runs along the top of a great wall, and the floor of the temple lies far down beneath it, of marble, pink and white.

  ‘Upon the temple floor I counted to the number of thirteen hungry cats.

  ‘ “Sometimes,” they said among themselves, “it was the gods that lived here, sometimes it was men, and now it’s cats. So let us enjoy the sun on the hot marble before another people comes.”

  ‘For it was at that hour of a warm afternoon when my fancy is able to hear the silent voices.

  ‘And the fearful leanness of all those thirteen cats moved me to go into a neighbouring fish shop, and there to buy a quantity of fishes. Then I returned and threw them all over the railing at the top of the great wall, and they fell for thirty feet, and hit the sacred marble with a smack.

  ‘Now, in any other town but Rome, or in the minds of any other cats, the sight of fishes falling out of heaven had surely excited wonder. They rose slowly, and all stretched themselves, then they came leisurely towards the fishes. “It is only a miracle,” they said in their hearts.’

  And the watchers in the gate said, ‘Enter in.’

  Proudly and slowly, as they spoke, drew up to them a camel, whose rider sought for entrance to the city. His face shone with the sunset by which for long he had steered for the city’s gate. Of him they demanded toll. Whereat he spoke to his camel, and the camel roared and kneeled, and the man descended from him. And the man unwrapped from many silks a box of divers metals wrought by the Japanese, and on the lid of it were figures of men who gazed from some shore at an isle of the Inland Sea. This he showed to the watchers, and when they had seen it, said, ‘It has seemed to me that these speak to each other thus: “Behold now Oojni, the dear one of the sea, the little mother sea that hath no storms. She goeth out from Oojni singing a song, and she returneth singing over her sands. Little is Oojni in the lap of the sea, and scarce to be perceived by wondering ships. White sails have never wafted her legends afar, they are told not by bearded wanderers of the sea. Her fireside tales are known not to the North, the dragons of China have not heard of them, nor those that ride on elephants through India.

  “Men tell the tales and the smoke ariseth upwards; the smoke departeth and the tales are told.

  “Oojni is not a name among the nations, she is not known of where the merchants meet, she is not spoken of by alien lips.

  “Indeed, but Oojni is little among the isles, yet is she loved by those that know her coasts and her inland places hidden from the sea.

  “Without glory, without fame, and without wealth, Oojni is greatly loved by a little people, and by a few; yet not by few, for all her dead still love her, and oft by night come whispering through her woods. Who could forget Oojni even among the dead?

  “For here in Oojni, wot you, are homes of men, and gardens, and golden temples of the gods, and sacred places inshore from the sea, and many murmurous woods. And there is a path that winds over the hills to go into mysterious holy lands where dance by night the spirits of the woods, or sing unseen in the sunlight; and no one goes into these holy lands, for who that love Oojni would rob her of her mysteries, and the curious aliens come not. Indeed, but we love Oojni though she is so little; she is the little mother of our race, and the kindly nurse of all seafaring birds.

  “And behold, even now caressing her, the gentle fingers of the mother sea, whose dreams are afar with that old wanderer Ocean.

  “And yet let us forget not Fuzi-Yama, for he stands manifest over clouds and sea, misty below, and vague and indistinct, but clear above for all the isles to watch. The ships make all their journeys in his sight, the nights and the days go by him like a wind, the summers and winters under him flicker and fade, the lives of men pass quietly here and hence, and Fuzi-Yama watches there—and knows.” ’

  And the watchers in the gate said ‘Enter in.’

  And I, too, would have told them a tale, very wonderful and very true; one that I had told in many cities, which as yet had no believers. But now the sun had set, and the brief twilight gone, and ghostly silences were rising from far and darkening hills. A stillness hung over that city’s gate. And the great silence of the solemn night was more acceptable to the watchers in the gate than any sound of man. Therefore they beckoned to us, and motioned with their hands that we should pass untaxed into the city. And softly we went up over the sand, and between the high rock pillars of the gate, and a deep stillness settled among the watchers, and the stars over them twinkled undisturbed.

  For how short a while man speaks, and withal how vainly. And for how long he is silent. Only the other day I met a king in Thebes, who had been silent already for four thousand years.

  Tantalia

  Macedonio Fernández, Argentinian metaphysicist and humorist, born in Buenos Aires in 1874, died in 1952. His extremely original work, which includes No toda es Vigilia la de los Ojos Abiertos (1928) and Parpeles de Recienvenido (1930), is distinguished for its intensity and continual inventiveness.

  The world is of tantalic inspiration.

  First moment: The career of a little plant

  He is finally convinced that his sentimentality, his capacity for affection, which has long been struggling to recover, is totally exhausted and, in the pain of this discovery, ponders and comes to the decision that perhaps caring for a fragile little plant, a minimal life, the most in need of affection, should be the first step in the re-education of his sentimentality.

  A few days after this meditation and the projects pending, having no inkling of his thoughts but moved by a vague apprehension she had had of the emotional impoverishment taking place in him, she sent him a gift of a little clover plant.

  He decided to adopt it to initiate the procedure he had been contemplating. He looked after it enthusiastically for some time, gradually becoming more aware of the infinite care and protection, susceptible to a fatal lapse, required to ensure the life of such a weak being, which a cat, a frost, a knock, heat or wind, could threaten. He fe
lt intimidated by the possibility of seeing it die one day as a result of the slightest carelessness; but it was not only the fear of losing his beloved’s gift. Talking with Her, worried just like all those who are passionate, the more so when that passion is flagging, it became an obsession that there was an intertwining of destinies of the life of the plant and their lives, or that of their love. It was She who one day came to tell him that the clover was the symbol of life of their love.

  They began to fear that the little plant might die and that with it one of them might die, and, what’s more, their love, the only death there is. They saw each other frequently, going over it in conversations, whilst the fear in which they found themselves trapped grew. They then decided to destroy the recognizable identity of the little plant so that, avoiding the bad omen which killing it would entail, there would be nothing identifiable in the world whose existence their life and love was subordinate; and in so doing, ensuring that they would never know whether that vegetable existence which had so uniquely become part of the vicissitudes of a human passion lived or died. Then they decided, at night, to lose it in a vast clover field somewhere unfamiliar to them.

  Second moment: Identity of a clover

  But the excitement which had been mounting in Him for some time, and the disappointment of both at having had to give up the attempt on which they had embarked to re-educate his sensitivity and the habit and affection emerging in him as he looked after the little plant, were translated into a covert deed on his return from the mission to forget in the shadows. On the way back, without Her noticing for certain, yet feeling a certain anxiety, He bent down and picked another clover.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  They parted at dawn, She somewhat frightened, both of them relieved at no longer seeing themselves dependent on the symbolic life of that little plant, and in both also was the fear that we feel at the point of no return, when we have just created an impossibility, as in this case the impossibility of ever knowing whether it was living and which one was the little plant which had initially been a gift of love.