The Book of Fantasy

by Jorge Luis Borges

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: You foreigners are always wandering off.

  GERTRUDIS: Muni! Muni! Somebody’s coming; perhaps it’s one of your cousins. Don’t you like it, son? You can play and laugh with them again. Let’s see if it dispels your gloom.

  (EVA appears, foreign, fair-haired, tall, sad, very young, in a 1920s travelling dress.)

  EVA: Muni was around a moment ago. Muni, my son! Can you hear that beating? That’s how the sea beats against the rocks of my house . . . none of you knew it . . . it was on a rock, tall as a wave. Beaten by the winds which rocked us at night. Swirls of salt covered its windows with sea stars. The whitewash in the kitchen became golden with my father’s sunny hands . . . At night, the creatures of the wind, the sea, fire, salt, came in through the chimney, curled up in the flames, sang in the drips in the basins . . . Plink, plonk! Plink, plink, plink, plink, plonk! . . . And the iodine spread around the house like sleep . . . A shiny dolphin’s tail heralded the day. Like that! With a cascade of scales and coral!

  (EVA, on saying the last phrase, raises her arm and points to the flood of light entering the crypt. Above, the first stone slab is removed. The room is bathed in sunlight. The luxurious dresses are dusty and the faces pale. The little girl CATALINA jumps with delight.)

  CATALINA: Look, Jesusita! Somebody’s coming! Who’s bringing him Jesusita: Doña Diphtheria or St Michael?

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Wait, child, we’ll see!

  CATALINA: Doña Diphtheria brought me. Do you remember her? She had fingers of cotton wool and didn’t let me breathe. Did she frighten you, Jesusita?

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Yes, sister. I remember they took you away and the patio of the house was covered in purple petals. Mother cried a lot, and we girls too.

  CATALINA: Silly! You didn’t know you’d be coming to play with me? That day St Michael sat next to me and with his spear of fire he wrote it in the sky of my house. I couldn’t read . . . and I read it. And was the Misses Simson’s school pretty?

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Very pretty, Catita. Mother sent us with black bows . . . and you could no longer go.

  CATALINA: And did you learn how to spell? That’s what mother was going to send me there for. And since . . .

  MUNI (He enters in pyjamas, his face blue, with fair hair.): Who could it be?

  (Above, through the piece of vault open to the sky, we can see the feet of a woman suspended in a circle of light.)

  GERTRUDIS: Clemente, Clemente, those are Lidia’s feet! How lovely, my child, how lovely that you’ve died so soon!

  (Everyone is quiet. LIDIA starts her descent, suspended by ropes. She comes upright, with a white dress, her arms crossed over her chest, her fingers making a cross, head bent and eyes closed.)

  CATALINA: Who’s Lidia?

  MUNI: Lidia? She’ the daughter of Uncle Clemente and Aunt Gertrudis, Catita. (He caresses the girl.)

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: That’s all we needed! Now we have the whole set of grandchildren. What a lot of small fry! What’s with the crematorium? Isn’t that more modern? I thought it was at least more hygienic.

  CATALINA: Isn’t it true, Jesusita, that Lidia isn’t real?

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: If only it were, child! Here there is room for everyone, except poor old Ramon!

  EVA: How she’s grown! When I came she was as small as Muni.

  (LIDIA remains standing in their midst as they watch her. Then she opens her eyes.)

  LIDIA: Father! (She hugs him.) Mother! Muni! (She hugs them.)

  GERTRUDIS: You look very well, child.

  LIDIA: And grandmother?

  CLEMENTE: She couldn’t get up. Do you remember we made the mistake of burying her in her nightdress?

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Yes, Lilí, here I am lying down for ever and ever.

  GERTRUDIS: My mother’s ideas. You know, Lilí, how composed she always was . . .

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: The worst thing would be, child, to appear like this before Our Lord God. Don’t you think it’s wicked? Why didn’t you think of bringing me a dress? That grey one, with the brocade ruffles and the little bunch of violets . . . but nobody remembers old people . . .

  CATALINA: When St Michael comes to see us, she hides.

  LIDIA: And who are you, darling?

  CATALINA: Catita!

  LIDIA: Ah, of course! We had her on the piano. Now she’s in Evita’s house. How sad when we saw her, so melancholic, painted in her white dress! I’d forgotten she was here.

  VICENTE: And aren’t you pleased to meet me, niece?

  LIDIA: Uncle Vicente! We also had you in the lounge, in uniform, and your medal was in a little red velvet box.

  EVA: And don’t you remember your Aunt Eva?

  LIDIA: Aunt Eva! Yes, I can just remember you, with your fair hair in the sun . . . and I remember your purple parasol and your pale face under its lights, like that of a beautiful drowned woman . . . and your empty chair rocking to the rhythm of your song after you had gone.

  (A voice erupts from the circle of light. A speech.)

  VOICE: The generous earth of our beloved Mexico opens its arms to give you loving shelter. Virtuous lady, most exemplary mother, model wife, you leave an irremediable void . . .

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Who’s talking to you with such familiarity?

  LIDIA: It’s Don Gregorio de la Huerta y Ramírez Puente, President of the Society for the Blind.

  VICENTE: What madness! And what are so many blind people doing together?

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: But why does he treat you so familiarly?

  GERTRUDIS: It’s the fashion, mother, to talk familiarly to the dead.

  VOICE: Most cruel loss, whose absence we shall grieve with growing sorrow with the passage of time, you deprive us of your overwhelming charm and you also leave a secure Christian home in the most pitiless orphanhood. Let homes tremble before the merciless Parcae . . .

  CLEMENTE: Good God! Is that idiot still around?

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: What’s no good thrives!

  LIDIA: Yes. And now she’s Chair of the Bank, of the Knights of Colombus, of the flag and of Mother’s Day . . .

  VOICE: Only unshakable faith, Christian resignation and compassion . . .

  CATALINA: Don Hilario always says the same thing.

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: It’s not Don Hilario, Catita. Don Hilario died a mere sixty-seven years ago . . .

  CATALINA (without hearing her): When they brought me here, he said, ‘A little angel has flown!’ And it wasn’t true. I was down here, alone, very frightened. Isn’t that right, Vicente? Isn’t it true that I don’t tell lies?

  VICENTE: You’re telling me! I arrived here, still dazed by the flashes, with open wounds and . . .what do I see? Catita crying: ‘I want to see my mummy, I want to see my mummy!’ What a battle this child gave me! I tell you, I even missed the French . . .

  VOICE: Requiescat in pace! (They begin to replace the stone slabs. The scene gradually darkens.)

  CATALINA: We were alone a long time, weren’t we, Vicente? We didn’t know what was happening, why nobody ever came back again.

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: I’ve told you already, Catita, we went to Mexico. Then there was the Revolution . . .

  CATALINA: Until one day Eva arrived. You said, Vicente, that she was a foreigner because we didn’t know her.

  VICENTE: The situation was rather strained, and Eva didn’t say a word to us.

  EVA: I felt intimidated . . . and I was thinking of Muni . . . and my house . . . everything was so quiet here. (Silence. They replace the last slab.)

  LIDIA: And now what do we do?

  CLEMENTE: Wait.

  LIDIA: Still wait?

  GERTRUDIS: Yes, child, you’ll see.

  EVA: You’ll see everything you want to see, except your house with its white pine table and the waves in the windows and the boats’ sails . . .

  MUNI: Aren’t you happy, Lilí?

  LIDIA: Yes, Muni, especially seeing you. When I saw you lying that night in the yard of the police station with that smell of urine coming from broken slab
s, and you sleeping on the bunk, amongst the policemen’s feet, your pyjamas crumpled and your face blue, I asked myself, why, why?

  CATALINA: So did I, Lilí. I had never seen a blue dead body. Jesusita told me later that cyanide has many brushes and only one tube of paint: blue.

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Leave the lad alone! Blue suits fair people very well.

  MUNI: Why, cousin Lilí? Haven’t you seen stray dogs wandering forever along the pavement, looking for bones in butchers’ shops, full of flies, and the butcher, with his fingers soaked in blood from chopping so much meat? Well, I didn’t want to walk along any more grim pavements looking for a bone amongst the blood. Nor to see the corners, props for drunks, places where dogs pee. I wanted a joyful city, full of suns and moons. A secure city, like the house we had as children: with a sun at each door, a moon for each window and planets in the rooms. Do you remember it, Lilí? It had a labyrinth of laughter. Its kitchen was a crossroads; its garden, the bed of all rivers; and the whole of it, the birth of nations . . .

  LIDIA: A secure home, Muni! That’s exactly what I wanted . . . And you know, they took me to a strange house and I found nothing there but clocks and some eyes without eyelids, which watched for years. I polished the floors, in order not to see the thousands of dead words the maids swept in the mornings. They polished the mirrors, to drive away our hostile looks. I was expecting that one morning the loving image would arise from its quicksilver. I would open books, in order to open up avenues in that circular inferno. I embroidered serviettes, with intertwined initials, to find the unbreakable magic thread which makes two names one . . .

  MUNI: I know, Lilí.

  LIDIA: But everything was in vain. The angry eyes never stopped looking at me. If I could find the spider which lived in my house, I would say to myself, with its invisible thread linking flower to light, apple to perfume, woman to man, I would sew beautiful eyelids on to these eyes which would look at me, and this house would enter the solar order. Each balcony would be a different country; its furniture would flower; sprinklers would sprout from its glasses; from the sheets, magic carpets to travel through a dream; from my children’s hands, castles, flags and battles . . . but I couldn’t find the thread, Muni . . .

  MUNI: You told me at the police station. In that strange yard, far away for ever from that other yard in whose sky a belltower told us the hours we had left to play.

  LIDIA: Yes, Muni. And in you I kept the last day we were children. Afterwards there was only one: Lidia sitting facing the wall, waiting . . .

  MUNI: I couldn’t grow either, live on the corners. I wanted my house . . .

  EVA: So did I, Muni, my son, I wanted a secure home. So secure that the sea could beat against it every night, bang! bang!, and it would laugh with the laughter of my father, full of fishes and nets.

  CLEMENTE: Lilí, aren’t you happy? You’ll find the thread and you’ll find the spider. Now your house is the centre of the sun, the heart of every star, the root of every grass, the most secure point of every rock.

  MUNI: Yes, Lilí, you don’t know it yet, but suddenly you don’t need a house, nor do you need a river. We shall not swim in Mescal; we shall be Mescal.

  GERTRUDIS: Sometimes you’ll feel very cold; and you’ll be the snow falling in an unfamiliar city, on to grey roofs and red caps.

  CATALINA: What I like most is to be a sweet in a little girl’s mouth, or a gold thistle, to make those who read by a window cry!

  MUNI: Don’t worry when your eyes begin to disappear, because then you’ll be all the eyes of the dogs looking at absurd feet.

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Oh, I hope you never have to be the blind eyes of a blind fish in the deepest sea. You don’t know what a terrible feeling it gave me: it was like seeing and not seeing.

  CATALINA (laughing and clapping): You also got very scared when you were the worm going in and out of your mouth!

  VICENTE: For me, the worst thing was being the murderer’s dagger.

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Now the rats will come back. Don’t scream when you yourself scurry across your own face.

  CLEMENTE: Don’t tell her that, you’ll scare her. It’s frightening learning to be all those things.

  GERTRUDIS: Especially since you barely learn to be a man in the world.

  LIDIA: And could I be a pine tree with a spider’s nest and build a secure home?

  CLEMENTE: Of course. And you’ll be the pine tree and the steps and the fire.

  LIDIA: And then?

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Then God will call us to His bosom.

  CLEMENTE: After you’ve learned to be everything, St Michael’s spear will appear, centre of the Universe. And under its light will emerge the divine host of angels and we will enter the celestial order.

  MUNI: I want to be the fold in an angel’s tunic!

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Your colour would go very well; it’ll give some beautiful reflections. And what will I do, encased in this nightdress?

  CATALINA: I want to be God the Father’s index finger!

  EVERYONE IN CHORUS: Child!

  EVA: And I a wave splattered with salt, transformed into a cloud!

  LIDIA: And I the Virgin’s seamstress’s fingers, embroidering . . . embroidering . . .!

  GERTRUDIS: And I the music from St Cecilia’s harp.

  VICENTE: And I the fury of St Gabriel’s sword.

  CLEMENTE: And I a particle of St Peter’s stone.

  CATALINA: And I the window which looks out on the world!

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: There will be no more world, Catita, because we’ll be all these things after the Last Judgement.

  CATALINA (crying): There’ll be no more world? And when am I going to see it? I haven’t seen anything. I haven’t even learned how to spell. I want there to be a world.

  VICENTE: See it now, Catita!

  (In the distance we hear a trumpet.)

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Jesus, Virgin most pure! The trumpet of the Last Judgement! And me in my nightdress! Forgive me, Lord, this immodesty . . .

  LIDIA: No, Granny. It’s the curfew. There’s a barracks next to the pantheon.

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Ah! Yes, they’ve told me before, and I always forget. Whoever thought of putting a barracks so close to us? What a government! It’s so confusing!

  VICENTE: The curfew! I’m off. I’m the wind. The wind which opens all the doors I never opened, which climbs in a whirlwind the steps I never climbed, which runs through the streets new to my officer’s uniform and lifts the skirts of beautiful unknown women . . . Ah, freshness! (He disappears.)

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: Rascal!

  CLEMENTE: Ah, rain on water! (He disappears.)

  MUNI: Can you hear that? A dog is howling. Ah, melancholy! (He disappears.)

  CATALINA: The table at which nine children are eating! I’m the game! (She disappears.)

  MAMÁ JESUSITA: The fresh heart of a lettuce! (She disappears.)

  EVA: Lightning sinking into the black sea! (She disappears.)

  LIDIA: A secure home! That’s what I am! The slabs of my tomb! (She disappears.)

  The Man Who Did Not Believe in Miracles

  Chu Fu Tze, who didn’t believe in miracles, died; his son-in-law was watching over him. At dawn the coffin rose up of its own accord and hung noiselessly in the air, two feet from the ground. The pious son-in-law was terrified. ‘Oh venerable father-in-law,’ he begged. ‘Don’t destroy my faith that miracles are possible.’ At that point the coffin descended slowly, and the son-in­-law regained his faith.

  —HERBERT A. GILES

  Earth’s Holocaust

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) came from an old Puritan family and won acclaim for his sketches of New England life and his novel The Scarlet Letter (1850). He also wrote many imaginative stories such as ‘Wakefield’ and ‘Mr Higginbotham’s Catastrophe’, which were enormously influential in the history of American writing.

  Once upon a time—but whether in the time past or time to come is a matter of little or no moment—this wide world had become so overburd
ened with an accumulation of wornout trumpery that the inhabitants determined to rid themselves of it by a general bonfire. The site fixed upon at the representation of the insurance companies, and as being as central a spot as any other on the globe, was one of the broadest prairies of the West, where no human habitation would be endangered by the flames, and where a vast assemblage of spectators might commodiously admire the show. Having a taste for sights of this kind, and imagining, likewise, that the illumination of the bonfire might reveal some profundity of moral truth heretofore hidden in mist or darkness, I made it convenient to journey thither and be present. At my arrival, although the heap of condemned rubbish was as yet comparatively small, the torch had already been applied. Amid that boundless plain, in the dusk of the evening, like a far off star alone in the firmament, there was merely visible one tremulous gleam, whence none could have anticipated so fierce a blaze as was destined to ensue. With every moment, however, there came foot travellers, women holding up their aprons, men on horseback, wheelbarrows, lumbering baggage wagons, and other vehicles, great and small, and from far and near laden with articles that were judged fit for nothing but to be burned.

  ‘What materials have been used to kindle the flame?’ inquired I of a bystander; for I was desirous of knowing the whole process of the affair from beginning to end.

  The person whom I addressed was a grave man, fifty years old or thereabout, who had evidently come thither as a looker on. He struck me immediately as having weighed for himself the true value of life and its circumstances, and therefore as feeling little personal interest in whatever judgment the world might form of them. Before answering my question, he looked me in the face by the kindling light of the fire.

  ‘Oh, some very dry combustibles,’ replied he, ‘and extremely suitable to the purpose—no other, in fact, than yesterday’s newspapers, last month’s magazines, and last year’s withered leaves. Here now comes some antiquated trash that will take fire like a handful of shavings.’

  As he spoke some rough-looking men advanced to the verge of the bonfire, and threw in, as it appeared, all the rubbish of the herald’s office—the blazonry of coat armor, the crests and devices of illustrious families, pedigrees that extended back, like lines of light, into the mist of the dark ages, together with stars, garters, and embroidered collars, each of which, as paltry a bawble as it might appear to be the uninstructed eye, had once possessed vast significance, and was still, in truth, reckoned among the most precious of moral or material facts by the worshippers of the gorgeous past. Mingled with this confused heap, which was tossed into the flames by armfuls at once, were innumerable badges of knighthood, comprising those of all the European sovereignties, and Napoleon’s decoration of the Legion of Honor, the ribbons of which were entangled with those of the ancient order of St Louis. There, too, were the medals of our own society of Cincinnati, by means of which, as history tells us, an order of hereditary knights came near being constituted out of the king quellers of the revolution. And besides, there were the patents of nobility of German counts and barons, Spanish grandees, and English peers, from the worm-eaten instruments signed by William the Conqueror down to the brand new parchment of the latest lord who has received his honors from the fair hand of Victoria.