The Book of Fantasy

by Jorge Luis Borges

  I have always had a solitary disposition, always been a dreamer, a sort of lone philosopher, kind to others, content with little, bearing neither bitterness towards men, nor resentment towards heaven. I have always lived alone, as a result of a kind of uneasiness which comes over me when I am with other people. How can I explain this? I don’t suppose I can explain it. It’s not that I refuse to see people, or to chat to them, or to have dinner with friends, but when I’ve been with them for some time, even with the people I know best, I find that they weary me, tire me out, get on my nerves—and with a growing exasperation I long to see them go, or go away myself, so that I can be alone.

  This feeling I have is more than a desire: it is a compelling necessity. And if I had to endure the continued presence of other people, if I had to go on listening to their conversation for any length of time, something would certainly happen to me. What exactly would it be? Ah, who knows? Perhaps I should faint—something like that.

  I am so passionately fond of solitude that I can’t even tolerate other people sleeping under the same roof. I can’t bear to live in Paris because, for me, it seems like a lingering death. Not only do I suffer a spiritual death, but I also find that my body and nerves are tortured by the vast, swarming crowds of people who are living all around me, even when they are asleep. Oh, yes, I find the sleep of other human beings even harder to bear than their endless talking. And I can never get any rest myself when I know—or when I suspect—that on the other side of a wall there are lives being interrupted by those regular eclipses of consciousness which we call sleep.

  Why do I feel like this? Who knows? Perhaps there is a very simple explanation: perhaps it’s because I tire very quickly of anything which takes place outside of me, as it were. There are a lot of people in my situation . . .

  One of the results of all this is that I become deeply attached to inanimate objects, which seem to me to take on the importance of living creatures. My house has become—or rather, had become—a whole world in which I lived a solitary yet active life, surrounded by physical things—familiar items of furniture and other odds and ends, which seemed to me to be as warm and friendly as human faces. I had gradually filled and adorned my home with these things, and when I was safe inside I felt as content and satisfied and genuinely happy as if I were in the arms of a loving woman whose familiar caress had become a gentle, tranquilizing necessity.

  This house stood in a beautiful garden which isolated it from the roads; yet it was within reach of a town where, if I happened to feel like it, I could find all the social activities in which I took an occasional interest. All my servants slept in a building some distance away at the bottom of the kitchen-garden, which was surrounded by a high wall. The embrace of sombre nights in the silence of this house of mine, lost, hidden, submerged amongst the foliage of great trees, was so restful and so good for me that every evening I would delay going to bed for several hours, just so that I could enjoy it even longer.

  On that particular day there had been a performance of Ernest Reyer’s Sigurd at the theatre in town. It was the first time that I had heard this beautiful romantic opera, and it had given me the greatest of pleasure.

  I was walking back home, at a brisk and cheerful pace, with my head full of rich melodies and pretty, fairy-tale scenes. It was very dark indeed—so dark, in fact, that I could hardly make out the edge of the main road, and several times I nearly fell into a ditch. The distance from the toll-gate to my house is about a mile, perhaps a little more—let us say twenty minutes at normal walking pace. It would be about one o’clock in the morning—possibly as late as half past one. As I walked, the sky ahead of me seemed to grow a little lighter, and a slender crescent-moon appeared, the melancholy crescent of the moon’s last quarter. The crescent of the first quarter, the one you see rising at four or five o’clock in the evening, is bright, cheerful, glistening with silver, but the one you see rising after midnight is reddish, dismal, disturbing—the sinister moon of the Witches’ Sabbath. All those who are out late at night must have noticed this difference. The crescent of the first quarter, even if it is only as slender as a thread, sheds a cheerful radiance which gladdens the heart and lights up the earth sufficiently to leave clear-cut shadows. The crescent of the last quarter struggles to shed its dying light, which is so feeble that it hardly casts any shadows at all.

  In the distance I noticed the gloomy mass of trees surrounding my garden, and for some reason or other I felt uneasy at the thought of entering it. I slackened my pace . . . The night was very mild. That great cluster of trees had the look of a tomb in which my house was buried.

  I opened my gate and walked down the long avenue of sycamore trees which led up to the house. It was arched overhead, like a high tunnel, and ran past dense masses of shrubbery and round dark, moonlit lawns on which flower-beds superimposed their oval patches of wan colours.

  When I got near the house I was overcome by a strange feeling of agitation. I stood still. There was not a sound to be heard. There was not a leaf stirring in the breeze. ‘What on earth’s the matter with me?’ I thought. For ten years I had been coming home like this without feeling the slightest bit of anxiety. I was not afraid—and I never have been afraid—when coming home late at night. The mere sight of a strange man, some prowler or burglar, would have made me furious, and I would have leaped upon him without a moment’s hesitation. Besides, I was armed: I had my revolver with me. But I did not touch it, because I was determined to master this nervousness stirring within me.

  What was it? Some kind of premonition? Was it the mysterious foreboding which takes possession of a man’s senses when he is about to see something inexplicable? Possibly. Who knows?

  As I moved slowly forwards I felt my skin tingling all over, and when I got to the wall of my vast house with its closed shutters, I knew that I would have to wait a few minutes before I could open the door and go inside. So I sat down on a seat under the windows of my drawing-room. I stayed there for a while, trembling a little, with my head leaning back against the wall of the house, and my eyes wide open, staring at the gloomy foliage. For the first few moments I noticed nothing unusual. There was a sort of rushing sound in my ears—but I often get that. It sometimes seems as though I can hear trains going by, or bells ringing, or marching footsteps.

  But soon these head-noises became louder, more distinct, more recognizable. I had been mistaken. It was not the usual surging in my arteries that was filling my ears with this murmuring sound, but a very peculiar, rather jumbled noise. And there was no doubt whatever that it was coming from inside my house.

  Through the wall I could make out this continuous noise—more like a vibration than a noise, the sort of confused sound you would expect if a number of things were being moved about. It was as though all my articles of furniture were vibrating, being moved from their accustomed places, being gently dragged about the house.

  Oh, I can assure you that for an appreciable time I doubted the evidence of my senses. But when I had pressed my ear against a shutter so I could get a better idea of what was going on inside, I became absolutely convinced that something abnormal and incomprehensible was taking place in my home. I was not exactly afraid, but I was . . . how can I put it? . . . stunned with astonishment. I didn’t even release the safety-catch on my revolver, because I felt sure there would be no need to use it . . . I simply waited.

  I waited for a long time, unable to come to any decision, thinking very clearly, but beside myself with anxiety. I waited, standing there, listening all the time to the noise which was now growing louder, occasionally reaching a kind of violent intensity, which seemed like a growl of impatience or anger—a sort of mysterious rebellion.

  Then, suddenly feeling ashamed of my cowardice, I took my bunch of keys, found the one I needed, pushed it into the keyhole, turned it fully in the lock and, pushing on the door with all my strength, I swung it open so violently that it banged against the inner wall.

  The noise it made rang out lik
e a gun-shot—and, instantly, as if in reply to this loud bang, from the whole of my house, from top to bottom, there came the most tremendous uproar. It was so unexpected, so horrible, so deafening, that I recoiled a few steps, and—though I still knew it was useless—I drew my revolver from its holster.

  I waited—but not for long! Now I could hear an extraordinary stamping noise on the stairs, on the floors, on the carpets—not the stamping of shoes worn by human beings, but the stamping of crutches—wooden crutches, and iron crutches which made a noise like the clashing of cymbals . . . And then it was that I suddenly noticed an armchair on the threshold of my front door—the big armchair I always used when reading. It was going out of the house, swaying and waddling as it went . . . There it was, going off into the garden . . . Other chairs followed it, the ones out of my drawing-room. Then came the low couches, dragging themselves along like crocodiles on their short legs. Then out came all the rest of my chairs, leaping about like goats, and the little stools, bounding along like rabbits.

  What a state I was in! I ran out and hid in the shrubbery, crouching down, unable to take my eyes off this march-past of my furniture—for every stick of it was going, one item after the other, some quickly, some slowly, depending on the size and weight. My piano, my huge grand piano, galloped past like a runaway horse, rattling and tinkling with music. The tiniest little objects were running over the gravel: the glasses, the goblets, in which the moonlight gleamed with the phosphorescence of glow-worms. The curtains and carpets were writhing and slithering along, like octopuses . . . Then I saw my writing-desk appear. It was a valuable antique from the eighteenth century and it contained all the letters I have ever received, the entire story of my personal life, a long story which has brought me much suffering! And there were photographs in there, too.

  Suddenly, I was afraid no longer. I rushed forward and flung myself on this desk, grabbing hold of it as if I were tackling a burglar. But it continued irresistibly on its way, and in spite of all my struggles, in spite of all my anger, I couldn’t even manage to slow it down. Struggling like a desperate man against this terrifying strength, I was flung to the ground still wrestling to hold it back. Then it sent me rolling over, dragged me along the gravel—and the furniture that had been coming along behind it started to walk over me, trampling on my legs and bruising them badly. Then, as soon as I had let go of the desk, the rest of the furniture passed over my body, just like cavalry charging over a dismounted soldier.

  By this time I was out of my mind with terror, but I managed to drag myself out of the drive and hide once again amongst the trees, from where I watched all my possessions disappearing into the night— every single one of them: the lowliest, the smallest, the most ordinary, even the ones I had never paid much attention to, but all of them belonging to me.

  Then I heard, some distance away, the tremendous clatter of doors being shut. It came from my own house, which was now filled with the sonorous echoes of an empty house. The doors of the building slammed shut from top to bottom until finally the front-door, which in my folly I had opened to permit this mass escape, slammed shut last of all.

  I took flight myself, running all the way to the town, and I only recovered my self-control when I got into the streets where there were a few people about, coming home late. I went and rang at the door of a hotel where I was well known. With my hands I had dashed the dirt off my clothes, and at the hotel I told the story that I had lost my bunch of keys, which also included the key to the kitchen-garden. I told them that this was where my servants were asleep in a detached building surrounded by the high wall which protected my fruit and vegetables from prowlers.

  They gave me a bed, and though I buried myself under the sheets I couldn’t sleep, but lay there waiting for daybreak, listening to the pounding of my heart. I had told somebody in the hotel to inform my servants of my whereabouts as soon as it was light, and at seven o’clock in the morning my valet banged on my door. From his face I could see that he was terribly upset.

  ‘Something dreadful has happened during the night, monsieur,’ he said. ‘All your furniture has been stolen, monsieur—everything, absolutely everything, even down to the smallest articles.’

  I felt pleased when I heard him say this. Why? Who knows? I was completely in control of myself, certain that I would be able to conceal my feelings and not tell anybody about what I had seen, certain that I could hide this thing, bury it deep in my mind like some frightful secret. I answered him by saying: ‘It must be the same people as the ones who stole my keys. We must inform the police immediately. I’ll get dressed and be with you in just a few moments.’

  The investigations went on for five months. The police discovered nothing whatever. They could neither trace the smallest of my possessions nor uncover the slightest clue about the thieves. My God! If I had told them what I knew . . .If I had told them . . . they would have locked me up—me, not the thieves—me, the man who had been able to see what I had seen.

  Oh, I knew how to keep my mouth shut. But I didn’t start re-furnishing my house. It would have been quite pointless. The whole business would have started all over again. I didn’t want to go back to my house. I never did go back. I never saw it again.

  I came to Paris and stayed in a hotel. I consulted various doctors about the state of my nerves, something which has been worrying me a great deal ever since that appalling night.

  They strongly advised me to travel. I took their advice . . .

  II

  I began with a trip to Italy. The sunshine there did me good. For six months I wandered from Genoa to Venice, from Venice to Florence, from Florence to Rome, from Rome to Naples. Then I travelled through Sicily, a place which has both wonderful scenery and wonderful historical sites, relics from the days of the Greeks and the Normans. I went over to Africa and made a safe journey across that great, calm yellow desert, peopled by camels, gazelles and nomadic Arabs, and where in the crystal-clear atmosphere there is no suggestion of any haunting vision, either by night or day.

  I returned to France by way of Marseilles, and, in spite of the Provençal gaiety, the fact that the skies were less bright than in Africa made me rather depressed. On returning to Europe I felt as a sick man must feel when he believes himself to be cured—and then a dull pain reminds him that the focus of infection has not been eliminated.

  I came back to Paris, and after a month here I became bored. By now it was autumn, and before winter set in I wanted to take a trip through Normandy, where I had never been before.

  I began by visiting Rouen, of course, and for a whole week I wandered in a state of ecstatic enthusiasm through this medieval city, this amazing museum of extraordinary Gothic buildings.

  Now one afternoon, about four o’clock, I turned down a most peculiar street, along which flowed an inky-black stream called the Eau de Robec. I was gazing up at the queer, ancient façades of the houses when my attention was suddenly caught by the sight of a whole row of shops dealing in second-hand furniture.

  How well they had chose their site, these sordid dealers in old junk. There they were in this weird alley, perched above this sinster-looking stream, and above them were the angular roofs of tiles and slates on which there still creaked the weather-cocks of a bygone age.

  In the depths of these gloomy shops you could see a higgledy-piggledy assortment of carved chests, pottery from Rouen, Nevers and Moustiers, statues of various kinds, some painted, some in oak, images of saints, church ornaments, garments worn by priests; there were even holy chalices and an old wooden tabernacle painted gold, in which God no longer resided. Oh, what strange, mysterious grottoes there were in these tall houses crammed from cellar to attic with objects of every conceivable kind, objects whose life seemed to be over, and yet which had outlived their mortal owners—even outlived their century, their period and their fashion, so they could be bought as curios by new generations.

  My passion for antiques was being aroused again in this stronghold of antique-dealers. I went
from shop to shop, taking quick, light steps across the little bridges made from three or four rotten planks which lay across the evil-smelling water of the Eau de Robec.

  Gracious God! What a shock! I found myself looking at one of my own wardrobes—one of the finest I had. It was standing at the side of a vaulted gallery which was cluttered up with antiques, a place which looked like the entrance to the catacombs of a cemetery for old furniture. I went up to the wardrobe, trembling all over, trembling so much that I hardly dared touch it. Hesitantly I reached out my hand. And yet it really was mine: a unique Louis XIII wardrobe, which would have been recognized straight away by anyone who had seen it even once. Suddenly looking a little further into the gloomy depths of this gallery, I noticed three of my armchairs, the ones upholstered in petit point tapestry, then, still deeper in the gallery, my two Henry II tables, so rare that people used to come all the way from Paris to see them.

  Just imagine how I felt! Just think of my state of mind!

  I moved further into the gallery. I was almost petrified with fear, but I am not a coward, and in spite of my agony of mind I moved forward, like a knight from the Dark Ages thrusting his way into a place that is haunted and bewitched. I went on, and at each step I took I found something that had belonged to me—my chandeliers, my books, my pictures, my curtains, my antique weapons—everything was there except the writing-desk containing my letters, and this was nowhere to be seen.

  I went on, going down steps leading to lower floors, then climbing to ones higher up. I was all alone. I called out; but nobody answered. I was all alone—there was not another soul in this vast labyrinth of a building.

  Night fell, and I had to sit there in the darkness on one of my own chairs, for I was determined not to leave the place. Every now and then I shouted out: ‘Hello! Hello! Is anybody there?’