The Book of Fantasy

by Jorge Luis Borges

  Ruperto would sit in a corner of the patio and, while he was tuning his guitar, would ask, without any preamble, for a mate tea, or an orange juice if it was hot. I thought of him as one of the many friends or relatives who were like part of the furniture in the house, that one only notices when they are broken or put in a different place.

  ‘These canaries sing well’, Cleobula would invariably remark, but, had she been able to kill them with a broom, she would have done so because she hated them. What would she have said if she had seen them perform so many ridiculous tricks without Antonio having to give them a single little lettuce leaf or a single sweet!

  Automatically, I would hand the mate or the glass of orange juice to Ruperto, sitting in the shade of the vine where he always sat, in a Vienna chair, like a dog in its corner. I didn’t think of him as a woman thinks of a man, there was not the slightest hint of flirtatiousness in the way I treated him. Often, after having washed my hair, with my wet hair held back by clips, looking an absolute fright, or maybe with my toothbrush in my mouth and with toothpaste on my lips, or my hands covered in soap when I was about to wash some clothes, an apron tied at my waist, with a large stomach like a pregnant woman, I would open the door and ask him to come in without even looking at him. Often in my carelessness, I think he saw me come out of the bathroom wrapped in a towel, shuffling along in my slippers like an old woman.

  Chusco, Albahaca and Serranito flew to the container which held little thorny arrows. Carrying the arrows, they would enthusiastically fly to other containers which held a dark liquid in which they dipped the minute tips of the arrows. They looked like toy birds, cheap penholders or the decorations on a grandmother’s hat.

  Cleobula, who is not a malicious person, had noticed and told me that Ruperto stared at me far too intently. ‘What eyes!’ he’d repeat incessantly. ‘What wonderful eyes!’

  ‘I’ve managed to keep my eyes open when I sleep’, murmured Antonio. ‘It’s one of the cleverest tricks I’ve ever managed to do.’

  I jumped when I heard his voice. Was that the trick? After all, what was so extraordinary about it?

  ‘Like Ruperto’, I said with a strange voice.

  ‘Like Ruperto’, repeated Antonio. ‘The canaries obey my orders more easily than my eyelids.’

  The three of us were in that darkened room as if in penance. But what possible link could there be between his eyes being open during sleep and the orders he gave to the canaries? No wonder Antonio left me somehow perplexed—he was so different from other men!

  Cleobula had also assured me that while Ruperto tuned his guitar he would look me over from the tip of my hair to the tips of my feet. One night, falling asleep, half drunk in the patio, his eyes had stayed fixed on me. The result of this was that I became self-conscious and maybe even flirtatious. Ruperto looked at me through a kind of mask into which his animal-like eyes were set, eyes that he didn’t close, even to sleep. With a mysterious intensity, he would fix his eyes on me when he was thirsty, God knows with what intention, just as he fixed them on the glass of orange juice or mate tea that I served him. No one in the whole province, in the whole world had eyes that stared so—a deep shining blue, like fragments of sky, set them apart from the others, whose eyes seemed dull or dead. Ruperto was not a man, he was a pair of eyes, without face, without voice, without a body, or so it seemed to me but Antonio didn’t share my feeling. During the months when my lack of awareness came to exasperate him, at the slightest excuse he would talk to me abruptly or make me do arduous tasks, as if I had been his slave instead of his wife. It grieved me to see how Antonio had changed.

  Men are so strange! What was the trick that he wanted to show us? The business about the circus hadn’t been a joke.

  Soon after we were married, he began to frequently miss work, with the excuse that he had a headache or an inexplicable queasiness in his stomach. Were all husbands like this?

  At the back of the house, the huge birdcage full of canaries that Antonio had always looked after so conscientiously lay forgotten. In the morning, if I had the time, I’d clean the birdcage, put canary grass, water and lettuce in the white containers and when the females were going to lay eggs, I’d prepare the little nests. Antonio had always looked after these things, but he no longer showed the slightest interest in doing it or even in my doing it.

  We had been married for two years and not one child! Instead, how many young had the canaries given birth to!

  The smell of musk and cedar filled the room. The canaries smelt like hens, Antonio of tobacco and sweat, but Ruperto smelt only of alcohol. People told me he often got drunk. The room was so dirty! Canary grass, breadcrumbs, lettuce leaves, cigarette ends and ash were scattered over the floor.

  Since childhood, Antonio had spent his free time training animals. He first put his art into practice, for he was a true artist, with a dog, a horse, then with a skunk that had had an operation and that he carried around for a time in his pocket. Later, when he met me, he thought of training canaries because I liked them. During the months of our courtship, so as to win my heart, he had sent the canaries tO me carrying little pieces of paper with romantic messages written on them or flowers tied with a little ribbon. From the house where he lived to mine there were fifteen large blocks; the winged messengers went from his house to mine without faltering. Incredible as it may seem, they managed to put the flowers in my hair and a little message in the pocket of my blouse.

  Canaries putting flowers in my hair and little papers in my pocket, was that not more difficult than the ridiculous things they were doing with those wretched little arrows?

  Antonio came to enjoy great prestige in the village. ‘If you hypnotized women like you do birds nobody would resist your charms’, his aunts would tell him in the hope that their nephew would marry some millionairess. As I have already mentioned, Antonio was not interested in money. Since the age of fifteen he had worked as a mechanic and .he had all he wanted, which is what he offered me when he proposed. We needed nothing else to make us happy. I couldn’t understand why Antonio didn’t find an excuse to keep Ruperto away. Any reason would have been good enough for the purpose, even if no more than a quarrel over work or politics, which, without escalating into a fullblown fight using fists or weapons, would have meant that Ruperto was barred from entering our house. Antonio didn’t let any of his feelings show, except for in that change of character which only I knew how to interpret. Going against my natural modesty, I realized that because of me my husband, whom I had always considered the most reasonable of men, was being driven out of his mind with jealousy.

  Antonio whistled and took off his vest. His naked torso seemed made of bronze. I trembled to look at him. I remembered that before marrying him I blushed when I saw a statue which looked very much like him. Had I not seen him naked before? Why was I so surprised?

  But Antonio’s character underwent another change which calmed me somewhat: he went from being apathetic to being extremely active, from being melancholy he appeared to become cheerful. His life became full of mysterious occupations, of a coming and going which seemed to denote great interest in life. After dinner, we didn’t even have a moment’s peace to listen to the radio or to read the daily papers, or just to do nothing, or to talk for a while about the events of the day. Neither were Sundays or holidays an excuse to allow ourselves a rest. I, who am like Antonio’s mirror image, became possessed by his restlessness and, overpowered by the necessity to keep up with my husband’s enigmatic occupations, paced around the house, tidying wardrobes that had already being tidied or washing spotless cushion covers. His love and assiduous care for the birds redoubled and took up a large part of the day. He added new sections to the birdcage and the little dead tree which stood at its centre was replaced by another larger and more graceful one which made the cage more attractive.

  Dropping their arrows, two of the canaries started to fight: the little feathers flew around the room, Antonio’s face grew dark with anger. Would he be cap
able of killing them? Cleobula had told me that he was cruel. ‘He looks as if he carries a knife at his belt’, she had added.

  Antonio now no longer allowed me to clean out the birdcage. At that time he left the marital bed to sleep in the room which was used as a storeroom at the back of the house. Antonio slept on an ottoman where my brother used to take a nap when he came to visit us but he would spend what I suspect were sleepless nights, as I could hear him pacing up and down until dawn. Sometimes he would shut himself for hours at a time in that wretched room.

  One by one the canaries let the little arrows drop from their beaks. They landed on the back of a chair and started singing softly. Antonio sat up and looking at Maria Callas, whom he had always called ‘the Queen of Disobedience’, he uttered a word that I could not understand. The canaries started to fly around again.

  I tried to follow his movements through the painted windowpanes. I cut my hand on purpose with a knife so that I dared knock at his door. When he opened, a whole flock of canaries flew out in the direction of the birdcage. Antonio dressed my wound but, as if he suspected that it was just an excuse to attract his attention, his manner was abrupt and suspicious. At that time he made a journey by bus which lasted two weeks—I don’t know where he went and he returned with a bag full of plants.

  I gave a sideways glance to my stained skirt. Birds are so small and so dirty. When had they stained my skirt? I looked at them with hatred—I like to be clean even in a darkened room.

  Ruperto, unaware of the bad feeling that his visits caused, came as often as usual and had the same habits. Sometimes, when I left the patio to avoid his glances, my husband would find an excuse to make me return. It seemed as if he somehow enjoyed that which he found so unpleasant. Ruperto’s stares now seemed obscene: they undressed me in the shade of the vine and made me do shameful things when, at dusk, a fresh breeze stroked my cheeks. Antonio, on the other hand, never looked at me or, so Cleobula told me, pretended not to. For a time, one of my most ardent desires was to have never known him, never married him or felt his caress so as to have been able to meet him, discover him, give myself to him. But who regains that which he has already lost?

  I sat up—my legs hurt. I don’t like to be still for so long. How I envy birds flying! But I pity canaries. They seem to suffer when they obey commands.

  Antonio didn’t try to stop Ruperto’s visits, on the contrary, he encouraged them. During the carnival, one night that he stayed until very late, he went to the extreme of inviting him to stay at our house. We had to put him in the room that Antonio provisionally slept in. That night, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, we slept together again, my husband and I, in the marital bed. From that moment my life returned to normal, or so I thought.

  In a corner, under the table with the light on it, I could just make out the famous doll. I thought of picking it up. As if I had actually gone to do so, Antonio said to me:

  ‘Don’t move’.

  I remembered that day during carnival week when I was tidying the rooms, I had discovered as a punishment for my sins, the rag doll, lying on Antonio’s wardrobe, with large blue eyes made of cloth with two dark circles in the centre made to look like pupils. Had it been dressed as a gaucho it could have decorated our bedroom. Laughing, I showed it to Antonio, who took it from me with annoyance. ‘It’s a souvenir from my childhood’, he told me. ‘I don’t like you touching my things’.

  ‘What harm is there in touching a doll that you played with in your childhood? I know boys who played with dolls, are you ashamed of it? Aren’t you a grown man now?’ I asked him.

  ‘I don’t have to give you any explanation. The best thing is for you to shut up.’

  In a temper, Antonio again placed the doll on top of the wardrobe and didn’t say a word to me for several days. But we slept together again as in happier times.

  I passed my hand over my damp forehead. Had my curlers come undone? Luckily, there was no mirror in the room as I would not have resisted the temptation of looking at myself instead of looking at the canaries that I found so silly.

  Antonio often shut himself in the back room and I noticed that he left the door of the birdcage open so that one of the little birds could fly in through the window. One afternoon, driven by my curiosity, I spied on him. I had to stand on a chair, as the window was very high up (this naturally did not allow me to look inside the room when I was passing through the patio).

  I could see Antonio’s naked torso. Was it my husband or a statue? He accused Ruperto of being mad, but maybe he was even more mad. How much money had he spent on buying canaries, instead of buying me a washing machine!

  One day I caught sight of the doll lying on the bed. A whole group of little birds fluttered around it. The room had been transformed into a kind of laboratory. In a earthenware container, there was a pile of leaves, stems and dark pieces of bark. In another container there was some little arrows made with thorns. In another one there was a shining brown liquid. It seemed as if I had already seen those objects in dreams and, so as to put an end to my perplexity, I recounted the scene to Cleobula who told me:

  ‘That is what the Indians do: they use arrows dipped in Curare.’

  I didn’t ask her what ‘Curare’ meant. Nor did I know if she was telling me this with scorn or with admiration.

  ‘They are given to witchcraft. Your husband is an Indian.’ And on seeing my surprise, she asked, ‘Didn’t you know?’

  Annoyed, I shook my head. My husband was my husband. I had never thought of him belonging to another race or to a world other than my own.

  ‘How do you know?’ I asked vehemently.

  ‘Haven’t you looked at his eyes, his high cheek bones? Haven’t you noticed how Indian he is? Mandarin, even Maria Callas are more frank than he is. His reserve, his way of not answering a question, his way of treating women, isn’t that enough to prove that he is an Indian? My mother knows all about it. They took him away from a settlement when he was five years old. Maybe that is what you like about him, his mysteriousness which sets him apart from other men.’ Antonio was sweating and the sweat made his torso shine. Such a solid young man and wasting his time! If I had married Juan Leston, the lawyer, or Roberto Cuentas, the bookkeeper, I would probably not have suffered so much. But what sensitive woman marries for money? They say there are men who train fleas and what is the point of that?

  I lost faith in Cleobula. Undoubtedly, she told me that my husband was Indian so as to hurt me or to make me lose my faith in him. But on leafing through a history book which showed illustrations of Indian settlements and Indians on horseback carrying bolas[*], I saw the similarity between Antonio and those naked men adorned with feathers. I also noticed that what had maybe attracted me to Antonio was the difference between him and my brothers and their friends, the dark colour of his skin, his slanting eyes and that Indian look about him which Cleobula mentioned with perverse enjoyment.

  ‘What about the trick?’ I asked.

  Antonio didn’t answer me. He was staring at the canaries which began flying around the room again. Mandarin separated himself from his companions and from the darkness he could be heard singing like a lark.

  My solitude increased. I told no one of my worries.

  During Easter week, Antonio insisted that Ruperto stayed as a guest in our house for the second time. It was raining, as it tends to do during Easter week. We went to church with Cleobula to do the Stations of the Cross.

  ‘How is the Indian?’ asked Cleobula insolently.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The Indian, your husband’, she answered. ‘That’s what everyone in the village calls him’.

  ‘I like Indians. Even if my husband were not one I would still like them’, I answered, trying to continue my prayers.

  Antonio was in an attitude of prayer. Had he ever prayed before? On our wedding day, my mother had asked him to receive communion but Antonio did not comply.

  Meanwhile Antonio and Ruperto’s friendship grew
stronger. A kind of camaraderie, from which I was somehow excluded, united them in a way which seemed genuine. At that time, Antonio showed off his powers. So as to occupy himself, he would send the canaries with messages to Ruperto. People said that they were using them to play some kind of cardgame, as they did once exchange some Spanish cards. Were they making fun of me? The game that the two men were playing annoyed me and I decided not to take them seriously. Did I have to concede that friendship was more important than love? Nothing had separated Antonio and Ruperto. Instead, Antonio, unjustly in some way, had moved away from me. My pride as woman suffered. Ruperto continued to stare at me. That whole drama, had it been nothing but a farce? Did I miss the conjugal drama, the torment that had resulted from the jealousy of a husband driven mad for so many days?

  We still loved each other in spite of everything.

  In a circus Antonio could earn money with his tricks, why not? Maria Callas nodded her little head to one side, then to the other and landed on the back of a chair.

  One morning, Antonio came into my room and, as if announcing that the house was on fire, said to me:

  ‘Ruperto is dying. They came to fetch me. I am going to see him.’

  Busying myself with chores in the house, I waited for Antonio until midday. He returned when I was washing my hair.

  ‘Come on’, he said to me. ‘Ruperto is in the patio. I saved him.’

  ‘How? Was it a joke?’

  ‘Not at all. I saved him with artificial respiration.’

  Not understanding anything, I quickly tied back my hair, dressed and went out to the patio. Ruperto stood immobile by the door and was staring unseeingly at the tiles on the patio floor. Antonio brought a chair to him so that he could sit down.