The Book of Fantasy

by Jorge Luis Borges

  ‘Well, really,’ he said, ‘I don’t think there’s been anything really extraordinary in what you’ve made me do. Excuse me if I speak to you openly—but I think you must agree with me that in your novels you’ve got much more originality and more amusing imagination than in real life. Just think—kidnapping, then a masked woman and a duel, then escape and now ghosts! You don’t seem to have been able to think of anything better than these old-fashioned tricks—the sort of thing you get in French novels. There are much more thrilling things in Hoffmann and Poe, and much more thrilling things in Hofmann and Poe, and much more ingenious ideas in Gaboriau and Ponson du Terrail. I really can’t understand this sudden collapse of your imagination. At the very beginning I used to do everything you did, really expecting to have an exciting life; but I soon came to the conclusion that your life was just like anyone else’s, and I supposed you must keep all your invention for your novels: but now I’m beginning to doubt this as well, and much as I dislike doing it I am obliged to tell you that unless you find something better to make me do I shall have to look for another master, even before our contract has run out.’

  Pride prevented my answering this extraordinary ingratitude. I thought to myself how for months—ever since I had taken over control of that man—I had not been master of my own life; I had been obliged to leave all my work in the middle, to leave my country, to worry myself inventing romantic adventures and reliable people to carry them out. Since I had taken possession of Amico Dite’s life, I had had to sacrifice the whole of my own life to him. I, nominally his master, had really degenerated into his slave; or at best, merely the manager of his personal existence. As he said, he must find something ‘more impressive’ than what I had done for him, and moreover, something that had no need of accomplices. After having thought the matter over quietly for a day or two, I wrote to him as follows:

  ‘My dear Dite,—Since you belong to me according to a formal contract, I can arrange for your life or your death as I see fit. I therefore order you to shut yourself up in your room on Saturday night at eight o’clock; then lie down on your bed and take one of the pills here enclosed. At half past eight take another one and at nine exactly take the third. Should you disobey my orders I give up any responsibility I may ever have had for your life, from this day onwards.’

  I knew that Amico Dite would not flinch at the fear of death. In spite of being so particular, he was a gentleman and had a great respect for his word and signature. I bought a strong emetic and arranged to be at his house just before nine—that is, just before he took the last pill, which would inevitably kill him if he took it.

  On Saturday evening I ordered a cab for eight o’clock, because I lived in a boarding house a long way from where Amico Dite was staying. The cab did not turn up until a quarter past eight, so I impressed on the driver the fact that I was in a great hurry. The horse started off, indeed,with a sort of pseudo-gallop, but after about ten minutes he stumbled and fell down in the street. It seemed hopeless to try to pick him up so I quickly paid the cabby and looked round for another cab. Luckily I found one at once and I calculated that at nine o’clock exactly I ought to be at Amico Dite’s house. I began to worry a little nevertheless because there was a thick fog and even if we were only five minutes late, it meant that the poor man would certainly be dead.

  Then suddenly the cab pulled up. We were at the end of an important street full of cars and ‘buses, and a policeman held up his hand to stop our going by. I leapt out of the cab like a madman and rushed up to the huge policeman, trying to make him understand that I was in a great hurry and that a man’s life was at stake.

  But he either did not understand or would not understand. I had to go the rest of the way on foot, but partly because of the fog and partly because I did not know London very well, I took a wrong turning and I only noticed I was going in the wrong direction when I’d been rushing along for about ten minutes. So, still running, I turned back and went in the other direction. It was only a few minutes before nine, and I was making prodigious efforts so as to get there in time. But I only reached the boarding house at seven minutes past nine, and rang the bell frantically. The moment someone opened it, I rushed into Amico Dite’s room. He was lying in his shirt-sleeves on the bed, pale and stiff as a corpse. I shook him and called him by name; I felt whether his heart was beating and whether he was breathing still. No: he was indeed a corpse; the little box I had sent him was empty. Amico Dite had kept his word to the last. I had intended to give him the terror of certain death and then the shock of resurrection; but instead I had given him death, real and irrevocable death.

  I stayed all night in his room, numb with grief. In the morning I was found with the dead man, as pale and as silent as he. My papers were all confiscated, and my last letter to Dite was found as well. The trial was extremely short because I did not even put up a defence or show the contract I still had put away somewhere. It is several years now since I have been in prison; but I am not sorry for what I have done. Amico Dite has made my life much more worth telling than it would have been without him, and I don’t think I have managed so badly even though in the year in which he belonged to me I spent a good deal more than the thousand pounds he gave me.

  RANI

  Carlos Peralta, Argentine writer. Author of a satirical book Manual del gorila; and a book of essays. He has been editor or director of various magazines, writing for them and other publications. He signs his satirical and humorous work with the pseudonym Carlos del Peral. He has several translations to his name and has also worked on filmscripts.

  Between Don Pedro the butcher and I there existed only a rather restricted relationship so far. Our lives were very different. For him, to exist was to cut up animals tirelessly in the foetid coolness of the butcher’s shop; for me, to tear numerous pages from a cheap pad and slip them into the typewriter. Almost all our daily deeds were subject to differing rituals. I would visit him to pay my bill, but I wouldn’t go to his daughter’s engagement party, for example. Not that I would have had any objection to doing so, had the case arisen. However, what interested me most was not the private attitudes I might have but the general search for closer relationships between men, for a greater exchange between those rituals.

  I was ruminating on these ideas when I noticed the butcher leaving, barely managing to carry a basket with a quarter of beef.

  ‘Would that be for the restaurant around the corner?’ I asked.

  ‘No. It’s for across the road, flat 4B.’

  ‘They must have a “frigidaire”,’ said a female verbal ghost which took power over me.

  ‘They have the same thing every day,’ answered Don Pedro.

  ‘You don’t say. They eat all that?’

  ‘Well, if they don’t eat it, tough on them, wouldn’t you say?’ said the butcher.

  I very soon found out that 4B was occupied by a childless couple. The man was short and wore brown. The woman must be very lazy, because she was always dishevelled when she received the butcher. Apart from that and the quarter of beef, which as far as I could see was their only bad habit, they were orderly people. They never returned home after sunset, at about eight o’clock in summer and five in winter. Once, the concierge had told Don Pedro, they must have thrown a very noisy party, because two neighbours complained. Apparently some comedian had been imitating animal noises.

  ‘Shh!’ said Don Pedro, lifting a tragic bloodstained finger to his lips. A man dressed in brown came in, undoubtedly the same one who ate two cows a week, or at least one, if he was assisted by his noble consort. Being in a hurry, he didn’t see me. He got his wallet and began counting out large, crisp bills.

  ‘Four thousand,’ he said. ‘Six hundred . . . and two. Here you are.’

  ‘Hello, Carracido,’ I said to him. ‘Do you remember me?’ I’d met him years ago. He was a lawer. ‘We seem to be neighbours.’

  ‘How are you, Peralta? How are things? Do you live nearby?’ he asked with his old administrative warm
th.

  ‘Next door to you. Things seem to be going well for you, apparently. Eating well, aren’t you?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I make do with anything. And anyway, you understand, my liver.’

  ‘But then, how come . . . ?’

  ‘Ah, you mean the meat? No, that’s something else.’ He seemed to become gloomy and then gave a sort of false laugh, like a cough. ‘I’ve got a lot to do. Goodbye, friend. Come around to my house early one afternoon, on Saturday or Sunday. I live at number 860, flat 4B.’ He hesitated. ‘You know, I’d like to have a chat with you.’ I could have sworn there was a pleading note in his voice, which intrigued me.

  ‘I will,’ I replied. ‘See you Saturday.’

  Don Pedro followed him with his gaze. ‘Goodness knows what’s up with him,’ he said. ‘Each family is a world unto itself.’

  Years go by and you never see an old school friend, a fellow-student from university days, a colleague from work; that day I met two. First Carracido, then Campbell, with whom I went for a coffee at the Boston, and told him I’d seen Carracido. He remembered him and didn’t like the memory, that was obvious.

  ‘I don’t like that chap,’ he said later. ‘He’s a nasty character, full of troubles and goings-on.’

  ‘He seems pretty harmless to me,’ I remarked.

  He kept quiet whilst the waiter served coffee. ‘I met him many years ago,’ he said. ‘Before joining the Ministry he worked at the Credit Bank. He was already married. Just think, I had to report him because he had taken a stack of money to the races. They nearly sacked him, but he was a friend of the manager’s and was able to replace the missing money, and got away with it. Afterwards he was appointed consultant at the Ministry. The man began to prosper. I think he came into an inheritance, too.

  This Gómez Campbell, I haven’t mentioned it to you yet, was a bit of a bad sort.

  ‘I was pleased, honestly,’ continued Gómez, ‘and I went to congratulate him. Do you know what he said to me? “Shut up, you hypocrite”, that’s what he called me. I, who was the first to go and congratulate him, with open arms, with the greatest respect. That is just not on. Men should know how to forget quarrels and trifles. And if they don’t know, like this Carracido, sooner or later they’ll be punished.’ He paused to highlight the severity of his admonition. ‘It was through him I got the job, after a lot of trying. And now, you know, I think he’s not getting on with his wife. She goes her own way and he goes his. You can see she’s too pretty and too big for him, and since the inheritance was from his father-in-law, a number of houses, he has to put up with her.’

  The band was happily murdering a waltz.

  ‘He can go to blazes as far as I’m concerned,’ Gómez Campbell finished. ‘Just see how things are: he’s been having affairs with all the employees at the Ministry. His wife ignores him, of course.’

  We soon said goodbye. That casual encounter, sustained by vilification and curiosity, exhausted itself pretty quickly. Gómez Campbell shook my hand coldly and disappeared into calle Florida. Carracido seemed more and more exciting to me, a great meat-eater, Don Juan, married to a beautiful and presumably unfaithful woman, quite a gambler and something of a thief. The truth is we never really know anyone.

  I meant to go early on Saturday, but couldn’t. I had intended finishing a short story I was to hand in on Monday (perhaps this same one) but I didn’t manage it. I had a bath, put on clean clothes, felt rather frustrated and went to number 860, flat 4B. It was half-past seven. Carracido received me very politely, but somewhat uneasily, opening the door very slowly.

  ‘Hello,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. You’re a bit late.’

  ‘Listen, if you have something to do, we’ll leave it until tomorrow or the day after.’

  ‘No,’ he said with genuine warmth. ‘No, come in. Just a moment, I’ll call my wife.’

  The furniture was in various styles, but the combination was not unpleasant. The only thing which clashed was the vicufia skin covering the couch, torn lengthwise as though with a knife and almost split in two. Moreover, the legs of the couch opened too far outwards. I stroked the skin and left it as I heard Carracido’s voice.

  ‘This is Rani,’ he said.

  I looked at her, fascinated. Everything I can say would not be enough. I don’t know—I don’t think I’ve ever seen a more beautiful woman, more intense green eyes, a more perfect and delicate movement. I got up and shook her hand, never taking my eyes off hers. She barely lowered her eyelids and sat beside me on the couch, silent, smiling, with an easy feline grace. Making an effort I looked away from her towards the window, but without ceasing to keep in my mind those legs which moved with the gentleness and energy of the waves. Outside, nothing stained the soft blue of the Buenos Aires sunset save for a cloud which was just then changing colour from copper to purple. An incongruous noise distracted me: Carracido was drumming his fingers on the table at the speed of an express train. I looked at him and he stopped.

  ‘Rani, your bath must be ready by now,’ he said.

  ‘Yes, dear,’ she replied sweetly, stretching her hand, closed and tight, over the vicuna skin.

  ‘Rani,’ insisted Carracido.

  Tacit command, I thought to myself. He’s jealous; he wants her to go.

  The woman got up and disappeared through a door. First she turned around and looked at me.

  ‘We could go for a drink in the bar,’ suggested Carracido. This annoyed me and I said to him, ‘Shame. It’s nice here. I’d rather stay, if you don’t mind.’

  He hesitated, but his warmth returned, as well as that pleading quality I had noticed before, that dog-like air.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Perhaps that would be best after all. God knows what’s best.’ He went to the sideboard and brought a bottle and two glasses. Before sitting down, he looked at his watch.

  Gómez Campbell is right, I said to myself. This man must bear his wife’s whims with more naturalness than a bull.

  And at that moment the purring began. First slow, deep and low; then more violent. It was a purr, but what a purr! I felt as though my head were in a beehive. And I couldn’t have drunk one glassful.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ said Carracido solicitously. ‘It’ll pass.’

  The purring came from the inner bedrooms. It was followed by a loud outburst which made me leap to my feet.

  ‘What was that?’ I yelled, going towards the door.

  ‘Nothing, nothing,’ he replied firmly, blocking my way.

  I didn’t answer him; I pushed him away so violently that he fell to one side, on the armchair.

  ‘Don’t shout!’ he said stupidly. And then, ‘Don’t be scared!’ I had already opened the door. At first I didn’t see a thing; then, a sinuous shape approached me in the darkness.

  It was a tiger. A huge tiger, totally out of place, striped, fearful and advancing. I pulled back; as though in a dream, I felt Carracido take me by the arm. I pushed him again, this time forwards, reached the front door, opened it and got into the lift. The tiger stopped in front of me. It had Rani’s amethyst necklace around its shiny neck. I covered my eyes so as not to see its green eyes and pressed the button.

  The tiger followed as I descended, bounding down the stairs. I went up again and the tiger went up. I went down, and this time it got tired of the game; it snorted triumphantly and went out into the street. I went back the flat.

  ‘Why didn’t you do as I said?’ said Carracido. ‘Now she’s gone, you idiot!’ He poured himself a glass of whisky and drank it in one go. I did likewise. Carracido leant his head on his arms and sobbed. ‘I’m a peaceful man,’ he hiccupped. ‘I married Rani never dreaming that at night she turned into a tiger.’

  He was apologizing. It was incredible, but he was apologizing.

  ‘You’ve no idea what it was like at first, when we lived in the suburbs . . .’ he began, like anyone who shares a secret.

  ‘What do I care where you lived!’ I shouted in exasperation. ‘We have
to call the police, the zoo, the circus. You can’t let a tiger loose in the street!’

  ‘No, have no fear. My wife won’t harm anyone. She sometimes frightens people at little. Don’t complain,’ he added, now a little drunk. ‘I told you to come early. The worst thing is I don’t know what to do; last week I had to sell off some land very cheaply in order to pay the butcher . . .’

  He drank down two or three glasses like an animal.

  ‘They say there is an Indian here in Buenos Aires . . . a magician . . . One of these days I’ll go and see him; perhaps he can do something.’

  He stopped talking and continued sobbing quietly.

  I smoked for a long while. I imagined—what a nightmare—some of the habitual scenes of his life. Rani ruining the couch, because she wasn’t allowed to frolic. Rani devouring the raw meat at some time during the night, or weaving her long body in and out of the furniture. And Carracido there, watching her . . . when would she sleep?

  ‘Bumburumbum,’ said Carracido, definitely drunk. He let his head fall to one side, inert, like an object. Gradually his sobs were replaced by the sound of peaceful snoring. He had finally returned to the simple world of work, documents, files. There was a little bone under the armchair.

  I stayed until daylight. I must have slept too. At about seven o’clock the bell rang. I opened the door. It was Rani. Her hair was uncombed, her clothes in a mess, her nails dirty. She seemed confused and ashamed. I turned my head away so as not to hurt her; I let her come in, went out and left. Don Pedro was right: each family is a world unto itself.