The Book of Fantasy

by Jorge Luis Borges

  To get back farther—

  She was walking now on a white road that went between broad grass borders. To the right and left were the long raking lines of the hills, curve after curve, shimmering in a thin mist.

  The road dropped to the green valley. It mounted the humped bridge over the river. Beyond it she saw the twin gables of the grey house pricked up over the high, grey garden wall. The tall iron gate stood in front of it between the ball-topped stone pillars.

  And now she was in a large, low-ceilinged room with drawn blinds. She was standing before the wide double bed. It was her father’s bed. The dead body, stretched out in the middle under the drawn white sheet, was her father’s body.

  The outline of the sheet sank from the peak of the upturned toes to the shin bone, and from the high bridge of the nose to the chin.

  She lifted the sheet and folded it back across the breast of the dead man. The face she saw then was Oscar Wade’s face, stilled and smoothed in the innocence of sleep, the supreme innocence of death. She stared at it, fascinated, in a cold, pitiless joy.

  Oscar was dead.

  She remembered how he used to lie like that beside her in the room in the Hotel Saint Pierre, on his back with his hands folded on his waist, his mouth half open, his big chest rising and falling. If he was dead, it would never happen again. She would be safe.

  The dead face frightened her, and she was about to cover it up again when she was aware of a light heaving, a rhythmical rise and fall. As she drew the sheet up tighter, the hands under it began to struggle convulsively, the broad ends of the fingers appeared above the edge, clutching it to keep it down. The mouth opened; the eyes opened; the whole face stared back at her in a look of agony and horror.

  Then the body drew itself forwards from the hips and sat up, its eyes peering into her eyes; he and she remained for an instant motionless, each held there by the other’s fear.

  Suddenly she broke away, turned and ran, out of the room, out of the house. She stood at the gate, looking up and down the road, not knowing by which way she must go to escape Oscar. To the right, over the bridge and up the hill and across the downs she would come to the arcades of the rue de Rivoli and the dreadful grey corridors of the hotel. To the left the road went through the village.

  If she could get further back she would be safe, out of Oscar’s reach. Standing by her father’s death-bed she had been young, but not young enough. She must get back to the place where she was younger still, to the Park and the green drive under the beech trees and the white pavilion at the cross. She knew how to find it. At the end of the village the high road ran right and left, east and west, under the Park walls; the south gate stood there at the top looking down the narrow street.

  She ran towards it through the village, past the long grey barns of Goodyer’s farm, pat the grocer’s shop, past the yellow front and blue sign of the ‘Queen’s Head,’ past the post office, with its one black window blinking under its vine, past the church and the yew-trees in the churchyard, to where the south gate made a delicate black pattern on the green grass.

  These things appeared insubstantial, drawn back behind a sheet of air that shimmered over them like thin glass. They opened out, floated pat and away from her; and instead of the high road and park walls she saw a London street of dingy white facades and instead of the south gate the swinging glass doors of Schnebler’s Restaurant.

  The glass doors swung open and she passed into the restaurant. The scene beat on her with the hard impact of reality: the white and gold panels, the white pillars and their curling gold capitals, the white circles of the tables, glittering, the flushed faces of the diners, moving mechanically.

  She was driven forward by some irresistible compulsion to a table in the corner, where a man sat alone. The table napkin he was using hid his mouth, and jaw, and chest; and she was not sure of the upper part of the face above the straight, drawn edge. It dropped; and she saw Oscar Wade’s face. She came to him, dragged, without power to resist; she sat down beside him, and he leaned to her over the table; she could feel the warmth of his red, congested face; the smell of wine floated towards her on his thick whisper.

  ‘I knew you would come.’

  She ate and drank with him in silence, nibbling and sipping slowly, staving off the abominable moment it would end in.

  At last they got up and faced each other. His long bulk stood before her, above her; she could almost feel the vibration of its power.

  ‘Come,’ he said. ‘Come.’

  And she went before him, slowly, slipping out through the maze of the tables, hearing behind her Oscar’s measured, deliberate, thoughtful tread. The steep, red-carpeted staircase rose up before her.

  She swerved from it, but he turned her back.

  ‘You know the way,’ he said.

  At the top of the flight she found the white door of the room she knew. She knew the long windows guarded by drawn muslin blinds; the gilt looking-glass over the chimney-piece that reflected Oscar’s head and shoulders grotesquely between two white porcelain babies and bulbous limbs and garlanded loins, she knew the sprawling stain on the drab carpet by the table, the shabby, infamous couch behind the screen.

  They moved about the room, turning and turning in it like beasts in a cage, uneasy, inimical, avoiding each other.

  At last they stood still, he at the window, she at the door, the length of the room between.

  ‘It’s no good your getting away like that,’ he said. ‘There couldn’t be any other end to it-to what we did.’

  ‘But that was ended.’

  ‘Ended there, but not here.’

  ‘Ended for ever. We’ve done with it for ever.’

  ‘We haven’t. We’ve got to begin again. And go on. And go on.’

  ‘Oh, no. No. Anything but that.’

  ‘There isn’t anything else.’

  ‘We can’t. We can’t. Don’t you remember how it bored us?’

  ‘Remember? Do you suppose I’d touch you if I could help it . . . That’s what we’re here for. We must. We must.’

  ‘No. No. I shall get away—now.’

  She turned to the door to open it.

  ‘You can’t,’ he said. ‘The door’s locked.’

  ‘Oscar—what did you do that for?’

  ‘We always did it. Don’t you remember?’

  She turned to the door again and shook it; she beat on it with her hands.

  ‘It’s no use, Harriott. If you got out now you’d only have to come back again. You might stave it off for an hour or so, but what’s that in an immortality?’

  ‘Immortality?’

  ‘That’s what we’re in for.’

  ‘Time enough to talk about immortality when we’re dead . . . Ah—’

  They were being drawn towards each other across the room, moving slowly, like figures in some monstrous and appalling dance, their heads thrown back over their shoulders, their faces turned from the horrible approach. Their arms rose slowly, heavy with intolerable reluctance; they stretched them out towards each other, aching, as if they held up an overpowering weight. Their feet dragged and were drawn.

  Suddenly her knees sank under her; she shut her eyes; all her being went down before him in darkness and terror.

  It was over. She had got away, she was going back, back, to the green drive of the Park, between the beech trees, where Oscar had never been, where he would never find her. When she passed through she south gate her memory became suddenly young and clean. She forgot the rue de Rivoli and the Hotel Saint Pierre; she forgot Schnebler’s Restaurant and the room at the top of the stairs. She was back in her youth. She was Harriott Leigh going to wait for Stephen Philpotts in the pavilion opposite the west gate. She could feel herself, a slender figure moving fast over the grass between the lines of the great beech trees. The freshness of her youth was upon her.

  She came to the heart of the drive where it branched right and left in the form of a cross. At the end of the right arm the white Greek temple,
with its pediment and pillars, gleamed against the wood.

  She was sitting on their seat at the back of the pavilion, watching the side door that Stephen would come in by.

  The door was pushed open; he came towards her, light and young, skimming between the beech trees with his eager, tiptoeing stride. She rose up to meet him. She gave a cry.

  ‘Stephen!’

  It had been Stephen. She had seen him coming. But the man who stood before her between the pillars of the pavilion was Oscar Wade.

  And now she was walking along the field-path that slanted from the orchard door to the stile; further and further back, to where young George Waring waited for her under the elder tree. The smell of the elder flowers came to her over the field. She could feel on her lips and in all her body the sweet, innocent excitement of her youth.

  ‘George, oh, George?’

  As she went along the field-path she had seen him. But the man who stood waiting for her under the elder tree was Oscar Wade.

  ‘I told you it’s no use getting away, Harriott. Every path brings you back to me. You’ll find me at every turn.’

  ‘But how did you get here?’

  ‘As I got into the pavilion. As I got into your father’s room, on to his death bed. Because I was there. I am in all your memories.’

  ‘My memories are innocent. How could you take my father’s place, and Stephen’s, and George Waring’s? You?’

  ‘Because I did take them.’

  ‘Never. My love for them was innocent.’

  ‘Your love for me was part of it. You think the past affects the future. Has it never struck you that the future may affect the past? In your innocence there was the beginning of your sin. You were what you were to be.’

  ‘I shall get away,’ she said.

  ‘And, this time, I shall go with you.’

  The stile, the elder tree, and the field floated away from her. She was going under the beech trees down the Park drive towards the south gate and the village, slinking close to the right-hand row of trees. She was aware that Oscar Wade was going with her under the left-hand row, keeping even with her, step by step, and tree by tree. And presently there was grey pavement under her feet and a row of grey pillars on her right hand. They were walking side by side down the rue de Rivoli towards the hotel.

  They were sitting together now on the edge of the dingy white bed. Their arms hung by their sides, heavy and limp, their heads drooped, averted. Their passion weighed on them with the unbearable, unescapable boredom of immortality.

  ‘Oscar—how long will it last?’

  ‘I can’t tell you. I don’t know whether this is one moment of eternity, or the eternity of one moment.’

  ‘It must end some time,’ she said. ‘Life doesn’t go on for ever. We shall die.’

  ‘Die? We have died. Don’t you know what this is? Don’t you know where you are? This is death. We’re dead, Harriott. We’re in hell.’

  ‘Yes. There can’t be anything worse than this.’

  ‘This isn’t the worst. We’re not quite dead yet, as long as we’ve life in us to turn and run and get away from each other; as long as we can escape into our memories. But when you’ve got back to the farthest memory of all and there’s nothing beyond it—When there’s no memory but this—

  ‘In the last hell we shall not run away any longer; we shall find no more roads, no more passages, no more open doors. We shall have no need to look for each other.

  ‘In the last death we shall be shut up in this room, behind that locked door, together. We shall lie here together, for ever and ever, joined so fast that even God can’t put us asunder. We shall be one flesh and one spirit, one sin repeated for ever, and ever; spirit loathing flesh, flesh loathing spirit; you and I loathing each other.’

  ‘Why? Why?’ she cried.

  ‘Because that’s all that’s left us. That’s what you made of love.’

  The darkness came down swamping, it blotted out the room. She was walking along a garden path between high borders of phlox and larkspur and lupin. They were taller than she was, their flowers swayed and nodded above her head. She tugged at the tall stems and had no strength to break them. She was a little thing.

  She said to herself then that she was safe. She had gone back so far that she was a child again; she had the blank innocence of childhood. To be a child, to go small under the heads of the lupins, to be blank and innocent, without memory, was to be safe.

  The walk led her out through a yew hedge on to a bright green lawn. In the middle of the lawn there was a shallow round pond in a ring of rockery cushioned with small flowers, yellow and white and purple. Gold-fish swam in the olive brown water. She would be safe when she saw the gold-fish swimming towards her. The old one with the white scales would come up first, pushing up his nose, making bubbles in the water.

  At the bottom of the lawn there was a privet hedge cut by a broad path that went through the orchard. She knew what she would find there; her mother was in the orchard. She would lift her up in her arms to play with the hard red balls of the apples that hung from the tree. She had got back to the farthest memory of all; there was nothing beyond it.

  There would be an iron gate in the wall of the orchard. It would lead into a field.

  Something was different here, something that frightened her. An ash-grey door instead of an iron gate.

  She pushed it open and came into the last corridor of the Hotel Saint Pierre.

  The Cloth which Weaves Itself

  Among the sacred objects belonging to a sultan of Menangcabow named Gaggar Allum was the cloth sansistah kallah, which weaves itself, and adds one thread yearly of fine pearls, and when that cloth shall be finished the world will be no more.

  -W.W. SKEAT

  Universal History

  William Olaf Stapledon, English utopian and early science fiction writer. Born in 1887, died in 1950. Author of A Modern Theory of Ethics (1915), Last and First Men (1930), Last Men in London (1932), Star Maker (1937), Philosophy and Living (1939).

  In one inconceivably complex cosmos, whenever a creature was faced with several possible courses of action, it took them all, thereby creating many distinct temporal dimensions and distinct histories of the cosmos. Since in every evolutionary sequence of the cosmos there were very many creatures, and each was constantly faced with many possible courses, and the combinations of all their courses were innumerable, an infinity of distinct universes exfoliated from every moment of every temporal sequence in this cosmos.

  A Theologian In Death

  Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772), Swedish theologian, scientist and mystic. Author of Daedalus Hyperboreus (1716), Economia Regni Animalis (1704), De Coelo et Inferno (1758), Apocalysis Revelata (1766), Thesaurus Bibliorum Embelaticus et Allegoricus (1859-68). Swedenborg has been translated into eighty eastern and western languages.

  The angels told me that when Melancthon died he was provided with a house deceptively like the one in which he lived in this world. (This happens to most newcomers in eternity upon their first arrival—it is why they are ignorant of their death, and think they are still in the natural world.) All the things in his room were similar to those he had had before—the table, the desk with its drawers, the shelves of books. As soon as Melancthon awoke in this new abode, he sat at his table, took up his literary work, and spent several days writing—as usual—on justification by faith alone, without so much as a single word on charity. This omission being remarked by the angels, they sent messengers to question him. ‘I have proved beyond refutation,’ Melancthon replied to them, ‘that there is nothing in charity essential to the soul, and that to gain salvation faith is enough.’ He spoke with great assurance, unsuspecting that he was dead and that his lot lay outside Heaven. When the angels heard him say these things, they departed.

  After a few weeks, the furnishings in his room began to fade away and disappear, until at last there was nothing left but the armchair, the table, the paper, and his inkstand. What is more, the walls of
the room became encrusted with lime, and the floor with a yellow glaze. Melancthon’s own clothes were now much coarser. He wondered at these changes, but he went on writing about faith while denying charity, and was so persistent in this exclusion that he was suddenly transported underground to a kind of workhouse, where there were other theologians like him. Locked up for a few days, Melancthon fell to doubting his doctrine, and was allowed to return to his former room. He was now clad in a hairy skin, but he tried hard to convince himself that what had just happened to him was no more than a hallucination, and he went back to extolling faith and belittling charity.

  One evening, Melancthon felt cold. He began examining the house, and soon discovered that the other rooms no longer matched those of his old house in the natural world. One was cluttered with instruments whose use he did not understand; another had shrunk so small that entrance was impossible; a third had not changed, but its doors and windows opened onto vast sandbanks. One of the rooms at the back of the house was full of people who worshipped him and who kept telling him that no theologian was ever as wise as he. These praises pleased him, but since some of the visitors were faceless and others seemed dead he ended up hating and distrusting them. It was at this point that he decided to write something concerning charity. The only difficulty was that what he wrote one day he could not see the next. This was because the pages had been written without conviction.

  Melancthon received many visits from persons newly dead, but he felt shame at being found in so run-down a lodging. In order to have them believe he was in Heaven, he hired a neighboring magician, who tricked the company with appearances of peace and splendor. The moment his visitors had gone—and sometimes a little before—these adornments vanished, leaving the former plaster and draftiness.

  The last I heard of Melancthon was that the magician and one of the faceless men had taken him away into the sand hills, where he is now a kind of servant of demons.