The Book of Fantasy

by Jorge Luis Borges

  ‘Good-bye, compadre.’

  Macario spoke as though he were walking from a heavy dream, yet immediately he realized that he had not been dreaming.

  Before him on the ground were the well-picked bones of that half turkey which his guest had eaten with so much delight.

  Mechanically he cleaned up all the morsels which had dropped and stuffed them into his mouth, so that nothing should be wasted, all the while trying to find the meaning of the several adventures that were crammed into the limited space of his mind.

  The thing most difficult for him to understand was how it had been possible for him to talk so much and talk what he believed was very clever as, in his opinion, only a learned man could do. But then he knew that when in the woods he always had very clever thoughts; only at home in the presence of his wife and children he had no thoughts whatever and his mouth was as if glued and it cost him much labor to get out of it one full sentence.

  Soon he got tired and presently lay down under a tree to sleep the rest of the day, as he had promised himself that he would after his holiday dinner.

  No fuel did he bring back that night.

  His wife had not a red cent in the house with which to buy food the next day.

  Yet she did not reproach him for having been lazy, as in fact she never criticized anything he did or did not. The truth was that she felt immensely happy to be alive. For, during the day, at about noon, when she was busy in the yard washing the children’s rags, a strange golden ray which, so it appeared, came not from the sun, but from an unknown source, had touched her whole body, while at the same time she had heard inside her heart a sweet music as if played by a huge organ from far, far above the earth.

  From that moment on and all the whole day she had felt as though lifted from the ground, and her mind had been at peace as she could not remember having ever felt before. Nothing of this phenomenon did she tell her husband. She kept it to herself like a very sacred property all her own.

  When she served supper there was still some reflection of that golden ray visible on her face.

  Even her husband noted it on giving her a casual glance. But he said nothing, for he was still heavily occupied with his own fortunes of the day.

  Before he went to sleep that night, later than usual, for he had slept well during the day out in the woods, his wife asked him timidly: ‘How was the turkey, dear husband?’

  ‘What do you think was the matter with it since you ask me how it was? What do you mean? Was there something wrong with it? It was quite all right as far as I could judge, with the little experience I’ve had eating roast turkey.’

  With not a single word did he mention his visitors.

  When he had turned about to go to his cot, she looked at him, watching his face sidewise and thoughtfully. Something was new in him, something had come over him. Never before had he talked that much to her at one breath.

  Next day was a hungry one for the whole family. Their breakfast, including that of Macario’s, was always lean. Yet this morning his wife had to make it smaller still, for it had to be stretched into two more meals.

  Soon Macario was through with the few mouthfuls of black beans seasoned with green chilli and a pot of atole for a drink. Complain he did not because he realized that the blame was on him.

  He took up his machete, his axe and his ropes and stepped out into the misty morning.

  Considering the way he went about his usual hard task of chopping wood, he might was well have forgotten about the precious medicine and all that went with it.

  Only a few paces had he gone when his wife called after him: ‘Husband, your water bottle.’

  This reminded him like a flash that the whole adventure of the day before might after all not have been a dream but reality. Last night, on thinking of the happenings, he had reached the conclusion that it might have been but sort of an imagination caused by a stomach not used to being filled up with roast turkey.

  ‘It’s still full of water,’ the wife said, bringing the guaje bottle out and shaking it. ‘Shall I pour the old water out and put in fresh water?’ she asked, while playing with the cork cut from a corn cob.

  ‘Yes, I know, woman, it’s still full,’ Macario answered, not a bit afraid that his wife might be too hasty and spill the miraculous liquid away. ‘Yesterday I drank from the little brook. Just give me the bottle full as it is. The water is good; I got it out there in the woods.’

  On his way to work and some fair distance away from his hut which was the last at his side of the village, he hid the bottle in dense bushes, partly covering it with soil.

  That night he brought home one of the biggest loads of heavy fine dry fuel such as he had not delivered for many months. It was sold at three bits, a price unheard of, and was sold that same night on the first call the older boy made. So the family felt like having come into a million.

  Next day Macario went about his job as usual.

  On the night before he had told his wife casually that he had broken his guaje bottle because a heavy trunk had dropped upon it, and she had to give him another one of the several they kept in the house. These bottles cost them nothing, for the older boys discovered them growing wild in the bush somewhere.

  Again he brought home that night a good load of chopped wood, yet this time he found his family in a pitiful distress.

  His wife, her face swollen her eyes red from long crying, rushed at him the moment he came in. ‘Reginito is dying, my poor little baby, Regino, will be gone in a halfhour,’ and she broke into heartbreaking lamentation, tears streaming down her face.

  Helplessly and stupidly he looked at her the way he always looked if something in the house happened which was out of the gloomy routine by which this home of his was run. When his wife stepped aside, he noted that there were present several neighbors, all women, partly standing, partly squatting close to the cot on which the child had been bedded.

  His was the poorest family in the village, yet they were among the best liked for their questions, their honesty, their modesty, and because of that unearned virtue that the poor are always liked better than the rich anywhere and by everybody.

  Those women, in their neighborly zeal to help the so very poor Macario, and on hearing of the child’s being sick, had brought with them all sorts of herbs, roots, bits of bark as used by the villagers in cases of sickness. The village had no doctor and no drug store and for that reason, perhaps, it also had no undertaker.

  Every woman had brought a different kind of medicinal herb or remedy. And every one of the women made a different suggestion as to what should be done to save the child. For hours that little creature had been tortured with scores of different treatments and had been given teas brewed from roots, herbs and ground snake bones mixed with a powder obtained from charred toads.

  ‘He ate too much,’ one woman said, seeing his father coming to the child’s bed.

  ‘His bowels are all twisted up, there’s no help,’ another one corrected the first one.

  ‘Wrong, compadre, it’s an infection of the stomach, he is done for.’

  The one next to her observed: ‘We’ve done everything possible, he can’t live another hour. One of our kids died the same way. I know it. I can see by his little shrunken face that he is winged already for his flight to heaven, little angel, poor little angel.’ She broke into a loud sob.

  Not in the least minding the women’s chatter, Macario looked at his little son whom he seemed to love best of all as he was the youngest of the bunch. He liked his innocent smile and felt happy in his way when the little tyke would now and then sit on his lap for a few minutes and play with his tiny fingers upon the man’s face. Often it occurred to Macario that the only reason for being alive rested with the fact that there always would be a little baby around the house smiling at him innocently and beating his nose and cheeks with his little fists.

  The child was dying; no doubt of that. The mirror held by a woman before the baby’s mouth showed no mark of breath. His he
artbeat could practically no longer be noted by one or the other woman who would press her ear upon the child’s chest.

  The father stood there and gazed at his baby without knowing whether he ought to step closer still and touch the little face or remain where he was, or say something to his wife or to one of the other women, or talk to the children who were timidly crowded into one corner of the room where they all sat as if they were guilty of the baby’s misfortune. They had had no dinner and they felt sure there would be no supper tonight as thier mother was in a horrible state of mind.

  Macario turned slowly about, walked to the door and went out into the darkness of the night.

  Not knowing what to do or where to go since his home was all in a turmoil, tired as he was from his very hard day’s labor, and feeling as though he were to sink down on his knees, he took, as if automatically, the path which led to the woods—his realm where he was sure to find the quiet of which he was so badly in need.

  Arriving at the spot where, in the early morning, he had buried the guaje bottle, he stopped, searched for the exact place, took out the bottle, and quicker than he had moved in many years ran back to his hut.

  ‘Give me a cup filled with fresh clean water,’ he ordered in a loud and determined voice on opening the door.

  His wife hurried as if given new hope, and in a few seconds she brought an earthen cup of water.

  ‘Now, folks, you leave the room. Get out of here, all of you, and leave me alone with that son of mine. I’ll see what I can do about it.’

  ‘No use, Macario, can’t you see he has only a few minutes left? You’d better kneel down and say the prayers with us while he is breathing his last, so that his soul may be saved,’ one of the women told him.

  ‘You heard what I said and you do as you’ve been advised,’ he said, sharply cutting off any further protest.

  Never before had his wife heard him speak in such a harsh, commanding manner. Almost afraid of him, she urged the women out of the hut.

  They were all gone.

  Macario closed the door behind them, turned to the cot, and when he looked up he saw his bony dinner guest standing opposite him, the cot with the child in it between the two.

  The visitor stared at him out of his deep dark holes he had for eyes, hesitated, shrugged, and slowly, as though still weighing his decision, moved toward the baby’s feet, remaining there for the next few seconds while the father poured a generous dose of the medicine into the cup filled with water.

  Seeing his partner shaking his head in disapproval, Macario remembered that only one drop would have sufficed for the cure. Yet, it was too late now, and the liquid could not be returned to the bottle, for it was already mixed with fresh water.

  Macario lifted the baby’s head, forced the little mouth open and let the drink trickle into it, taking care that nothing was spilled. To his great joy he noted that the baby, once his mouth had been moistened, started to swallow voluntarily. Soon he had taken the whole to its last drop.

  Hardly could the medicine have reached his stomach when the child began to breathe freely. Color returned slowly but visibly to his pale face, and he moved his head in search of better comfort.

  The father waited a few minutes longer, and seeing that the baby was recovering miraculously fast, he called in his wife.

  Only one look did the mother give her baby when she fell to her knees by the cot and cried out loud: ‘Glory be to God and the Holy Virgin. I thank you, Lord in Heaven; my little baby will live.’

  Hearing the mother’s excited outburst, all the women who had been waiting outdoors rushed in, and seeing what had happened while the father had been alone with his son they crossed themselves, gasped and stared at Macario as if noting his existence for the first time and as though he were a stranger in the house.

  One hour later the whole village was assembled at Macario’s to see with their own eyes whether it was true what the women, running about the village, were telling the people.

  The baby, his cheeks rosy, his little fists pressed close to his chin, was profoundly asleep, and anybody could see that all danger was past.

  Next morning Macario got up at his usual time, sat down at the table for his breakfast, looked for his machete, ax and ropes and, taciturn as always, left home to go out to the woods and there chop fuel for the villagers. The bottle with the medicine he took along with him and buried at the same spot from which he had taken it the night before.

  So he went about his job for the next six weeks when one night, on returning home, he found Ramiro waiting for him. Ramiro asked him, please, to come around to his place and see what he might do about his wife who had been sick for several days and was now sinking fast.

  Ramiro, the principal storekeeper and merchant of the whole community and the richest man in the municipality, explained that he had heard of Macario’s curing powers and that he would like him to try his talents on his young wife.

  ‘Fetch me a little bottle, a very little glass bottle from your store. I’ll wait for you here and think over what I perhaps could do for your wife.’

  Ramiro brought the bottle, an empty medicine flask.

  ‘What are you going to do with the bottle, Macario?’

  ‘Leave that to me, Ramiro. You just go home and wait for me. I have to see your wife first before I can say whether or not I can save her. She’ll hold on all right until I come, don’t worry over that. In the meantime, I will go out in the fields and look for some herbs which I know to be good medicine.’

  He went into the night, searched for his bottle, filled the little crystal flask half full with the precious liquid, buried the bottle again and walked to Ramiro’s who lived in one of the three one-story brick houses the village boasted.

  He found the woman rapidly nearing her end, and she was as close to it as had been his little son.

  Ramiro looked at Macario’s eyes. Macario shrugged for an answer. After a while he said: ‘You’d better go out now and leave me alone with your wife.’

  Ramiro obeyed. Yet, extremely jealous of his young and very pretty wife, pretty even now when near her death, he peeped through a hole in the door to watch Macario’s doings.

  Macario, already close to the door, turned abruptly with the intention to ask for a glass of fresh water.

  Ramiro, his eyes still pressed to the door, was not quick enough in getting away and so, when Macario, by a resolute pull, opened the door, Ramior fell full length into the room.

  ‘Not very decent of you, Ramiro,’ Macario said, comprehending what the jealous man had been about. ‘Just for that I should decline giving your young wife back to you. You don’t deserve her, you know that, don’t you?’

  He stopped in great surprise.

  He could not understand himself what had come over him this very minute. Why he, the poorest and humblest man in the village, a common woodchopper, had dared to speak to the haughtiest and richest man, the millionaire of the village, in a manner which the judge at the county court would hardly have risked. But seeing Ramiro, that mighty and powerful man, standing before him humiliated and with the gesture of a beggar trembling with fear that Macario might refuse to heal his wife, Macario had suddenly become aware that he had become a great power himself, a great doctor of whom that arrogant Ramiro expected miracles.

  Very humble now, Ramiro begged Macario’s forgiveness for having spied upon him, and in the most pitiful way he pleaded with him to save his wife, who was about to give him, in less than four months, his first child.

  ‘How much would you ask for giving her back to me sane and healthy like she was before?’

  ‘I do not sell my medicine for prices, I do not set prices. It’s you, Ramiro, who have to make the price. Only you can know what your wife is worth to you. So name the price yourself.’

  ‘Would ten doubloons do, my dear good Macario?’

  ‘That’s what your wife is worth to you? Only ten doubloons?’

  ‘Don’t take it that way, dear Macario. Of course she me
ans far more to me than all my money. Money I can make again any day that God will allow me to live. But once my wife is gone, where would I find another one like her? Not in this world. I’ll make it one hundred doubloons then, only, please, save her.’

  Macario knew Ramiro well, only too well did he know him. Both had been born and raised in that village. Ramiro was the son of the richest merchant of the village as he himself was the richest man today—whereas Macario was the son of the poorest day laborer in the community as he himself was now the poorest woodchopper with the biggest family of the whole village to support. And as he knew Ramiro so very well, nobody would have to tell him that, once the merchant’s wife was cured, her husband would try to chisel down on the one hundred doubloons as much as he possibly could, and if Macario did not yield there would be a long and nasty fight between the two men for many years to come.

  Realizing all that, Macario now said: ‘I’ll take the ten doubloons which you offered me first.’

  ‘Oh, thank you, Macario, I thank you, indeed I do, and not for cutting down on the price but that you’re willing to cure her. I shall never forget what you have done for us, I’m sure, I shall never forget it. I only hope that the unborn will be safe also.’

  ‘It surely will,’ Macario said, assured of his success since he had seen his bony dinner companion standing where he liked best to see him.

  ‘Now, bring me a glass of fresh water,’ he told Ramiro.

  The water was brought and Macario counselled the merchant: ‘Don’t you dare peep in again for, mind you, if you do I might fail and it will be all your fault. So remember, no spying, no peeping. Now, leave me alone with the patient.’

  This time Macario was extremely careful in not spending more than exactly one drop of the valuable liquid. As hard as he could he even tried to cut that one drop into two halves. By his talk with Ramiro he had suddenly understood how much his medicine was really worth if such a proud and rich man as Ramiro would humble himself before the woodchopper for no other reason than that his wife might be cured by the poor woodman’s medicine.