The Book of Fantasy

by Jorge Luis Borges

  In realizing that, he visioned what his future might be like if he would forget about his woodchopping and stick by his medicine exclusively. Naturally enough, the quintessence of that future was an unlimited supply of roast turkeys any time he wanted them.

  His one-time dinner guest, seeing him cutting the one drop in half, nodded approvingly when Macario looked at him for advice.

  Two days after Ramiro’s wife had recovered fully; she told her husband that she was positively sure that the baby had not been hurt in the least by her sickness, as she could feel him all right.

  Ramiro in his great joy handed Macario the ten gold pieces, not only without prattling over that high price but with a hundred thanks thrown in. He invited the whole Macario family to his store where everyone, husband, wife, and all the children, was allowed to take as much home as everybody could carry in his arms. Then he threw a splendid dinner to which the Macarios were invited as his guests of honor.

  Macario built a real house now for his family, bought some pieces of good land and began cultivating them, because Ramiro had loaned him one hundred doubloons at very low interest.

  Ramiro had done so not solely out of gratitude. He was too shrewd a businessman to loan out money without thinking of fat gains. He realized that Macario had a great future ahead of him, and that it would be a very sound investment to keep Macario in the village and make people come here to see him, rather than have him take up his residence in a city. The more visitors the village would have on account of Macario’s fame, the more important would grow Ramiro’s business. In expectation of this development in the village’s future, Ramiro added to his various lines in business that of banking.

  He gambled fast on Macario and he won. He won far beyond his most fantastic dreams.

  It was he who did all the advertising and all the propaganda to draw attention to Macario’s great gift. Hardly had he sent out a few letters to business friends in the city, than sick people flocked to the village in the hope of being cured of their maladies, many having been declared uncurable by learned physicians.

  Soon Macario could build himself a mansion. He bought up all the land around and converted it into gardens and parks. His children were sent to schools and universities as far as Paris and Salamanca.

  As his one-time dinner guest had promised him, so it came to pass, Macario’s half turkey was paid for a millionfold.

  Regardless of his riches and his fame, Macario remained honest and uncorrupted. Anyone who wanted to be cured was asked how much his health was worth to him. And as Macario had done in his first case, so he did ever after in all other cases—that is, the patients or their relatives would decide the price.

  A poor man or woman who had no more to offer than one silver peso or a pig or a rooster, he would heal just as well as the rich who, in many instances, had made prices as high as twenty thousand doubloons. He cured men and women of the highest nobility, many of whom had crossed the ocean and had come from Spain, Italy, Portugal, France and other countries and who had come for no other reason than to see him and consult him.

  Whoever came to consult him would be told frankly that he could do nothing to save him, if Macario saw the Bone Man stand at the patient’s head. Nothing did he charge for that consultation.

  People, whoever they were, accepted his final verdict without discussion. No longer would they try arguing with him, once he had told them that they were beyond help.

  More or less half the people consulting him were saved; the other half were claimed by his partner. It happened often for weeks at a time that he would not meet one patient whom he could cure, because his dinner guest would decide differently. Such weeks the people in the land called ‘his low-power periods.’

  While at the beginning of his practice he was able to cut a drop of his precious medicine into two, he soon learned to cut each drop into eight. He acquired all devices known then by which a drop might be divided up into practically an infinite number of mites. Yet, no matter how much he cut and divided, regardless of how cleverly he administered each dose to make it as small as possible and yet retain its effectiveness, the medicine had frightfully fast become scarcer and scarcer.

  He had drained the guaje bottle during the first month of his practice, once he had observed the true value of the liquid. He knew that a guaje bottle will not only soak into its walls a certain amount of any fluid it may hold, but worse, the liquid will evaporate, and rather fast, through the bottle’s walls. It is for that reason that water kept in a guaje bottle of the kind natives use will stay always cool even should the day be very hot.

  So he had taken out the medicine and poured it into bottles of dark glass, tightly sealed.

  The last little bottle had been opened months ago, and one day Macario noted to his horror that there were only about two drops left. Consequently, he decided to make it known that he would retire from practice and cure nobody any longer.

  By now he had become really old and felt that he had a right to spend the last few years of his life in peace.

  These last two drops he meant to keep for members of his family exclusively, and especially for his beloved wife, whom he had had to cure two times during the last ten years and whom he was afraid he might lose—a loss which would be very difficult for him to bear.

  Just about that same time it so happened that the eight-year-old son of the viceroy, don Juan Marquez de Casafuerte, the highest personage of New Spain, fell sick.

  The best doctors were called for help. None could do anything for the boy. The doctors admitted frankly that this boy had been stricken by a sickness not known to medical science.

  The viceroy had heard of Macario. Who hadn’t? But he owed it to his dignity, education and high social and political position to consider Macario a quack, the more so since he was called thus by every doctor who had a title from an accredited university.

  The child’s mother, however, less given to dignity when the life of her son was at stake, made life for the viceroy so miserable that finally he saw no other way out of his dilemma than to send for Macario.

  Macario disliked travelling and rarely left his village, and then only for short trips. Yet, an order given by the viceroy himself had to be obeyed under penalty of death.

  So he had to go.

  Brought before the viceroy he was told what was expected of him.

  The viceroy, still not believing in the so-called miracles which Macario was said to have performed, spoke to him in the same way as he would have spoken to any native wood-chopper.

  ‘It was not I who called you, understand that, my good man. Her Highness, la Marquesa, insisted on bringing you here to save our son whom, so it appears, no learned medico can cure. I make it quite clear to you that in case you actually save our child, one-fourth of the fortune which I hold here in New Spain shall be yours. Besides, you may ask anything you see here in my palace, whatever it is that catches your fancy and whatever its value. That shall be yours also. Apart from all that, I personally shall hand you a license which will entitle you to practise medicine anywhere in New Spain with the same rights and privileges as any learned medico, and you shall be given a special letter with my seal on it which will give you immunity for life against any arrest by police or soldiers, and which will safeguard you against any unjustified court action. I believe, my good man, that this is a royal payment for your service.’

  Macario nodded, yet said nothing.

  The viceroy went on: ‘What I promised you in the case that you save our son follows exactly the suggestion made by Her Highness, La Marquesa, my wife, and what I promise I always keep.’

  The Marquez stopped for a few seconds, as if waiting for Macario to say something.

  Macario, however, said nothing and made no gesture.

  ‘But now, listen to my own suggestions,’ the viceroy continued. ‘If you should fail to save our son, I shall hand you over to the High Court of the Inquisition, charging you with the practice of witchcraft under pact with the Devil, a
nd you shall be burned alive at the stake on the Alameda and in public.’

  Again the viceroy stopped to see what expression his threat had made upon Macario.

  Macario paled, but still said nothing.

  ‘Have you understood in full what I have said?’

  ‘I have, Your Highness,’ Macario said briefly, trembling slightly as he attempted to make an awkward bow.

  ‘Now, I personally shall show you to our sick child. Follow me.’

  They entered the boy’s room where two nurses were in attendance, merely watching the child’s slow decline, unable to do anything save keep him comfortable. His mother was not present. She had, by the doctor’s order, been confined to her room as she was close to a complete breakdown.

  The boy was resting on a bed becoming his age, a light bed made of fine wood, though not rich looking.

  Macario went close and looked around for a sign of his dinner guest.

  Slightly, so as not to make his gesture seem suspicious, he touched a special little pocket in his trousers to be sure he had the crystal flask with the last two drops of medicine about him.

  Now he said: ‘Will you, Your Highness, I pray, leave this room for one hour, and will Your Highness, please, give orders that everybody else will leave, too, so that I may remain alone with the young patient?’

  The Marquez hesitated, evidently being afraid that this ignorant peasant might do his son some harm if left alone with him.

  Macario, noting that expression of uneasiness shown by the viceroy, recalled, at this very instant, his first cure of a patient not of his own family, that is, Ramiro’s young wife in his native village. Ramiro had hesitated in a similar way when told to leave the room and let Macario alone with the young woman in bed.

  These two cases of hesitation had been the only ones he had ever experienced during his long practice. And Macario wondered whether that might carry some significance in his destiny, that perhaps today, with only two little drops of his medicine left, he beheld the same expression of hesitancy in a person who wanted a great service done but did not trust the man who was the only one who could render that service.

  He was now alone with the boy.

  And suddenly there appeared his partner, taking his stand at the boy’s head. The two, Macario and the Bone Man, had never again spoken one to the other since they had had a turkey dinner together. Whenever they would meet in a sickroom, they would only look at each other, yet not speak.

  Macario had never asked of his partner any special favour. Never had he claimed from him any individual whom the Bone Man had decided to take. He even had to let go two grandchildren of his without arguing his dinner guest’s first claim.

  This time everything was different. He would be burned alive at the stake as a witch doctor convicted of having signed a pact with the Devil. His children, now all of them in highly honoured positions, would fall into disgrace, because their father had been condemned by the Holy Inquisition to suffer the most infamous death a Christian could die. All his fortune and all his landed property, which he had meant to leave to his children and grandchildren, would be confiscated and given to the Church. He did not mind losing his fortune. It had never meant much to him personally anyhow.

  What he did mind above all was the happiness of his children. But more still than his children he was, in this most terrible moment of his whole life, thinking of his beloved wife.

  She would go crazy with grief on learning what had happened to him in that strange, vast city so far away from home, and she would be unable to come to his aid or even comfort him during his last hours on earth. It was for her sake, not for his own, that this time he decided to fight it out with the Bone Man.

  ‘Give me that child,’ he pleaded, ‘give him to me for old friendship’s sake. I’ve never asked any favor of you, not one little favor for the half turkey you ate with so much gusto when you needed a good dinner more than anything else. You gave me voluntarily what I had not asked you for. Give me that boy, and I’ll pour out the last drop of your medicine and break the bottle, so that not even one little wet spot be left inside to be used for another cure. Please, oh please, give me that boy. It isn’t for my sake that I ask you this. It is for my dear, faithful, loyal and beloved wife’s. You know, or at least you can imagine, what it means for a Christian family if one of its members is burned at the stake alive and in public. Please, let me have the boy. I shall not take or touch the riches offered me for curing him. You found me a poor man and I was happy then in my own way. I don’t mind being poor again, as I used to be. I’m willing to chop wood again for the villagers as I did when we met for the first time.’

  The Bone Man looked at him with his deep black holes for a long time. If he had a heart he was questioning it at this moment. Now he looked down before him as though he were deliberating this case from every angle to find the most perfect solution. Obviously, his orders were to take the child away. He could not express his thoughts by his eyes or his face, yet his gestures clearly showed his willingness to help a friend in dire need, for by his attitude he tried to explain that, in this particular case, he was powerless to discover a way out which would meet halfway the problems of both.

  Again, for a very long while, his look rested upon the boy as though judging more carefully still Macario’s plea against the child’s fate, destined before he was born.

  And again he looked at Macario as if pitying him and as though he felt deeply distressed.

  Presently he shook his head slowly as might someone in great sadness who finds himself utterly helpless in a desperate situation.

  He opened his fleshless jaws, and with a voice that sounded like heavy wooden sticks clubbed on a board he said: ‘I am sorry, compadre, very sorry, but in this case I can do nothing to help you out of that uncomfortable pool you have been put into. All I can say is that in few of my cases I have felt sadder than in this, believe me, compadre. I can’t help it, I must take that boy.’

  ‘No, you mustn’t. You mustn’t. Do you hear me, you must not take that child,’ Macario yelled in great despair. ‘You must not, you cannot take him. I won’t let you.’

  The Bone Man shook his head again, but said nothing.

  And now, with a resolute jerk, Macario grabbed the boy’s bed and quickly turned it round so that his partner found himself standing at the boy’s feet.

  Immediately the Bone Man vanished from sight for two or three seconds and, like a flash, appeared at the boy’s head once more.

  Quickly Macario again turned the bed so that the Bone. Man would stand at the feet, and again the Bone Man disappeared from the child’s feet and stood at the boy’s head.

  Macario, wild with madness, turned the bed round and round as if it were a wheel. Yet, whenever he stopped, for taking a breath, he would see his dinner guest standing at the boy’s head, and Macario would start his crazy game again by which he thought that he might cheat the claimant out of his chosen subject.

  It was too much for the old man, turning that bed round and round without gaining more than two seconds from eternity.

  If, so he thought, he could stretch these two seconds into twenty hours only and leave the city under the viceroy’s impression that the boy was cured, he might escape that horrible punishment which he had been condemned to suffer.

  He was so tired now that he could not turn the bed once more. Touching, as if by a certain impulse, the little pocket in his trousers, he discovered that the crystal flask with the last two drops of the precious medicine in it had been smashed during his wild play with the bed.

  Fully realizing that loss and its significance, he felt as if he had been drained of the last spark of his life’s energy and that his whole life had become empty.

  Vaguely, he gazed about the room as though coming out of a trance in which he had been held for an uncountable number of years, centuries perhaps. He recognized that his fate was upon him and that it would be useless to fight against it any longer.

  So, letting his eyes
wander around the whole room, he came to look at the boy’s face and he found the boy gone.

  As if felled he dropped to the floor, entirely exhausted.

  Lying there motionless, he heard his one-time dinner guest speaking to him, softly this time.

  He heard him say: “Once more, compadre, I thank you for the half turkey which you so generously gave me and which restored my strength, then waning, for another hundred years of tedious labor. It certainly was exquisite, if you understand that word. But now, coming to where we are at this hour, see, compadre, I have no power to save you from being burned at the stake on the Alameda and in public, because that is beyond my jurisdiction. Yet, I can save you from being burned alive and from being publicly defamed. And this, compadre, I shall do for old friendship’s sake, and because you have always played fair and never tried to cheat me. A royal payment you received and you honored it like a royal payment. You have lived a very great man. Good-bye, compadre.”

  Macario opened his eyes and, on looking backwards, he saw his one-time dinner guest standing at his head.

  Macario’s wife, greatly worried over her husband’s not coming home, called all the men of the village morning to help her find Macario, who might be hurt somewhere deep in the woods and unable to return without help.

  After several hours of searching, he was discovered at the densest part of the woods in a section far away from the village, so far that nobody would ever dare go there alone.

  He was sitting on the ground, his body comfortably snuggled in the hollow of a huge tree trunk, dead, a big beautiful smile all over his face.

  Before him on the ground banana leaves were spread out, serving as a tablecloth, and on them were lying the carefully cleaned bones of a half turkey.