The seven deaths of Jorge Luis Borges

                                                                                                                    by Aurel Antonie

Motto:

…I see you, Borges, above all as a Great Poet. Then I see you as follows: arbitrary, brilliant, loving, meticulous, feeble, giant, triumphant, temerary, afraid, vanquished, magnificent, unhappy, limited, childish and immortal.

                                                                                                                        Ernesto Sabato

            In the year 163 of the Hegira, I followed Borges up to the Sanam citadel, where the armies of caliph Mohammed Al Mahdi had surrounded him and his faithful defenders. I was spared by the pest that had broken out within those walls and I was not reached by the javelins of the valiant defenders of the citadel. Since it was impossible to get close to his palace, as guards protected it day and night, I harmed him where he was most vulnerable. Dressed like a beggar, I started preaching in plazas from where corpses had been removed, spreading distrust in the Masked Prophet who led us. I succeeded in being listened to by the people of the citadel, whom hunger had rendered emaciated but full of revolt. I told them that the masked man who led us to disaster was a leper. That the fourfold silk veil studded with gems was not meant to protect us from his blinding sight, but to hide the repulsiveness of his face, disfigured by the disease. I told them that if we were not killed on the walls, if we were spared by pest and starvation, we certainly should not evade the leprosy which was implacably spreading out, from the palace of the Prophet to the citadel. People listened to me full of terror. One of the 114 blind women in his harem confirmed my words. While the Prophet was praying on a high terrace, two captains snatched his veil. I had been right. He was a leper and they killed him with their spears, but he was not Borges. That was my first crime.

After this first failure, I became more wary of the rumours about Borges. Yet, one of them drew my attention. People spoke of a man who was worshipping a pagan god, in the quiet of some circular ruins. A man who adored the god of fire and who tried to create another man, by means of secret dreams and strange rituals. I was aware that only someone like Borges could have such ideas. I wandered for years in the jungle, looking for him. I spent long nights by the fishermen’s fires, to listen to their stories. I joined serpent hunters, telling them that I wished to learn their dangerous trade and I endeavoured to make them speak about the man who worships the fire. It was only very late that I succeeded in finding out where the temple was. I stole a boat and I started down the river, till I could see the ruins. I hid the boat in the mud and I waited for the nightfall. The way to kill him was suggested by the grey colour of the stone god, who represented a lion or a horse. I was decided to set it on fire, so that he was to be killed by the blaze of the god whom be devoted himself to. After a long lapse of drought, during which I prayed in the old zenda language for the absence of rain, I set on fire the grass surrounding the temple and I waited for him on the bank of the river. If he did not want to burn alive, he had to take shelter in the water, and there he would see me. The flames chased both animals and birds and then they played havoc with the temple of fire – for the nth time. I caught sight of him among the flames, making for the height of the blaze. The fire surrounded him from everywhere, but it did not consume him. After so many years of searches, I found only a phantom, a dream projection of Borge’s fiery imagination.

Only once was I completely sure that I actually found Borges. Namely when Carlos Argentino Daneri locked him in the basement of his house on Garay street, to show him the Aleph. Everything seemed prepared for a perfect crime. A dark basement in a dark house, and there, lying on the ground, Borges, lost, staring in the depths of the universe inside Aleph. I am sure that he would not have felt my presence. Then, there was a scapegoat – Carlos – who could easily be accused of Borges’ death. I was already in Garay street and I imagined the way I was going to strike him, when I realized that the timing was extremely wrong and I turned back. It was unforgettable that I had overlooked the fact that Borges was looking in Aleph and that there he certainly could see me heading towards him to kill.

The first and last time when I resorted to a professional killer I was in Argentina. Borges called himself Juan Dahlman and worked as a secretary to the municipal library on Cordoba street. He was ailing in the sanatorium on Ecuador street, after he had bumped into that window, almost ding with septicaemia. I thought that destiny spared me the effort of killing him myself. But nothing happened. He recovered his health and left for his farm in the south. I had then a great many businesses which could not be delayed and I had to stay in Buenos Aires. As I would follow him in the pampas, I resorted to a fellow specialist, an Indian whom I had met earlier in one of the taverns on the outskirts of the capital and who lived now in the south. I told him by phone how the man looked, what his name was and what train he was coming by. The Indian said that I could rely on him. That is what I did. Unfortunately the Indian was more of a drunkard that of a throat cutter. I found out later that Borges was alive and the Indian wasn’t. Serve him right! What kind of a killer is that who is killed by his own victim?

            It so happened – according to the will of the gods, or of the god that rules the world, from the circular mountain which surrounds it – that Borges was at my mercy, and I could crush him, under the guise of Destiny. No, I am not Destiny, but in Babylonia I could have been. In that vast lottery game I also involved myself, hoping to help him draw a fatal lot. To be sure, at the beginning, when lottery offered only money, I did not interfere. I waited till, as predictable, it started distributing important social statuses, imprisonment, mutilations and even death. I got initiated in the Bel mysteries and I spent hundreds of nights in the labyrinths of the god, trying to decipher Borges’ fate. I was tattooed on the belly the holy letter Aleph. In moonlit nights it gave me boundless power over Borges, who had been tattooed letter Beth. But he too, like any other dweller of Babylonia, was aware of his limits and he got out only in moonless nights, when I was subordinated to the Ghimel bearing ones. I followed up the game of his life in the labyrinths where Society ordered sentences. Borges became a proconsul, a slave – and I could not buy him -, a prisoner, and his right hand forefinger was cut. In an attempt to force the hand of Destiny, I lodged a denunciation against him in the sacred latrine Qaphqa. Following that denunciation, Borges was sentenced to death by strangulation in the bronze room. He looked very calm and reconciled to the fate provided by lottery. I used cunning and lies to get the right to carry out myself that sentence, with the strangulator’s handkerchief. Unfortunately, before the sentence could be carried out, another lottery ticket declared him invisible and I had to live in Babylonia for one year, knowing that he was close to me, if not all around, since, being, invisible, he could be anywhere, while I could be in one place only. In the meantime, I left Babylonia, as I realized that Society was inefficient and that everything was just an endless play of chance.

            As I knew that Borges was a compulsive reader, I made once the mistake to look for him in the hexagonal halls of the Babel library. I joined the vengeful Avars who killed those they met and threw books in bottomless wells. I was one of the inquisitors and I ascended the tiresome staircases devoid of steps. I entered the God-cursed sect of those that endeavour to recreate the divine disorder in toilets. Together with the purifiers, I threw thousands of shelves full of books. I saw self-murderers full of despair, when faced with the immense vastness of the library; pious young people who kissed the pages of the books they could not read and old men that had perused only some tens of thousands of volumes during their whole life, volumes comprising only three letters, arranged in an infinity of ways. Then I stopped. I realized that the library was endless and that though I was immortal, there was the risk of not finding Borges alive, as be was a mortal. In the happiest case, I could find his recollection in a book or in someone’s memory, unless the passage of time finally wiped it out, leaving me to wander in an infinite space.

I arrived in Ireland only after Borges had recited to the King his unparalleled poem devoted to victory against the Norwegian foe. I caught a glimpse of him, through the window of his room, while he was looking at his reflection in the silver mirror, which the King had presented him. In fact I am not sure that I saw was him. Maybe it was one of the images of the mirror which seemed to surround him completely. The presence of the mirror rendered my task difficult. The dagger I brought could scratch the silver of the mirror instead of realising the flow of blood. I fawned and I became a courtier, and so, the following year I was present when Borges recited his second poem. The shock created by his poem did not touch me. I did not share the enthusiasm of the others and I did not forget to inform the King of it, somewhat later, when we were alone by chance:

            “My discontent, Sire, is due to the fact that this Poet attempts to reach the essence of all things. I hope that the golden mask you gave him should blind his mind’s eyes, which pierce wisdom. Let the King forgive me for the fear which overwhelms me. If your Poet will go on writing, he is sure to find the ultimate name of God, who is the Poem of Poems, and the ear that hears it will go mad with too much wisdom, while the mouth that will utter it will stop talking and will die.”

            “I don’t think that my Poet could know that name, since I don’t know it myself!” answered the King.

            “Sire, don’t underestimate the arms of the Poet! He will find this name, before us, a name which the initiates impart only on their death bed. King of mine, take this dagger which chills my belly and give it to him, if he will dare tell you that name. God will direct his arm!”

            As I suspected, after a year of staying locked in his room, with his golden mask on his face, he came to the palace with no manuscript. I was not present when he recited his poem, as the King commanded us to leave them alone. I waited for Borges on the steps of the palace. He was staggering, and carried my danger in his right hand. Maybe he had grown blind, for having worn for so long that golden mask, or he had lost his mind as he learned the ultimate name of God, he was making his way downstairs but he seemed to see no one. When he reached the last stair, he thrust the dagger into his own belly and he collapsed. I ran to him and I peered in his eyes which had started seeing. He recognized me. Those eyes which had begun to see were not his. The man who had died was not Borges. That very moment, when the Poet was trying to utter the fatal name, in the agony of death, I grasped the ultimate truth. If I wanted to kill Borges, I had to commit suicide.

Translated by Sorana Georgescu-Gorjan