Chapter 46 another person

It happened in February 1969 in Cambridge, north of Boston.I didn't write it right away, because my first thought was to forget it so I wouldn't say something stupid.Now in 1972, I think that if I write it, others will regard it as a story, and after a long time, I may regard it as a story myself. It didn't make sense to me as it was going on, and it just didn't make sense the more I thought about it during the sleepless nights that followed.But that's not to say others will be shocked. It was about ten o'clock in the morning.I'm sitting on a bench by the Charles River.About 500 meters to the right is a high-rise building with an unknown name.The gray river was laced with long icicles.The river inevitably makes me think of the passage of time.Image of Heraclitus more than 2,000 years ago.I had a good night's sleep the night before; I think the students were very interested in my lectures in the afternoon.There was no one around.

I suddenly felt that the scene had been there before (psychologists consider this impression to be a state of fatigue).At the other end of my bench sat another man.I'd rather be alone, but don't want to embarrass anyone by getting up and walking away right away.Another man whistled with pleasure.Much of the heartache that morning began at that moment.What he was whistling, or trying to whistle (I've never been a connoisseur), was Elias Regules' local score.The tune of the piece takes me to a courtyard that has disappeared, reminding me of Álvaro Rafinul, who died many years ago.Then he read the words.Those are the words of the opening decaline.The voice is not from Rafinur, but from Rafinur.I recognized the resemblance with horror.

I leaned closer to him and said: "Sir, are you Uruguayan or Argentinian?" "Argentine, but I've lived in Geneva since 1914," he replied. There was a long silence.I asked him again: "Live at No. 17, Via Maranho, opposite the Russian Church?" He said yes. "Then," I said with some assurance, "you are Jorge Luis Borges. I am Jorge Luis Borges. We are now in 1969, in Cambridge." "No," he answered in my voice, which seemed distant. After a moment he persisted: "I'm in Geneva, sitting on a bench by the Rodano. It's odd that we look alike, but you're much older than me, and your hair is gray."

I replied: "I can prove to you that I am not talking nonsense. I can tell you things that a stranger would never know. In that house there is a silver yerba mate tea pot with a coiled snake on the bottom that our great-grandfather brought back from Peru Yes. There is also a silver washbasin hanging from the saddle. There are two rows of books in the cabinet in your room. Three volumes in the Lane edition, steel plate illustrations, notes in small letters between chapters, Quiche Rattle's Latin Dictionary, Tacilon's "Germanic Local Chronicles" in the original Latin and Gordon's English editions, "Don Quixote" from Garnier Press, Rivera Indalte's " Blood Slab, with the author's inscription on the title page, Carlyle's The Tailor's Transformation, a biography of Amir, and a paperback book on Balkan national customs hidden behind other books. I still remember Evening scene on the first floor of the house on Place Duburgh."

"It's not Duborg, it's Dufour," he corrected. "Okay, Dufour. Aren't these proofs enough?" "Not enough," he replied, "the proofs don't tell anything. If I'm dreaming, you know what I know. Your long list is of no use." He retorted with reason.I say: "If this morning's encounter with us was all a dream, each of us would have to think that it was he who was dreaming. Maybe we were awake, maybe we were still dreaming. In the meantime, it's clearly our duty to accept the dream , just as we have accepted the universe, admitted that we are born in this world, can see with eyes, and can breathe."

"What if we keep dreaming?" he asked eagerly. To reassure him and myself, I feigned a composure that never existed.I told him: "My dream has been going on for seventy years. At the end of the day, everyone finds themselves when they wake up. That's exactly what we are now, only two of us. Would you like to know a little about my past, which is Waiting for your future?" He said nothing, but nodded in agreement.I went on a little bit upside down: "My mother is in good health, and she is still in her hometown on Chargas-Maipu Street in Buenos Aires, but my father passed away more than 30 years ago. He died of a heart attack. He was paralyzed after a previous stroke; his left hand rested on the Above the right hand, a limp, childlike hand rests on a giant's. He eventually grew impatient, but never complained. Grandmother died in that house too. A few days before she died, she called us all Come to the bed and say to us: I am a very old woman, half buried in the ground. This kind of thing is so common that none of you need make a fuss. Nora, your sister, is married and has two children. By the way, how is the family?"

"That's fine. Father always makes fun of religion. He said last night that Jesus, like the gauchos, doesn't want to be involved, so he always preaches in parables." He hesitated for a moment, then asked me: "and you?" "I don't know how many books you've written, only that there are too many. You write poems that please you only, and short stories that are too surreal. And you give lectures like my father and many other members of our family." To my delight he didn't ask me a word about the success or failure of my published book.I took a breath and went on:

"As for history... there was another major war, pretty much the same countries. France capitulated shortly thereafter; Britain and the United States waged a campaign against a German dictator named Hitler, a repeat of Waterloo. In 1946, Buenos Aires produced another Rosas, very similar to our relative. In 1955, the province of Córdoba saved us, just as Entre Ríos had saved us before The situation is not good. Russia is taking over the world; America is superstitious about democracy and cannot make up its mind to be an empire. Our country is becoming more and more demoralized. It is both rustic and self-important, as if it does not open its eyes to look outside .. I wouldn't be surprised if the Latin language was not taught in schools and Guaraní was taught instead."

I found that he wasn't paying attention to me at all.The fear of the impossible and yet true frightened him.I have no children, and I feel a kind of affection for the poor boy, and feel that he is more dear to me than my own son.I saw a book in his hand.I asked him what book it was. "The Wicked Man, or, I think, The Possessed, by Fyodor Dostoevsky," he replied, not without airs. "I'm fuzzy. How about the book?" As soon as I said it, I felt that the question was a bit abrupt. "This Russian master," he observed, "knows the labyrinth of the Slavic soul better than anyone else."

This rhetorical attempt made me think that he had calmed down. I asked him what other works of that master he had browsed. He mentioned two or three titles, including Double Personality. I asked him if he could read the characters as clearly as he could with Joseph Conrad, and whether he planned to read the complete works. "Honestly, no," he replied slightly surprised. I asked him what he was writing, and he said he was writing a book of poems, which he was going to title "Ode to Red."He also thought of "Red Melody". "Why not?" I said to him. "You can cite famous precedents. Ruven Dario's Blue Poems and Verlaine's Gray Sentiments."

He dismissed it, explaining to himself that his collection of poems should celebrate the fraternity of all human beings.Contemporary poets cannot but face reality. I was lost in thought, then asked him if he really felt brotherly towards all men.For example, to all the undertakers, to all the postmen, to all the divers, to all the homeless, to all the voiceless, etc.He told me that his collection was about the oppressed and the outcast masses. "What you call the oppressed and outcast masses," I said, "is an abstraction. If there are people, there are only individuals. The people of yesterday are not the people of today. Some ancient Greek Already asserted. The two of us, sitting on a bench in Geneva or Cambridge, may prove it." Memorable facts do not require memorable words, except in the strict pages of history.A dying man recalls an engraving he saw as a child; soldiers about to go into battle talk of dirt roads or sergeant majors.Our situation is unique, and honestly, none of us were prepared for it.Inevitably we talked about literature; but what I was talking about was nothing more than the usual talk to journalists.My other me likes to invent or discover new metaphors; what I like is metaphors that fit implicit or obvious affinities and our imaginations already accept.Human aging and the sunset of the sun, dreams and life, time and the passing of water.I made this point to him, and a few years later I was going to make it clear in a book. He didn't seem to be listening to me.suddenly asked: "If you were me, how do you explain that you forgot your encounter in 1918 with an old gentleman who also claimed to be Borges?" I hadn't considered this conundrum.I answered uncertainly: "I might say things are so weird, I try to forget about it." He timidly asked a question: "How is your memory?" I understand that in the eyes of a young man under the age of twenty, an old man in his seventies is almost the same as a dead person.I replied: "It seems easy to forget things, but I can still remember what should be remembered. I am studying Anglo-Saxon, and my grades are not the last in the class." Our conversation was too long to be dreamlike. I suddenly came up with an idea. "I can prove to you in a minute that you are not dreaming with me," I told him. "Listen carefully to this poem. You have never seen it before, but I can recite it." I read the famous poem slowly: The planet's glistening body forms a sinuous cosmic snake. I noticed that he was almost trembling with astonishment.I repeated it in a low voice, playing with each shiny word. "Indeed," he murmured. "I can't write that kind of verse." Hugo, the author of the poem, connects us. I recalled his earlier eager repetition of a short poem by Walt Whitman, in which Whitman reminisced about an evening on the beach he shared with others and felt truly happy. "If Whitman sang about that night," I remarked, "it was because he wanted it and didn't actually get it. If we see that a poem expresses some kind of longing, rather than narrating a fact, then A poem is a success." He stared at me. "You don't understand," he cried out. "Whitman cannot tell a lie." The half-century age difference is not for nothing.We both had different interests and read different books, and through our conversations I realized that it was impossible for us to understand each other.We have to face up to reality, so the dialogue is quite difficult.Each is a caricature of the other.The situation is very abnormal and cannot continue any longer.Convincing and arguing are futile because its inevitable end is that I want to be myself. Suddenly I remembered a whim of Coleridge's.Someone went to the kingdom of heaven in a dream, and the kingdom of heaven gave him a flower as evidence.When he woke up, the flower was still there. I came up with a similar approach. "Hey, do you have any money with you?" I asked him. "Yes," he replied. "I have about twenty francs. I'm going to invite Simon Gichlinski tonight at the La Crocodile." "You said to Simon, let him practice medicine in Kaluqi, save lives... Now give me one of your coins." He produced three silver coins and some small coins.He didn't understand what I meant, so he gave me a silver coin. I handed him a U.S. bill, all the same size but with vastly different denominations.He examines it carefully. "Impossible," he cried. "The year on the note is 1974." (A few months later, I was told that the year is not printed on the dollar.) "It's nothing short of a miracle," he said at last. "Miracle scares people. Anyone who sees Lazarus resurrected from four days dead would be petrified." We haven't changed at all, I thought.Always quote from the book. He tore up the bill and put away the silver coin. I decided to throw the silver coin into the river.Throwing a silver coin into the silvery river, drawing an arc, and then disappearing, would have added a stark image to my story, but fate didn't want it to. I replied that supernatural events are not scary if they occur twice.I offered to meet again the next day, on the same bench in two times and two places. He agreed immediately, without looking at his watch, but said that he had lost time.Neither of us told the truth, each knew the other was lying.I told him someone was looking for me. "Looking for you?" he asked. "That's right. When you get to my age, you'll be almost completely blind too. You can only see yellow and light and dark. You don't have to worry about it. Going blind isn't a tragic thing. It's like summer getting dark very slowly." We said goodbye without shaking hands.The next day, I didn't go.Neither will the other. I thought a lot about this encounter without telling anyone.I think I have found the answer.The encounter was real, but the other person was talking to me in a dream and could therefore have forgotten me; I was talking to him while awake, so the recollection of it bothered me. The other dreamed of me, but not so vividly.Now I understand that he dreamed of an impossible year on the dollar.