To the Ends of the Earth

There was a hint of this cultural overlay in the composition of the city. The pink-flowered “drunken branch” trees of the pampas grew in the parks, but the parks were English and Italian, and this told in their names, Britannia Park, Palermo Park. The downtown section was architecturally French, the industrial parts German, the harbor Italian. Only the scale of the city was American; its dimensions, its sense of space, gave it a familiarity. It was a clean city. No one slept in its doorways or parks—this, in a South American context, is almost shocking to behold. I found the city safe to walk in at all hours, and at three o’clock in the morning there were still crowds in the streets. Because of the daytime humidity, groups of boys played football in the floodlit parks until well after midnight. It was a city without a significant Indian population—few, it seemed, strayed south of Tucumán, and what Indians existed came from Paraguay, or just across the Rio de la Plata in Uruguay. They worked as domestics, they lived in outlying slums, they were given little encouragement to stay.

It was a divided culture, but it was also a divided country. The Argentines I met said it was two countries—the uplands of the north, full of folklore and mountains and semibarbarous settlers; and the “humid pampas” of the south, with its cattle ranches and its emptiness, a great deal of it still virgin territory (pampas derives from an Aymara word meaning “space”). You have to travel a thousand miles for this division to be apparent, and Argentines—in spite of what they claim is their adventurous spirit—only travel along selected routes. They know Chile. Some know Brazil. They spend weekends in the Patagonian oasis of Bariloche. But they do not travel much in the north of Argentina, and they don’t know, or even care very much, about the rest of South America. Mention Quito and they will tell you it is hellish, small, poor, and primitive. A trip to Bolivia is unthinkable. Their connections tend to be with Europe. They fancy themselves Frenchified and have been told so often that their capital is like Paris that they feel no need to verify it with a visit to France. They prefer to maintain their ancestral links with Europe; many go to Spain, but almost a quarter of a million visit Italy every year. The more enterprising are Anglophiles. They are unsure of the United States, and their uncertainty makes them scorn it.

“But what do you know about Argentina?” they asked me, and by way of forestalling their lectures—they seemed deeply embarrassed about their political record—I said things like, “Well, when I was in Jujuy …,” or “Now, Humahuaca’s awfully nice …,” or “What struck me about La Quiaca …” No one I met had been to La Quiaca or taken the train across the border. The person in Buenos Aires who wishes to speak of the squalor of the distant provinces tells you about the size of the cockroaches in nearby Rosario.

Borges

THE BRASS PLAQUE ON THE LANDING OF THE SIXTH FLOOR said Borges. I rang the bell and was admitted by a child of about seven. When he saw me he sucked his finger in embarrassment. He was the maid’s child. The maid was Paraguayan, a well-fleshed Indian, who invited me in, then left me in the foyer with a large white cat. There was one dim light burning in the foyer, but the rest of the apartment was dark. The darkness reminded me that Borges was blind.

Curiosity and unease led me into a small parlor. Though the curtains were drawn and the shutters closed, I could make out a candelabra, the family silver Borges mentions in one of his stories, some paintings, old photographs, and books. There was little furniture—a sofa and two chairs by the window, a dining table pushed against one wall, and a wall and a half of bookcases. Something brushed my legs. I switched on a lamp; the cat had followed me here.

There was no carpet on the floor to trip the blind man, no intrusive furniture he could barge into. The parquet floor gleamed; there was not a speck of dust anywhere. The paintings were amorphous, but the three steel engravings were precise. I recognized them as Piranesi’s Views of Rome. The most Borges-like one was The Pyramid of Cestius and could have been an illustration from Borges’s own Ficciones. Piranesi’s biographer, Bianconi, called him “the Rembrandt of the ruins.” “I need to produce great ideas,” said Piranesi. “I believe that were I given the planning of a new universe I would be mad enough to undertake it.” It was something Borges himself might have said.