To the Ends of the Earth

“But people respect soldiers,” said Borges. “That’s why no one really thinks much of the Americans. If America were a military power instead of a commercial empire, people would look up to it. Who respects businessmen? No one. People look at America and all they see are traveling salesmen. So they laugh.”

He fluttered his hands, snatched with them, and changed the subject. “How did you come to Argentina?”

“After Texas, I took the train to Mexico.”

“What do you think of Mexico?”

“Ramshackle, but pleasant.”

Borges said, “I dislike Mexico and the Mexicans. They are so nationalistic. And they hate the Spanish. What can happen to them if they feel that way? And they have nothing. They are just playing—at being nationalistic. But what they like especially is playing at being Red Indians. They like to play. They have nothing at all. And they can’t fight, eh? They are very poor soldiers—they always lose. Look what a few American soldiers could do in Mexico! No, I don’t like Mexico at all.”

He paused and leaned forward. His eyes bulged. He found my knee and tapped it for emphasis.

“I don’t have this complex,” he said. “I don’t hate the Spanish. Although I much prefer the English. After I lost my sight in 1955 I decided to do something altogether new. So I learned Anglo-Saxon. Listen …”

He recited the entire Lord’s Prayer in Anglo-Saxon.

“That was the Lord’s Prayer. Now this—do you know this?”

He recited the opening lines of The Seafarer.

“The Seafarer,” he said. “Isn’t it beautiful? I am partly English. My grandmother came from Northumberland, and there are other relatives from Staffordshire. ‘Saxon and Celt and Dane’—isn’t that how it goes? We always spoke English at home. My father spoke to me in English. Perhaps I’m partly Norwegian—the Vikings were in Northumberland. And York—York is a beautiful city, eh? My ancestors were there, too.”

“Robinson Crusoe was from York,” I said.

“Was he?”

“ ‘I was born in the year something-something, in the city of York, of a good family …’ ”

“Yes, yes, I had forgotten that.”

I said there were Norse names all over the north of England, and gave as an example the name Thorpe. It was a place name and a surname.

Borges said, “Like the German Dorf.”

“Or Dutch dorp.”

“This is strange. I will tell you something. I am writing a story in which the main character’s name is Thorpe.”

“That’s your Northumberland ancestry stirring.”

“Perhaps. The English are wonderful people. But timid. They didn’t want an empire. It was forced upon them by the French and the Spanish. And so they had their empire. It was a great thing, eh? They left so much behind. Look what they gave India—Kipling! One of the greatest writers.”

I said that sometimes a Kipling story was only a plot, or an exercise in Irish dialect, or a howling gaffe, like the climax of “At the End of the Passage,” where a man photographs the bogeyman on a dead man’s retina and then burns the pictures because they are so frightening. But how did the bogeyman get there?

“It doesn’t matter—he’s always good. My favorite is ‘The Church that Was at Antioch.’ What a marvelous story that is. And what a great poet. I know you agree with me—I read your piece in the New York Times. What I want you to do is read me some of Kipling’s poems. Come with me,” he said, getting to his feet and leading me to a bookshelf. “On that shelf—you see all the Kipling books? Now on the left is the Collected Poems. It’s a big book.”

He was conjuring with his hands as I ran my eye across the Elephant Head Edition of Kipling. I found the book and carried it back to the sofa.

Borges said, “Read me ‘The Harp Song of the Dane Women.’ ” I did as I was told.

What is a woman that you forsake her,

And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,

To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

“ ‘The old grey Widow-maker,’ ” he said. “That is so good. You can’t say things like that in Spanish. But I’m interrupting—go on.”

I began again, but at the third stanza he stopped me. “ ‘… the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you’—how beautiful!” I went on reading this reproach to a traveler—just the reading of it made me feel homesick—and every few stanzas Borges exclaimed how perfect a particular phrase was. He was quite in awe of these English compounds. Such locutions were impossible in Spanish. A simple poetic phrase such as “world-weary flesh” must be rendered in Spanish as “this flesh made weary by the world.” The ambiguity and delicacy is lost in Spanish, and Borges was infuriated that he could not attempt lines like Kipling’s.

Borges said, “Now for my next favorite, ‘The Ballad of East and West.’ ”

There proved to be even more interruption fodder in this ballad than there had been in “The Harp Song,” but though it had never been one of my favorites, Borges drew my attention to the good lines, chimed in on several couplets, and continued to say, “You can’t do that in Spanish.”

“Read me another one,” he said.