Borges and I
108
Abraham Elm
I spent many summer afternoons in the bookstore on 37th Street, wandering through the dimly lit labyrinth of shelves, eager to lose myself in other people’s worlds. It was a fitting place to find Borges for the first time: someone had tucked a faded copy of his Ficciones between two volumes of an ancient encyclopedia. I took it down from the shelf, opened it to a random page, and knew at once that I’d discovered something extraordinary. In the days that followed I read all the works of Borges that I could find. I locked myself inside of my bedroom, avoiding friends and family members, speaking only to myself. My face assumed the strained expression of someone struggling to understand every aspect of existence in a single afternoon. I grew pale and stooped and so thin that I seemed to be receding from the world. But an unsettling incident occurred before I could disappear entirely. I was sitting on the edge of my bed early one morning, weary from a night of disturbing dreams, when I noticed a book of Borges’s poetry sprawled open at my feet. I picked it up and began to read, but when I reached the end of the first line I was unable to go any further. I went back to the beginning of the line and read it once more, enchanted by the arrangement of its words. I read it again and again, wanting each time to go beyond it but ineluctably dragged back to its beginning. I dare not write the line here, for I’m afraid that if I did I would be unable to write anything else. I will only say that it involved mirrors, and that I eventually escaped it by closing my eyes and throwing the book to the floor. The next day I took my collection of books by Borges to the bookstore on 37th Street. Ignoring the employees’ suspicious glances, I put the books in random places on the shelves. As I did so I wondered if someone else had followed this same routine before me, and that is why I had found the copy of Ficciones hidden among the encyclopedias. While considering this possibility a startling thought occurred to me: Perhaps I had followed this routine already, and without realizing it I had led myself back to Borges in the only way I would allow—by forgetting I had ever found him.