misfortune, especially because the roots braided together and the tops reached for the light of the sky. Scandinavian skies were never so crystal clear.
Grete was still contemplating it when the taxi turned off down some tedious streets and came out in a triangular plaza on which stood three or four palaces copied from those on Avenue Foch, please
stop here for a moment, Grete had begged, while she observed the luxurious windows, the empty balconies and clear sky above. That was when she remembered a novel by George Orwell,
Coming Up For
Air
, that she’d read in adolescence, in which a character called George Bowling describes himself like this: ‘I’m fat, but I’m thin inside. Has it ever struck you that
there’s a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there’s a statue inside every block of stone?’ That was Buenos Aires, Grete said to herself at that moment and repeated
to us later: a delta of cities embraced by one single city, a myriad of tiny, thin cities within this obese unique majesty that allows Madrid-style avenues and Catalan cafés next to
Neapolitan aviaries and Doric bandstands and Rive Droite mansions, beyond all of which, however – the taxi driver had insisted – were the livestock market, with the lowing of the cattle
before sacrifice and the smell of dung, the evening dew, the open plain, and also a melancholy that comes from nowhere except here, from the end of the earth feeling you get when you look at maps
and see how alone Buenos Aires is, how very out of the way.
When we turned onto 9 de Julio Avenue and saw the obelisk in the center, I felt sad thinking we’d be leaving in two days’ time, Grete said. If I could be born again, I would choose
Buenos Aires and I wouldn’t move from this place even if they stole my purse again with a hundred pesos and my Helsingør driver’s license in it, because I can live without those
but not without the light of the sky I saw this morning.
She’d arrived at Borges’ National Library, on México Street, almost at the same time as her tired companions. There too they had to settle for the façade, inspired by
the Milanese Renaissance. When the guide had the group gathered on the sidewalk in front of the building, among broken flagstones and piles of dog shit, she informed them that, completed in 1901,
it was originally destined for the lottery draws and that’s why there were so many winged nymphs with unseeing eyes, which represented chance, and large bronze drums. The spiderweb of shelves
rose through circular labyrinths that emerged, if you knew your way, into a corridor of low ceilings, adjacent to a cupola open over the abyss of books. The reading room had been stripped of its
tables and lamps more than a decade earlier, and the premises were now used for symphony orchestra rehearsals. ‘National Music Center,’ read the sign at the entrance, beside the defiant
doors. On the right-hand wall, there was a slogan written in black aerosol paint: ‘Democracy lasts as long as obedience.’ An anarchist wrote that, said the guide disparagingly. See how
they signed it with an A inside a circle.
That was the penultimate stop before they arrived at the boarding house where I lived. The bus drove them through potholed streets to a café, at the corner of Chile and Tacuarí,
where – according to the guide – Borges had written desperate love letters to the woman who turned down his marriage proposals over and over again and who he tried in vain to seduce by
dedicating ‘The Aleph’ to her, while waiting to see her come out of the building to approach her if only with a look.
I miss you unceasingly
, he told her. His writing, ‘my
dwarf’s handwriting,’ ran in lines that sloped further and further downwards, in a sign of sadness or devotion,
Estela, Estela Canto, when you read this I shall be finishing the
story I promised you.
Borges could only express his love in an exalted, sighing English, he was afraid of
Grete was still contemplating it when the taxi turned off down some tedious streets and came out in a triangular plaza on which stood three or four palaces copied from those on Avenue Foch, please
stop here for a moment, Grete had begged, while she observed the luxurious windows, the empty balconies and clear sky above. That was when she remembered a novel by George Orwell,
Coming Up For
Air
, that she’d read in adolescence, in which a character called George Bowling describes himself like this: ‘I’m fat, but I’m thin inside. Has it ever struck you that
there’s a thin man inside every fat man, just as they say there’s a statue inside every block of stone?’ That was Buenos Aires, Grete said to herself at that moment and repeated
to us later: a delta of cities embraced by one single city, a myriad of tiny, thin cities within this obese unique majesty that allows Madrid-style avenues and Catalan cafés next to
Neapolitan aviaries and Doric bandstands and Rive Droite mansions, beyond all of which, however – the taxi driver had insisted – were the livestock market, with the lowing of the cattle
before sacrifice and the smell of dung, the evening dew, the open plain, and also a melancholy that comes from nowhere except here, from the end of the earth feeling you get when you look at maps
and see how alone Buenos Aires is, how very out of the way.
When we turned onto 9 de Julio Avenue and saw the obelisk in the center, I felt sad thinking we’d be leaving in two days’ time, Grete said. If I could be born again, I would choose
Buenos Aires and I wouldn’t move from this place even if they stole my purse again with a hundred pesos and my Helsingør driver’s license in it, because I can live without those
but not without the light of the sky I saw this morning.
She’d arrived at Borges’ National Library, on México Street, almost at the same time as her tired companions. There too they had to settle for the façade, inspired by
the Milanese Renaissance. When the guide had the group gathered on the sidewalk in front of the building, among broken flagstones and piles of dog shit, she informed them that, completed in 1901,
it was originally destined for the lottery draws and that’s why there were so many winged nymphs with unseeing eyes, which represented chance, and large bronze drums. The spiderweb of shelves
rose through circular labyrinths that emerged, if you knew your way, into a corridor of low ceilings, adjacent to a cupola open over the abyss of books. The reading room had been stripped of its
tables and lamps more than a decade earlier, and the premises were now used for symphony orchestra rehearsals. ‘National Music Center,’ read the sign at the entrance, beside the defiant
doors. On the right-hand wall, there was a slogan written in black aerosol paint: ‘Democracy lasts as long as obedience.’ An anarchist wrote that, said the guide disparagingly. See how
they signed it with an A inside a circle.
That was the penultimate stop before they arrived at the boarding house where I lived. The bus drove them through potholed streets to a café, at the corner of Chile and Tacuarí,
where – according to the guide – Borges had written desperate love letters to the woman who turned down his marriage proposals over and over again and who he tried in vain to seduce by
dedicating ‘The Aleph’ to her, while waiting to see her come out of the building to approach her if only with a look.
I miss you unceasingly
, he told her. His writing, ‘my
dwarf’s handwriting,’ ran in lines that sloped further and further downwards, in a sign of sadness or devotion,
Estela, Estela Canto, when you read this I shall be finishing the
story I promised you.
Borges could only express his love in an exalted, sighing English, he was afraid of
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