THAT PISSING AGAINST my wheel was par for the course with Borges. Like most men of a certain age, he peed often, and kept insisting that I stop so he could relieve himself along the roadside, often against my left front wheel, which he seemed to favor. Not half an hour further into the northward journey, he cried, “It’s of an urgency! Your chariot must pause.”
“Rocinante is a horse, not a chariot.”
“Whoa, I say! It’s known that gauchos will relieve themselves without getting down from their horses. Quite ingenious, this dexterity.” He recited a fragment of a poem in Spanish, which I asked him to translate. “ ‘My horse and my woman, they disappear,’ ” he said. “ ‘May my horse return soon. / I don’t need a woman.’ ” He turned to me. “I think you need a woman. Am I correct?”
“I do,” I said, wondering if Alastair had told him of my romantic woes, or if perhaps he could smell my loneliness, as if it were a shelf of books. “But I have no luck.”
“Nor I! Do you know this phrase unrequited love?”
“Too well.”
“Oh, dear. We have much in common, as I’m beginning to see.”
Did I really want to have much in common with this old, blind man who couldn’t stop talking, who ignored everyone around him, and who seemed obsessed by some woman from a long time ago? Would this be me in fifty years?
“I was in love, deeply in love, perhaps have always and only been in love, with Norah Lange.”
By now he had mentioned Norah too many times, and I wondered if he would ever get around this obstacle in his path. When I spoke of Bella to Alastair and Jeff, did I seem as stymied, as stuck in my own emotional mud? Was I looking at myself here?
Borges said, “I prefer not to speak about Norah Lange. Let’s drop the subject. Tell me about the young girl who has broken your heart. I believe it was recent?”
“Her name is Bella Law.”
“Bella Law—worthy of Dickens! Don’t tell me she has red hair, too?”
“Brownish red. A tinge of blond in the sunlight.”
As I spoke, Bella was almost present in the car, with her pale gray-green eyes and softly throaty voice. I had promised to call her to arrange for a dinner this week at the Pearl of Hong Kong, but what if I didn’t make it back to town in time? I had dared to believe that I was making headway and that Angus had been fading as the object of her affections. Should I have stayed in St. Andrews to press my case with her instead of driving off to the Highlands with a writer whose work I had never even read? I knew that Alastair admired him without reservation, but Borges had struck me from the outset as self-obsessed, a little mad, and I didn’t fully trust Alastair’s appraisal. I kept thinking about George Mackay Brown and his exquisitely painful stories of lonely figures on Orkney, about his concrete, lyrical poems of place. I loved the restraint in those poems, and the keen edge of every phrase, the effect of a chiseled piece of sculpture in language.
“Dear God, Giuseppe, I must tell you, Norah lived in one of the fine neighborhoods of Buenos Aires. Tronado, that was the street. I remember its width, the shade of its plane trees. But Norah’s mother became a widow too early. I loved her as much as Norah.”
“And you proposed to Norah?”
“Many times, yes. She was a writer, too, which is unfortunate. For a writer to love a writer, it’s a bad idea.”
“Bella hopes to become a writer,” I said.
Borges winced. “I can’t talk about this. You don’t want to hear an old man weep, am I right?”
“I wouldn’t like it.”
“One should avoid strong emotion, especially when it interferes with the work at hand. We have European blood in our veins, you and I. Mine is northern blood. We’re cold people, you see. Warriors.”
“I’m doing everything I can to avoid being a warrior,” I said, eager to shift the subject from doomed love affairs, although warriors was hardly a better topic.
“You’re not a warrior in Vietnam,” Borges said. “I’ve been wondering about this.”
“My draft board in Pennsylvania would like me to go,” I said. “They keep sending me draft notices.”
“But you’ve avoided their summons?”
“I don’t open their…invitations, never. I’ve got several in a drawer in my flat.”
“This is a protest!”
“Or cowardice. Or lassitude. Or indifference.”
“I don’t know. I don’t see any of these things in Giuseppe.” He mumbled something to himself, perhaps trying to frame what he meant, then said, “Do not hate all wars. Sometimes these conflicts are necessary, in terrible circumstances. I must tell you about Juan Perón, the dictator. Or perhaps not. It troubles me to think of him.”
I kept silent, waiting for Borges to expound—or not—on Perón, and wondered again what on earth I was doing by stuffing those letters into a drawer. Shouldn’t I just open them? If the draft board insisted on my reporting for service, I could make a strong statement, declaring myself a conscientious objector. If that didn’t work, and it probably wouldn’t (given my draft board), I could simply reject my citizenship altogether. I could become a Canadian, as they apparently welcomed draft resisters. This would, however, put me outside my American world forever. I would become a true alien, not just an inner emigré. And this frightened me, as I loved my family, even Scranton, with its familiar landscape and rhythms, the feeling of home that is impossible to find just anywhere. As much as I complained about my mother, I loved her. She cared deeply about my welfare, as did my father. The connections between us were anything but fragile.
It struck me that Borges, even with his vastly cosmopolitan mind, seemed attached to Buenos Aires, to its smells and tastes, to its familiar rhythms of thought. He could never just let go of this. It was home.
Our plan now was to push as far into Perthshire as we could before nightfall, following the M90 through the town of Kinross. I described what I saw along the way to Borges as best I could, fetching images and metaphors, noting the bright lakes, the fertile land with stone barns and hillsides smudged with white-and-gray sheep. Spring had begun to assert itself, with flowers breaking out in patches.
“What flowers? Name them. I need the particulars.”
“Daffodils,” I said.
“I adore daffodils.”
I mentioned an impressive purple limestone church in Perth as we entered the town. The River Tay bristled in the background, running below the glebe, a field adjacent to the church where sheep safely grazed. We paused briefly to walk around the graveyard beside the church, beneath huge oak trees with crooked limbs, and I turned my back as Borges stopped to pee against one of them as he tapped its trunk with his cane. A hiss followed a grunt, so I guessed his venture had been successful.
He’d been more silent than usual, as if suddenly lost in problematic musings. I could appreciate this and left him to his ruminations, which summoned my own. I was somehow relieved to settle into my own thoughts about—who else?—Bella. It terrified me that she might take my silence over these past few days as an indication that I had lost interest, when the opposite was true. I must find a phone booth in the evening and explain how I came to be traveling in the Highlands with Borges.
It was astonishing how far away St. Andrews seemed, the dream of a dream. I had been riveted by Alastair and Jasper, but in such a short time they had vanished from my life, although Alastair lingered in Borges. I could see that so many of his ideas could be traced to this source, especially that sense of being present, taking in the world in a gulp. But Alastair was more cynical than Borges, more judgmental. I often felt criticized by him, especially when I sat down to write, feeling the heat of his gaze over my shoulder. He would mock my interest in the soul and its fate, my interest in theology. When I told him I was eagerly reading The Courage to Be, by Paul Tillich, he asked “To be what?” He urged me to garden and to cook. “Chop wood, carry water,” he said, quoting an old Buddhist precept.
In Perth’s quiet town center, we stopped for lunch at a pub called the Cock & Bull, where a lump-faced publican suggested we should visit Scone Palace. “Your old man, he will like this, aye!” he whispered to me. “History is what we sell, aye.”
“Oh, yes, we must go there,” said Borges. “Macbeth and Robert the Bruce stood in that holy spot!”
Before stepping back into the car, he looked up at the sky, where dark clouds had begun to gather, and sniffed the air.
“What is it?” I asked.
“There is rain coming.”
No sooner did he say this than a drizzle began, though it was short-lived, with frequent breaks in the clouds. We drove on through it, and a short while later we pulled into an empty car park at Scone, a palace made of red sandstone blocks and built in the neo-Gothic style, with battlements, towers, and crenulations. I had skimmed my guidebook, relaying to Borges the elementary facts. Ancient Scottish kings had for centuries been crowned at Scone, going back to the ninth century. Some thirty-eight monarchs had knelt before the Stone of Destiny. I allowed myself to ramble a bit, offering a potted history.
Borges smiled faintly. “You say scone as if it rhymed with bone. But it rhymes with spoon. It’s a Pictish word. Do you know the Picts?”
“I kissed one of them, years ago.”
Quite sensibly, he ignored my remark. “Scotland was conquered by the Picts, who came from Scandinavia. They landed in Ireland first. That’s one theory. They were Christians, like yourself, Giuseppe. They weren’t pagans, so don’t say that.”
“I’ll never call a Pict a pagan, I swear.”
“They made beautiful structures, and were artists who could draw images on stone: a wolf, a salmon, a catlike creature resembling a tiger. Brilliant! I’ve read about them and have wished to stand here. ‘So thanks to all at once and to each one, / Whom we invite to see us crowned at Scone.’ ”
“Scone doesn’t rhyme with spoon there.”
“Do you know how Shakespeare pronounced one?”
“I doubt it rhymed with spoon.”
“My dear, you are in battle mode, in full armor, your sword drawn!” He reached to touch my face with his hands, carefully feeling his way among my features. It felt odd but relieving as well, and I began to believe the Fates had something in mind for me, that it wasn’t happenstance that Borges and I were tracing our peculiar pathway through the Highlands of Scotland. “A stern visage, yes. I knew it!”
“I’m not stern.”
“But I object! There is strength in your features.”
I wished I could feel as sure of my strength as Borges did. He kept holding up mirrors, and the reflections disturbed me at times. I’d never wanted to look at myself too closely, to see the abrasions on my skin, my broad flat nose, the slightly protruding upper lip. Already my hair grew thin, and I had begun to stoop, as if the world weighed too much. Real strength was in fact a new element to witness, to see in this reflection. Was there after all a reason for this trip? Had Alastair, in some benevolent if unconscious way, engineered this journey with Borges, guessing that he could teach me something indirectly?
The rain paused, though mist hung in the air like a cloak over the grounds of Scone Palace. It was late afternoon, and a notice proclaimed the palace closed to visitors until May. When I told Borges about our bad timing, he showed no sign of distress.
“Scone Palace is not an important building,” he said. “I’m blind, in any case. And I like genuine Gothic, not these pale imitations, with moats and turrets, and probably an armory inside, even a dungeon! Is there a keep in this castle? I believe so. They reproduce these elements—pure fantasy. Walter Scott would have approved.”
“Not you.”
“I prefer whatever is authentic, as long as it’s invented.”
I noticed a sign pointing around the corner to the garden at the back of the house and suggested that we might stroll around a bit. Perhaps the garden, if not the palace, would be accessible.
Borges put one arm through mine—I was beginning to enjoy, even to count on, the intimacy of guiding him—and we turned into a narrow path beside a massive beech. The gravel crackled under our feet.
“I like to walk on this popcorn,” said Borges. “It’s a kind of foot music. A prelude to the full choir of stones.”
“And the noisy silence of heaven,” I added.
A low cloud gathered around us, tangible, almost pulsating. And then, strangely, as if materializing from the wet mist, three elderly women appeared before us. Were they employees at the palace? They seemed too old for that, and too peculiar in their gray raincoats and knitted hats. One of them had wrapped her face in a long black scarf so that you could see only her eyes. Another had so much facial hair that I wondered if she were actually a man. The third was a bit younger, and tiny, with skin like crepe.
“It’s the garden you’re after?” the youngest one asked.
“Yes, if it’s open. My friend has come all the way from Argentina.”
“I speak for the National Library of Argentina,” Borges said.
“This is your day,” said the woman in the scarf. “And what you say is what we play.”
“Is this a play then?”
“Heaven has the script,” she said.
This was all too much. I wanted to take Borges back to the car but knew he’d want to press on. “Are we allowed in?” I asked.
“Go where you go, son, and go with confidence,” said the small one.
Borges mused to himself but aloud, “Such fantastic strange voices! Angels or demons? No matter!”
The one in the scarf told us they were sisters from Kinross.
“The Weird Sisters!” cried Borges. “Darlings, I’ve been reading about you my whole life.”
“The old tree pants,” intoned the one with a fuzz on her cheeks. “And the young supplants.”
“This isn’t good news for me,” Borges said, squeezing my arm in a way that showed his vulnerability.
His comment produced a clap of harsh laughter from the bearded one. “You’re already dead,” she pronounced.
“I’ve never pretended otherwise,” Borges told her, but he grabbed my arm tightly.
“Do they bother you?” I asked.
“They have nothing to teach me,” he said. “Send them back into the mist.”
I didn’t have to do anything. They had already stepped into the swirl and vanished, whoever they were.
Borges pushed forward, as if sure of the path. Soon an iron gate swung on rusty hinges and I saw a broad expanse of snowdrops beneath the fog. A grassy pathway bordered by violets led into a row of hedges. This was, I thought, the entrance.
“There’s a maze,” I said.
“You will know that a bat flies by sonar. I do this as well.” He rushed forward into the maze with more energy, more agility, than I had thought possible. How did he know where to go? The blackthorn hedges closed around him.
“Borges!” I called, but when I stepped into the maze I could not tell which of the divergent paths he had taken. I called out for him. His name rose in the balloon of my voice and hovered in the air. Borges! Borges!
Time shifted gears within this maze as the forward progress of our day ended. I was under its spell, guided by hedges and given binary choices, but these yielded only further corridors within tunnels of waxy leaves. Rabbits scurried to left and right, and the air smelled sharply of damp, piss, and piney resin.
“Borges?” I waited for him, looking around. Where was he?
Was it minutes or hours later that I turned into a corridor where Borges, winded, sat on the path, his legs folded awkwardly under him? Time had certainly become a pliant thing in this mist, in the maze.
“Are you okay, Borges?” I asked, bending over to help him stand.
“I’m grateful for this hand,” he said, reestablishing his footing. “So we come to the end of the maze, Giuseppe, but this is only the beginning. It’s like any good story, which has no end. A way of defeating death.”
“How?” I felt sucked into his drama of ideas. He was once again playing the role of Socrates, and I was called upon to perform as one of his students, as in the Meno, where the Greek philosopher proves once and for all that even a slave with no education can, with a little persistence, understand geometrical concepts. Was this my role with Borges, acting as the naive young man who must learn things already present in his heart and head?
“What’s the shortest distance between two points?”
“A straight line,” I answered.
“A narrative that proceeds from the beginning to the middle to the end.”
“That’s right.”
“But what if we proceed in a zigzag fashion, as in this maze, or within any labyrinthine structure? We wrinkle time, you see. Divagations! If we linger in these loopholes of history, these timeless tortuous stretches, perhaps we shall never come to the end, or if we do, we will find an opening there and start again.”
“So we can hide in time?”
“Yes, but time is another fiction. It’s very useful, especially for writers like us. We need the lapse of moments, even the pause between feet in a poem, or the lingering before a climax in our stories. Syntax itself is a form of time.”
He was on a roll now, speaking quickly, almost whispering to himself. “Death, my dear, is a false ending. A climax that is no climax. Have you never read A Thousand and One Nights?”
“No.”
“The centuries pass, and still we listen to the voice of Scheherazade.”
“She’s the narrator, right?”
“See, you know this already, even without reading it. One does not need to read this book of all books. It’s part of our memory.”
“She had to keep telling stories to stay alive,” I said.
He leaned close to me, a hand on my shoulder. He touched my cheek in a kindly, even fatherly way. “A strategy for survival, son,” he said. “We enter the maze, you see, as in any tale, and with luck we arrive at the point from which we began, which is always ourselves.”