Short Stories of Jorge Luis Borges - The Giovanni Translations (25 page)
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Authors: Jorge Luis Borges (trans. by N.T. di Giovanni)
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That was how I obtained the horse I needed, and directed my course for Natchez in much better style than I had been for the last five days.
The Disruption
Morell leading rebellions of blacks who dreamed of lynching him; Morell lynched by armies of blacks he dreamed of leading it hurts me to confess that Mississippi history took advantage of neither of these splendid opportunities. Nor, contrary to all poetic justice (or poetic symmetry), did the river of his crimes become his grave. On the second of January 1835 Lazarus Morell died of a lung ailment in the Natchez hospital, where he had been interned under the name Silas Buckley. A fellow patient on the ward recognized him. On the second and on the fourth, the slaves of certain plantations attempted an uprising, but they were put down without a great deal of bloodshed.
Tom Castro, the Implausible Impostor
Tom Castro is what I call him, for this was the name he was known by, around 1850, in the streets and houses of Talcahuano, Santiago, and Valparaiso, and it is only fitting now that he comes back to these shores even if only as a ghost and as mere light reading that he go by this name again. The registry of births in Wapping lists him as Arthur Orton, and enters the name under the date 7 June 1834. It is known that he was a butcher’s son, that his childhood suffered the drabness and squalor of London slums, and that he felt the call of the sea. This last fact is not uncommon. Running away to sea is, for the English, the traditional break from parental authority the road to adventure; Geography fosters it, and so does the Bible (Psalms, 107): ‘They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; These see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.’
Orton ran away from his familiar, dirty, brick-red streets, went down to the sea in a ship, gazed at the Southern Cross with the usual disappointment, and deserted in the Chilean port of Valparaiso. As an individual, he was at once quiet and dull. Logically, he might (and should) have starved to death, but his dim-witted good humour, his fixed smile, and his unrelieved meekness brought him under the wing of a family called Castro, whose name he came to adopt. Of this South American episode no other traces are left, but his gratefulness does not seem to have flagged, since, in 1861, he reappears in Australia still using that name Tom Castro. There, in Sydney, he made the acquaintance of a certain Ebenezer Bogle, a Negro servant. Bogle, without being especially handsome, had about him that air of authority and assurance, that architectural solidity typical of certain Negroes well along in years, in flesh, and in dignity. He had another quality, which most anthropology textbooks have denied his race a capacity for sudden inspiration. In due time, we shall see proof of this. He was a well-mannered, upright person, whose primeval African lusts had been carefully channelled by the uses and misuses of Calvinism. Apart from receiving divine visitations (which will presently be described), Bogle was no different from other men, with nothing more distinctive about him than a longstanding, shamefaced fear that made him linger at street crossings glancing east, west, south, and north in utter dread of the vehicle that might one day take his life.
Orton first saw him early one evening on a deserted Sydney street corner, steeling himself against this quite unlikely death. After studying him for a long while, Orton offered the Negro his arm, and, sharing the same amazement, the two men crossed the harmless street. From that moment of a now dead and lost evening, a protectorate came into being that of the solid, unsure Negro over the obese dimwit from Wapping. In September 1865 Bogle read a forlorn advertisement in the local paper.
The Idolized Dead Man
Toward the end of April 1854 (while Orton was enjoying the effusions of Chilean hospitality), the steamer
Mermaid
, sailing from Rio de Janeiro to Liverpool,
went down in the waters of the Atlantic. Among those lost was Roger Charles Tichborne, an army officer brought up in France and heir of one of the leading Roman Catholic families of England. Incredible as it may seem, the death of this Frenchified young man who spoke English with the most refined Parisian accent and awoke in others that incomparable resentment which only French intelligence, French wit, and French pedantry can touch off was a fateful event in the life of Arthur Orton, who had never laid eyes on Tichborne. Lady Tichborne, Roger’s anguished mother, refused to give credence to her son’s death and had heartrending advertisements published in newspapers the world over. One of these notices fell into the soft, black hands of Ebenezer Bogle, and a masterly scheme was evolved.
The Virtues of Disparity
Tichborne was a gentleman, slight in build, with a trim, buttoned-up look, sharp features, darkish skin, straight black hair, lively eyes, and a finicky, precise way of speaking. Orton was an enormously fat, out-and-out boor, whose features could hardly be made out; he had somewhat freckled skin, wavy brown hair, heavy-lidded eyes, and his speech was dim or nonexistent. Bogle got it into his head that Orton’s duty was to board the next Europe-bound steamer and to satisfy Lady Tichborne’s hopes by claiming to be her son. The plan was outrageously ingenious. Let us draw a simple parallel. If an impostor, in 1914, had undertaken to pass himself off as the German emperor, what he would immediately have faked would have been the turned-up moustache, the withered arm, the authoritarian frown, the grey cape, the illustriously bemedalled chest, and the pointed helmet. Bogle was more subtle. He would have put forward a clean-shaven kaiser, lacking in military traits, stripped of glamorous decorations, and whose left arm was in an unquestionable state of health. We can lay aside the comparison. It is on record that Bogle put forward a flabby Tichborne, with an imbecile’s amiable smile, brown hair, and an invincible ignorance of French. He knew that an exact likeness of the long-lost Roger Charles Tichborne was an outright impossibility. He also knew that any resemblances, however successfully contrived, would only point up certain unavoidable disparities. Bogle therefore steered clear of all likeness. Intuition told him that the vast ineptitude of the venture would serve as ample proof that no fraud was afoot, since an impostor would hardly have overlooked such flagrant discrepancies. Nor must the all-important collaboration of time be forgotten: fourteen years of Southern Hemisphere, coupled with the hazards of chance, can wreak change in a man.
A further assurance of success lay in Lady Tichborne’s unrelenting, harebrained advertisements, which showed how unshakably she believed that Roger Charles was not dead and how willing she was to recognize him,
The Meeting
Tom Castro, always ready to oblige, wrote to Lady Tichborne. To confirm his identity, he cited the unimpeachable proof of two moles located close to the nipple of his left breast and that childhood episode so painful, but at the same time so unforgettable of his having been attacked by a nest of hornets. The letter was short and, in keeping with Tom Castro and Bogle, was wanting in the least scruples of orthography. In the imposing seclusion of her Paris hotel, the lady read and reread the letter through tears of joy, and in a few days’ time she came up with the memories her son had asked for.
On the sixteenth of January 1867 Roger Charles Tichborne announced his presence in that same hotel. He was preceded by his respectful manservant, Ebenezer Bogle. The winter day was bright with sunshine; Lady Tichborne’s weary eyes were veiled with tears. The Negro threw open wide the window blinds, the light created a mask, and the mother, recognizing her prodigal son, drew him into her eager embrace. Now that she really had him back, she could relinquish his diary and the letters he had sent from Brazil those cherished reflections that had nourished her through fourteen years of solitude. She handed them back with pride. Not a scrap was missing.
Bogle smiled to himself. Now he had a way to flesh out the compliant ghost of Roger Charles.
Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam
This glad reunion which seems somehow to belong to a tradition of the classical stage might well have crowned our story, rendering certain, or at least probable, the happiness of three parties: the real mother, the spurious son, the successful plotter. Fate (such is the name we give the infinite, ceaseless chain of thousands of intertwined causes) had another end in store. Lady Tichborne died in 1870, and her relatives brought suit against Arthur Orton for false impersonation. Unburdened by solitude or tears though not by greed they had never believed in the obese and nearly illiterate prodigal son who appeared, straight out of the blue, from the wilds of Australia. Orton counted on the support of his numerous creditors who, anxious to be paid what was owed them, were determined that he was Tichborne.
He also counted on the friendship of the family solicitor, Edward Hopkins, and of Francis J. Baigent, an antiquary intimately acquainted with the Tichborne family history. This, however, was not enough. Bogle reasoned that, to win the game, public opinion would have to be marshaled in their favour. Assuming a top hat and rolled umbrella, he went in search of inspiration along the better streets of London. It was early evening. Bogle perambulated about until a honey-coloured moon repeated itself in the rectangular basins of the public fountains. The expected visitation was paid him. Hailing a cab, he asked to be driven to Baigent’s flat. Baigent sent a long letter to the
Times
certifying that the supposed Tichborne was a shameless impostor. He signed it with the name of Father Goudron of the Society of Jesus. Other equally papist accusations soon followed. Their effect was immediate: decent people everywhere were quick to discover that Sir Roger Charles was the target of an unscrupulous Jesuitical plot.
The Hansom Cab
The trial lasted one hundred and ninety days. Something like a hundred witnesses swore that the defendant was Tichborne among them, four fellow officers in the 6th Dragoon Guards. The claimant’s supporters kept on repeating that he was not an impostor, for, had he been one, he would have made some effort to ape his model’s youthful portraits. Furthermore, Lady Tichborne had identified him, and obviously a mother cannot be wrong. All went well, or more or less well, until a former sweetheart of Orton’s took the stand to testify. Bogle was unshaken by this treacherous maneuver on the part of the ‘relatives’; assuming top hat and umbrella, he once again took to the London streets in search of a visitation. We will never know whether he found it. Shortly before reaching Primrose Hill, there loomed out of the dark the dreaded vehicle that had been in pursuit of him down through the years. Bogle saw it coming, he cried out, but salvation eluded him. Dashed violently against the stone pavement, his skull was split by the dizzying hoofs.
The Spectre
Tom Castro was the ghost of Roger Charles Tichborne, but he was a sorry ghost animated by someone else’s genius. On hearing the news of Bogle’s death, he collapsed. He went on lying, but with failing conviction and obvious discrepancies. It was not hard to foresee the end.
On the twenty-seventh of February 1874 Arthur Orton, alias Tom Castro, was sentenced to fourteen years’ penal servitude. In prison, he got himself liked; this was Orton’s calling. Good behaviour won him a four-year reduction of sentence. When this last touch of hospitality prison was behind him, he toured the hamlets and centres of the United Kingdom, giving little lectures in which he alternately pleaded his innocence or his guilt. Modesty and ingratiation were so deep-seated in him that many a night he would begin by exoneration and end by confession, always disposed to the leanings of his audience. On 2 April 1898, he died.
The Widow Ching, Lady Pirate
Any mention of pirates of the fair sex runs the immediate risk of awakening painful memories of the neighbourhood production of some faded musical comedy, with its chorus line of obvious housewives posing as pirates and hoofing it on a briny deep of unmistakable cardboard. Nonetheless, lady pirates there have been women skilled in the handling of ships, in the captaincy of brutish crews, and in the pursuit and plunder of sea-going vessels. One such was Mary Read, who once declared that the profession of pirate was not for everyone, and that to engage in it with dignity one had, like her, to be a man of courage. At the flamboyant outset of her career, when as yet she captained no crew, one of her lovers was wronged by the ship’s bully. Challenging the fellow to a duel, Mary took him on with both hands, according to the time-honoured custom of the West Indies unwieldy and none-too-sure flintlock in the left, trusty cutlass in the right. The pistol misfired, but the sword behaved as it should . . .
Along about 1720, Mary Read’s daring career was cut short by a Spanish gallows at St Jago de la Vega, in Jamaica.
Another lady buccaneer of those same seas was Anne Bonney, a good-looking, boisterous Irishwoman, with high breasts and fiery red hair, who was always among the first to risk her neck boarding a prize. She was a shipmate and, in the end, gallowsmate of Mary Read; Anne’s lover, Captain John Rackam, sported a noose on that occasion, too. Contemptuous of him, Anne came up with this harsh variant of Aisha’s reproach of Boabdil: ‘If you had fought like a Man, you need not have been hang’d like a Dog.’
A third member of this sisterhood, more venturesome and longer-lived than the others, was a lady pirate who operated in Asian waters, all the way from the Yellow Sea to the rivers of the Annam coast. I speak of the veteran widow Ching.
The Apprentice Years
Around 1797, the shareholders of the many pirate squadrons of the China seas formed a combine, to which they named as admiral a man altogether tried and true a certain Ching. So severe was this Ching, so exemplary in his sacking of the coasts, that the terror-stricken inhabitants of eighty seaboard towns, with gifts and tears, implored imperial assistance. Their pitiful appeal did not go unheard: they were ordered to put their villages to the torch, forget their fishing chores, migrate inland, and there take up the unfamiliar science of agriculture. All this they did, so that the thwarted invaders found nothing but deserted coasts. As a result, the pirates were forced to switch to preying on ships, a form of depredation which, since it seriously hampered trade, proved even more obnoxious to the authorities than the previous one. The imperial government was quick to act, ordering the former fishermen to abandon plough and yoke and mend their nets and pars. True to their old fears, however, these fishermen rose up in revolt, and the authorities set upon another course that of pardoning Ching by appointing him Master of the Royal Stables. Ching was about to accept the bribe. Finding this out in time, the shareholders made their righteous indignation evident in a plate of poisoned greens, cooked with rice. The morsel proving deadly, the onetime admiral and would-be Master of the Royal Stables gave up his ghost to the gods of the sea. His widow, transfigured by this twofold double-dealing, called the pirate crews together, explained to them the whole involved affair, and urged them to reject both the emperor’s deceitful pardon and the unpleasant service rendered by the poison-dabbling shareholders. She proposed, instead, the plundering of ships on their own account and the election of a new admiral.
The person chosen was the widow Ching. She was a slinking woman, with sleepy eyes and a smile full of decayed teeth. Her blackish, oiled hair shone brighter than her eyes. Under her sober orders, the ships embarked upon danger and the high seas.
The Command
Thirteen years of systematic adventure ensued. Six squadrons made up the fleet, each flying a banner of a different colour red, yellow, green, black, purple, and one (the flagship’s) emblazoned with a serpent. The captains were known by such names as ‘Bird and Stone’, ‘Scourge of the Eastern Sea’, ‘Jewel of the Whole Crew’, ‘Wave with Many Fishes’, and ‘Sun on High’. The code of rules, drawn up by the widow Ching herself, is of an unappealable severity, and its straightforward, laconic style is utterly lacking in the faded flowers of rhetoric that lend a rather absurd loftiness to the style of Chinese officialdom, of which we shall presently offer an alarming specimen or two. For now, I copy out a few articles of the widow’s code:
All goods transshipped from enemy vessels will be entered in a register and kept in a storehouse. Of this stock, the pirate will receive for himself out of ten parts, only two; the rest shall belong to the storehouse, called the general fund. Violation of this ordinance will be punishable by death.
The punishment of the pirate who abandons his post without permission will be perforation of the ears in the presence of the whole fleet; repeating the same, he will suffer death.
Commerce with captive women taken in the villages is prohibited on deck; permission to use violence against any woman must first be requested of the ship’s purser, and then carried out only in the ship’s hold. Violation of this ordinance will be punishable by death.
Information extracted from prisoners affirms that the fare of these pirates consisted chiefly of ship biscuits, rats fattened on human flesh, and boiled rice, and that, on days of battle, crew members used to mix gunpowder with their liquor. With card games and loaded dice, with the metal square and bowl of fan-tan, with the little lamp and the pipe dreams of opium, they whiled away the time. Their favourite weapons were a pair of short swords, used one in each hand. Before seizing another ship, they sprinkled their cheekbones and bodies with an infusion of garlic water, which they considered a certain charm against shot. Each crewman traveled with his wife, but the captain sailed with a harem, which was five or six in number and which, in victory, was always replenished.
Kia-king, the Young Emperor, Speaks
Somewhere around the middle of 1809, there was made public an imperial decree, of which I transcribe the first and last parts. Its style was widely criticized. It ran:
Men who are cursed and evil, men capable of profaning bread, men who pay no heed to the clamour of the tax collector or the orphan, men in whose undergarments are stitched the phoenix and the dragon, men who deny the great truths of printed books, men who allow their tears to run toward the North all these are disrupting the commerce of our rivers and the age-old intimacy of our seas. In unsound, unseaworthy craft, they are tossed by storms both night and day. Nor is their object one of benevolence: they are not and never were the true friends of the seafarer. Far from lending him their aid, they swoop down on him most viciously, inviting him to wrack and ruin, inviting him to death. In such wise do they violate the natural laws of the Universe that rivers overflow their banks, vast acreages are drowned, sons are pitted against fathers, and even the roots of rain and drought are altered . . .
. . . In consequence, Admiral Kwo-lang, I leave to your hand the administration of punishment. Never forget that clemency is a prerogative of the throne and that it would be presumptuous of a subject to endeavour to assume such a privilege. Therefore, be merciless, be impartial, be obeyed, be victorious.
The incidental reference to unseaworthy vessels was, of course, false. Its aim was to encourage Kwo-lang’s expedition. Some ninety days later, the forces of the widow Ching came face to face with those of the Middle Kingdom. Nearly a thousand ships joined battle, fighting from early morning until late evening. A mixed chorus of bells, drums, curses, gongs, and prophecies, along with the report of the great ordnance, accompanied the action. The emperor’s forces were sundered. Neither the proscribed clemency nor the recommended cruelty had occasion to be exercised. Kwo-lang observed a rite that our present-day military, in defeat, choose to ignore suicide.
The Terrorized Riverbanks
The proud widow’s six hundred war junks and forty thousand victorious pirates then sailed up the mouths of the Si-kiang, and to port and starboard they multiplied fires and loathsome revels and orphans. Entire villages were burned to the ground. In one of them alone, the number of prisoners passed a thousand. A hundred and twenty women who sought the confused refuge of neighbouring reedfields and paddies were betrayed by a crying baby and later sold into slavery in Macao. Although at some remove, the tears and bereavement wreaked by this depredation came to the attention of Kia-king, the Son of Heaven. Certain historians contend that this outcry pained him less than the disaster that befell his punitive expedition. The truth is that he organized a second expedition, awesome in banners, in sailors, in soldiers, in the engines of war, in provisions, in augurs, and in astrologers. The command this time fell upon one Ting-kwei. The fearful multitude of ships sailed into the delta of the Si-kiang, closing off passage to the pirate squadron. The widow fitted out for battle. She knew it would be difficult, even desperate; night after night and month after month of plundering and idleness had weakened her men. The opening of battle was delayed. Lazily, the sun rose and set upon the rippling reeds. Men and their weapons were waiting. Noons were heavy, afternoons endless.
The Dragon and the Fox
And yet, each evening, high, shiftless flocks of airy dragons rose from the ships of the imperial squadron and came gently to rest on the enemy decks and surrounding waters. They were lightweight constructions of rice paper and strips of reed, akin to comets, and their silvery or reddish sides repeated identical characters. The widow anxiously studied this regular stream of meteors and read in them the long and perplexing fable of a dragon which had always given protection to a fox, despite the fox’s long ingratitude and repeated transgressions. The moon grew slender in the sky, and each evening the paper and reed figures brought the same story, with almost imperceptible variants. The widow was distressed, and she sank deep into thought. When the moon was full in the sky and in the reddish water, the story seemed to reach its end.
Nobody was able to predict whether limitless pardon or limitless punishment would descend upon the fox, but the inexorable end drew near. The widow came to an understanding. She threw her two short swords into the river, kneeled in the bottom of a small boat, and ordered herself rowed to the imperial flagship. It was dark; the sky was filled with dragons this time, yellow ones. On climbing aboard, the widow murmured a brief sentence. ‘The fox seeks the dragon’s wing’, she said.
The Apotheosis
It is a matter of history that the fox received her pardon and devoted her lingering years to the opium trade. She also left off being the widow, assuming a name which in English means ‘Luster of Instruction’.
From this period [wrote one Chinese chronicler lyrically], ships began to pass and repass in tranquility. All became quiet on the rivers and tranquil on the four seas. Men sold their weapons and bought oxen to plough their fields. They buried sacrifices, said prayers on the tops of hills, and rejoiced themselves by singing behind screens during the day-time.