Part 35 (1/2)

p. 196: Paso delMolino:”Alower-to-middle-cla.s.s district outside Montevideo” (Fishburn and Hughes).

Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden p. 210: The Auracan or Pampas tongue:The Pampas Indians were a nomadic peo- ple who inhabited the plains of the Southern Cone at the time of the Conquest; they were overrun by the Araucans, and the languages and cultures merged; today the two names are essentially synonymous (Fishburn and Hughes). English seems not to have taken the name Pampas for anything but the plains of Argentina.

p. 211:Pulperia:A country store or general store, though not the same sort of cor- ner grocery-store-and-bar, the esquinaoralmacen, thatBorgesuses as a setting in thestories that take place in the city. Thepulperiawould have been precisely the sort of frontier general store that one sees in American westerns.

A Biography of TadeoIsidoro Cruz(1829-1874) p. 212:Montoneros: Montoneroswere the men of guerrilla militias (generallygau- chos)that fought in the civil wars following the wars of independence. They tended to rally under the banner of a leader rather than specifically under the banner of a cause; Fishburn and Hughes put it in the following way: ”[T]heir allegiance to their leader was personal and direct, and they were largely indifferent to his political leanings.”

p. 212:Lavalle:Juan GaloLavalle(1797-1841) was an Argentine hero who fought on the side of the Unitarians, the centralizing Buenos Aires forces, against the Federal- istmontonerosof the outlying provinces and territories, whose most famous leader was Juan ManueldeRosas, the fierce dictator who appears in several of JLB's stories. The mention here ofLavalleandLopez wouidindeed locate this story in 1829, a few months beforeLavalle wasdefeated by the combined Rosas andLopezforces (Fish-burn and Hughes). One would a.s.sume, then, that the man who fathered TadeoIsidoroCruz was fighting with Rosas' forces themselves.

p. 212:Suarez'cavalry:Probably ManuelIsidoro Suarez(1759-1843), JLB's mother's maternal grandfather, who fought on the side of the Unitarians in the period leading up to 1829 (Fishburn and Hughes).Borgesmay have picked up the protago- nist's name, as well, in part from his forebear.

p. 213: ThirtyChristian men... Sgt. Ma}.EusebiaLaprida... two hundred Indians:Eusebio Laprida (1829-1898) led eighty, not thirty, men against a regular army unit of two hundred soldiers, not Indians, in a combat at the Cardoso Marshes on January 25, not 23,1856 (data, Fishburn and Hughes). The defeat of the Indians took place during a raid in 1879. JLB here may be conflating the famous Thirty-three led by Lavalleja against Montevideo (see note to”Avelino Arredondo”inThe Book of Sand), Laprida's equally heroic exploit against a larger ”official” army unit, and Laprida's exploit against the Indians two decades later.

p. 214: Manuel Mesa executed in the Plazade laVictoria:Manuel Mesa (1788-1829) fought on the side of Rosas and the Federalists. In 1829 he organized a force ofmon- tonerosand friendly Indians and battledLavalle,losing that engagement. In his retreat, he was met by ManuelIsidoro Suarezand captured.Suarezsent him to Buenos Aires, where he was executed in the Plaza Victoria.

p. 214:The deserterMartin Fierro:As JLB tells the reader in the Afterword to this volume, this story has been a retelling, from the ”unexpected” point of view of a sec- ondary character, of the famousgauchoepic poemMartin Fierro, byJose Hernandez.Since this work is a cla.s.sic (orthe cla.s.sic) of nineteenth-century Argentine literature, every reader in the Southern Cone would recognize ”what was coming”: MartinFierro,the put-upongauchohero, stands his ground against the authorities, and his friend abandons his uniform to stand and fight with him. This changing sides is a re- current motif inBorges;see ”Story of the Warrior and the Captive Maiden” in this vol- ume, for instance. It seems to have been more interesting to JLB that one might change sides than that one would exhibit the usual traits of heroism.Borgesis also fond of rewriting cla.s.sics: See ”The House ofAsterion,” alsoin this volume, and note that the narrator in ”The Zahir” retells to himself, more or less as the outline of a storyhe is writing, the story of the gold of theNibelungen.One could expand the list to great length.

Emma Zunz p. 215:Bage:A city in southern Rio Grande doSulprovince, in Brazil.

p.215: Gualeguay: ”A rural town and department in the province ofEntre Rios”(Fishburn and Hughes).

p. 215:La.n.u.s:”A town and middle-cla.s.s district in Greater Buenos Aires, south- west of the city” (Fishburn and Hughes).

p. 217:Almagro:A lower-middle-cla.s.s neighborhood near the center of Buenos Aires.

p. 217:CalleLiniers:As the story says, a street in theAlmagroneighborhood.

p. 217:Paseo de]ulio:Now theAvenidaAlem.This street runs parallel with the waterfront; at the time of this story it was lined with tenement houses and houses of ill repute.

p. 218:A westbound Lacroze: The Lacroze Tramway Line served the northwestern area of Buenos Aires at the time; today the city has an extensive subway system.

p. 218:Warnes: A street in central Buenos Aires near the commercial district of VillaCrespo,where the mill is apparently located.

The Other Death p. 223:Gualeguaychu:”A town on the river of the same name in the province ofEntre Rios,opposite the town of FrayBentos,with which there is considerable inter- change” (Fishburn and Hughes).

p. 223:Masoller: Masoller, in northern Uruguay, was the site of a decisive battle on September i, 1904, between therebel forces ofAparicio Saravia(see below) and the National Army; Saravia was defeated and mortally wounded (Fishburn and Hughes).

p. 223:The banners ofAparicioSaravia:AparicioSaravia (1856-1904) was a Uruguayan landowner andcaudillowho led the successful Blanco (White party) re- volt against the dictators.h.i.+p of IdiarteBorda(theColorados,or Red party). Even in victory, however, Saravia had to continue to fight against the central government, since Borda's successor, Batlle, refused to allow Saravia's party to form part of the new government. It is the years of this latter revolt that are the time of ”The Other Death.” See also, for a longer explanation of the political situation of the time, the story”Avelino Arredondo”inThe Book of Sand.

p. 223: Rio Negro orPaysandu:RioNegro is the name of a department in western Uruguay on the river of the same name, just opposite the Argentine province ofEntreRios. Paysanduis a department in Uruguay bordering Rio Negro.

Once again JLB is signaling the relative ”wildness” of Uruguay is comparison with Argentina, which was not touched by these civil wars at the time.

p. 223:Gualeguay: See note to p. 215 above. Note the distinction between ”Gualeguay” and”Gualeguaychu”(see note to p. 223 above).

p. 223:nancay:”A tributary of the Uruguay River that flows through the rich agri- cultural lands of southernEntre Riosprovince” (Fishburn and Hughes).

p. 224: Men whose throats were slashed through to the spine:This is another in- stance in which JLB doc.u.ments the (to us today) barbaric custom by the armies of theSouth American wars of independence (and other, lesser combats as well) of slitting defeated troops' throats. In other places, he notes offhandedly that ”no prisoners were taken,”

which does not mean that all the defeated troops were allowed to return to their bivouacs. In this case, a rare case,Borgesactually ”editorializes” a bit: ”a civil war that struck me as more some outlaw's dream than the collision of two armies.”

p. 224: Ilkscas, Tupambae, Masoller:All these are the sites of battles in northern and central Uruguay fought in 1904 between Saravia's forces and the National Army of Uruguay.

p. 224: White ribbon:Because the troops were often irregulars, or recruited from thegauchosor farmhands of the Argentine, and therefore lacking standardized uni- forms, the only way to tell friend from enemy was by these ribbons, white in the case of theBlancos,red in the case of theColorados.Here the white ribbon worn by the character marks him as a follower of Saravia, the leader of the Whites. (See notespas- sim about the significance of these parties.) p. 224: Zumacos:The name by which regulars in the Uruguayan National Army were known.

p.225: Artiguismo: That is, in accord with the life and views ofJose Gervasio Arti- gas(1764-1850), a Uruguayan hero who fought against both the Spaniards and the nascent Argentines to forge a separate nation out of what had just been theBandaOriental, or east bank of the Plate. The argument was that Uruguay had its own ”spirit,” its own ”sense of place,” which the effete Argentines of Buenos Aires, who only romanticized thegauchobut had none of their own, could never truly understand or live.

p. 225: Red infantry:The Reds, orColorados,were the forces of the official na- tional government of Uruguay, in contradistinction to theBlancos,or Whites, of Saravia's forces; the Reds therefore had generally better weapons and equipment, and better-trained military officers on the whole, than the irregular and largelygauchoWhites.

p. 225:Viva Urquiza!:Justo Jose Urquiza(1801-1870) was president of the Argen- tinian Confederation between 1854 and 1860. Prior to that, he had fought with the Federalists under Rosas (the provincial forces) against the Unitarians (the Buenos Aires-based centralizing forces), but in 1845 he broke with Rosas (whom JLB always excoriates as a vicious dictator) and eventually saw Buenos Aires province and the other provinces of the Argentinian Confederation brought together into the modern nation of Argentina, though under the presidency ofBartolomeMitre.

p. 225: Cagancha or IndiaMuerta:The perplexity here derives from the fact that while the battle at Masoller, in whichDamiantook part, occurred in 1904, the cryViva Urquiza! would have been heard at the Battle of Cagancha (1839) or IndiaMuerta(1845), where Urquiza's rebel Federalist forces fought the Unitarians. At Ca- gancha, Urquiza was defeated by the Unitarians; at IndiaMuertahe defeated them. This story may also, thus, have certain subterranean connections with ”The Theolo- gians,” in its examination of the possibilities of repeating or circular, or at leastnondiscrete,time.

p. 227: He ”marked” no one:He left his mark on no man in a knife fight; in a fight, when the slight might, even by the standards of the day, be deemed too inconsequen- tial to kill a man for, or if the other man refused to fight, the winner would leave his mark, a scar, that would settle the score.

Averroes'Search p.239: ”The seven sleepers of Ephesus”: This is a very peculiar story to put in the minds of these Islamic luminaries, for the story of the seven sleepers of Ephesus is a Christian story, told by Gregory of Tours. Clearly the breadth of culture of these gentlemen is great, but it is difficult (at least for this translator) to see the relations.h.i.+p of this particular tale (unlike the other ”stories,” such as the children playing or ”repre- senting” life and the ”if it had been a snake it would have bitten him” story told by abu-al-Hasan) toAverroes'quest.

TheZahir p.243: CalkAraoz:Fishburn and Hughes tell us that in the 19305,Calle Araozwas ”a street of small houses inhabited by the impoverished middle cla.s.s”; it is near the penitentiary LasHeras.

p. 244:On the corner of Chile and Tacuari: A corner in the BarrioSur, orsouthern part of Buenos Aires, as the story says; it is some ten blocks from the PlazaConst.i.tu- cionand its great station.p.244:Truco:A card game indigenous, apparently, to Argentina and played very often in these establishments.Borgeswas fascinated by this game and devoted an essay and two or three poems to it, along with references, such as this one, scattered through- out hisuvre.The phrase ”to my misfortune” indicates the inexorability of the attrac- tion that the game held for him; the narrator could apparently simply not avoid goinghitothe bar. Truco's nature, for JLB, is that combination of fate and chance that seems to rule over human life as well as over games: an infinitude of possibilities within a lim- ited number of cards, the limitations of the rules. See”Truco”inBorges: AReader.

p. 244:LaConcepcion:A large church in the BarrioSur,near the PlazaConst.i.tucion.

p. 244:The chamfered curb in darkness: Here JLB's reference is to anochava-that is, a ”corner with the corner cut off” to form a three-sided, almost round curb, and a somewhat wider eight-sided rather than four-sided intersection, as the four corners of the intersection would all be chamfered in that way. This reference adds to the ”old-fas.h.i.+oned”

atmosphere of the story, because chamfered corners were common on streets traveled by large horse-drawn wagons, which would need extra s.p.a.ce to turn the corners so that their wheels would not ride up onto the sidewalks.