La Muerte y La Brujula
Jorge Luis Borges
Of the many problems which exercised the reckless
discernment of Lönnrot, none was so strange—so rigorously strange, shall we
say—as the periodic series of bloody events which culminated at the villa of
Triste-le-Roy, amid the ceaseless aroma of the eucalypti. It is true that Erik
Lonnrot failed to prevent the last murder, but that he foresaw it is
indisputable. Neither did he guess the identity of Yarmolinsky’s luckless assassin,
but he did succeed in divining the secret morphology behind the fiendish series
as well as the participation of Red Scharlach, whose other nickname is
Scharlach the Dandy. That criminal (as countless others) had sworn on his honor
to kill Lönnrot, but the latter could never be intimidated. Lönnrot believed
himself a pure reasoner, an Auguste Dupin, but there was something of the
adventurer in him, and even a little of the gambler.
The first murder occurred in the Hotel du Nord—that tall
prism which dominates the estuary whose waters are the color of the desert. To
that tower (which quite glaringly unites the hateful whiteness of a hospital,
the numbered divisibility of a jail, and the general appearance of a bordello)
there came on the third day of December the delegate from Podolsk to the Third
Talmudic Congress, Doctor Marcel Yarmolinsky, a gray-bearded man with gray
eyes. We shall never know whether the Hotel du Nord pleased him; he accepted it
with the ancient resignation which had allowed him to endure three years of war
in the Carpathians and three thousand years of oppression and pogroms.
He was given a room on Floor R, across from the suite which
was occupied—not without splendor—by the Tetrarch of Galilee. Yarmolinsky
supped, postponed until the following day an inspection of the unknown city,
arranged in a placard his many books and few personal possessions, and before
midnight extinguished his light. (Thus declared the Tetrarch’s chauffeur who
slept in the adjoining room.) On the fourth, at 11:03 A.M., the editor of the
Yidische Zaitung put in a call to him; Doctor Yarmolinsky did not answer. He
was found in his room, his face already a little dark, nearly nude beneath a
large, anachronistic cape. He was lying not far from the door which opened on
the hail; a deep knife wound had split his breast. A few hours later, in the
same room amid journalists, photographers and policemen, Inspector Treviranus
and Lönnrot were calmly discussing the problem.
“No need to look for a three-legged cat here,” Treviranus
was saying as he brandished an imperious cigar. “We all know that the Tetrarch
of Galilee owns the finest sapphires in the world. Someone, intending to steal
them, must have broken in here by mistake. Yarmolinsky got up; the robber had
to kill him. How does it sound to you?”
“Possible, but not interesting,” Lönnrot answered. “You’ll
reply that reality hasn’t the least obligation to be interesting. And I’ll
answer you that reality may avoid that obligation but that hypotheses may not.
In the hypothesis that you propose, chance intervenes copiously. Here we have a
dead rabbi; I would prefer a purely rabbinical explanation, not the imaginary
mischances of an imaginary robber.”
Treviranus replied ill-humoredly:
“I’m not interested in rabbinical explanations. I am
interested in capturing the man who stabbed this unknown person.”
“Not so unknown,” corrected Lonnrot. “Here are his complete
works.” He indicated in the wall-cupboard a row of tall books:
a Vindication of the Cabala; An Examination of the Philosophy
of Robert Fludd; a literal translation of the Sepher Yezirah;a Biography of the
Baal Shem; a History of the Hasidic Sect; a monograph (in German) on the
Tetragrammaton; another, on the divine nomenclature of the Pentateuch. The
inspector regarded them with dread, almost with repulsion. Then he began to
laugh.
“I’m a poor Christian,” he said. “Carry off those musty
volumes if you want; I don’t have any time to waste on Jewish superstitions.”
“Maybe the crime belongs to the history of Jewish
superstitions,” murmured Lönnrot.
“Like Christianity,” the editor of the Yidische Zaitung
ventured to add. He was myopic, an atheist and very shy.
No one answered him. One of the agents had found in the small
typewriter a piece of paper on which was written the following unfinished
sentence:
The first letter of the Name has been uttered
Lonnrot abstained from smiling. Suddenly become a
bibliophile or Hebraist, he ordered a package made of the dead man’s books and
carried them off to his apartment. Indifferent to the police investigation, he
dedicated himself to studying them. One large octavo volume revealed to him the
teachings of Israel Baal Shem Tobh, founder of the sect of the Pious; another,
the virtues and terrors of the Tetragrammaton, which is the unutterable name of
God; another, the thesis that God has a secret name, in which is epitomized (as
in the crystal sphere which the Persians ascribe to Alexander of Macedonia) his
ninth attribute, eternity—that is to say, the immediate knowledge of all things
that will be, which are and which have been in the universe. Tradition numbers
ninety-nine names of God; the Hebraists attribute that imperfect number to
magical fear of even numbers; the Hasidim reason that that hiatus indicates a
hundredth name—the Absolute Name.
From this erudition Lönnrot was distracted, a few days
later, by the appearance of the editor of the Yidische Zaitung. The latter
wanted to talk about the murder; Lonnrot preferred to discuss the diverse names
of God; the journalist declared, in three columns, that the investigator, Erik
Lonnrot, had dedicated himself to studying the names of God in order to come
across the name of the murderer. Lonnrot, accustomed to the simplifications of
journalism, did not become indignant. One of those enterprising shopkeepers who
have discovered that any given man is resigned to buying any given book
published a popular edition of the History of the Hasidic Sect.
The second murder occurred on the evening of the third of
January, in the most deserted and empty corner of the capital’s western
suburbs. Towards dawn, one of the gendarmes who patrol those solitudes on
horseback saw a man in a poncho, lying prone in the shadow of an old paint
shop. The harsh features seemed to be masked in blood; a deep knife wound had
split his breast. On the wall, across the yellow and red diamonds, were some
words written in chalk. The gendarme spelled them out… That afternoon,
Treviranus and Lonnrot headed for the remote scene of the crime. To the left
and right of the automobile the city disintegrated; the firmament grew and
houses were of less importance than a brick kiln or a poplar tree. They arrived
at their miserable destination: an alley’s end, with rose-colored walls which
somehow seemed to reflect the extravagant sunset. The dead man had already been
identified. He was Daniel Simon Azevedo, an individual of some fame in the old
northern suburbs, who had risen from wagon driver to political tough, then
degenerated to a thief and even an informer. (The singular style of his death
seemed appropriate to them: Azevedo was the last representative of a generation
of bandits who knew how to manipulate a dagger, but not a revolver.) The words
in chalk were the following:
The second letter of the Name has been uttered
The third murder occurred on the night of the third of
February. A little before one o’clock, the telephone in Inspector Treviranus’
office rang. In avid secretiveness, a man with a guttural voice spoke; he said
his name was Ginzberg (or Ginsburg) and that he was prepared to communicate,
for reasonable remuneration, the events surrounding the two sacrifices of
Azevedo and Yarmolinsky. A discordant sound of whistles and horns drowned out
the informer’s voice. Then, the connection was broken off.Without yet rejecting
the possibility of a hoax (after all, it was carnival time), Treviranus found
out that he had been called from the Liverpool House, a tavern on the rue de
Toulon, that dingy street where side by side exist the cosmorama and the coffee
shop, the bawdy house and the bible sellers. Treviranus spoke with the owner.
The latter (Black Finnegan, an old Irish criminal who was immersed in, almost
overcome by, respectability) told him that the last person to use the phone was
a lodger, a certain Gryphius, who had just left with some friends. Treviranus
went immediately to Liverpool House. The owner related the following. Eight
days ago Gryphius had rented a room above the tavern. He was a sharp-featured
man with a nebulous gray beard, and was shabbily dressed in black; Finnegan
(who used the room for a purpose which Treviranus guessed) demanded a rent
which was undoubtedly excessive; Gryphius paid the stipulated sum without
hesitation. He almost never went out; he dined and lunched in his room; his
face was scarcely known in the bar. On the night in question, he came
downstairs to make a phone call from Finnegan’s office. A closed cab stopped in
front of the tavern. The driver didn’t move from his seat; several patrons recalled
that he was wearing a bear’s mask. Two harlequins got out of the cab; they were
of short stature and no one failed to observe that they were very drunk. With a
tooting of horns, they burst into Finnegan’s office; they embraced Gryphius,
who appeared to recognize them but responded coldly; they exchanged a few words
in Yiddish—he in a low, guttural voice, they in high-pitched, false voices—and
then went up to the room. Within a quarter hour the three descended, very
happy. Gryphius, staggering, seemed as drunk as the others. He walked—tall and
dizzy—in the middle, between the masked harlequins. (One of the women at the
bar remembered the yellow, red and green diamonds.) Twice he stumbled; twice he
was caught and held by the harlequins. Moving off toward the inner harbor which
enclosed a rectangular body of water, the three got into the cab and
disappeared. From the footboard of the cab, the last of the harlequins scrawled
an obscene figure and a sentence on one of the slates of the pier shed.
Treviranus saw the sentence. It was virtually predictable.
It said:
The last of the letters of the Name has been uttered
Afterwards, he examined the small room of Gryphius-Ginzberg.
On the floor there was a brusque star of blood, in the corners, traces of
cigarettes of a Hungarian brand; in a cabinet, a book in Latin—the Philologus
Hebraeo-Graecus (1739) of Leusden—with several manuscript notes. Treviranus
looked it over with indignation and had Lönnrot located. The latter, without
removing his hat, began to read while the inspector was interrogating the
contradictory witnesses to the possible kidnapping. At four o’clock they left.
Out on the twisted rue de Toulon, as they were treading on the dead serpentines
of the dawn, Treviranus said:
“And what if all this business tonight were just a mock
rehearsal?”
Erik Lönnrot smiled and, with all gravity, read a passage
(which was underlined) from the thirty-third dissertation of the
Philologus: Dies Judacorum incipit ad
soils occasit usque ad solis occasurn diei sequentis.
“This means,” he added, “‘The Hebrew day begins at sundown
and lasts until the following sundown.’”
The inspector attempted an irony.
“Is that fact the most valuable one you’ve come across
tonight?”
“No. Even more valuable was a word that Ginzberg used.”
The afternoon papers did not overlook the periodic
disappearances. La Cruz de la Espada contrasted them with the admirable
discipline and order of the last Hermetical Congress; Ernst Palast, in El
Mártir, criticized “the intolerable delays in this clandestine and frugal
pogrom, which has taken three months to murder three Jews”; the Yidische
Zaitung rejected the horrible hypothesis of an anti-Semitic plot, “even though
many penetrating intellects admit no other solution to the triple mystery”; the
most illustrious gunman of the south, Dandy Red Scharlach, swore that in his
district similar crimes could never occur, and he accused Inspector Franz
Treviranus of culpable negligence.
On the night of March first, the inspector received an
impressive-looking sealed envelope. He opened it; the envelope contained a
letter signed “Baruch Spinoza” and a detailed plan of the city, obviously torn
from a Baedeker. The letter prophesied that on the third of March there would
not be a fourth murder, since the paint shop in the west, the tavern on the rue
de Toulon and the Hotel du Nord were “the perfect vertices of a mystic
equilateral triangle”; the map demonstrated in red ink the regularity of the
triangle. Treviranus read the more geometrico argument with resignation, and sent
the letter and the map to Lönnrot —who, unquestionably, was deserving of such
madnesses.
Erik Lönnrot studied them. The three locations were in fact
equidistant. Symmetry in time (the third of December, the third of January, the
third of February); symmetry in space as well…
Suddenly, he felt as if he were on the point of solving the mystery. A
set of calipers and a compass completed his quick intuition. He smiled,
pronounced the word Tetragrammaton (of recent acquisition) and phoned the
inspector. He said:
“Thank you for the equilateral triangle you sent me last
night. It has enabled me to solve the problem. This Friday the criminals will
be in jail, we may rest assured.”
“Then they’re not planning a fourth murder?”
“Precisely because they are planning a fourth murder we can
rest assured.”
Lönnrot hung up. One hour later he was traveling on one of
the Southern Railway’s trains, in the direction of the abandoned villa of
Triste-le-Roy. To the south of the city of our story, flows a blind little
river of muddy water, defamed by refuse and garbage. On the far side is an
industrial suburb where, under the protection of a political boss from
Barcelona, gunmen thrive. Lönnrot smiled at the thought that the most
celebrated gunman of all—Red Scharlach—would have given a great deal to know of
his clandestine visit. Azevedo had been an associate of Scharlach; Lönnrot
considered the remote possibility that the fourth victim might be Scharlach
himself. Then he rejected the idea… He
had very nearly deciphered the problem; mere circumstances, reality (names,
prison records, faces, judicial and penal proceedings) hardly interested him
now. He wanted to travel a bit, he wanted to rest from three months of
sedentary investigation. He reflected that the explanation of the murders was
in an anonymous triangle and a dusty Greek word. The mystery appeared almost
crystalline to him flow; he was mortified to have dedicated a hundred days to
it.
The train stopped at a silent loading station. Lönnrot got
off. It was one of those deserted afternoons that seem like dawns. The air of
the turbid, puddled plain was damp and cold. Lönnrot began walking along the
countryside. He saw dogs, he saw a car on a siding, he saw the horizon, he saw
a silver-colored horse drinking the crapulous water of a puddle. It was growing
dark when he saw the rectangular belvedere of the villa of Triste-le-Roy,
almost as tall as the black eucalypti which surrounded it. He thought that
scarcely one dawning and one nightfall (an ancient splendor in the east and another
in the west) separated him from the moment long desired by the seekers of the
Name.
A rusty wrought-iron fence defined the irregular perimeter
of the villa. The main gate was closed. Lönnrot, without much hope of getting
in, circled the area. Once again before the insurmountable gate, he placed his
hand between the bars almost mechanically and encountered the bolt. The
creaking of the iron surprised him. With a laborious passivity the whole gate
swung back.
Lönnrot advanced among the eucalypti treading on con- fused
generations of rigid, broken leaves. Viewed from anear, the house of the villa
of Triste-le-Roy abounded in pointless symmetries and in maniacal repetitions:
to one Diana in a murky niche corresponded a second Diana in another niche; one
balcony was reflected in another balcony; double stairways led to double
balustrades. A two-faced Hermes projected a monstrous shadow. Lönnrot circled
the house as he had the villa. He examined everything; beneath the level of the
terrace he saw a narrow Venetian blind.
He pushed it; a few marble steps descended to a vault.
Lönnrot, who had now perceived the architect’s preferences, guessed that at the
opposite wall there would be another stairway. He found it, ascended, raised
his hands and opened the trap door.
A brilliant light led him to a window. He opened it: a
yellow, rounded moon defined two silent fountains in the melancholy garden.
Lönnrot explored the house. Through anterooms and galleries he passed to
duplicate patios, and time after time to the same patio; He ascended the dusty
stairs to circular antechambers; he was multiplied infinitely in opposing
mirrors; he grew tired of opening or half-opening windows which revealed
outside the same desolate garden from various heights and various angles;
inside, only pieces of furniture wrapped in yellow dust sheets and chandeliers
bound up in tarlatan. A bedroom detained him; in that bedroom, one single
flower in a porcelain vase; at the first touch the ancient petals fell apart.
On the second floor, on the top floor, the house seemed infinite and
expanding.The house is not this large, he thought. Other things are making it
seem larger: the dim light, the symmetry, the mirrors, so many years, my
unfamiliarity, the loneliness.
By way of a spiral staircase he arrived at the oriel. The
early evening moon shone through the diamonds of the window; they were yellow,
red and green. An astonishing, dizzying recollection struck him.
Two men of short stature, robust and ferocious, threw
themselves on him and disarmed him; another, very tall, saluted him gravely and
said:
“You are very kind. You have saved us a night and a day.” It
was Red Scharlach. The men handcuffed Lonnrot. The latter at length recovered
his voice.
“Scharlach, are you looking for the Secret Name?”
Scharlach remained standing, indifferent. He had not
participated in the brief struggle, and he scarcely extended his hand to
receive Lönnrot’s revolver. He spoke; Lönnrot noted in his voice a fatigued
triumph, a hatred the size of the universe, a sadness not less than that
hatred.
“No,” said Scharlach. “I am seeking something more ephemeral
and perishable, I am seeking Erik Lönnrot. Three years ago, in a gambling house
on the rue de Toulon, you arrested my brother and had him sent to jail. My men
slipped me away in a coupé from the gun battle with a policeman’s bullet in my
stomach. Nine days and nine nights I lay in agony in this desolate, symmetrical
villa; fever was demolishing me, and the odious two-faced Janus who watches the
twilights and the dawns lent horror to my dreams and to my waking. I came to
abominate my body, I came to sense that two eyes, two hands, two lungs are as
monstrous as two faces. An Irishman tried to convert me to the faith of Jesus;
he repeated to me the phrase of the goyim: All roads lead to Rome. At night my
delirium nurtured itself on that metaphor; I felt that the world was a
labyrinth, from which it was impossible to flee, for all roads, though they
pretend to lead to the north or south, actually lead to Rome, which was also
the quadrilateral jail where my brother was dying and the villa of
Triste-le-Roy. On those nights I swore by the God who sees with two faces and
by all the gods of fever and of the mirrors to weave a labyrinth around the man
who had imprisoned my brother. I have woven it and it is firm: the ingredients
are a dead heresiologist, a compass, an eighteenth-century sect, a Greek word,
a dagger, the diamonds of a paint shop.
“The first term of the sequence was given to me by chance. I
had planned with a few colleagues—among them Daniel Azevedo—the robbery of the
Tetrarch’s sapphires. Azevedo betrayed us: he got drunk with the money that we
had advanced him and he undertook the job a day early. He got lost in the
vastness of the hotel; around two in the morning he stumbled into Yarmolinsky’s
room. The latter, harassed by insomnia, had started to write. He was working on
some notes, apparently, for an article on the Name of God; he had already
written the words: The first letter of the Name has been uttered. Azevedo
warned him to be silent; Yarmolinsky reached out his hand for the bell which
would awaken the hotel’s forces; Azevedo countered with a single stab in the
chest. It was almost a reflex action; half a century of violence had taught him
that the easiest and surest thing is to kill … Ten days later I learned through
the Yidische Zaitungthat you were seeking in Yarmolinsky’s writings the key to
his death. I read the History of the Hasidic Sect; I learned that the reverent
fear of uttering the Name of God had given rise to the doctrine that that Name
is all powerful and recondite. I discovered that some Hasidim, in search of
that secret Name, had gone so far as to perform human sacrifices … I knew that you would make the conjecture that
the Hasidim had sacrificed the rabbi; I set myself the task of justifying that
conjecture.
“Marcel Yarmolinsky died on the night of December third; for
the second ‘sacrifice’ I selected the night of January third. He died in the
north; for the second ‘sacrifice’ a place in the west was suitable. Daniel
Azevedo was the necessary victim. He deserved death; he was impulsive, a
traitor; his apprehension could destroy the entire plan. One of us stabbed him;
in order to link his corpse to the other one I wrote on the paint shop
diamonds: The second letter of the Name has been uttered.
“The third murder was produced on the third of February. It
was, as Treviranus guessed, a mere sham. I am Gryphius-Ginzberg-Ginsburg; I
endured an interminable week (supplemented by a tenuous fake beard) in the
perverse cubicle on the rue de Toulon, until my friends abducted me. From the
footboard of the cab, one of them wrote on a post: The last of the letters of
the Name has been uttered. That sentence revealed that the series of murders
was triple. Thus the public understood it; I, nevertheless, interspersed
repeated signs that would allow you, Erik Lönnrot, the reasoner, to understand
that the series was quadruple. A portent in the north, others in the east and
west, demand a fourth portent in the south; the Tetragrammaton—the name of God,
JHVH—is made up of four letters; the harlequins and the paint shop sign
suggested fourpoints. In the manual of Leusden I underlined a certain passage:
that passage manifests that Hebrews compute the day from sunset to sunset; that
passage makes known that the deaths occurred on the fourth of each month. I
sent the equilateral triangle to Treviranus. I foresaw that you would add the
missing point. The point which would form a perfect rhomb, the point which
fixes in advance where a punctual death awaits you. I have premeditated
everything, Erik Lonnrot, in order to attract you to the solitudes of
Triste-le-Roy.”
Lönnrot avoided Scharlach’s eyes. He looked at the trees and
the sky subdivided into diamonds of turbid yellow, green and red. He felt
faintly cold, and he felt, too, an impersonal—almost anonymous—sadness. It was
already night; from the dusty garden came the futile cry of a bird. For the
last time, Lonnrot considered the problem of the symmetrical and periodic
deaths.
“In your labyrinth there are three lines too many,” he said
at last. “I know of one Greek labyrinth which is a single straight line. Along
that line so many philosophers have lost themselves that a mere detective might
well do so, too. Scharlach, when in some other incarnation you hunt me, pretend
to commit (or do commit) a crime at A, then a second crime at B, eight
kilometers from A, then a third crime at C, four kilometers from A and B,
half-way between the two. Wait for me afterwards at D, two kilometers from A and
C, again halfway between both. Kill me at D, as you are now going to kill me at
Triste-le-Roy.”
“The next time I kill you,” replied Scharlach, “I promise
you that labyrinth, consisting of a single line which is invisible and
unceasing.”
He
moved back a few steps. Then, very carefully, he fired.