Death and The Compass by Jorge Luis Borges

DEATH AND THE COMPASS by Jorge Luis Borges To Mandy Melina Vedilla Of the many problems which exercised the daring perspicacity of Lonrit, none was so strange, so harshly strange, we may say, as the staggered series of bloody acts which culminated at the villa of Triss Leroy, amid the boundless odour of the eucalypti. It is true that Eric Lonrit did not succeed in preventing the last crime, but it is indisputable that he foresaw it. Nor did he, of course, guess the identity of Yarmolinsky's unfortunate assassin, but he did divine the secret morphology of the vicious series, as well as the participation of Red Sharlach, whose alias is Sharlach the Dandy. This criminal, as so many others, had sworn on his honour to kill Lonrit, but the latter had never allowed himself to be intimidated. Lonrit thought of himself as a pure thinker, an Auguste Dupin, but there was something of the adventurer in him, and even of the gamester. The first crime occurred at the Hotel du Nord, that high prism that dominates the estuary whose waters are the colours of the desert, to this tower, which most manifestly unites the hateful whiteness of a sanatorium, the numbered divisibility of a prison, and the general appearance of a body-house. On the third day of December came the delegate from Podolsk to the Third Talmudic Congress, Dr. Marcel Yarmolinsky, a man of grey beard and grey 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 sleeping-room on Floor R, in front of the suite, which the Tetrarch of Galilee occupied not without some splendour. Yarmolinsky supped, postponed until the following day an investigation of the unknown city, arranged a cupboard of his many books and his few possessions, and before midnight turned off the light. Thus declared the Tetrarch's chauffeur, who slept in an adjoining room. On the fourth, at 11.03 a.m., there was a telephone call for him from the editor of the Yiddish Zitgum. Dr. Yarmolinsky did not reply. He was found in his room, his face already a little dark, and his body almost nude beneath a large anachronistic cape. He was lying not far from the door which gave on to the corridor. A deep-stab wound had split open his breast. In the same room a couple of hours later, in the midst of journalists, photographers and police, Commissioner Trevenaris and Lonrot were discussing the problem with equanimity. There's no need to look for a chimera or a cat with three legs, Treveranis was saying as he brandished an imperious cigar. We all know that the Tetrarch of Galilee is the possessor of the finest sapphires in the world. Someone, intending to steal them, came in here by mistake. Yarmolinsky got up, the robber had to kill him. What do you think? It's possible, but not interesting, Lonrot answered. You will reply that reality hasn't the slightest need to be of interest. And I'll answer you that reality may avoid the obligation to be interesting, but that hypotheses may not. In the hypothesis you have postulated, chance intervenes largely. Here lies a dead rabbi. I should prefer a purely rabbinical explanation, not the imaginary mischances of an imaginary robber. Trevenaris answered ill-humoredly, I'm not interested in rabbinical explanations. I'm interested in the capture of the man who stabbed this unknown person. Not so unknown, corrected Lonrot. Here are his complete works. He indicated a line of tall volumes, a vindication of the Kabbalah, an examination of the philosophy of Robert Flood, a literal translation of the Sefer Yezora, a biography of the Baal Shem, a history of the sect of the Hasidism, a monograph in German on the Tetragrammaton, another on the divine nomenclature of the Pentateuch. The commissioner gazed at them with suspicion, almost with revulsion. Then he fell to laughing. I'm only a poor Christian, he replied. Carry off all these Moffeaton classics if you like. I haven't got time to lose in Jewish superstitions. Maybe this crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions, murmured Lonrot. Like Christianity, the editor of the Yiddish Zittung dared to put in, he was a myope, an atheist, and very timid. No one answered him. One of the agents had found, inserted in the small typewriter, a piece of paper on which was written the following inconclusive sentence. The first letter of the name has been spoken. Lonrot abstained from smiling, suddenly become a bibliophile or Hebraist. He directed that the dead man's books be made into a parcel, and he carried them to his office. Indifferent to the police investigation, he dedicated himself to studying them. A large octavo volume revealed to him the teachings of Israel, Baal Shem Tov, founder of the sect of the pious. Another volume, the virtues and terrors of the Tetragrammaton, which is the ineffable name of God. Another, the thesis that God has a secret name, in which is epitomized, as in the crystal sphere, which the Persians attribute to Alexander of Macedon. His ninth attribute, eternity. That is to say, the immediate knowledge of everything that will exist, exists, and has existed in the universe. Tradition numbers 99 names of God. The Hebraists attribute this imperfect number to the magical fear of even numbers. The Hassidim reason that this hiatus indicates a hundredth name, the absolute name. From this erudition he was distracted, within a few days, by the appearance of the editor of the Yiddish Ziton. This man wished to talk of the assassination. Lonnert preferred to speak of the diverse names of God. The journalist declared in three columns that the investigator Eric Lonnert had dedicated himself to studying the names of God in order to come up with the name of the assassin. Lonnert, habituated to the simplifications of journalism, did not become indignant. One of those shopkeepers, who have found that there are buyers for every book, came out with a popular edition of the history of the sect of Hassidim. The second crime occurred on the night of the 3rd of January, in the most deserted and empty corner of the capital's western suburbs. Toward dawn, one of the jindarmes, who patrol these lonely places on horseback, detected a man in a cape lying prone in the shadow of an ancient paint shop. The hard visage seemed bathed in blood. A deep stab wound had split open his breast. On the wall, upon the yellow and red roms, there were some words written in chalk. The jindarme spelled them out. That afternoon, Trevenaris and Lonnert made their way toward the remote scene of the crime. To the left and right of the automobile, the city disintegrated. The firmament grew larger and the houses meant less and less, and a brick kiln or a popular grove more and more. They reached their miserable destination, a final alley of rose-colored mud walls, which in some way seemed to reflect the disordered setting of the sun. The dead man had already been identified. He was Daniel Simon Azevedo, a man of some fame in the ancient northern suburbs, who had risen from wagoner to political tough, only to degenerate later into a thief and even an informer. The singular style of his death struck them as appropriate, as Azevedo was the last representative of a generation of bandits who knew how to handle a dagger, but not a revolver. The words in chalk were the following. The second letter of the name has been spoken. The third crime occurred on the night of the 3rd of February, a little before one o'clock. The telephone rang in the office of Commissioner Trevenaris. In avid secretiveness, a man with a guttural voice spoke. He said his name was Ginzburg, or Ginzburg, and that he was disposed to communicate for a reasonable remuneration an explanation of the two sacrifices of Azevedo and Yarmolinsky. The discordant sound of whistles and horns drowned out the voice of the informer. Then the connection was cut off. Without rejecting the possibility of a hoax, it was carnival time. Trevenaris checked and found he had been called from Liverpool House, a tavern on the rue de Toulon. That dirty street where cheek by jowl are the peep show and the milk store, the bordello and the women selling Bibles. Trevenaris called back and spoke to the owner. This personage, Black Finnegan by name, an old Irish criminal who was crushed, annihilated almost, by respectability, told him that the last person to use the establishment's phone had been a lodger, a certain Griffius, who had just gone out with some friends. Trevenaris immediately went to Liverpool House, where Finnegan related the following facts. Eight days previously, Griffius had taken a room above the saloon. He was a man of sharp features, a nebulous gray beard, shabbily clothed in black. Finnegan, who put the room to a use which Trevenaris guessed, demanded a rent which was undoubtedly excessive. Griffius immediately paid the stipulated sum. He scarcely ever went out. He dined and lunched in his room. His face was hardly known in the bar. On this particular night, he came down to telephone from Finnegan's office. A closed coop stopped in the front of the tavern. The driver did not move from his seat. Several of the patrons recalled that he was wearing a bear mask. Two harlequins descended from the coop. They were short in stature, and no one could fail to observe that they were very drunk. With a tooting of horns, they burst into Finnegan's office. They embraced Griffius, who seemed to recognize them but who replied to them coldly. They exchanged a few words in Yiddish, he in a low guttural voice, they in shrill falsetto tones, and then the party climbed to the upstairs room. Within a quarter hour, the three descended, very joyous. Griffius, staggering, seemed as drunk as the others. He walked, tall, dazed, in the middle, between the masked harlequins. One of the women in the bar remembered the yellow, red, and green roms, the diamond designs. Twice he stumbled, twice he was held up by the harlequins. Alongside the adjoining dock basin, whose water was rectangular, the trio got into the coop and disappeared. From the running board, the last of the harlequins had scrawled an obscene figure and a sentence on one of the slates of the outdoor shed. Trevenaris gazed upon the sentence. It was nearly foreknowable. It read, The last of the letters of the name has been spoken. He examined, then, the small room of Griffius Ginsberg. On the floor was a violent star of blood. In the corners, the remains of some Hungarian brand cigarettes. In a cabinet, a book in Latin, the Philologus Hebraeo-Gracius, 1739, of Lusden, along with various manuscript notes. Trevenaris studied the book with indignation and had Landrut summoned. The latter, without taking off his hat, began to read, while the commissioner questioned the contradictory witnesses to the possible kidnapping. At four in the morning they came out, in the tortuous Rue de Toulon, as they stepped on the dead serpentines of the dawn, Trevenaris said. And suppose the story of this night were a sham? Eric Landrut smiled and read him, with due gravity, a passage, underlined, of the thirty-third dissertation of the Philologus. Philologus This deuteron incipit a solis acasu usc ad solis ocasum die sequentes. This means, he added, that the Hebrew day begins at sundown and lasts until the following sundown. Trevenaris attempted in irony, Is this fact the most worthwhile you've picked up tonight? No, of even greater value is a word Ginsberg used. The afternoon dallies did not neglect this series of disappearances. The cross and the sword contrasted them with admirable discipline and order of the last arametical congress. Ernest Pallast, writing in The Martyr, spoke out against the intolerable delays in this clandestine and frugal pogrom, which has taken three months to liquidate three Jews. The Yiddish Zitung rejected the terrible hypothesis of an anti-Semitic plot. Even though many discerning intellects do not admit of any other solution to the triple mystery, the most illustrious gunman in the South, Dandy Red Charlock, swore that in his district such crimes as these would never occur, and he accused Commissioner Franz Trevenaris of criminal negligence. On the night of March 1st, the Commissioner received an imposing-looking sealed envelope. He opened it. The envelope contained a letter signed by Ruge Spinoza, and a detailed plan of the city, obviously torn from a bettaker. The letter prophesied that on the 3rd of March, there would not be a fourth crime, and as much as the paint shop in the West, the tavern on the Rue de Toulon, and the Hotel du Nord were the, quote, perfect vertices of an equilateral and mystic triangle, end quote. The regularity of this triangle was made clear on the map of red ink, this argument more geometrico. Trevenaris read with resignation, and sent the letter and map on to Lonnrot, who deserved such a piece of insanity. Eric Lonnrot studied the documents. The three sites were in fact equidistant. Symmetry and time, the 3rd of December, the 3rd of January, the 3rd of February. Symmetry in space as well. Of a sudden, he sensed he was about to decipher the mystery. A set of calipers and a compass completed his sudden intuition. He smiled, pronounced the word tetragrammaton, of a recent acquisition, and called the commissioner on the telephone. He told him, Thank you for the equilateral triangle you sent me last night. It has enabled me to solve the problem. Tomorrow, Friday, the criminals will be in jail. We can rest assured. In that case, they're not planning a fourth crime? Precisely, because they are planning a fourth crime, can we rest assured? Lonnrot hung up. An hour later, he was traveling in one of the trains of the southern railways, en route to the abandoned villa of Trisleroy. South of the city, of our story, there flows a blind little river filled with muddy water made disgraceful by floating scraps and garbage. On the further side is a manufacturing suburb where, under the protection of a chief from Barcelona, gunmen flourish. Lonnrot smiled to himself to think that the most famous of them, Red Scarlet, would have given anything to know of this clandestine visit. As a veto had been a comrade of Charlotte's, Lonnrot considered the remote possibility that the fourth victim might be Charlotte himself. Then he put aside the thought. He had virtually deciphered the problem, the mere circumstances, or the reality. Names, prison records, faces, judicial and penal proceedings scarcely interested him now. Most of all, he wanted to take a stroll, to relax from three months of sedentary investigation. He reflected on how the explanation of the crimes lay in an anonymous triangle and a dust-laden Greek word. The mystery seemed to him almost crystalline now. He was mortified to have dedicated a hundred days to it. The train stopped at a silent loading platform. Lonnrot descended. It was one of those deserted afternoons which seemed like dawn. The air over the muddy plain was damp and cold. Lonnrot set off across the fields. He saw dogs. He saw a wagon on a dead road. He saw the horizon. He saw a silvery horse drinking the crappulous water of a puddle. Dusk was falling when he saw the rectangular belvedere of the villa of Tristler Roy, almost as tall as the black eucalypti which surrounded it. He thought of the fact that only one more dawn and one more nightfall, an ancient splendor in the east and another in the west, separated him from the hour so much desired by the seekers of the name. A rust-colored wrought iron fence defined the irregular perimeter of the villa. The main gate was closed. Without much expectation of entering, Lonnrot made a complete circuit. In front of the insurmountable gate once again, he put his hand between the bars almost mechanically and chanced upon the bolt. The creaking of the iron surprised him. With laborious passivity, the entire gate gave way. Lonnrot advanced among the eucalypti, stepping amidst confused generations of rigid, broken leaves. Close up, the house on the estate of Tristler Roy was seen to abound in superfluous symmetries and in maniacal repetitions. A glacial Diana in one lugubrious niche was complemented by another Diana in another niche, one balcony was repeated by another balcony, double steps of stairs opened into a double balustrade. A two-faced Hermes cast a monstrous shadow. Lonnrot circled the house as he had the estate. He examined everything. Beneath the level of the terrace, he noticed a narrow shuttered door. He pushed against it. Some marble steps descended to a vault. Versed now in the architect's preferences, Lonnrot divined that there would be a set of stairs on the opposite wall. He found them, ascended, raised his hands, and pushed up a trap door. The diffusion of light guided him to a window. He opened it. Around a yellow moon outlined two stopped-up fountains in the melancholy garden. Lonnrot explored the house. He traveled through antechambers and galleries to emerge upon delicate patios. Several times he emerged upon the same patio. He ascended dust-covered stairways and came out into circular antechambers. He was infinitely reflected in opposing mirrors. He grew wary of opening or half-opening windows which revealed the same desolate garden outside from various heights and various angles. Inside, the furniture was wrapped in yellow covers and the chandeliers bound up with creton. A bedroom detained him. In the bedroom, a single rose in a porcelain vase. At the first touch, the ancient petals fell apart. On the second floor, on the top story, the house seemed to be infinite and growing. The house is not this large, he thought. It is only made larger by the penumbra, the symmetry, the mirrors, the years, my ignorance, the solitude. Going up a spiral staircase, he arrived at the observatory. The evening moon shone through the rhomboid diamonds of the windows, which were yellow, red, and green. He was brought to a halt by a stunning and dizzying recollection. Two men of short stature, ferocious and stocky, hurled themselves upon him and took his weapon. Another man, very tall, saluted him gravely and said, You are very thoughtful. You've saved us a night and a day. It was Red Charlotte. His men manacled Lonrit's hands. Lonrit, at length, found his voice. Are you looking for the secret name, Charlotte? Charlotte remained standing, indifferent. He had not participated in the short struggle. He scarcely stretched out his hand to receive Lonrit's revolver. He spoke. In his voice, Lonrit detected a fatigued triumph, a hatred the size of the universe, a sadness no smaller than that hatred. No, answered Charlotte. I am looking for something more ephemeral and slippery. I am looking for Eric Lonrit. Three years ago, in a gambling house on the rue de Toulon, you arrested my brother and had him sent to prison. In the exchange of shots that night, my men got me away in a coupe with a police bullet in my chest. Nine days and nine nights I lay dying in this desolate, symmetrical villa. I was racked with fever, and the odious, double-faced Janice, who gazes toward the twilights of dusk and dawn, terrorized my dreams and my waking. I learned to abominate my body. I came to feel that two eyes, two hands, two lungs are as monstrous as two faces. An Irishman attempted to convert me to the faith of Jesus. He repeated to me that famous axiom of the goyim, all roads lead to Rome. At night, my delirium nurtured itself on this metaphor. I sensed that the world was a labyrinth, from which it was impossible to flee. For all paths, whether they seemed to lead north or south, actually led to Rome, which was also the quadrilateral jail where my brother was dying and the villa of Tristler Roy. During those nights, I swore by the God who sees from two faces and by all the gods of fever and of mirrors to weave a labyrinth around the man who had imprisoned my brother. I have woven it, and it holds. The materials are a dead writer on heresies, a compass, an 18th century sect, a Greek ward, a dagger, the roms of a paint shop. The first objective in the sequence was given me by chance. I had made plans with some colleagues, among them Daniel Azevedo, to take the Tetrarch's sapphires. Azevedo betrayed us. With the money we advanced him, he got himself inebriated and started on the job a day early. In the vastness of the hotel, he got lost. At two in the morning, he blundered into Yarmolinsky's room. The latter, harassed by insomnia, had set himself to writing. He was editing some notes, apparently, or writing an article on the name of God. He had just written the words, the first letter of the name has been spoken. Azevedo enjoined him to be quiet. Yarmolinsky reached out his hand for the bell, which would arouse all the hotel's forces. Azevedo at once stabbed him in the chest. It was almost a reflex action. Half a century of violence had taught him that it was easiest and surest to kill. Ten days later, I learned through the Yiddish Zeitung that you were perusing the writings of Yarmolinsky for the key to his death. For my part, I read the history of the sect of the Hassidim. I learned that the reverent fear of pronouncing the name of God had given rise to the doctrine that this name is all-powerful and mystic. I learned that some Hassidim in search of this secret name had gone as far as to offer human sacrifices. I knew you would conjecture that the Hassidim had sacrificed the rabbi. I set myself to justifying this conjecture. Marcel Yarmolinsky died on the night of December 3rd. For the second sacrifice, I selected the night of January 3rd. Yarmolinsky died in the north. For the second sacrifice, a place in the west was preferable. Daniel Azevedo was the inevitable victim. He deserved death. He was an impulsive person, a traitor. His capture could destroy the entire plan. One of our men 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 spoken. The third crime was produced on the 3rd of February. It was, as Trevenaris must have guessed, a mere mockery, a simulcrum. I am Griffius Ginsberg Ginsberg. I endured an interminable week filled out with a tenuous false beard in that perverse cubicle on the rue de Toulon until my friends spirited me away. From the running board, one of them wrote on a pillar, the last of the letters of the name has been spoken. This sentence revealed that the series of crimes was triple, and the public thus understood it. Nevertheless, I interspersed repeated signs that would allow you, Eric Lonrath, the reasoner, to understand that it was a 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, Yahweh, is made up of four letters. The harlequins and the paint shop sign suggested four points. In the manual of Lusden, I underlined a certain passage. It manifested that the Hebrews calculate a day counting from dusk to dusk, and that therefore the deaths occurred on the fourth day of each month. To Trevenaris, I sent the equilateral triangle. I sensed that you would supply the missing point, the point which would form a perfect rhomb, the point which fixes where death exactly awaits you. In order to attract you, I have premeditated everything, Eric Lonrath, so as to draw you to the solitude of Triste Lebroy. Lonrath avoided Charlotte's eyes. He was looking at the trees, and the sky divided into realms of turbid yellow, green, and red. He felt a little cold, and felt, too, an impersonal, almost anonymous sadness. It was already night. From the dusty garden arose the useless cry of a bird. For the last time, Lonrath considered the problem of symmetrical and periodic death. In your labyrinth there are three lines too many, he said at last. I know of a Greek labyrinth which is a single straight line. Along this line, so many philosophers have lost themselves that a mere detective might well do so, too. Charlotte, when in some other incarnation you hunt me, feign 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, halfway en route between the two. Wait for me later at D, two kilometers from A and C, halfway once again between both. Kill me at D as you are going to kill me at Tristleroy. The next time I kill you, said Charlotte, I promise you the labyrinth made of the single straight line which is invisible and everlasting. He stepped back a few paces, then very carefully, he fired. This has been a narration of Death and the Compass by Jorge Luis Borges, translated by Anthony Kerrigan and narrated by Joseph Voelbel.