object:A Secret Miracle
class:Fiction
class:chapter
author class:Jorge Luis Borges
book class:Labyrinths
The Secret Miracle
And God had him die for a hundred
years and then revived him and said:
"How long have you been here?"
"A day or a part of a day," he answered.
Koran, II, 261
T
he night of March 14, 1943, in an apartment in the Zeltnergasse of
Prague, Jaromir Hladik, the author of the unfinished drama entitled The
Enemies, of Vindication of Eternity, and of a study of the indirect Jewish
sources of Jakob Böhme, had a dream of a long game of chess. The players
were not two persons, but two illustrious families; the game had been going
on for centuries. Nobody could remember what the stakes were, but it was
rumored that they were enormous, perhaps infinite; the chessmen and the
board were in a secret tower. Jaromir (in his dream) was the first-born of
one of the contending families. The clock struck the hour for the game,
which could not be postponed. The dreamer raced over the sands of a rainy
desert, and was unable to recall either the pieces or the rules of chess. At that
moment he awoke. The clangor of the rain and of the terrible clocks ceased.
A rhythmic, unanimous noise, punctuated by shouts of command, arose
from the Zeltnergasse. It was dawn, and the armored vanguard of the Third
Reich was entering Prague.
On the nineteenth the authorities received a denunciation; that same
nineteenth, toward evening, Jaromir Hladik was arrested. He was taken to an
aseptic, white barracks on the opposite bank of the Moldau. He was unable
to refute a single one of the Gestapo's charges; his mother's family name was
Jaroslavski, he was of Jewish blood, his study on Böhme had a marked
Jewish emphasis, his signature had been one more on the protest against the
Anschluss. In 1928 he had translated the Sepher Yezirah for the publishing
house of Hermann Barsdorf. The fulsome catalogue of the firm had
exaggerated, for publicity purposes, the translator's reputation, and the
catalogue had been examined by Julius Rothe, one of the officials who held
Hladik's fate in his hands. There is not a person who, except in the field of
his own specialization, is not credulous; two or three adjectives in Gothic
type were enough to persuade Julius Rothe of Hladik's importance, and he
ordered him sentenced to death pour encourager les autres. The execution
95was set for March 29 th , at 9:00 A . M . This delay (whose importance the reader
will grasp later) was owing to the desire on the authorities' part to proceed
impersonally and slowly, after the manner of vegetables and plants.
Hladik's first reaction was mere terror. He felt he would not have
shrunk from the gallows, the block, or the knife, but that death by a firing
squad was unbearable. In vain he tried to convince himself that the plain,
unvarnished fact of dying was the fearsome thing, not the attendant
circumstances. He never wearied of conjuring up these circumstances,
senselessly trying to exhaust all their possible variations. He infinitely
anticipated the process of his dying, from the sleepless dawn to the
mysterious volley. Before the day set by Julius Rothe he died hundreds of
deaths in courtyards whose forms and angles strained geometrical
probabilities, machine-gunned by variable soldiers in changing numbers,
who at times killed him from a distance, at others from close by. He faced
these imaginary executions with real terror (perhaps with real bravery); each
simulacrum lasted a few seconds. When the circle was closed, Jaromir
returned once more and interminably to the tremulous vespers of his death.
Then he reflected that reality does not usually coincide with our anticipation
of it; with a logic of his own he inferred that to foresee a circumstantial
detail is to prevent its happening. Trusting in this weak magic, he invented,
so that they would not happen, the most gruesome details. Finally, as was
natural, he came to fear that they were prophetic. Miserable in the night, he
endeavored to find some way to hold fast to the fleeting substance of time.
He knew that it was rushing headlong toward the dawn of the twenty-ninth.
He reasoned aloud: "I am now in the night of the twenty-second; while this
night lasts (and for six nights more), I am invulnerable, immortal." The
nights of sleep seemed to him deep, dark pools in which he could submerge
himself. There were moments when he longed impatiently for the final burst
of fire that would free him, for better or for worse, from the vain compulsion
of his imaginings. On the twenty-eighth, as the last sunset was reverberating
from the high barred windows, the thought of his drama, The Enemies,
deflected him from these abject considerations.
Hladik had rounded forty. Aside from a few friendships and many
habits, the problematic exercise of literature constituted his life. Like all
writers, he measured the achievements of others by what they had
accomplished, asking of them that they measure him by what he envisaged
or planned. All the books he had published had left him with a complex
96feeling of repentance. His studies of the work of Böhme, of Ibn Ezra, and of
Fludd had been characterized essentially by mere application; his translation
of the Sepher Yezirah, by carelessness, fatigue, and conjecture. Vindication
of Eternity perhaps had fewer shortcomings. The first volume gave a history
of man's various concepts of eternity, from the immutable Being of
Parmenides to the modifiable Past of Hinton. The second denied (with
Francis Bradley) that all the events of the universe make up a temporal
series, arguing that the number of man's possible experiences is not infinite,
and that a single "repetition" suffices to prove that time is a fallacy. . .
Unfortunately, the arguments that demonstrate this fallacy are equally
fallacious. Hladik was in the habit of going over them with a kind of
contemptuous perplexity. He had also composed a series of Expressionist
poems; to the poet's chagrin they had been included in an anthology
published in 1924, and no subsequent anthology but inherited them. From all
this equivocal, uninspired past Hladik had hoped to redeem himself with his
drama in verse, The Enemies. (Hladik felt the verse form to be essential
because it makes it impossible for the spectators to lose sight of irreality,
one of art's requisites.)
The drama observed the unities of time, place, and action. The scene
was laid in Hradcany, in the library of Baron von Roemerstadt, on one of the
last afternoons of the nineteenth century. In the first scene of the first act a
strange man visits Roemerstadt. (A clock was striking seven, the vehemence
of the setting sun's rays glorified the windows, a passionate, familiar
Hungarian music floated in the air.) This visit is followed by others;
Roemerstadt does not know the people who are importuning him, but he has
the uncomfortable feeling that he has seen them somewhere, perhaps in a
dream. They all fawn upon him, but it is apparent—first to the audience and
then to the Baron—that they are secret enemies, in league to ruin him.
Roemerstadt succeeds in checking or evading their involved schemings. In
the dialogue mention is made of his sweetheart, Julia von Weidenau, and a
certain Jaroslav Kubin, who at one time pressed his attentions on her. Kubin
has now lost his mind, and believes himself to be Roemerstadt. The dangers
increase; Roemerstadt, at the end of the second act, is forced to kill one of
the conspirators. The third and final act opens. The incoherencies gradually
increase; actors who had seemed out of the play reappear; the man
Roemerstadt killed returns for a moment. Someone points out that evening
has not fallen; the clock strikes seven, the high windows reverberate in the
97western sun, the air carries an impassioned Hungarian melody. The first
actor comes on and repeats the lines he had spoken in the first scene of the
first act. Roemerstadt speaks to him without surprise; the audience
understands that Roemerstadt is the miserable Jaroslav Kubin. The drama
has never taken place; it is the circular delirium that Kubin lives and relives
endlessly.
Hladik had never asked himself whether this tragicomedy of errors
was preposterous or admirable, well thought out or slipshod. He felt that the
plot I have just sketched was best contrived to cover up his defects and point
up his abilities and held the possibility of allowing him to redeem
(symbolically) the meaning of his life. He had finished the first act and one
or two scenes of the third; the metrical nature of the work made it possible
for him to keep working it over, changing the hexameters, without the
manuscript in front of him. He thought how he still had two acts to do, and
that he was going to die very soon. He spoke with God in the darkness: "If in
some fashion I exist, if I am not one of Your repetitions and mistakes, I exist
as the author of The Enemies. To finish this drama, which can justify me and
justify You, I need another year. Grant me these days, You to whom the
centuries and time belong." This was the last night, the most dreadful of all,
but ten minutes later sleep flooded over him like a dark water.
Toward dawn he dreamed that he had concealed himself in one of the
naves of the Clementine Library. A librarian wearing dark glasses asked
him: "What are you looking for?" Hladik answered: "I am looking for God."
The librarian said to him: "God is in one of the letters on one of the pages of
one of the four hundred thousand volumes of the Clementine. My fathers
and the fathers of my fathers have searched for this letter; I have grown
blind seeking it." He removed his glasses, and Hladik saw his eyes, which
were dead. A reader came in to return an atlas. "This atlas is worthless," he
said, and handed it to Hladik, who opened it at random. He saw a map of
India as in a daze. Suddenly sure of himself, he touched one of the tiniest
letters. A ubiquitous voice said to him: "The time of your labor has been
granted." At this point Hladik awoke.
He remembered that men's dreams belong to God, and that
Maimonides had written that the words heard in a dream are divine when
they are distinct and clear and the person uttering them cannot be seen. He
dressed: two soldiers came into the cell and ordered him to follow them.
From behind the door, Hladik had envisaged a labyrinth of
passageways, stairs, and separate buildings. The reality was less spectacular:
they descended to an inner court by a narrow iron stairway. Several soldiers
—some with uniform unbuttoned—were examining a motorcycle and
discussing it. The sergeant looked at the clock; it was 8:44. They had to wait
until it struck nine. Hladik, more insignificant than pitiable, sat down on a
pile of wood. He noticed that the soldiers' eyes avoided his. To ease his wait,
the sergeant handed him a cigarette. Hladik did not smoke; he accepted it out
of politeness or humility. As he lighted it, he noticed that his hands were
shaking. The day was clouding over; the soldiers spoke in a low voice as
though he were already dead. Vainly he tried to recall the woman of whom
Julia von Weidenau was the symbol.
The squad formed and stood at attention. Hladik, standing against the
barracks wall, waited for the volley. Someone pointed out that the wall was
going to be stained with blood; the victim was ordered to step forward a few
paces. Incongruously, this reminded Hladik of the fumbling preparations of
photographers. A big drop of rain struck one of Hladik's temples and rolled
slowly down his cheek; the sergeant shouted the final order.
The physical universe came to a halt.
The guns converged on Hladik, but the men who were to kill him
stood motionless. The sergeant's arm eternized an unfinished gesture. On a
paving stone of the courtyard a bee cast an unchanging shadow. The wind
had ceased, as in a picture. Hladik attempted a cry, a word, a movement of
the hand. He realized that he was paralyzed. Not a sound reached him from
the halted world. He thought: "I am in hell, I am dead." He thought: "I am
mad." He thought: "Time has stopped." Then he reflected that if that was the
case, his mind would have stopped too. He wanted to test this; he repeated
(without moving his lips) Vergil's mysterious fourth Eclogue. He imagined
that the now remote soldiers must be sharing his anxiety; he longed to be
able to communicate with them. It astonished him not to feel the least
fatigue, not even the numbness of his protracted immobility. After an
indeterminate time he fell asleep. When he awoke the world continued
motionless and mute. The drop of water still clung to his cheek, the shadow
of the bee to the stone. The smoke from the cigarette he had thrown away
had not dispersed. Another "day" went by before Hladik understood.
He had asked God for a whole year to finish his work; His
omnipotence had granted it. God had worked a secret miracle for him;
German lead would kill him at the set hour, but in his mind a year would go
99by between the order and its execution. From perplexity he passed to stupor,
from stupor to resignation, from resignation to sudden gratitude.
He had no document but his memory; the training he had acquired
with each added hexameter gave him a discipline unsuspected by those who
set down and forget temporary, incomplete paragraphs. He was not working
for posterity or even for God, whose literary tastes were unknown to him.
Meticulously, motionlessly, secretly, he wrought in time his lofty, invisible
labyrinth. He worked the third act over twice. He eliminated certain symbols
as over-obvious, such as the repeated striking of the clock, the music.
Nothing hurried him. He omitted, he condensed, he amplified. In certain
instances he came back to the original version. He came to feel an affection
for the courtyard, the barracks; one of the faces before him modified his
conception of Roemerstadt's character. He discovered that the wearying
cacophonies that bothered Flaubert so much are mere visual superstitions,
weakness and limitation of the written word, not the spoken. . . He
concluded his drama. He had only the problem of a single phrase. He found
it. The drop of water slid down his cheek. He opened his mouth in a
maddened cry, moved his face, dropped under the quadruple blast.
Jaromir Hladik died on March 29, at 9:02 A . M .
Translated by Harriet de Onís
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