Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley (translator) · 1953 (story); added to Ficciones 1956; Hurley trans. 1998 · EPUB · Calibre ID 7517
Resurfaced in Something Brushed His Forehead (2026-10-02).
Role in the triad
The source: forehead brushed in the dark, fever, train south, the store like an engraving, the dagger; two readings (events / dream on the operating table).
Why this book
Supplies the template both later texts inherit and Borges’s own instruction that it can be read ‘in quite another way, as well’. Its open question (‘a bat? a bird?’) is answered by Aira; its plot is rewritten by name in Bolaño.
Quotations
Verified against the book’s own text on the day of the reading.
- “Something in the dimness brushed his forehead—a bat? a bird?” (≈12% through the story)
- “Reality is partial to symmetries and slight anachronisms;” (≈27%)
- “it was as though he were two men at once: the man gliding along through the autumn day and the geography of his native land, and the other man, imprisoned in a sanatorium and subjected to methodical attentions.” (≈48%)
- “his direct knowledge of the country was considerably inferior to his nostalgic, literary knowledge.” (≈52%)
- “There was something in its sorry architecture that reminded Dahlmann of a steel engraving, perhaps from an old edition of Paulet Virginie.” (≈65%)
- “It was as though the South itself had decided that Dahlmann should accept the challenge.” (≈92%)
Themes
Arabian Nights · doubling · dream · fever · gaucho · knife fight · literary knowledge vs direct knowledge · pampa · the South · two readings · wound