Jorge Luis Borges - The Last Interview

that I had been given a prize, the Formentor Prize, by European editors. So suddenly, they noticed that I was there. Up until then I had been Wells’s Invisible Man, which was more comfortable, but all of a sudden they started to pay attention to me.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: And what happened when they started to pay more attention to you? Especially given your characteristic shyness?
    BORGES: My shyness has actually grown more acute over time, just like my terror of speaking in public: I was less afraid the first time than I am now because I’m a veteran, let’s say, of the panic.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Panic? How do you feel when you’re standing in front of an audience?
    BORGES: Now, I’m terrified, but of course my blindness can be a defense: my friends will tell me that no one’s come, that the hall is empty, but I know they say this to ease my nerves. Then, sometimes, I’ll go out into the hall, hear the applause and realize that my friends have, generously, been lying to me and I start to feel that depression again.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: But you speak so easily …
    BORGES: No, no, no, believe me, it’s so difficult, I find writing for myself especially difficult.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: How many canes do you have, Borges?
    BORGES: Seven or eight; they’re quite rustic.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Are they gifts?
    BORGES: Yes, they’re gifts.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: From people in the countries you visit or …?
    BORGES: Well, some of them, and the rest are from María Kodama, they’re Arab shepherd’s crooks from nearby Canaan.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: And do you always dress like that, in a suit and tie?
    BORGES: Yes, but I don’t know what color this suit is, because I’m blind.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Mmmm … I’m not going to tell you.
    BORGES: You could tell me that it’s a harlequin costume and I could decide whether to believe you or not, but let’s hope not.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Actually it’s a bright red suit with a pink shirt and a pink tie …
    BORGES: Really? A pink shirt? Isn’t that a little daring? I didn’t … I thought it was a white shirt.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: No, it’s not true, I’m joking; you’re dressed perfectly.
    BORGES: Yes, I don’t think we have any pink shirts at home, I wouldn’t have allowed it.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: No, the shirt is beige, the suit is light brown and you’re wearing a beautiful Yves Saint Laurent beige and violet tie.
    BORGES: Oh good, it sounded a little strange to me, but that’s fine.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Don’t worry.
    BORGES: Violet?
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: It’s lovely.
    BORGES: How strange, I don’t like violet, but if the color looks good, I’m not … [
Laughs
.]
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Who dresses you, Fanny?
    BORGES: No, María Kodama.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Oh, because you have a maid, a
salteña
5 woman, at home …
    BORGES: Nooo …
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: … who speaks to us journalists and says “The señor is sleeping” or “He’s sleeping.”
    BORGES: That “salteña” is actually correntina. 6
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Oh, I’m sorry, I thought she was from Salta.
    BORGES: She’s from the province and speaks Guaraní, but I don’t understand a word of it …

    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Borges, how do you imagine your death?
    BORGES: Ah, I’m waiting for it very impatiently, I’m told that it will come but I feel as though it won’t, that I’m not going to die. Spinoza says that we all feel immortal, yes, but not as individuals, I assume, rather immortal in a pantheist way, in a divine way. When I get scared, when things aren’t going so well, I think to myself, “But why should I care what happens to a South American writer, from a lost country like the Republic of Argentina at the end of the twentieth century? What possible interest could that hold for me when I still have the adventure of death before me, which could be annihilation; that would be best, it could be oblivion …”
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Or it could be the start of an adventure …
    BORGES: It could be, but I hope not. I hope it’s the end. You’re a pessimist. I was thinking about a story about precisely this, concerning a man who spends his whole life waiting hopefully to die and then it turns out that he continues living and he’s extremely disappointed. Eventually, however, he gets accustomed to his posthumous life, just as he got used to the previous one, which is invariably hard.
    I don’t think that a day passes when we’re not both very happy and very unhappy, in that sense we’re like Joyce’s
Ulysses. Ulysses
, of course, takes place over twenty-four