Jorge Luis Borges - The Last Interview

journalists. Everyone celebrates my humor and my irony. I have never been ironic as far as I know, I can’t; irony exhausts me. If I speak insolently, everyone says “How wonderful, what lovely irony”; “What marvelous mockery.” But I haven’t mocked anyone.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: You said once that you have always been in love with a woman.
    BORGES: Yes, but the women have changed over time.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Have you had so many loves?
    BORGES: I asked my sister about her first love and she said to me, “I don’t remember much from my life but I know that I’ve been in love since I was four years old,” and as far as I remember I have always been in love, but the people change. The love is always the same, and the person is always unique, even if she is different.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Who is that unique person?
    BORGES: There have been so many that I’ve lost track.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Have you been in love with many women?
    BORGES: It would be very strange if I hadn’t.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Because I would say that actually one has very few great loves.
    BORGES: All love is great, love doesn’t come in different sizes, whenever one is in love, they’re in love with a unique person. Maybe every person is unique, maybe when one is in love they see a person as they really are, or how God sees them. If not, why fall in love with them? Maybe every person is unique, I could go further: maybe every ant is unique, if not why are there so many of them? Why else would God like ants so much? There are millions of ants and each one is undoubtedly as individual as, well, as Shakespeare or Walt Whitman. Every ant is undoubtedly unique. And every person is unique.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Like women …? The species known as woman?
    BORGES: I think that they’re more sensible than men, I have no doubt that if women governed countries, there would be no wars, men are irrational, they’ve evolved that way, women too.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: So why aren’t women allowed to govern countries?
    BORGES: Well, they probably have somewhere … I was talking to Alicia Moreau de Justo 17 who seems a miraculous person to me; she’s about to turn a hundred and she speaks so fluently. She can put together long, complex phrases and each phrase has a certain elegance. I was genuinely amazed for the first time in my life, really, a few months ago at her house, which is in Cinco Esquinas. 18 The tenement where Leónidas Barletta was born used to stand where her house is now, in Juncal and Libertad, and Barletta used to say to me “I’m a
compadrito
from Cinco Esquinas.” 19 In the end he came into town. He liked to play the guitar and knew how to improvise, he was very good. Once he dedicated a song to Mastronardi that lasted maybe a quarter of an hour, all improvised, the whole thing, it came to him very easily.

    LÓPEZ LECUBE: You left your mother’s bedroom untouched. Why did your mother mean so much to you? Well, mothers are important to everyone, aren’t they …
    BORGES: I felt that I had no right. She said to me that when she died, I should make it into my study, and that meant moving all of my books there, but I left the bed.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: To remember her by?
    BORGES: I didn’t think I had the right …
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: To move it …
    BORGES: To move it, yes. Also, if I were to move it I’d almost be accentuating the difference between one era and another, but if I keep things more or less as they were …
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: It’s your way of keeping her here.
    BORGES: Yes, it’s a way of stopping time a little, when I go back there I think that she’s in her room …
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Waiting …
    BORGES: Waiting for me, yes. About a month ago, I went to Recoleta, 20 and saw our tomb, which is horrible, like all tombs, and I thought, “Well, if there’s somewhere in the world where my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents aren’t, it’s here.” Why should I think that they’re in a horrible place like Recoleta? It’s odd that they’ve put so many restaurants in an unpleasant place like Recoleta, there’s something morbid about Argentines, wanting to be close to death, don’t you think?
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: And where is your mother buried?
    BORGES: In the tomb where my great-grandfather Colonel Suárez is buried with his close friend Olavarría; they both fought in the campaign in the Andes, the campaign in Brazil, they fought in the civil wars together and died together in exile, even though my great-grandfather was related to Rosas, 21