Jorge Luis Borges - The Last Interview

forget you?
    BORGES: Because it’s unimportant.

    LÓPEZ LECUBE: What’s a typical day for you?
    BORGES: Well, when I’m lucky, I’m talking to you here, but I don’t get lucky every day.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Well, thank you. You don’t have to say that.
    BORGES: Well, I sleep a siesta.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: How many hours?
    BORGES: No, for me a long siesta is forty minutes, because I take a long time to get to sleep. I find it very difficult; sometimes I even have to take a pill.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Do you have insomnia?
    BORGES: Yes, insomnia visits me quite often. There’s a lovely verse by Rosetti: “Sleepless, with cold commemorative eyes …”
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: And what do you do when you have insomnia?
    BORGES: I try not to think about getting to sleep. I try to think up a plot or polish a verse.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Do you remember what you thought about the next day?
    BORGES: No, but I managed to get to sleep, which is the important thing. No, happily I don’t remember the projects of my insomnia. But I am always writing verses or prose, I’m always polishing verses or putting together plots for stories because if I didn’t, I’d get very bored. Xul Solar 25 once said to me that he wouldn’t mind spending a year in prison. “In the company of your cellmates?” “No,” he said, “a year in a cell on my own.” “Ah well, me too, because spending a year with criminals sounds horrible.” I don’t think it would be so bad, a blind person is alone; blindness is a form of solitude … old age too.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: What time do you get up in the morning?
    BORGES: They come to wake me at nine but I’m already awake, and I try to get to sleep when I hear the Torre de los Ingleses 26 strike eleven. But sometimes I don’t, sometimes I come home late and it strikes twelve and I’m disoriented. Generally I go to bed at eleven.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: And the cat?
    BORGES: The cat died.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: The cat died? When did it die?
    BORGES: About a month ago, I think. I think it was twelve and that’s old for a cat. I didn’t know it, but apparently that’s a good life for a cat.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: And do you miss it?
    BORGES: Yes, sometimes, and sometimes not. I look for it and then remember that it’s died.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: So I should get you a little cat?
    BORGES: I don’t know. I’d have to ask because cats can be a lot of work and as they die, it can be hard can’t it? And you’d look at it as though it were the previous cat but it would be a little different, as though it were dressed up, so I’d have to ask, but thank you very much in any case.

    LÓPEZ LECUBE: All the popularity you’ve earned over the years.
    BORGES: It’s strange isn’t it? But it will pass.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Why should it pass if it’s growing all the time? How does it feel? When I walk down the street with you, it causes more fuss than with Miguel Angél Solá!
    BORGES: Who’s Miguel Ángel Solá? Now, Émile Zola, I know that name …
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: Miguel Ángel Solá is an actor … With you people stand back, amazed, it’s an expression of …
    BORGES: Well, if I were with Émile Zola that would be because he’s dead; it would be an amazing sight. Walking with Émile Zola!
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: And you’re growing ever more popular, your wit, your genius …
    BORGES: What can I do? And yet I’m still published, which should put people off shouldn’t it? This year, I’m directing a collection of one hundred books, I wanted to call it the Marco Polo Library, but the publisher chose a more vague title, Personal Library, so that’s what it’s called. I’m choosing them with María Kodama, and writing the prologues.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: A good thing is happening that I want to tell you about: children are learning about you because of the advertisement on television. When I told my daughter that I was going to interview Jorge Luis Borges, she said to me: “The man who’s writing all the books?”
    BORGES: Well, I’m not writing them, they’re books by great writers; a Personal Library.
    LÓPEZ LECUBE: No, I know, but it means young people already know about you.
    BORGES: Well, Bioy told me a story today; he was with a Spanish woman at his home, and a package of books arrived from the printers: fifty copies. She looked at it and he said, “Yes, I wrote them.” So she opened the package and saw that they were fifty copies of the same book and said to him “There’s been a mistake! They’re all the same!” She was very disappointed;