I’m not so sure about that.
Isn’t telling stories what you do?
Yes.
Well, have a bit of faith, won’t you?
Let’s suppose you’re right. That I say yes to your proposal. What are you going to ask me to do in return?
Almost nothing. You just write for me.
Write what?
Whatever I commission you to do. First I need you to write my story, the story of my teeth. I tell it to you, you just write it. We sell millions, and I get my teeth fixed for good. Then, when I die, you write about that too. Because a man’s story is never complete until he dies. End of that task.
And what else?
Well, then, if we rub along well together, I can offer you other jobs.
Such as?
Such as, I need someone to catalog my collection of collectibles, because I auction only my own collections now. I’ve got the world’s best collection. And as I haven’t got much longer in this world, I want to hold a grand auction, for which I need a catalog. But let’s not jump the gun. For the time being, you just write my dental autobiography.
The melancholy young Voragine finally smiled, but he made no reply.
What are you smiling at?
Nothing. That it would be your biography, not your autobiography.
Ah! I see that you’re going to be a good writer too.
Why do you say that?
Because when you smile, you don’t show your teeth. Real writers never show their teeth. Charlatans, in contrast, flash that sinister crescent when they smile. Check it out. Find photos of all the writers you respect, and you’ll see that their teeth remain a permanently occult mystery. I believe the only exception is the Argentinian Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis.
Borges?
The selfsame. Blind and Argentinian. But he doesn’t count because he was blind, so he probably couldn’t picture himself smiling — at least, not with the smile he had when he was blind, if you know what I mean.
Borges is my idol. Have you read him? asked young Voragine with childlike enthusiasm.
Not as much as I will in the future, I replied.
I think you and I are going to rub along well, Mr. Highway. And I’d be happy to write your biography.
It is my autobiography, you stubborn matchstick, because it is my story, and I will tell it, you’ll just transcribe.
As you wish, sir. I’d be happy to write your dental autobiography.
That’s more like it.
We spent the rest of the morning ordering Nescafés, exchanging stories, and fine-tuning the details of our arrangement. Around noon, the summer sun began to warm the concrete floor of the café. The Nescafés had us as perky as a couple of protococaine addicts, and the Chinese fortune cookies were all gone.
Let’s go, Voragine, I said, leaving a twenty on the table, Benito Juarez face up. I’ve got my new bicycle here outside. A friend just gave it to me.
My bicycle’s outside too, he said.
Perfect. We can pick up your things, and I’ll take you to Disneylandia.
I’m in.
Great. Say no more. Shall we go?
Right now?
This very instant.
End of conversation.
~ ~ ~
TACITO’S FORTUNE COOKIES:
The man atop the mountain does not fall.
The motionless dragon in deep waters becomes the prey of the crabs.
Fortune never comes with a parallel, and misfortune never comes alone.
When two brothers work together, the mountains turn to gold.
Not hearing is not as good as hearing, hearing is not as good as seeing, seeing is not as good as mentally knowing, mentally knowing is not as good as acting; true learning continues up to the point of action.
When the wind changes, some people build walls, others windmills.
The tongue resists because it is soft; the teeth yield because they are hard.
Put your words in the mouth of the stomach.
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BOOK V. The Allegorics
My speculations led me to conclude that I had to go back to basics and rethink not just the semantics of names, but their very syntax, the metaphysics of words: How should words be individuated? What is the nature of a word?
Names are a special kind of word, so special that some have thought them not to be a part of a language at all. I disagree with this and will emphasize ways in which names are like other words, but I do not disagree that names are special in several ways.
~ ~ ~
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I AM NOT SURE IF THIS should be in the story, because it’s a part that seems to start folding over on itself, so that I become confused and agitated and lose my way. But I don’t see how it can be ignored either.
When Voragine and I got back to Disneylandia, we found that my house and warehouse had been broken into. My collection was gone, every single item. I first felt tremendous relief. Then, a little sadness. Then disbelief, and anger. Then, again, a deeper form of sadness and relief fused together, almost a weightlessness.
The following days were confusing and difficult, and I’d rather not speak about them. I attended group therapy. I watched Formula 1. I considered Catholicism. I was lost like a swallow in Antarctica, as Napoleón says.
One morning, while we were drinking coffee, Voragine tried to persuade me to go to the dentist and get a temporary set of dentures, so I could at least begin eating proper food. I resisted a little, but the boy was right, and I’m a reasonable man despite a certain stubbornness. As soon as I’d gotten the new dentures — cheap and a bit too tight, but functional — I began dictating my dental autobiography. It took me some time to find the right structures, but Voragine pointed out that there should be a beginning, a middle, and an end, and that helped me to get started.
A MONTH LATER, AS I had promised him, we began the “Education of the Voragine Artist.” Our first lesson: to pick up and recycle some objects that my son left for me in the gallery next to the juice factory. Around one in the morning on a particularly quiet Sunday, my friend El Perro, who still worked as a driver for the factory, came to pick us up in a handsome truck. We took the back road, where there wasn’t a single security checkpoint. El Perro parked in an alley, handed me a set of keys, and Voragine and I went into the small building adjacent to the factory, where the gallery is located. We started in the office to the right of the entrance of the gallery. We didn’t find much there, but Voragine took a catalog from the desk, which later came in handy. I requisitioned some pencils, which would also come in handy, as Voragine was doing a lot of writing.
We walked around carefully, because the gallery was quite dark, and we’d decided not to turn the main lights on, in case there were cameras. The only illumination came from the spots directed onto the objects. I have to say that, in this particular light, they looked more beautiful than I remembered from when I had first seen them on the morning of my brief captivity. I first recognized the plush costumes, the musical score on its podium, the prosthetic leg.