The Book of Sand
by Jorge Luis Borges
...thy rope of sands...
George Herbert (1593-1623)
A line consists of an infinite number of points; a plane of an infinite number of lines; a volume of an infinite number of planes; a hyper-volume of an infinite numbers of volumes...No, this is not —more geometrico— the best way to begin my story. It is conventional today to claim that every fantastical story is true; mine, however, really is.
I live alone on the fourth-floor of a building on Belgrano Street in Buenos Aires. A few months ago, at sunset, I heard a knocking on my door. I opened and an unknown person entered. He was a tall fellow with fuzzy features. Or perhaps my myopia only saw them so. All in all he looked poor but respectable. He was dressed in gray and carried a gray valise. I immediately perceived that he was a foreigner. At first I thought he was old, but then I realized that his thin blond hair, almost white in a Scandinavian way, had deceived me. During our conversation, which lasted less than an hour, I learned that he came from the Orkney Islands.
I pointed to a chair. The man took a while before speaking. He emanated melancholy, as I do now.
“I sell Bibles,” he said.
Not without pedantry I answered: “In this house there are some English Bibles, including the first one by John Wiclif. I also have one by Cipriano de Valera, and Luther´s, which from a literary viewpoint is the worst, and a Latin Vulgate version. So as you can see it is not exactly Bibles that I lack.”
After a silence he answered: “I don't only sell Bibles. I can show you a sacred book which may interest you. I acquired it on the outskirts of Bikanir.”
He opened the valise and placed the book on the table. It was an octavo volume bound with cloth. Without doubt it had passed through many hands. I examined it; its unusual weight surprised me. On the spine it said “Holy Writ” and below “Bombay”.
“It seems to be from the 19th century,” I observed.
“I don't know. I never knew,” was the answer.
I opened it at random. The letters seemed strange. The pages, which were worn and of poor typography, were printed in two columns, like a Bible. The text was compressed and ordered in versicles. There were Arabic numbers in the upper corner of the pages. I was surprised that the even page bore the number (let us say) 40,514 and the facing odd one, 999. I turned the page; the back bore a number of eight digits. There was a small illustration, like the ones used in dictionaries: an anchor drawn in ink as though by a child's clumsy hand. It was then that the stranger said: “Look at the anchor well. You will not see it again.”
The threat was in the affirmation, but not in his voice.
I noted its place in the book and closed it. Then I immediately opened it. I searched in vain for the anchor, page by page. To hide my confusion I said: “It's a version of the Scripture in some Hindustanic language, is it not?”
“No,” he replied.
Then he lowered his voice as though to tell me a secret: “I acquired it in a town down on the plain in exchange for some rupees and a Bible. Its owner couldn't read. I suspect that he saw the Book of Books as a talisman. He was of the lowest caste; people couldn't step on his shadow without being contaminated. He told me that his book was called the Book of Sand, because neither the book nor sand has a beginning or an end."
He told me to find the first page. I placed my left hand on the cover and opened the book with my thumb almost at the index. It was useless: various pages always interjected themselves between the cover and my hand. It was as though they were sprouting from the book.
“Now find the end.” I failed in that as well; I could barely stammer in a voice that wasn't mine: “This cannot be.”
Still in a low voice the Bible salesman said: “It cannot be, but it is. The number of pages in this book is exactly infinite. None is the first; none the last. I don't know why they are numbered arbitrarily. Perhaps to imply that the terms of an infinite series admit any number."
Then, as though thinking aloud: “If space is infinite we are at any point in space. If time is infinite we are at any point in time.”
His comments irritated me. I asked him: “You are, I presume, religious?”
“Yes, I am a Presbyterian. My conscience is clear. I am certain of not having cheated that native when I gave him the Word of the Lord in exchange for his diabolic book.”
I assured him that he had no need to reproach himself and asked him if he was visiting these parts. He answered that he was thinking of returning to his homeland within a few days . It was then that I learned that he was a Scot from the Orkney Islands. I told him how much I personally admired Scotland, out of love for Stevenson and Hume.
“And Robbie Burns,” he corrected me.
As we spoke I continued examining the infinite book. With pretended indifference I asked him: “Do you intend to offer this curious specimen to the British Museum?”
“No. I am offering it to you,” he replied, and mentioned a large sum.
I answered, truthfully, that the amount was beyond my means, and I paused, thinking. After a few minutes I had concocted a plan.
“I propose an exchange,” I said. “You obtained this volume for a few rupees and the Holy Writ; I offer you the amount of my pension, which I have just collected, and the Wiclif Bible in gothic letters. I inherited it from my parents.
“A black-letter Wiclif,” he muttered.
I went to my bedroom and brought him the money and the book. He turned the pages and studied the title-page with a bibliophile's fervor.
“It's a deal,” he told me.
I was surprised that he did not haggle. Only later did I realize that he had entered my home already decided to sell the book. He didn't count the bills, just put them away.
We spoke about India, the Orkneys and the Norwegian jarls who had ruled them. It was night when he left. I never saw him again and don't know his name.
I thought of placing the Book of Sand in the space the Wiclif had left on the shelf, but finally decided to hide it behind some out of place volumes of The Thousand and One Nights.
I went to bed but couldn't sleep. At three or four in the morning I turned on the light. I took down the impossible book and turned its pages. I saw a mask engraved on one of them. The corner bore a number, I don't remember which, elevated to the ninth power.
I showed my treasure to no one. To the joy of possessing it was added the fear of it being stolen and then the anxiety that it was not really infinite. Those two emotions aggravated my already old misanthropy. I still had a few friends. I stopped seeing them. A prisoner of the Book, I rarely went out. I examined the frayed spine and covers with a magnifying glass and rejected the possibility of fraud. I verified that the small illustrations were separated from each other by two-thousand pages. I noted them down alphabetically in a notebook, which was soon full. They were never repeated. At night, in the few intervals granted me by insomnia, I dreamed about the book.
As summer came to an end I realized that the book was monstrous. It did not help to consider that I was no less monstrous for perceiving it with eyes and touching it with my ten fingers ending in nails. I felt that it was a nightmarish object, an obscene thing which defamed and corrupted reality.
I thought of burning it, but feared that the combustion of an infinite book would likewise be infinite and suffocate the planet in smoke.
I remembered reading that the best place to hide a leaf is in a forest. Before retiring I worked in the National Library which possesses nine hundred thousand books; I knew that to the right of the vestibule a curving staircase descends to the basement, where the periodicals and maps are. I took advantage of the employees' inattentiveness to lose the Book of Sand in one of the humid shelves. I tried not to notice the height or its distance from the door.
I feel somewhat relieved, but I avoid even walking down Mexico Street.
Translated by Frank Thomas Smith.
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