August 23, 2024 • 45 mins
Today, we're discussing another famous story from Jorge Luis Borges--Death and the Compass. If you're looking for an accessible Borges story, then this is it. My guests today are Varsha (from Reading by the Rainy Mountain) and Jarrod (from The Fantasy Thinker).
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello everyone and welcome to Books Undone. I'm your host, Livia J. Elliot, and today
(00:17):
we are back with a guest talk, or a guest takeover. The spotlight is in another famous short
story written by Jorge Luis Borges, namely Death on the Compass. Let me introduce you
to my guest today. I'm Jarrod. I run the Fantasy Thinker YouTube channel, and I'm on podcasts,
speculative speculations, and other fine podcasts around pagejoin.com as well. Hi, I'm Varsha,
(00:41):
and you can find me on most of the places you couldn't find Jared to, except on his
YouTube channel, but maybe I'm there sometimes too. My channel is Reading by the Rainy Mountain,
and yeah, mostly I just do book discussions there. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Before we start, let me do some disclaimers. First, there are spoilers in this podcast.
(01:03):
We are focusing only on Death on the Campus, and we will not spoil other short stories
in the anthologies of Ficciones or Labyrinths. We may, however, reference them briefly. Second,
what you will hear is our subjective opinion about this story, and you may disagree with
that, and that's fine. Now, let me start with a short question that may not be that easy
(01:27):
to answer. If you have to reduce Death on the Compass into a single takeaway, what would
that be? How can you do anything gorgeous with a single takeaway? I mean, on a surface,
it seems like just a quick detective farce type thing. It's kind of tongue in cheek
(01:47):
for that genre, but you can tell right away it's not about that genre. Even though he's
writing a detective story, it's really not about a detective. It's kind of deeper than
that, but yeah, we can get into that. I mean, if you're talking single takeaway,
I guess I can speak in terms of abstract uselessness. I just came away thinking, oh my God, that
(02:13):
blew my mind, which I guess at this point, every book has story. Yeah, I wrote in Hindi,
I said, yeh kaha ki samajhdaari hai, which is basically like, what kind of sensibility
is this to the detective at the end of it? So I guess that's my take on it. What were
you thinking, bro? Which we know as we go through what he was thinking, but I love that
(02:37):
story. I loved how it subverted every expectation we might have along the way, and the one that
it set up at the very beginning, where it basically tried to tell us that this guy is
a very competent detective, which he was, but oh, look how that was misused to turn
him around and dig his own grave, so to speak. I think that will be my single takeaway. It's
(03:00):
like a cautionary tale to me that we can create fictions to match reality. For example, conspiracy
theories or things that we know they are fake, and we end up believing them simply because
we try to show horned reality into that. And Borges is striking again with the themes of
(03:21):
perceptions and mirrors. It's like we have, at least to me, two layers of mirrors. On
the one hand, we have detective Lone Rod, which is the clever guy who has a very convoluted
perception of reality, and he's trying to solve this puzzle of murderers, and he's slowly
trying to piece together the criminals' idea, but he's also at the same time creating a
(03:44):
fiction as we find out at the end of the story. And on the other hand, we have the actual
criminal Scarlack, who basically by sheer luck guessed what Lone Rod was going to do
and crafted reality to meet the fiction. So it's like they are mirrored and doing opposite
things. And at the same time, I think we have that idea of a mirror within the fiction because
(04:08):
Scarlack mirrors Lone Rod. And outside of the story, we the reader, we are mirroring
that reality because at the start of the story, it seems like a regular murder mystery, hoodunits
type of a story. And we just believe it and create the fiction, piecing all the bits together.
And it turns out that the whole mystery was a red herring.
(04:29):
Yeah, a set up red herring and very well set up by the criminal. You know, it was fun.
I actually had more fun with this story than with the last one because the last one was
so convoluted. It was you took had to take really a lot of time to try to make sense
of it. Whereas this one, I felt that we kind of already had a base for Borgess. We kind
of like we're going in expecting his unique, you know, perceptive takes on reality. And
(04:55):
so that kind of helped, I think, really stop me off with this story. And I was like, and
I enjoyed myself more initially, I think, because of that. And I think there's a little
more humor in this one than, you know, and it made it a little fun. I love his, his choice
of adjectives. It had to be in the very first paragraph, he points out the reckless discernment
(05:18):
of Lonrot and rigorously strange periodic series of bloody events and amid a ceaseless
aroma and he forsook it is indisputable. So all those terms kind of key you into how Lonrot
goes about his task and how he thinks and it keys you into what the story is going to
(05:40):
lead into with those adjectives. They're so all those adjectives are so strong and so sure.
And of course, all that gets flipped on its head by the end of the story, because it turns
out he was like you said, he was creating his own conspiracy, his own reality and was
very sure about it as it's going along. And of course, all that gets flipped on its head
(06:03):
later on. And I love how, how we're also led to, oh, yeah, this guy, he's he's it, he's
sure of himself. He's these are constants right here, these, these strong adjectives,
and they, they give that sense that that's what we're getting into. And as it goes along,
we kind of start seeing a little different reality as I love his, his, his adjectives.
(06:23):
That's so great.
He also compares himself to Auguste Dupin, who haven't read any Poe, but I guess he's
a detective created by Poe and inspired Holmes and Poirot. And like you get all this set
up to tell us like, he's gonna solve this thing and it's gonna be cool. And he did,
(06:44):
he did, but he solved a setup mystery, which I think that was a brilliance of this story,
wasn't it? It's not like it turned out that he was an incompetent detective, it's just
that he fell into his own trap of reasoning. And the thing I like about it all is that
the whole thing was a setup, right? He saw the newspaper article about how he's reading
all these books about the, I don't know, whatever mysticism he's reading about. And then he
(07:11):
starts to set up the remaining traps, which I thought was pretty cool too. Like it's not,
it's not, it's just enough to be believable that this could happen. It's not that he expected
right from the beginning that Longdott would fall for all his traps, it's that he saw an
opportunity here and he took it.
There are two things in there that I want to mention. First of all, in that paragraph,
he actually spoils the end, because he's saying it is true that Eric Longdott failed to prevent
(07:37):
the last murder and we allow him to escape. So it's like the same Borghese thing that
he's always giving us the end. And also in terms of the adjectives and the names, I have
a friend who is living in Germany and I was talking about this one and I was trying to
summarize the story and he tells me like, Skarlak means Scarlet, so the villain's name
(07:59):
is Red Scarlet. I started to think because when I was little, I was like a Sherlock Holmes
fan, like I would read anything from him. And there is one of the stories which is called
A Study in Scarlet, which is actually the first Sherlock Holmes story. I'm not sure
if he was trying to make a reference to Sherlock Holmes and the whole mystery set up and detective
(08:20):
approach or if he was simply trying to make a world play with red herrings, which are
so common in this case. It's like we mentioned before, like the whole plot is a red herring
towards the end, like the whole investigation is it. He's deconstructing the genre basically.
Yeah. I think in this case it's probably both. Of course, he was very aware of the history
(08:46):
of the genre of Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes. The reference to Dupin
in there, of course, means he was quite, not only was he aware of Poe in the history of
this genre, but the actual detective in the story is aware of Poe or at least treats Dupin
(09:07):
as a real person who lived in the past at some time, which that's in and of itself is
a kind of metafictional twisting of perception, depending on how you look at it. That's interesting
that Scarlak actually means Scarlet. That's funny. It just makes it more funny, I think.
It's like you said, the Scarlak was making it up as he went along because he's reading
(09:33):
these texts and stuff like that. I love how he's like, oh, it's a triangle. No, no, no,
wait. It was actually a diamond. He changed his mind about what his ultimate evil plan
was. Once again, that's playing with our perception of, because in all those old stories in Sherlock
Holmes, the evil mastermind is doing evil mastermind stuff and actually has a big plan
(09:59):
and has a big purpose. Whereas this guy, I think he was just out to get lawn rot and
he succeeded. Like you said, he tells us right in the first sentence, it's going to end that
way. I feel like because of how the first sentence is set up all the way to the end,
I kept expecting lawn rot to turn around and say, no, no, I was aware of your plan. I just
came here to catch you red handed or whatever. And the first sentence or like the first paragraph,
(10:24):
I guess, not only did he define the identity of Jan Malinski's unlucky murderer, but he
did perceive the evil series secret shape and the part played in it by Red Scarlak.
So the part played in it by Red Scarlak, I think he didn't know until the guy told him.
But because this sentence tells us that he knew about it, it's making us think he knew
(10:45):
about it beforehand, but he just knew about it just before the last murder happened, which
was his own. So he did have, I think, some clues or suspicions that Red Scarlak could
be involved, but it's not like he truly knew the extent of it. I want to circle back to
what Jarrell said, because the mastermind doing evil things, because in this case, there
(11:06):
is also a lot of randomness into what happens, because if Lone Rod wouldn't have pissed off
that reporter, he wouldn't have written anything. Therefore, Scarlak wouldn't have ever known
that Lone Rod was pursuing these clues and the plan wouldn't have happened. And I think
it's also, you know, that idea that sometimes we can try, we can do everything very, in
(11:28):
a very polished way. And sometimes life happens, you know, and we have little control over
it. Every character within this story has or their actions have small consequences that
start to pile up, like a snowball ending up in this big ending in which Lone Rod is killed.
For most of them, at least, it didn't seem to me that it was because Lone Rod was careless.
(11:55):
Perhaps at the end, when he goes into that mansion, but he was following the clues, he
was very methodical, but it was everything else that basically conspired to lead him
into that position and being killed at the end.
I think what you said, Livia, I think that's kind of the genius of the story for me. Like,
it's not at any point making us think that Lone Rod wasn't good at what he was doing.
(12:17):
Like, he lives up to most of what that first paragraph is telling us, except that he followed
a fake trap and he just got outwitted by someone. If it had been a series of sacrifices and
I wonder, like we're only getting a part of the story. I wonder what it was that he wasn't
looking at. I think he did have this, that first interaction with the police officer
(12:38):
where he says, oh, maybe they were just going to steal the sapphires and they ended up in
this room instead and ended up killing this guy. And Lone Rod's like, nah, that's just
boring. Let's think about other options. That's what turned out to be true in the end.
Because yeah, the policeman said, let's not look for a three legged cat. I thought that
was hilarious because it of course refers to the three thing, the triangle that's made,
(13:02):
but he actually is a fourth one and the cat's supposed to have four legs. It's brilliant
how he makes those little illusions like that. And like you said, the policeman was like,
I would prefer a purely rabbinical explanation, not an imaginary, mischances of an imaginary
robber. It's like the whole time he's pointing out, you don't have to look deeper into this.
(13:22):
It's just a robbery. And of course our guy wants to look deeper into it. And he starts
doing that. And then it goes into the circumstances that Livia described earlier. It was just
great. When I was reading it, it struck to me that Treviranos, which is the other detective,
he's first of all, he kind of acts like the voice of reason. He's always trying to stay
(13:45):
grounded, cool instead of crafting this fancy mystery. And he's always right. Like in a
way he's always right. And the first one he says, it could, we had this other guy with
sapphires or something across the room. It could have been an unlucky person. Ends up
being that. It's so funny and sad at the same time because Lone Rod is always looking for
(14:06):
a convoluted explanation. We go back again to that idea of one person looking at reality
in a very straightforward, plain way and the other crafting a fiction to fit the reality
he wanted to see.
And it's funny because the journalist declared in three columns, so he specifically mentions
three again, that Lone Rod was looking for the names of God in order to come across a
(14:31):
name of the murderer. And so yeah, you're reaching, you're looking for, like you said,
conspiracies in order to solve your case for you, which totally contradicts believing himself
to be the pure reasoner that we saw in the first paragraph. I love how it was very funny
how that came about. Because then of course, because that publication comes out, then the
(14:52):
actual murderer can look at that and play Lone Rod how he did.
I think, yeah, if there is a mistake he made, it is to not consider the other options, right?
Which he was not taking his own advice that he gave the police officer. He told the police
officer to also look at other options, but he didn't consider or chase down simpler options.
I guess that would be his mistake that led him to his death, if anything. But I think
(15:16):
that that's an important one as I think about it in things like scientific research or in
things like just similar police investigations. If you not necessarily convoluted, but if
you pick an approach and you stick with it and don't look at other options, what that
can do. And I guess in this case, it led to direct self harm, but it can cause damage.
(15:37):
That's in the very first line, reckless discernment. And that's basically what he did was that
the whole story reckless discernment. I love that line.
I think there may be some message to reality, especially given the year in which he wrote
this one. This story in particular is from 1941 or 1944, something like that. It was
(16:00):
again written during World War II. And we know everything that happened during World
War II. So when I was reading it, I was thinking we have this whole plot in which Lone Rod
is looking for the name of God following Jewish traditions and he's crafting a myth about
the assassin and what he's doing about Jewish traditions. And if we look back at history,
(16:23):
real world history, during that period of time, we could say that humanity had believed
a fiction about the Jews for a lot of time. I'm not sure whether Borges was also trying
in a very convoluted and Borgesian way to create a cautionary tale about how easy it
is to create that type of fiction or believe in a conspiracy theory, especially when it
(16:49):
is directed or stemmed from the belief of a minority group, like in this case, the Jewish
community. There is also a sentence at the start, I think it's in the second page in
which we have this editor from the magazine that comes in and Lone Rod says, maybe the
crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions, more and more Lone Rod. Like Christianity,
(17:13):
the editor of the magazine, venture to add. And like there is also, he's actively trying
to make a comment about how people from different religions perceive each other and the fictions
they have about each other. I understand that it can be understood in a different way, but
when I read it, that was the idea that I got, especially because it's very easy to fall
(17:36):
into that belief and again, we have the idea of a fiction within the fiction of what Lone
Rod is doing and what we, what humanity did during World War II as well. I'm not sure
it's a very convoluted idea.
I think that makes sense. Like I didn't understand this line when I was first reading the story,
but I think in the context of what you said, that makes sense. And the rest of the story,
(18:00):
this is in the second paragraph. We will never know whether he found the hotel do not to
his liking. He accepted it with the ancient resignation that had allowed him to bear three
years of war in the Carpathians and 3000 years of pogroms and oppression.
Borges wasn't, it seems that he was quite aware of the issues that the Jewish community
(18:21):
was having, especially in Argentina in the time. Yeah, that's also part of what I started
to think around those lines.
And of course, history of the world has done nothing but pour on conspiracy theories as
pertaining to the Jewish people. So it makes sense that he, that he was very aware of that
(18:42):
and was very pointing that out. And he was also pointing out the fact that if the tables
were turned, the same thing could be said about the superstitions of Christianity that
are said about the superstitions of, of, of the Jewish people. And so anybody could be
in that boat if they were in the minority and they, and they were fell on the superstitious
(19:05):
rambling of a majority people who were actively suppressing those people. It's just very interesting
how he he's, he's able to say so much about it in like two or three lines here. And he's
able to have that come across very strongly. And I have no, yeah, there's no doubt that
boy just was very aware of all the, the, the goings on or the world at the time.
(19:27):
I only read two Dan Brown books, but this felt a lot like a Dan Brown book. I think
angels and demons in particular, where they kept finding a series of dead people. That
was the book that made me decide to stop reading Dan Brown. I was thinking like the ending,
the part that leads up to the labyrinth in that building where he sees mirror after mirror
(19:49):
and staircase after staircase, that felt a little surreal, right? Like could be that
because of the mystic trap that he's following and people are setting a trap and it's the
third name of God. Like if, if this had been true, it's almost like sucking us into that
fiction. I don't know, they're calling down God or something. So I loved that. And then
it's immediately broken down after with the appearance of red and saying, no, no, I made
(20:13):
that all up. But I loved that little paragraph where for a moment, like I felt really tripped
up and getting afraid with him about being, I think I have genuine fear of like time loops
and infinities, like a little bit of a side track. We were coming back on from a hike
once and it was really dark. We hadn't planned well. And so there were, there were a lot
(20:37):
of bridges on our, on our way up. And while coming back down, I didn't see any bridges
or I didn't remember seeing any bridges. So it felt like we should have seen one by now.
And I was like, oh no, we're stuck in a time loop. No way that could be true. But that's
what was happening in my head in the dark. So anyway, I feel like this, those paragraphs
(20:57):
here really played on that fear I have really well. And also I think the other aspect of
Borges' story, we read two others that we discussed on this podcast, the sort of infinite
recursion and recurring infinities. I think those we saw in the library of Babel and also
a little bit in Tilon with the parallel mirrors and stuff. He played into that a little bit
(21:20):
in this too. I really just loved that paragraph.
So that was going to be my next question. What do you make up from that mansion towards
the end? Because it seems to be described in a way that is built in to mirror itself.
The design of it seems to also have like a staircase and in the opposite side you have
a staircase that mirrors it. And again, I also thought of the library of Babel when
(21:45):
I read that, especially because the other was more geometric than this one. Do you think
it actually tries to bring back to the physical world, whatever was happening on the mind
world that mirror that Lone Rod was creating about reality?
It seems to be that Lone Rod, he kind of admits that it's kind of in his head that this house
(22:06):
is like the things that make it seem larger, the dim light, the symmetry, the mirrors and
his unfamiliarity and his loneliness. And so we don't know how much of it was something
that he was just perceiving or was it really planned out like that? That house was planned
out like that? Or was he just perceiving it that way because of the state he was in going
(22:29):
to this strange place? He's by himself, he's unfamiliar and all that stuff. And he's noticing
all these mirrors and this place that has this strange symmetry. It's a neat little
trick that Borges is playing with our perceptions and by seeing it through the characters' perceptions
and not knowing the reliability of the characters' perceptions due to his own feelings. And so
(22:51):
it's up in the air as far as what the house actually was.
I think it's very common for us, if you are spooked, suppose that you see a shadow, you're
going to see a monster. And it's actually just, I don't know, a statue or something.
And I think that he was also, you made me think, Jaro, that perhaps he was also playing
with that idea that how the feelings and especially the momentum that Lone Rod has built up for
(23:18):
himself, like aware that he was going to catch him before the fourth murder and all of that.
Plus all of the fears that are very played down during the story because he already knows
what Scarlark is capable of. We get some bits and pieces that he already knows. And at the
end of the story, we find out that he even captured his brother, that Lone Rod captured
(23:39):
Scarlark's brother. So he knows what's happening there. So we may have expectation and the
fears, all of that playing to actually change the house. Because at the end of the day,
the narrator seems to go from a omniscient perspective to get into Lone Rod's head, the
more the story progresses. So it could be that towards the end, we are getting another
(24:02):
example of a very unreliable narrator.
Yeah. And Bojes knows that if you read Poe and you read Sherlock Holmes, they all have
spooky mentions. And so the reader already has a perception of what this spooky manner
is going to be. And he just plays that up. He plays it up a lot. He doesn't need many
(24:25):
words to do that with, and he does it so well and so quick because there's a certain level
of reader expectation, I think, with a detective story. And the spooky mansion was a well-known
trope. There's a lot of expectation going into that as a reader and knowing what a spooky
mansion is. And so Lone Rod conveys those feelings as he's going in. And we get that.
(24:49):
It's beautifully done. I love how he did it. It's great.
And there's also the standard detect, I think it's a detective story trope where the villain
stands in the end and explains everything he did accompanied by mandatory evil laughter.
Oh yeah. I wrote that in the side of the other. Great monologuing. Here we go. And I think,
(25:14):
yeah, I think he was playing with us with that too, because that's the villain explaining
his villainous plan at the end, even though it's ironic because it was made up on the
fly as he went along. So it wasn't as mastermindful as those old detective stories. It was actually
funny. It was ironic, ironically funny.
It's like the entire story is overt in the murder mystery and the hood-on-it tropes.
(25:39):
And he took painstaking care to actually go through every trope, everything that a mystery
reader could actually expect from this story and change it. You know that one of the compilations
of his stories is called Labyrinth. As we were discussing it, I was thinking like it's
(25:59):
like Borges was actively crafting a maze or a labyrinth here with the readers there, like
a mouse to play in the trap. And at the end of the day, he's just like, close or nope.
That's it. It's a completely different thing. And he actually subverts every expectation
that you would have on a very plain story. Because at the start, it seems to be like
(26:22):
a very classical, plain murder mystery. And I was reading it and I was wondering like,
where is the Borges twist here? And it doesn't happen until the end. Right? And it's like
the exact moment in which that labyrinth he so carefully crafted comes to life.
And there's also a sort of almost physical, maybe not just in your mind labyrinth with
(26:46):
the one that he navigates inside the building, right? As he's making his way through. It
feels like a bit of a maze, doesn't it? As he's making his way through the building and
starting to wonder whether he'll ever get out. I think that was a part that made me
understand, I guess, why it was in the labyrinth collection. But I think I really like what
you said about this also being a maze that he's constructed in our minds about the story
(27:10):
it says. And also perhaps we're focusing a bit too
much on Lone Road, but towards the end on that big villainous monologue, Scarlak also
says that when his brother was captured, he was wounded with a bullet and he stayed in
that house. And here he caps basically all the dreamlike moments that he had in that
(27:31):
mansion. And it also feels like a labyrinth or like something, a fiction to come in and
touch reality because there was, I think, a painting, a mural. And in that feverish
dream, he thought it became reality. So again, we have the same themes and basically those
dreams combined with the anger he was feeling because his brother was captured is what leads
(27:54):
Scarlak to create all this plan or to basically be certain to kill Lone Road.
Yeah. To go back to the point about the Jewish people, he does something kind of clever here
on the fourth page that I have. I'm not sure if it's the same as what you guys got, but
talking about the second murderer, the second murder was somebody who had risen from wagon
(28:15):
driver to political tough, then degenerated to a thief and even an informer, which I found
a very key that informer was put down below political tough and thief as the worst thing
that somebody could be. And then later on, when they get the phone call, there's the
discordant sound of whistles and horns drowned out the informer's voice about the third
(28:40):
murder. And of course, related to the Jewish experience, of course, of an informer in the
war in the camps would be the worst thing that somebody could be. So that's why I think
it's so far down in the order of lowest of the low here. And I was wondering if that
name that the informer spoke in the guttural voice in secretiveness, Ginsburg meant anything
(29:04):
that name means anything at all. It obviously was a fake name that somebody was using over
the phone. And I'm wondering if it was actually Skarlak, who was the actual informer informing
him himself informing about the third murder, because he was setting it all up. But I didn't
know that name Ginsburg meant anything specific to that whole situation.
But Skarlak actually says he was and he refers to him with a name. So when he was doing the
(29:30):
monologue, something I'm not sure I can't answer your question, Jarl, but something
that I read on that part, I'm not sure if in the English version it's like that. In
the Spanish version, it says that his name was Ginsburg spelled with a Z and B-R-G. And
between parentheses, it says or Ginsburg written with an S. So that may tie up to Argentinian
(29:56):
history during that period of time and even before on the 1900s, when there was a lot
of immigration, people will just go down the ships, they will spell their names and they
will be misspelled, like in a Spanish version or something. And there was some identity
there because many children of immigrants then had a very hard time trying to reconnect
(30:22):
with their family overseas and in Europe because of the misspelled last names. It was actually
a big deal because you had to go and try to rectify them and so on. And that's something
that actually drags on until today. There are still processes on the civil registry
to rectify your name, your family name that was misspelled during these periods of 1940s
(30:47):
or the 1900s. So I thought that he was perhaps making a reference to that, to what people
is capable of leaving behind, in this case, their identity, their family name, just to
go to a different place. And again, given that this was written during the 1940s and
Argentina openly received refugees, it may be perhaps a reference to that. The fact that
(31:10):
he was actively putting up both spellings of the name.
Oh yeah, that's pretty interesting. Yeah, could be. Yeah, I just found it fascinating.
I really did. And of course, the ending with the whole labyrinth thing, next time I kill
you.
Yes, I was going to ask about that because-
That was brilliant.
(31:31):
He supposes another labyrinth, but that second labyrinth, the one that Lone Rock suggests,
it has only two points, right? So you have A and B and then you have that and have the
next one, when Scarlack was actually doing that rhomboid fourth point thing. I'm not
sure if the fact that he, we know from Babel's library that Borges was playing a lot with
(31:56):
mass. So I'm not sure if the fact that we have the four points on the, on Lone Rock's
fiction and in here we have two points on the proposed fiction, because the idea of
the next time you kill me, that's a fiction, right? So I'm not sure if the four versus
two actually means something or if he was actively trying to make a comment or something
(32:22):
or use mass again.
Yeah, it's funny.
Yeah, I did wonder whether he wrote a different story where the labyrinth is essentially a
straight line with the infinity of points it comes with. Yeah, like draw a straight
line, then find halfway points, then find halfway points and kill me. Just find the
(32:44):
damn center and kill me then. No, do these other things first. Lay the trap for me so
I will arrive at the center. I thought that was hilarious. I did wonder what it was a
reference to. But the last line that Scarlack says, that makes me think that maybe he was
just noting the idea of the fact that a straight line has an infinity of points because he
(33:05):
says, I promise you the labyrinth that consists of a single straight line that is invisible
and endless. But do you think that means something for the story too? Is that something about
the afterlife?
The Spanish version is slightly different. It could be something like, I promise you
that labyrinth consisting of a single line, which is invisible and unceasing. I thought
(33:28):
that was more of a more accurate translation. It's weird, I thought the same. Was he trying
to actually make a reference to afterlife or to a belief? Because in this case, the
whole story is based on a religious belief. So I'm not sure if he was actually making
that and he makes a reference. It's invisible and endless and unceasing. It continues and
(33:51):
we can't see it.
Invisible too, right? Yeah, that's just like the rhombus. That was invisible too. But it's
interesting that he pointed it out in the context of the straight line. Yeah, the rhombus
technically didn't exist and the straight line wouldn't exist in the same way. So the
invisibility must refer to something else, right? And I could be having this wrong, but
mathematically like a straight line wouldn't really exist in reality, right? Like it's
(34:17):
made up just like a point.
I think perhaps he was trying to go for a more philosophical meaning on that sentence.
You could say that perhaps the struggle, because the whole book is about struggling to find
the truth, that is endless, unceasing and invisible. Sorry, I will veer towards philosophy
(34:40):
again. I like that.
Oh yeah. No, that is true. And of course, Borges has played a lot with alternate realities
and perceptions and dimensions and stuff. So is there another reality where he does
kill him in a different manner, leading him to a death on a straight line, so to speak?
(35:05):
It's all interesting possibilities.
Yeah. And I may be chasing ghosts here, but in the library of Babel, one, we could say
hidden theme is a struggle to find knowledge because they were always trying to find books
and that was like a constant in their lives within the library. And in Thlone, Uqvar,
(35:26):
or Restartius, we had the struggle to exist again, but for that fictional reality, because
it kept multiplying, they kept adding things into it. And in here, we could have something
similar, there is struggle to keep going and to keep finding mysteries or cleaning up the
mysteries and understanding them. I think everything, anything that a person does, especially
(35:49):
that type of inner reality is invisible and is endless as long as a person exists.
Yeah. And it's telling that Lonrot's about to be killed, but he's sitting there philosophizing,
considering the problem of a symmetrical and periodic deaths. And it's like, wait a minute,
(36:09):
you're about to die. Why are you talking about this stuff? And it makes you wonder how much
the character really felt about the nature of his own reality here and what was happening
to him.
In that context, what do you make of this line? There are three lines too many in your
labyrinth. He said at last, I know of a Greek labyrinth that is but one straight line. So
(36:33):
many philosophers have been lost upon that line that a mere detective might be pardoned
if he became lost as well. I mean, I think that's adding to everything you guys have
been saying about the search for truth. And I think it's really interesting that you can
get lost in a really small part of the problem and spend your entire life on it. Or you can
(36:53):
go out and look at a bigger picture, which I guess in this case is a rhombus and try
to understand that as well.
Yeah. And if you look at that bigger picture, you can lose all you can lose details. But
if you only look at that small problem, you can lose your perspective. So much you can
get out of this.
Now, Varsha, what you said, it made me think of something like in the paragraph just above
(37:17):
that, when he says in your labyrinth, there are three lines too many in the paragraph
just above that, Lone Rod says that he felt faintly cold and he felt too impersonal, almost
anonymous, sadness. Like thinking on what you said, I kind of see that line as expressing
that he was impressed because the impression has that quality of making impersonal and
(37:42):
detached from everything that there is no actual meaning to the things. Lone Rod's emotions
at that moment, they don't like Jarl said, they don't correlate to the action that he's
about to kill. Another person could be crying, whatever, and very anxious. But he seemed
to me to have that calmness or that detachment caused by the depression. And again, if we
(38:04):
look at it into the lines, Jarl Labyrinth has three lines too many, it could mean that
Lone Rod has been looking at something very convoluted to try to make sense of his own
life, to give meaning to his own life when the answer was just a straight line and he
was up there, just go and leave.
That's good.
That's really cool.
(38:25):
No, it's very telling that he actually seemed to be accepting the situation rather than
looking for a way out. And you're right. And that could tie into what it seems like he
was feeling with that impersonal cold feeling that he had that's enormous sadness.
Do you think this straight line is a reference to the thing that happened all the way at
(38:50):
the beginning where the police officer just said, maybe the guy was just looking after
the sapphires and ended up in the wrong room. So the shortest path is a straight line, but
he followed a wrong person instead.
Like it could be a metaphor for the easiest explanation, just a straight explanation.
(39:11):
At the end of the day, Trevi Ranos, which is the other inspector, he was always right.
He was making like very clumsy guesses. He wanted to actually drop the person on the
other room or there was no murder in the third one. He says like there was no murder. He
was always right.
I love that when he got the thing in the mail that explained the triangle, he's like, but
(39:34):
there was this line about how he, Trevi Ranos read over that argument by geometry resignedly
and then sent both letter and map to Laundrod's house. He's like, yeah, I don't think this
makes sense, but I will send it to this guy because I know he'll get lost in it. Argument
by geometry.
(39:55):
It's so extra. Like everything Skarlak does, it's so extra. He could have just gone to
Laundrod with a gun and shoot him. And that's it. Like he didn't have to craft all of this
fiction, all of these laborings for Laundrod to fall into the trap and actually go to the
mansion and kill him there. He could have just probably lure him. If Skarlak really
(40:20):
wanted to lure him into the mansion, he could have done so in a more easy way.
As we mentioned before, there is always that element of lack or chance that is affecting
what the characters believe or end up deciding in this story because if the first victim
hadn't been a Ravi, he wouldn't have the books and Laundrod wouldn't have guessed. It was
(40:43):
like he was standing in that room looking around and say like, oh, we are books that
I don't know nothing about. Therefore, that's it. That's a mystery. And then we have the
writing in the columns in the magazine that gives the idea to Skarlak. And we have the
drunk guy, I think it's on the second murder. They find him in that place in that bar and
(41:04):
they end up killing him there. And oops, suddenly we have two points and we have to come in
with a third one. It's like every part of the plot ends up having that element of chance.
It's interesting because it gives more force to the final paragraph with the final lines
where Laundrod says your labyrinth has three lines too many. He might as well just be saying
(41:26):
next time just come and kill me. Don't go through all the rigamarole. Go in a straight
line and just come and kill me. And that's kind of funny. The irony abounds.
I like that. Because the story is in a large part, a bit of a, I don't know, is deconstruction
the right word of detective stories. Do you think it is the convolutedness of Skarlak's
(41:51):
plot? Is that an allusion to how convoluted the mastermind's plots typically tend to be
in detective stories that if you take a lot of it out, you could probably have a simple
solution, but you wouldn't have a good story. I wonder if it's also doing that deliberately.
I think it tackles everything at every level because I can also read it as a warning about
(42:13):
crafting convoluted explanations in reality when something very simple can be just the
answer. It's honestly a very interesting story. And I thought it was more accessible than
the others, Library of Vable and Throne, because the other two have a very thin plot. They
are more of an exposition, like here is a weird thing and that's it. And in this one
(42:36):
we have more of a plot. It's more traditional in that sense, except that when you reach
the end, review the story and start picking up, it's not traditional at all.
It's traditional until you start breaking it down and then you're like, oh, okay, it's
not. But yeah, I told you that yesterday, Vasha, that it was a bit more accessible than
(42:57):
the previous stories. But then once you start breaking it down, you're like, oh wow, this
is clever. It really is. When I came here today, I was prepared to discuss a very cool
detective story, a very cool take on a detective story. But we talked about the meaning of
life and looking at the big picture and the little picture. Of course, a Borges story
(43:21):
has to do that. But I think it's very cool. You could do the surface level reading of
just the detective story, but then there are so many of these little sentences here and
there. I feel like, I don't know why that's there, but I'll come back to it. But when
you do and you put it all together, it's the meaning of life itself, apparently. I love
that.
(43:42):
It's like his prose was always so carefully crafted. He would always sew up words. Like
you said, Vasha, that he seemed inconsequential or a nicely chosen adjective. And then once
you finish the story, it's just like, whoa, it has four layers of meaning, that single
word.
(44:03):
Yeah. I would be curious about what his process was to refine his writing to every word, conveying
what he wants it to. I think it's really cool what he does.
Thank you everyone for joining me in another terrific discussion of Borges' imaginative
storytelling. Let's do a round of outros so that the listeners know where to find you.
(44:26):
Yes, you can find me at the Fantasy Thinker YouTube channel and you can find me on pagechewing.com
in various podcasts, including Speculative Speculations.
You can find me on the YouTube channel, Reading by the Rainy Mountain, on the podcast, Speculative
Speculations, hanging out on the Page Chewing Forum, and on some episodes of the Page Chewing
(44:46):
podcast, I guess.
Awesome. Thank you both for joining me today. That said, and if you like the episode, please
like and subscribe and let's continue the discussion in the comments. Also, you may
want to check the other guest talks about Borges' stories. So far, we have covered
the Library of Babel and Drone, Uggvar, or Restartus.
(45:08):
If you want to get buy-sized deep dives, prose analysis, and other bookish discussions, then
subscribe to my newsletter. You will also get a free ebook for my novella, The Genesis
of Change. I will leave the link in the episode's description.
Thank you for listening and happy reading.
Hello everyone and welcome to Books Undone. I'm your host, Livia J. Elliot, and today
(00:17):
we are back with a guest talk, or a guest takeover. The spotlight is in another famous short
story written by Jorge Luis Borges, namely Death on the Compass. Let me introduce you
to my guest today. I'm Jarrod. I run the Fantasy Thinker YouTube channel, and I'm on podcasts,
speculative speculations, and other fine podcasts around pagejoin.com as well. Hi, I'm Varsha,
(00:41):
and you can find me on most of the places you couldn't find Jared to, except on his
YouTube channel, but maybe I'm there sometimes too. My channel is Reading by the Rainy Mountain,
and yeah, mostly I just do book discussions there. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Before we start, let me do some disclaimers. First, there are spoilers in this podcast.
(01:03):
We are focusing only on Death on the Campus, and we will not spoil other short stories
in the anthologies of Ficciones or Labyrinths. We may, however, reference them briefly. Second,
what you will hear is our subjective opinion about this story, and you may disagree with
that, and that's fine. Now, let me start with a short question that may not be that easy
(01:27):
to answer. If you have to reduce Death on the Compass into a single takeaway, what would
that be? How can you do anything gorgeous with a single takeaway? I mean, on a surface,
it seems like just a quick detective farce type thing. It's kind of tongue in cheek
(01:47):
for that genre, but you can tell right away it's not about that genre. Even though he's
writing a detective story, it's really not about a detective. It's kind of deeper than
that, but yeah, we can get into that. I mean, if you're talking single takeaway,
I guess I can speak in terms of abstract uselessness. I just came away thinking, oh my God, that
(02:13):
blew my mind, which I guess at this point, every book has story. Yeah, I wrote in Hindi,
I said, yeh kaha ki samajhdaari hai, which is basically like, what kind of sensibility
is this to the detective at the end of it? So I guess that's my take on it. What were
you thinking, bro? Which we know as we go through what he was thinking, but I love that
(02:37):
story. I loved how it subverted every expectation we might have along the way, and the one that
it set up at the very beginning, where it basically tried to tell us that this guy is
a very competent detective, which he was, but oh, look how that was misused to turn
him around and dig his own grave, so to speak. I think that will be my single takeaway. It's
(03:00):
like a cautionary tale to me that we can create fictions to match reality. For example, conspiracy
theories or things that we know they are fake, and we end up believing them simply because
we try to show horned reality into that. And Borges is striking again with the themes of
(03:21):
perceptions and mirrors. It's like we have, at least to me, two layers of mirrors. On
the one hand, we have detective Lone Rod, which is the clever guy who has a very convoluted
perception of reality, and he's trying to solve this puzzle of murderers, and he's slowly
trying to piece together the criminals' idea, but he's also at the same time creating a
(03:44):
fiction as we find out at the end of the story. And on the other hand, we have the actual
criminal Scarlack, who basically by sheer luck guessed what Lone Rod was going to do
and crafted reality to meet the fiction. So it's like they are mirrored and doing opposite
things. And at the same time, I think we have that idea of a mirror within the fiction because
(04:08):
Scarlack mirrors Lone Rod. And outside of the story, we the reader, we are mirroring
that reality because at the start of the story, it seems like a regular murder mystery, hoodunits
type of a story. And we just believe it and create the fiction, piecing all the bits together.
And it turns out that the whole mystery was a red herring.
(04:29):
Yeah, a set up red herring and very well set up by the criminal. You know, it was fun.
I actually had more fun with this story than with the last one because the last one was
so convoluted. It was you took had to take really a lot of time to try to make sense
of it. Whereas this one, I felt that we kind of already had a base for Borgess. We kind
of like we're going in expecting his unique, you know, perceptive takes on reality. And
(04:55):
so that kind of helped, I think, really stop me off with this story. And I was like, and
I enjoyed myself more initially, I think, because of that. And I think there's a little
more humor in this one than, you know, and it made it a little fun. I love his, his choice
of adjectives. It had to be in the very first paragraph, he points out the reckless discernment
(05:18):
of Lonrot and rigorously strange periodic series of bloody events and amid a ceaseless
aroma and he forsook it is indisputable. So all those terms kind of key you into how Lonrot
goes about his task and how he thinks and it keys you into what the story is going to
(05:40):
lead into with those adjectives. They're so all those adjectives are so strong and so sure.
And of course, all that gets flipped on its head by the end of the story, because it turns
out he was like you said, he was creating his own conspiracy, his own reality and was
very sure about it as it's going along. And of course, all that gets flipped on its head
(06:03):
later on. And I love how, how we're also led to, oh, yeah, this guy, he's he's it, he's
sure of himself. He's these are constants right here, these, these strong adjectives,
and they, they give that sense that that's what we're getting into. And as it goes along,
we kind of start seeing a little different reality as I love his, his, his adjectives.
(06:23):
That's so great.
He also compares himself to Auguste Dupin, who haven't read any Poe, but I guess he's
a detective created by Poe and inspired Holmes and Poirot. And like you get all this set
up to tell us like, he's gonna solve this thing and it's gonna be cool. And he did,
(06:44):
he did, but he solved a setup mystery, which I think that was a brilliance of this story,
wasn't it? It's not like it turned out that he was an incompetent detective, it's just
that he fell into his own trap of reasoning. And the thing I like about it all is that
the whole thing was a setup, right? He saw the newspaper article about how he's reading
all these books about the, I don't know, whatever mysticism he's reading about. And then he
(07:11):
starts to set up the remaining traps, which I thought was pretty cool too. Like it's not,
it's not, it's just enough to be believable that this could happen. It's not that he expected
right from the beginning that Longdott would fall for all his traps, it's that he saw an
opportunity here and he took it.
There are two things in there that I want to mention. First of all, in that paragraph,
he actually spoils the end, because he's saying it is true that Eric Longdott failed to prevent
(07:37):
the last murder and we allow him to escape. So it's like the same Borghese thing that
he's always giving us the end. And also in terms of the adjectives and the names, I have
a friend who is living in Germany and I was talking about this one and I was trying to
summarize the story and he tells me like, Skarlak means Scarlet, so the villain's name
(07:59):
is Red Scarlet. I started to think because when I was little, I was like a Sherlock Holmes
fan, like I would read anything from him. And there is one of the stories which is called
A Study in Scarlet, which is actually the first Sherlock Holmes story. I'm not sure
if he was trying to make a reference to Sherlock Holmes and the whole mystery set up and detective
(08:20):
approach or if he was simply trying to make a world play with red herrings, which are
so common in this case. It's like we mentioned before, like the whole plot is a red herring
towards the end, like the whole investigation is it. He's deconstructing the genre basically.
Yeah. I think in this case it's probably both. Of course, he was very aware of the history
(08:46):
of the genre of Poe and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes. The reference to Dupin
in there, of course, means he was quite, not only was he aware of Poe in the history of
this genre, but the actual detective in the story is aware of Poe or at least treats Dupin
(09:07):
as a real person who lived in the past at some time, which that's in and of itself is
a kind of metafictional twisting of perception, depending on how you look at it. That's interesting
that Scarlak actually means Scarlet. That's funny. It just makes it more funny, I think.
It's like you said, the Scarlak was making it up as he went along because he's reading
(09:33):
these texts and stuff like that. I love how he's like, oh, it's a triangle. No, no, no,
wait. It was actually a diamond. He changed his mind about what his ultimate evil plan
was. Once again, that's playing with our perception of, because in all those old stories in Sherlock
Holmes, the evil mastermind is doing evil mastermind stuff and actually has a big plan
(09:59):
and has a big purpose. Whereas this guy, I think he was just out to get lawn rot and
he succeeded. Like you said, he tells us right in the first sentence, it's going to end that
way. I feel like because of how the first sentence is set up all the way to the end,
I kept expecting lawn rot to turn around and say, no, no, I was aware of your plan. I just
came here to catch you red handed or whatever. And the first sentence or like the first paragraph,
(10:24):
I guess, not only did he define the identity of Jan Malinski's unlucky murderer, but he
did perceive the evil series secret shape and the part played in it by Red Scarlak.
So the part played in it by Red Scarlak, I think he didn't know until the guy told him.
But because this sentence tells us that he knew about it, it's making us think he knew
(10:45):
about it beforehand, but he just knew about it just before the last murder happened, which
was his own. So he did have, I think, some clues or suspicions that Red Scarlak could
be involved, but it's not like he truly knew the extent of it. I want to circle back to
what Jarrell said, because the mastermind doing evil things, because in this case, there
(11:06):
is also a lot of randomness into what happens, because if Lone Rod wouldn't have pissed off
that reporter, he wouldn't have written anything. Therefore, Scarlak wouldn't have ever known
that Lone Rod was pursuing these clues and the plan wouldn't have happened. And I think
it's also, you know, that idea that sometimes we can try, we can do everything very, in
(11:28):
a very polished way. And sometimes life happens, you know, and we have little control over
it. Every character within this story has or their actions have small consequences that
start to pile up, like a snowball ending up in this big ending in which Lone Rod is killed.
For most of them, at least, it didn't seem to me that it was because Lone Rod was careless.
(11:55):
Perhaps at the end, when he goes into that mansion, but he was following the clues, he
was very methodical, but it was everything else that basically conspired to lead him
into that position and being killed at the end.
I think what you said, Livia, I think that's kind of the genius of the story for me. Like,
it's not at any point making us think that Lone Rod wasn't good at what he was doing.
(12:17):
Like, he lives up to most of what that first paragraph is telling us, except that he followed
a fake trap and he just got outwitted by someone. If it had been a series of sacrifices and
I wonder, like we're only getting a part of the story. I wonder what it was that he wasn't
looking at. I think he did have this, that first interaction with the police officer
(12:38):
where he says, oh, maybe they were just going to steal the sapphires and they ended up in
this room instead and ended up killing this guy. And Lone Rod's like, nah, that's just
boring. Let's think about other options. That's what turned out to be true in the end.
Because yeah, the policeman said, let's not look for a three legged cat. I thought that
was hilarious because it of course refers to the three thing, the triangle that's made,
(13:02):
but he actually is a fourth one and the cat's supposed to have four legs. It's brilliant
how he makes those little illusions like that. And like you said, the policeman was like,
I would prefer a purely rabbinical explanation, not an imaginary, mischances of an imaginary
robber. It's like the whole time he's pointing out, you don't have to look deeper into this.
(13:22):
It's just a robbery. And of course our guy wants to look deeper into it. And he starts
doing that. And then it goes into the circumstances that Livia described earlier. It was just
great. When I was reading it, it struck to me that Treviranos, which is the other detective,
he's first of all, he kind of acts like the voice of reason. He's always trying to stay
(13:45):
grounded, cool instead of crafting this fancy mystery. And he's always right. Like in a
way he's always right. And the first one he says, it could, we had this other guy with
sapphires or something across the room. It could have been an unlucky person. Ends up
being that. It's so funny and sad at the same time because Lone Rod is always looking for
(14:06):
a convoluted explanation. We go back again to that idea of one person looking at reality
in a very straightforward, plain way and the other crafting a fiction to fit the reality
he wanted to see.
And it's funny because the journalist declared in three columns, so he specifically mentions
three again, that Lone Rod was looking for the names of God in order to come across a
(14:31):
name of the murderer. And so yeah, you're reaching, you're looking for, like you said,
conspiracies in order to solve your case for you, which totally contradicts believing himself
to be the pure reasoner that we saw in the first paragraph. I love how it was very funny
how that came about. Because then of course, because that publication comes out, then the
(14:52):
actual murderer can look at that and play Lone Rod how he did.
I think, yeah, if there is a mistake he made, it is to not consider the other options, right?
Which he was not taking his own advice that he gave the police officer. He told the police
officer to also look at other options, but he didn't consider or chase down simpler options.
I guess that would be his mistake that led him to his death, if anything. But I think
(15:16):
that that's an important one as I think about it in things like scientific research or in
things like just similar police investigations. If you not necessarily convoluted, but if
you pick an approach and you stick with it and don't look at other options, what that
can do. And I guess in this case, it led to direct self harm, but it can cause damage.
(15:37):
That's in the very first line, reckless discernment. And that's basically what he did was that
the whole story reckless discernment. I love that line.
I think there may be some message to reality, especially given the year in which he wrote
this one. This story in particular is from 1941 or 1944, something like that. It was
(16:00):
again written during World War II. And we know everything that happened during World
War II. So when I was reading it, I was thinking we have this whole plot in which Lone Rod
is looking for the name of God following Jewish traditions and he's crafting a myth about
the assassin and what he's doing about Jewish traditions. And if we look back at history,
(16:23):
real world history, during that period of time, we could say that humanity had believed
a fiction about the Jews for a lot of time. I'm not sure whether Borges was also trying
in a very convoluted and Borgesian way to create a cautionary tale about how easy it
is to create that type of fiction or believe in a conspiracy theory, especially when it
(16:49):
is directed or stemmed from the belief of a minority group, like in this case, the Jewish
community. There is also a sentence at the start, I think it's in the second page in
which we have this editor from the magazine that comes in and Lone Rod says, maybe the
crime belongs to the history of Jewish superstitions, more and more Lone Rod. Like Christianity,
(17:13):
the editor of the magazine, venture to add. And like there is also, he's actively trying
to make a comment about how people from different religions perceive each other and the fictions
they have about each other. I understand that it can be understood in a different way, but
when I read it, that was the idea that I got, especially because it's very easy to fall
(17:36):
into that belief and again, we have the idea of a fiction within the fiction of what Lone
Rod is doing and what we, what humanity did during World War II as well. I'm not sure
it's a very convoluted idea.
I think that makes sense. Like I didn't understand this line when I was first reading the story,
but I think in the context of what you said, that makes sense. And the rest of the story,
(18:00):
this is in the second paragraph. We will never know whether he found the hotel do not to
his liking. He accepted it with the ancient resignation that had allowed him to bear three
years of war in the Carpathians and 3000 years of pogroms and oppression.
Borges wasn't, it seems that he was quite aware of the issues that the Jewish community
(18:21):
was having, especially in Argentina in the time. Yeah, that's also part of what I started
to think around those lines.
And of course, history of the world has done nothing but pour on conspiracy theories as
pertaining to the Jewish people. So it makes sense that he, that he was very aware of that
(18:42):
and was very pointing that out. And he was also pointing out the fact that if the tables
were turned, the same thing could be said about the superstitions of Christianity that
are said about the superstitions of, of, of the Jewish people. And so anybody could be
in that boat if they were in the minority and they, and they were fell on the superstitious
(19:05):
rambling of a majority people who were actively suppressing those people. It's just very interesting
how he he's, he's able to say so much about it in like two or three lines here. And he's
able to have that come across very strongly. And I have no, yeah, there's no doubt that
boy just was very aware of all the, the, the goings on or the world at the time.
(19:27):
I only read two Dan Brown books, but this felt a lot like a Dan Brown book. I think
angels and demons in particular, where they kept finding a series of dead people. That
was the book that made me decide to stop reading Dan Brown. I was thinking like the ending,
the part that leads up to the labyrinth in that building where he sees mirror after mirror
(19:49):
and staircase after staircase, that felt a little surreal, right? Like could be that
because of the mystic trap that he's following and people are setting a trap and it's the
third name of God. Like if, if this had been true, it's almost like sucking us into that
fiction. I don't know, they're calling down God or something. So I loved that. And then
it's immediately broken down after with the appearance of red and saying, no, no, I made
(20:13):
that all up. But I loved that little paragraph where for a moment, like I felt really tripped
up and getting afraid with him about being, I think I have genuine fear of like time loops
and infinities, like a little bit of a side track. We were coming back on from a hike
once and it was really dark. We hadn't planned well. And so there were, there were a lot
(20:37):
of bridges on our, on our way up. And while coming back down, I didn't see any bridges
or I didn't remember seeing any bridges. So it felt like we should have seen one by now.
And I was like, oh no, we're stuck in a time loop. No way that could be true. But that's
what was happening in my head in the dark. So anyway, I feel like this, those paragraphs
(20:57):
here really played on that fear I have really well. And also I think the other aspect of
Borges' story, we read two others that we discussed on this podcast, the sort of infinite
recursion and recurring infinities. I think those we saw in the library of Babel and also
a little bit in Tilon with the parallel mirrors and stuff. He played into that a little bit
(21:20):
in this too. I really just loved that paragraph.
So that was going to be my next question. What do you make up from that mansion towards
the end? Because it seems to be described in a way that is built in to mirror itself.
The design of it seems to also have like a staircase and in the opposite side you have
a staircase that mirrors it. And again, I also thought of the library of Babel when
(21:45):
I read that, especially because the other was more geometric than this one. Do you think
it actually tries to bring back to the physical world, whatever was happening on the mind
world that mirror that Lone Rod was creating about reality?
It seems to be that Lone Rod, he kind of admits that it's kind of in his head that this house
(22:06):
is like the things that make it seem larger, the dim light, the symmetry, the mirrors and
his unfamiliarity and his loneliness. And so we don't know how much of it was something
that he was just perceiving or was it really planned out like that? That house was planned
out like that? Or was he just perceiving it that way because of the state he was in going
(22:29):
to this strange place? He's by himself, he's unfamiliar and all that stuff. And he's noticing
all these mirrors and this place that has this strange symmetry. It's a neat little
trick that Borges is playing with our perceptions and by seeing it through the characters' perceptions
and not knowing the reliability of the characters' perceptions due to his own feelings. And so
(22:51):
it's up in the air as far as what the house actually was.
I think it's very common for us, if you are spooked, suppose that you see a shadow, you're
going to see a monster. And it's actually just, I don't know, a statue or something.
And I think that he was also, you made me think, Jaro, that perhaps he was also playing
with that idea that how the feelings and especially the momentum that Lone Rod has built up for
(23:18):
himself, like aware that he was going to catch him before the fourth murder and all of that.
Plus all of the fears that are very played down during the story because he already knows
what Scarlark is capable of. We get some bits and pieces that he already knows. And at the
end of the story, we find out that he even captured his brother, that Lone Rod captured
(23:39):
Scarlark's brother. So he knows what's happening there. So we may have expectation and the
fears, all of that playing to actually change the house. Because at the end of the day,
the narrator seems to go from a omniscient perspective to get into Lone Rod's head, the
more the story progresses. So it could be that towards the end, we are getting another
(24:02):
example of a very unreliable narrator.
Yeah. And Bojes knows that if you read Poe and you read Sherlock Holmes, they all have
spooky mentions. And so the reader already has a perception of what this spooky manner
is going to be. And he just plays that up. He plays it up a lot. He doesn't need many
(24:25):
words to do that with, and he does it so well and so quick because there's a certain level
of reader expectation, I think, with a detective story. And the spooky mansion was a well-known
trope. There's a lot of expectation going into that as a reader and knowing what a spooky
mansion is. And so Lone Rod conveys those feelings as he's going in. And we get that.
(24:49):
It's beautifully done. I love how he did it. It's great.
And there's also the standard detect, I think it's a detective story trope where the villain
stands in the end and explains everything he did accompanied by mandatory evil laughter.
Oh yeah. I wrote that in the side of the other. Great monologuing. Here we go. And I think,
(25:14):
yeah, I think he was playing with us with that too, because that's the villain explaining
his villainous plan at the end, even though it's ironic because it was made up on the
fly as he went along. So it wasn't as mastermindful as those old detective stories. It was actually
funny. It was ironic, ironically funny.
It's like the entire story is overt in the murder mystery and the hood-on-it tropes.
(25:39):
And he took painstaking care to actually go through every trope, everything that a mystery
reader could actually expect from this story and change it. You know that one of the compilations
of his stories is called Labyrinth. As we were discussing it, I was thinking like it's
(25:59):
like Borges was actively crafting a maze or a labyrinth here with the readers there, like
a mouse to play in the trap. And at the end of the day, he's just like, close or nope.
That's it. It's a completely different thing. And he actually subverts every expectation
that you would have on a very plain story. Because at the start, it seems to be like
(26:22):
a very classical, plain murder mystery. And I was reading it and I was wondering like,
where is the Borges twist here? And it doesn't happen until the end. Right? And it's like
the exact moment in which that labyrinth he so carefully crafted comes to life.
And there's also a sort of almost physical, maybe not just in your mind labyrinth with
(26:46):
the one that he navigates inside the building, right? As he's making his way through. It
feels like a bit of a maze, doesn't it? As he's making his way through the building and
starting to wonder whether he'll ever get out. I think that was a part that made me
understand, I guess, why it was in the labyrinth collection. But I think I really like what
you said about this also being a maze that he's constructed in our minds about the story
(27:10):
it says. And also perhaps we're focusing a bit too
much on Lone Road, but towards the end on that big villainous monologue, Scarlak also
says that when his brother was captured, he was wounded with a bullet and he stayed in
that house. And here he caps basically all the dreamlike moments that he had in that
(27:31):
mansion. And it also feels like a labyrinth or like something, a fiction to come in and
touch reality because there was, I think, a painting, a mural. And in that feverish
dream, he thought it became reality. So again, we have the same themes and basically those
dreams combined with the anger he was feeling because his brother was captured is what leads
(27:54):
Scarlak to create all this plan or to basically be certain to kill Lone Road.
Yeah. To go back to the point about the Jewish people, he does something kind of clever here
on the fourth page that I have. I'm not sure if it's the same as what you guys got, but
talking about the second murderer, the second murder was somebody who had risen from wagon
(28:15):
driver to political tough, then degenerated to a thief and even an informer, which I found
a very key that informer was put down below political tough and thief as the worst thing
that somebody could be. And then later on, when they get the phone call, there's the
discordant sound of whistles and horns drowned out the informer's voice about the third
(28:40):
murder. And of course, related to the Jewish experience, of course, of an informer in the
war in the camps would be the worst thing that somebody could be. So that's why I think
it's so far down in the order of lowest of the low here. And I was wondering if that
name that the informer spoke in the guttural voice in secretiveness, Ginsburg meant anything
(29:04):
that name means anything at all. It obviously was a fake name that somebody was using over
the phone. And I'm wondering if it was actually Skarlak, who was the actual informer informing
him himself informing about the third murder, because he was setting it all up. But I didn't
know that name Ginsburg meant anything specific to that whole situation.
But Skarlak actually says he was and he refers to him with a name. So when he was doing the
(29:30):
monologue, something I'm not sure I can't answer your question, Jarl, but something
that I read on that part, I'm not sure if in the English version it's like that. In
the Spanish version, it says that his name was Ginsburg spelled with a Z and B-R-G. And
between parentheses, it says or Ginsburg written with an S. So that may tie up to Argentinian
(29:56):
history during that period of time and even before on the 1900s, when there was a lot
of immigration, people will just go down the ships, they will spell their names and they
will be misspelled, like in a Spanish version or something. And there was some identity
there because many children of immigrants then had a very hard time trying to reconnect
(30:22):
with their family overseas and in Europe because of the misspelled last names. It was actually
a big deal because you had to go and try to rectify them and so on. And that's something
that actually drags on until today. There are still processes on the civil registry
to rectify your name, your family name that was misspelled during these periods of 1940s
(30:47):
or the 1900s. So I thought that he was perhaps making a reference to that, to what people
is capable of leaving behind, in this case, their identity, their family name, just to
go to a different place. And again, given that this was written during the 1940s and
Argentina openly received refugees, it may be perhaps a reference to that. The fact that
(31:10):
he was actively putting up both spellings of the name.
Oh yeah, that's pretty interesting. Yeah, could be. Yeah, I just found it fascinating.
I really did. And of course, the ending with the whole labyrinth thing, next time I kill
you.
Yes, I was going to ask about that because-
That was brilliant.
(31:31):
He supposes another labyrinth, but that second labyrinth, the one that Lone Rock suggests,
it has only two points, right? So you have A and B and then you have that and have the
next one, when Scarlack was actually doing that rhomboid fourth point thing. I'm not
sure if the fact that he, we know from Babel's library that Borges was playing a lot with
(31:56):
mass. So I'm not sure if the fact that we have the four points on the, on Lone Rock's
fiction and in here we have two points on the proposed fiction, because the idea of
the next time you kill me, that's a fiction, right? So I'm not sure if the four versus
two actually means something or if he was actively trying to make a comment or something
(32:22):
or use mass again.
Yeah, it's funny.
Yeah, I did wonder whether he wrote a different story where the labyrinth is essentially a
straight line with the infinity of points it comes with. Yeah, like draw a straight
line, then find halfway points, then find halfway points and kill me. Just find the
(32:44):
damn center and kill me then. No, do these other things first. Lay the trap for me so
I will arrive at the center. I thought that was hilarious. I did wonder what it was a
reference to. But the last line that Scarlack says, that makes me think that maybe he was
just noting the idea of the fact that a straight line has an infinity of points because he
(33:05):
says, I promise you the labyrinth that consists of a single straight line that is invisible
and endless. But do you think that means something for the story too? Is that something about
the afterlife?
The Spanish version is slightly different. It could be something like, I promise you
that labyrinth consisting of a single line, which is invisible and unceasing. I thought
(33:28):
that was more of a more accurate translation. It's weird, I thought the same. Was he trying
to actually make a reference to afterlife or to a belief? Because in this case, the
whole story is based on a religious belief. So I'm not sure if he was actually making
that and he makes a reference. It's invisible and endless and unceasing. It continues and
(33:51):
we can't see it.
Invisible too, right? Yeah, that's just like the rhombus. That was invisible too. But it's
interesting that he pointed it out in the context of the straight line. Yeah, the rhombus
technically didn't exist and the straight line wouldn't exist in the same way. So the
invisibility must refer to something else, right? And I could be having this wrong, but
mathematically like a straight line wouldn't really exist in reality, right? Like it's
(34:17):
made up just like a point.
I think perhaps he was trying to go for a more philosophical meaning on that sentence.
You could say that perhaps the struggle, because the whole book is about struggling to find
the truth, that is endless, unceasing and invisible. Sorry, I will veer towards philosophy
(34:40):
again. I like that.
Oh yeah. No, that is true. And of course, Borges has played a lot with alternate realities
and perceptions and dimensions and stuff. So is there another reality where he does
kill him in a different manner, leading him to a death on a straight line, so to speak?
(35:05):
It's all interesting possibilities.
Yeah. And I may be chasing ghosts here, but in the library of Babel, one, we could say
hidden theme is a struggle to find knowledge because they were always trying to find books
and that was like a constant in their lives within the library. And in Thlone, Uqvar,
(35:26):
or Restartius, we had the struggle to exist again, but for that fictional reality, because
it kept multiplying, they kept adding things into it. And in here, we could have something
similar, there is struggle to keep going and to keep finding mysteries or cleaning up the
mysteries and understanding them. I think everything, anything that a person does, especially
(35:49):
that type of inner reality is invisible and is endless as long as a person exists.
Yeah. And it's telling that Lonrot's about to be killed, but he's sitting there philosophizing,
considering the problem of a symmetrical and periodic deaths. And it's like, wait a minute,
(36:09):
you're about to die. Why are you talking about this stuff? And it makes you wonder how much
the character really felt about the nature of his own reality here and what was happening
to him.
In that context, what do you make of this line? There are three lines too many in your
labyrinth. He said at last, I know of a Greek labyrinth that is but one straight line. So
(36:33):
many philosophers have been lost upon that line that a mere detective might be pardoned
if he became lost as well. I mean, I think that's adding to everything you guys have
been saying about the search for truth. And I think it's really interesting that you can
get lost in a really small part of the problem and spend your entire life on it. Or you can
(36:53):
go out and look at a bigger picture, which I guess in this case is a rhombus and try
to understand that as well.
Yeah. And if you look at that bigger picture, you can lose all you can lose details. But
if you only look at that small problem, you can lose your perspective. So much you can
get out of this.
Now, Varsha, what you said, it made me think of something like in the paragraph just above
(37:17):
that, when he says in your labyrinth, there are three lines too many in the paragraph
just above that, Lone Rod says that he felt faintly cold and he felt too impersonal, almost
anonymous, sadness. Like thinking on what you said, I kind of see that line as expressing
that he was impressed because the impression has that quality of making impersonal and
(37:42):
detached from everything that there is no actual meaning to the things. Lone Rod's emotions
at that moment, they don't like Jarl said, they don't correlate to the action that he's
about to kill. Another person could be crying, whatever, and very anxious. But he seemed
to me to have that calmness or that detachment caused by the depression. And again, if we
(38:04):
look at it into the lines, Jarl Labyrinth has three lines too many, it could mean that
Lone Rod has been looking at something very convoluted to try to make sense of his own
life, to give meaning to his own life when the answer was just a straight line and he
was up there, just go and leave.
That's good.
That's really cool.
(38:25):
No, it's very telling that he actually seemed to be accepting the situation rather than
looking for a way out. And you're right. And that could tie into what it seems like he
was feeling with that impersonal cold feeling that he had that's enormous sadness.
Do you think this straight line is a reference to the thing that happened all the way at
(38:50):
the beginning where the police officer just said, maybe the guy was just looking after
the sapphires and ended up in the wrong room. So the shortest path is a straight line, but
he followed a wrong person instead.
Like it could be a metaphor for the easiest explanation, just a straight explanation.
(39:11):
At the end of the day, Trevi Ranos, which is the other inspector, he was always right.
He was making like very clumsy guesses. He wanted to actually drop the person on the
other room or there was no murder in the third one. He says like there was no murder. He
was always right.
I love that when he got the thing in the mail that explained the triangle, he's like, but
(39:34):
there was this line about how he, Trevi Ranos read over that argument by geometry resignedly
and then sent both letter and map to Laundrod's house. He's like, yeah, I don't think this
makes sense, but I will send it to this guy because I know he'll get lost in it. Argument
by geometry.
(39:55):
It's so extra. Like everything Skarlak does, it's so extra. He could have just gone to
Laundrod with a gun and shoot him. And that's it. Like he didn't have to craft all of this
fiction, all of these laborings for Laundrod to fall into the trap and actually go to the
mansion and kill him there. He could have just probably lure him. If Skarlak really
(40:20):
wanted to lure him into the mansion, he could have done so in a more easy way.
As we mentioned before, there is always that element of lack or chance that is affecting
what the characters believe or end up deciding in this story because if the first victim
hadn't been a Ravi, he wouldn't have the books and Laundrod wouldn't have guessed. It was
(40:43):
like he was standing in that room looking around and say like, oh, we are books that
I don't know nothing about. Therefore, that's it. That's a mystery. And then we have the
writing in the columns in the magazine that gives the idea to Skarlak. And we have the
drunk guy, I think it's on the second murder. They find him in that place in that bar and
(41:04):
they end up killing him there. And oops, suddenly we have two points and we have to come in
with a third one. It's like every part of the plot ends up having that element of chance.
It's interesting because it gives more force to the final paragraph with the final lines
where Laundrod says your labyrinth has three lines too many. He might as well just be saying
(41:26):
next time just come and kill me. Don't go through all the rigamarole. Go in a straight
line and just come and kill me. And that's kind of funny. The irony abounds.
I like that. Because the story is in a large part, a bit of a, I don't know, is deconstruction
the right word of detective stories. Do you think it is the convolutedness of Skarlak's
(41:51):
plot? Is that an allusion to how convoluted the mastermind's plots typically tend to be
in detective stories that if you take a lot of it out, you could probably have a simple
solution, but you wouldn't have a good story. I wonder if it's also doing that deliberately.
I think it tackles everything at every level because I can also read it as a warning about
(42:13):
crafting convoluted explanations in reality when something very simple can be just the
answer. It's honestly a very interesting story. And I thought it was more accessible than
the others, Library of Vable and Throne, because the other two have a very thin plot. They
are more of an exposition, like here is a weird thing and that's it. And in this one
(42:36):
we have more of a plot. It's more traditional in that sense, except that when you reach
the end, review the story and start picking up, it's not traditional at all.
It's traditional until you start breaking it down and then you're like, oh, okay, it's
not. But yeah, I told you that yesterday, Vasha, that it was a bit more accessible than
(42:57):
the previous stories. But then once you start breaking it down, you're like, oh wow, this
is clever. It really is. When I came here today, I was prepared to discuss a very cool
detective story, a very cool take on a detective story. But we talked about the meaning of
life and looking at the big picture and the little picture. Of course, a Borges story
(43:21):
has to do that. But I think it's very cool. You could do the surface level reading of
just the detective story, but then there are so many of these little sentences here and
there. I feel like, I don't know why that's there, but I'll come back to it. But when
you do and you put it all together, it's the meaning of life itself, apparently. I love
that.
(43:42):
It's like his prose was always so carefully crafted. He would always sew up words. Like
you said, Vasha, that he seemed inconsequential or a nicely chosen adjective. And then once
you finish the story, it's just like, whoa, it has four layers of meaning, that single
word.
(44:03):
Yeah. I would be curious about what his process was to refine his writing to every word, conveying
what he wants it to. I think it's really cool what he does.
Thank you everyone for joining me in another terrific discussion of Borges' imaginative
storytelling. Let's do a round of outros so that the listeners know where to find you.
(44:26):
Yes, you can find me at the Fantasy Thinker YouTube channel and you can find me on pagechewing.com
in various podcasts, including Speculative Speculations.
You can find me on the YouTube channel, Reading by the Rainy Mountain, on the podcast, Speculative
Speculations, hanging out on the Page Chewing Forum, and on some episodes of the Page Chewing
(44:46):
podcast, I guess.
Awesome. Thank you both for joining me today. That said, and if you like the episode, please
like and subscribe and let's continue the discussion in the comments. Also, you may
want to check the other guest talks about Borges' stories. So far, we have covered
the Library of Babel and Drone, Uggvar, or Restartus.
(45:08):
If you want to get buy-sized deep dives, prose analysis, and other bookish discussions, then
subscribe to my newsletter. You will also get a free ebook for my novella, The Genesis
of Change. I will leave the link in the episode's description.
Thank you for listening and happy reading.
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