I know accuse me of arrogance, and perhaps of misanthropy, and perhaps of madness. Such accusations (which I will punish in due time) are derisory. It is true that I never leave my house, but it is also true that its doors (whose number is infinite) are open day and night to men and animals. That among those who want. Not find feminine extravagance here nor gallant courtly, just quiet and solitude. Will find a house like no other in the face of the earth. (They who declare that in Egypt there is a similar one.)
Even my detractors admit there is not one piece of furniture in the house. Another ridiculous is that I, Asterion, am a prisoner. I repeat that there is a camera, add that there are no locks? Moreover, one afternoon I walked the streets, if before the evening I returned, I did for the fear instilled in me the faces of the people, faces discolored and flat as an open hand. Already the sun had set, but the helpless crying of a child and the rude supplications of the faithful said they had recognized me. The people prayed, fled, prostrated, some climbed the stylobate the temple of the Axes, others gathered stones. Some, cro, hid under the sea. Not for nothing was a queen my mother, I can not mix with the common, though my modesty might so desire.
The fact is that I am unique. I do not care what a man can pass with other men, like the philosopher, I think nothing is communicable by the art of writing. Loas vexatious and trivial details have no place in my mind that is capable of big, I have never retained the difference between a letter and another. A certain generous impatience has not permitted that I learn to read. Sometimes I regret, for the nights and days are long.
course I am not without distacciones. Like the ram about to charge, I run through the stone galleries until I fall dizzy to the floor. I crouch in the shade of a pool or around a corner and pretend that I seek. There are rooftop from which I let myself fall until bloody. Any time I can pretend to be asleep, with eyes closed and breathing deeply. (Sometimes I really sleep, sometimes changed the color of the day when I open my eyes.) But of all the games I prefer it the other Asterion. Pretend to come to visit me and I'll show you the house. With great reverence I say: Now we return to the previous intersection or now towards another courtyard or I knew you would now see the channel or a tank that was filled with sand or I'll see how the cellar branches. Sometimes I'm wrong and we laughed heartily.
Not only have I imagined games have also meditated on the house. All parts of the house are often is anywhere else. There is no pool, courtyard, drinking trough, manger; are fourteen [are infinite] mangers, drinking troughs, courtyards, cisterns, the house is the size of the world, rather, is the world. However, by dint of exhausting the courtyards with pools and dusty gray stone galleries I have reached the street and seen the temple of the Axes and the sea. I did not understand until a night vision revealed to me that there are also fourteen [are infinite] seas and temples. Everything is repeated many times, fourteen times, but two things in the world that seem at once: above, the intricate sun below, Asterion. Perhaps I have created the stars and the sun and the big house, but I do not remember. Every nine years
enter the house nine men for me to deliver them from all evil. I hear his footsteps or voice in the back of the stone galleries and I run joyfully to find. The ceremony lasts a few minutes. One after another fall without my hands ensantgriente. Where they fall, remain, and the bodies help distinguish one gallery from another. I do not know who they are, but I know that one of them prophesied, at the time of his death that someday my Redeemer, since then it hurts me alone because I know that my redeemer lives, and finally stand on the earth. If I could hear voices of the world, I hear his steps. Would take me to a place fewer galleries and fewer doors. What will my redeemer?, I wonder. Is it a bull or a man? Is it perhaps a bull with a human face? Or be like me?
The morning sun reverberated from the bronze sword. Since there was not a trace of blood.
- Would you believe it, Ariadne? Said Theseus. The Minotaur scarcely defended.
Jorge Luis Borges
