Jorge Luis Borges
EMMA ZUNZ
On the fourteenth of January 1922, Emma Zunz, upon re–
turning from the textile mill of Tarbuch and Loewenthal, found at the
farthest end of the corridor a letter postmarked in Brazil, by which she
knew that her father had died. At first, the stamp and the envelope de–
ceived her; then, she was disturbed by the unknown handwriting.
Nine or ten smudged
lines
nearly filled the paper; Emma read that
Mr. Maier had accidentally drunk a strong dose of narcotic and
had passed away on the third of the month at the hospital of Bage.
The letter was signed by one of her father's boarding-house com–
panions, a Fein or Fain, from Rio Grande, who could not possibly
know that he was addressing the daughter of the deceased.
Emma let the letter drop. Her first reaction was that of pain
in the stomach and the knees; then one of blind guilt, of unreality,
of cold and fear; then she was eager for the next day to come. But
at once she realized that such a wish was useless because the death
of her father was the only thing which had happened in the world, and
would continue to happen endlessly. She picked up the letter and
went to her room. She concealed it furtively in a drawer, as
if
in
some way she already knew the events which were to follow. Perhaps
she had already begun to visualize them; what was to be had already
begun.
In the growing darkness, Emma wept till the end of that day
over the suicide of Manuel Maier, who in former happy days
had been Emanuel Zunz. She recalled summer vacations on a
small isolated farm, near Gualeguay, she recalled (tried to re–
call) her mother, she recalled the little ' house at Lanus which had
been sold at auction, she recalled the yellow rhombs on a window,
she recalled the prison car, the humiliation, she recalled the anony–
mous letters in open envelopes about "the cashier's embezzlement";
she recalled (but this she had never forgotten) that on the last night
