Jorge Luis Borges
THE ZAHIR
In Buenos Aires the Zahir is an ordinary coin worth twenty
centavos. The letters N T and the number 2 are scratched as if with
a razor-blade or pen-knife; 1929 is the date on the obverse. (In
Guzerat, towards the end of the eighteenth century, the Zahir was a
tiger; in Java, a blind man from the Mosque of Surakarta whom the
Faithful pelted with stones; in Persia, an astrolabe which Nadir Shah
caused to be sunk to the bottom of the sea; in the Mahdi's prisons,
along about 1892, it was a little compass which Rudolf Carl von
Slatin touched, tucked into the fold of a turban; in the Mosque of
C6rdoba, according to Zotenberg, it was a vein in the marble of one
of the twelve-hundred pillars; in the Tetuan ghetto, it was the bottom
of a well.) Today is the thirteenth of November; the Zahir came into
my possession at dawn on June seventh. I am no longer the "I" of
that episode; but it is still possible for me to remember what hap–
pened, perhaps even to tell it. I am still, however incompletely, Borges.
Clementina Villar died on the sixth of June. About 1930 you saw
pictures of her in all the big society magazines: perhaps it was this
ubiquity that contributed to the legend that she was extremely pretty,
although not every portrait bore out this hypothesis unconditionally.
At any rate, Clementina Villar was interested less in beauty than in
perfection. The Hebrews and the Chinese codified every conceivable
human eventuality: for instance, it is written in the Mishnah that a
tailor is not to go out into the street carrying a needle once the Sab–
bath twilight has set in, and we read in the Book of Rites that a guest
should assume a grave air when offered the first cup, and a respect–
fully contented air upon receiving the second. Something of this sort,
though in much greater detail, was to be discerned in the uncom-
