BORGES
119
as a politician he should have said: "We are doing our best to destroy
England, maybe we'll get hurt in the process, but it's a risk we have
to run," - even if he thought it wasn't that way. So when the profes–
sor said to me "What have you to say about these ruins?" - well,
my German is not too good, but I had to make my answer very curt,
so I said, "I've seen London." And then of course he dried up. He
changed the subject because he had wanted me to pity him.
INTERVIEWER:
He wanted a quote from Borges.
BORGES:
Well, I gave
him
a quotation, no?
INTERVIEWER:
But not the one he wanted.
BORGES:
Not the one he wanted. Then I said (to myself) what a pity
that I have English blood, because it would have been better if I
had been a straight South American. But, after all, I don't think he
knew it, no?
INTERVIEWER:
He should have read "The Warrior And The Captive"
and then he would have found out.
BORGES:
Yes, he would have found out, - yes.
INTERVIEWER:
That's a good story, don't you think? It's very concise.
BORGES:
Yes.
INTERVIEWER:
You're able to work in-
BORGES:
No! I worked in nothing; my grandmother told me the whole
thing.
[Laughter]
Yes, because she was in the frontier and this hap–
pened way back in the 1800's.
INTERVIEWER:
But you linked it with something that happened in
history.
BORGES:
With something told by Croce, yes.
INTERVIEWER:
Yes, and that's what makes it effective.
BORGES:
Yes. I thought that the two stories, the two characters, might
be essentially the same. Yes ... a barbarian being wooed to Rome,
to civilization, and then an English girl turning to witchcraft, to
barbarians, to living in the Pampas. In fact it's the same story as
"The Theologians," now as I come to think of
it.
In "The Theologians"
you have two enemies and one of them sends the other to the
stake. And then they find out that somehow they're the same man.
But I think "The Warrior And The Captive" is a better story, no?
INTERVIEWER:
I wouldn't say so, no.
BORGES :
No? Why?
INTERVIEWER:
There's something almost tragic, on a tragic level about
"The Theologians." It's a very moving story.
BORGES :
Yes, "The Theologians" is more of a tale; the other is merely
the quotation or the teIIing of two parables.
INTERVIEWER:
I mean the theologians are pathetic and yet there's some
