"And the queen gave birth to a son who was called Asterion"
Apollodorus, Library III, 1
Apollodorus, Library III, 1
I know you accuse me of arrogance, and perhaps misanthropy, or madness. These charges (which will punish in due time) are ridiculous.
It is true that I leave the house, but it is also true that the doors (whose number is infinite) * remain open day and night to men and animals. Who wants to enter. You will not find luxury here womanly ne 'the splendid pomp of palaces, but the quiet and solitude.
It will find a home as there is none other on earth. (Mind the claim that in Egypt there is one like that.)
Even my detractors admit that the house is not only a mobile. Another lie is ridiculous that I, Asterion, am a prisoner. I'll have to repeat that there is a locked door, and added that there is only one lock? Moreover, once the sun set through the streets, and if the first night I went, it was for fear that infuses the faces of the crowd, faces faded and flat, like an open hand. The sun had set, but the heartfelt cry of a child and the rude I said prayers for the flock had been recognized. The people prayed, fled, prostrated themselves, and some climbed on stylobate of the temple of the Axes, others gathered stones. Someone, I believe, sought refuge in the sea. Not for nothing that my mother was a queen, I can not mingle with the crowd, even if my modest wants.
The truth is that they are unique. I do not care what a man can be transmitted to other men as the philosopher, I think that nothing can be communicated through the art of writing. The annoying and trivial minutiae do not have shelter in my mind that it is liable only to the great, I could never remember the difference between one letter and another. Generous impatience has not permitted me to learn to read. Sometimes I regret, because the nights and days are long.
Of course, I do not miss distractions. As the ram rushes, I run the corridors of stone to fall to the ground in the grip of vertigo. I crouch in the shade of a tank at the corner of a hallway and play hide and seek. There are terraces which I let myself fall until I am bloody. At any moment I can pretend to be asleep, eyes closed and breathing heavily (sometimes actually fall asleep, and sometimes when I open my eyes, the color of the day has changed). But of all the games, I prefer that of another Asterion. I guess he comes to visit me and that I show him the house. With big bows, I tell him: "Now we go back to the first corner," or "now blossomed into another yard," or, "I told you I would have liked the water channel," or "Now you I see who has a tank filled with sand, "or" You'll see how it splits the cellar. " Sometimes I'm wrong, and we both laughed.
But I only imagined games, I have also meditated on the house. All parts of the house are repeated, wherever it is held elsewhere. There are a tank, a courtyard, a fountain, a barn, the stables are endless, fountains, courtyards, cisterns. The house is big as the world. However, by dint of a tanker along the courtyards and dusty corridors of gray stone, I reached the road and saw the temple of the Axes and the sea. Not included until a night vision revealed to me that even the seas and temples are endless. Everything there many times, infinite Sometimes, only two things in the world seem to exist only once: above, the intricate sun; below, Asterion. Perhaps I have created the stars and the sun and this enormous house, but I can not remember.
Every nine years nine men entered the house, because I set them free from all evil. I hear their footsteps or their voice at the bottom of the stone galleries and I run joyfully to find them. The ceremony lasts a few minutes. They fall one after another, without that I will stain your hands with blood. Where did remain, and their bodies help distinguish one gallery from others. I do not know who they are, but I know that one of them prophesied, at the point to die, who would one day come my redeemer. Since then the loneliness I do not regret, because I know that my redeemer lives and one day rise from the dust. If my ear could hear all the noises of the world, I hear his footsteps. Take me to a place with fewer galleries and fewer doors What will my redeemer? Maybe it is a bull with a human face? Or will it be like me?
The morning sun shone on the bronze sword. There remained no trace of blood.
"Would you believe it, Ariadne?" said Theseus. "The Minotaur he has not nearly defended."
* The original says fourteen, but there are reasons to infer that, in the mouth of
Asterion, the numeral adjective is endless. [N. d. A.]
(Jorge Louis Borges, The House of Asterion in The Aleph, Adelphi)
