”And so, without knowing it, I imitated the ancient ascetics and eventually came round to an act that others had once made sublime and which in my case turned out to be a miserably sad comedy: self-flagellation. I recall, not without shame, the first time I stood before the ironic mirror in my room and coolly stripped down; still cool, I gave myself fifteen or twenty lashes to the buttocks with an old belt, a gift from Raimunda, its steel buckle engraved with my initials. The still silence of midnight, the ascetic cold of my room, the indignant astonishment of my body groaning under the lashes, and the satisfaction of my triumphant soul all produced in me a certain intoxication that faded into tranquil slumber. The acts of flagellation continued the following nights. But it wasn’t long before I noticed that, far from leading me to great revelations, those belt-blows were degenerating into a glacial mechanism, and that my intoxication was limited to a certain prideful complacency. Later, I noticed in alarm I was no longer alone in my chamber of self-torment; invisible eyes were following every one of my gestures, malevolent voices were whispering here and there, abominable laughter erupted and subsided in the corners. At last I realized how dangerous and absurd my game was, when not conducted under the tearful gaze of the angels. Meanwhile, news of my penitence had leaked into the rooming house I lived in then — it was run by a miserable harpy ironically named Doña Consuelo.178 Apparently, through the thin walls, my neighbours’ ears had picked up the swish-swash of nocturnal whippings and caught snippets of the monologues I unconsciously muttered to spur myself on. Alarming rumours were circulating, glances and knowing gestures were exchanged, until finally the painful truth came out: “Don Ecuménico has gone bonkers.” Thanks to my remaining shred of prudence, I renounced the belt-lashings and recovered my sanity. It didn’t require any big effort. Once again I let myself drift on the dreary river of happenstance. But my struggle with the Divinity wasn’t over, merely postponed: it resumed when I entered the sinister House of Books and met the Librarian Who Peered Out from Hazy Distances.
Don Ecuménico, that incredible bug, paused theatrically. He’d cackled these last words in a tone that rang pitifully false, redolent of who knows what rancid literatures; and yet his words resonated with poetry and humour as well. Then he continued:
— It was some demon that led me by the hand to the House of Books, no doubt about it. A venerable old Buenos Aires mansion with an oil-painted facade and barred windows, it looked the most innocent place in the world. As the Librarian Who Peered Out from Hazy Distances later told me, the philanthropic founder of that species of institute had gathered there tome upon tome, in the grip of a strange compulsion — perhaps the passion of a genius or a miser who mindlessly amasses his treasure; or perhaps simply the collectionist mania of the empty man who mechanically fills the hours of his day. The bust of the Founder, moreover, graced the hall of the library; and I can assure you neither his marble features nor his hollow eyes nor his clothing, which the sculptor had respected right down to the tie pin, allowed me to discern whether the man had been an intellectual or an idiot.
”The first reading room was devoted to children, and was usually populated by a legion of restless brats fidgeting among their childish papers under the bovine gaze of a woman security guard whose neckless head appeared to be screwed directly into a torso exuberant in its haunches and udders. The second room was spacious, with ceiling-high stacks, comfortable reading tables, and ancient woodcuts on the walls; there I met the Librarian Who Peered Out from Hazy Distances; and there, in a clear well-lit space, I first tested my mettle as a reader, not suspecting the future disaster in store for me as a result of this innocent exercise. Let me clarify that Room Number Two specialized in literary works — novels, plays, and poetry lined its shelves. And I began to devour everything, my soul wading in up to its knees in those fictitious worlds. But, gentlemen, I had previously renounced the deceitful parade of images, passions, and sentiments that constitute a human existence — and what did literature do, if not multiply those images, stylize the passions, and fictionally prolong the colourful lie of worldly things? Yes, yes! What my being longed for was to live within a hermetic cube, amid figures and solids invented by geometry, and to surrender myself to abstract ideas, where not even the ghost of a rose might intrude! I had a fight pending with the Eternal, and I could only fight it on enemy territory, which is to say, on the wide, glacial, silent plains of the Abstract. That was when, without intending to, I began to look at the little padded door.
”It was a neatly quilted little door; an insignificant little door off in one corner of the second room; an almost invisible little door, like the ones concealed in catacombs, pyramids, and secret alchemical fortresses. It was quite plausible that behind the little door lay only a poky little storage room filled with brooms, feather dusters, and the like. But if that was the case, why the severe padding on the little door? For an entire week I obsessed over this mystery. Finally, I resolved to sound out the Librarian Who Peered Out from Hazy Distances. The Librarian was a man of indeterminate age with no discernible tendencies, a strictly neutral man about whom nothing could be affirmed or denied. He was enveloped in the deep but calming silence of plants; he expressed no emotion, ever. His cold, moist eyes seemed to slide over things, alas, smoothly, without penetrating them, the way a stream slips over pebbles. Was he dull-witted, or was some secret concealed within the reserve of that obscure man? When I gently broached the subject of the little door, the Librarian, as I recall, remained stubbornly mute. But hadn’t two strange glints flashed in his eyes? Be that as it may, he turned on his heels without a word and returned to his metal filing cabinets. The next day I again asked about the door, and again the man listened to me with vegetable indifference. But this time something began to slacken inside him, something like a strict resolve that has not quite decided to relax. At last, as distant as ever, he proffered these four words: What do you seek? He uttered them with a sort of tired, rusty voice, as though for all eternity he’d had no other mission than to ask of men: What do you seek? Then, in a fit of trustingness, I told him all. And the Librarian Who Peered Out from Hazy Distances listened for a long while, as coldly as a pair of scales that receives and registers weights. He didn’t encourage me to tell my tale; neither did he approve or disapprove of its terms. When I finished, he made no comment at all, turned his back on me, and went back to his olive-green filing cabinets. But the following day, that fateful man, that inscrutable man, that absurd man opened the little padded door for me; and he did so as mechanically as a guard, without breaking his silence, not a single line of his face stirring.