I arrived in London in early January of 1902.1 recall the caress of the snow, which I had never seen before, and which I must say I liked. Happily, I had not had to travel with Eguren. I stayed at a modest inn behind the British Museum, to whose library I would repair morning and afternoon, in search of a language worthy of the Congress of the World. I did not neglect the universal languages; I looked into Esperanto (which Lugones' Lunario sentimental* calls "reasonable, simple, and economical") and Volapuk, which attempts to explore all the possibilities of language, declining verbs and conjugating nouns. I weighed the arguments for and against reviving Latin (for which one still finds some nostalgia, even after so many centuries). Ialso devoted some time to a study of the analytical language of John Wilkins, in which the definition of each word is contained in the letters that constitute it. It was under the high dome of the reading room that I met Beatrice.
This is the general history of the Congress of the World, not the history of Alexander Ferri—emphatically not my own—and yet the first includes the second, as it includes all others. Beatrice was tall and slender, her features pure and her hair bright red; it might have reminded me of the devious Twirl's, but it never did. She was not yet twenty. She had left one of the northern counties to come and study literature at the university. Her origins, like mine, were humble. In the Buenos Aires of that time, being of Italian extraction was a questionable social recommendation; in London I discovered that for many people it was romantic. It took us but a few afternoons to become lovers; I asked her to marry me, but Beatrice Frost, like Nora Erfjord, was a votary of the religion of Ibsen and would not join herself to any man. From her lips came the word I dared not speak. Oh nights, oh shared warm darkness, oh love that flows in shadow like a secret river, oh that moment of joy in which two are one, oh innocence and openness of delight, oh the union into which we entered, only to lose ourselves afterward in sleep, oh the first soft lights of day, and myself contemplating her.
On that harsh border with Brazil I had been prey to homesickness; not so in the red maze of London, which gave me so many things. But in spite of the pretexts I invented to put off my departure, at the end of the year I had to return; we would celebrate Christmas together. I promised her that don Alejandro would ask her to join the Congress; she replied, vaguely, that she'd like to visit the Southern Hemisphere—a cousin of hers, she said, a dentist, had settled in Tasmania. Beatrice had no wish to see the boat off; farewells, in her view, were an emphasis, a senseless celebration of misfortune, and she hated emphases.
We parted at the library where we had met the previous winter. I am a coward; to avoid the anguish of waiting for her letters, I did not give her my address.
I have noticed that return voyages are shorter than voyages out, but that particular crossing of the Atlantic, wallowing in memories and heavy seas, seemed inordinately long to me. Nothing pained me so much as thinking that Beatrice's life, parallel with my own, was continuing onward, minute by minute and night by night. I wrote a letter many pages long, and tore it up when we anchored in Montevideo. I arrived in my own country on a Thursday; Irala was at the dock to greet me. I returned to my old lodgings in Calle Chile. That day and the next we spent talking and walking; I wanted to recapture Buenos Aires. It was a relief to know that Fermín Eguren was still in Paris; the fact that I'd returned before him might somehow mitigate my long absence.
Irala was discouraged. Fermín was spending vast sums of money in Europe and more than once had disobeyed instructions to return immediately. That was all predictable enough. It was other news that I found more disturbing: despite the objections of Irala and Cruz, Twirl had invoked Pliny the Younger—who had affirmed that there was no book so bad that it didn't contain some good—to suggest that the Congress indiscriminately purchase collections of La Prensa, thirty-four hundred copies (in various '<»'
formats) of Don Quijote, Balmes' Letters, and random collections of university dissertations, short stories, bulletins, and theater programs. "All things are testaments," he had said. Nierenstein had seconded him; don Alejandro, "after three thunderous Saturdays," had agreed to the motion. Nora Erfjord had resigned her post as secretary; she was replaced by a new member, Karlinski, who was a tool of Twirl's. The enormous packages now began piling up, uncataloged and without card files, in the back rooms and wine cellar of don Alejandro's mansion. In early July, Irala had spent a week in La Caledonia. The carpenters were not working. The foreman, questioned about this, explained that don Alejandro had ordered the work halted, and the workers were feeling the time on their hands.
In London I had drafted a report (which need not concern us here); on Friday, I went to pay my respects to don Alejandro and deliver the manuscript to him. Fernández Irala went with me. It was that hour of the evening when the pampas wind begins to blow; the house was filled with breezes. Before the iron gate on Calle Alsina there stood a wagon with three horses. I recall men, bent under the weight of their loads, carrying large bundles into the rear patio; Twirl was imperiously ordering them about. There too, as though they'd had a foreboding, were Nora Erfjord and Nierenstein and Cruz and Donald Wren and one or two others. Nora put her arms around me and kissed me, and that embrace, that kiss, reminded me of others. The Negro, high-spirited and gay, kissed my hand.
In one of the bedrooms the square trap-door to the cellar was lying open; crude cement steps led down into the dimness.
Suddenly we heard footsteps. Even before I saw him, I knew it was don Alejandro arriving home. He was almost running when he came into the room.
His voice was changed. It was not the voice of the thoughtful, deliberate gentleman who presided over our Saturday meetings, nor was it the voice of the feudal seigneur who stopped a knife fight and read the word of God to his gauchos, though it did resemble this latter one. He did not look at anyone when he spoke.
"Start bringing up everything that's piled down there," he commanded. "I don't want a book left in that cellar."
The job took almost an hour. In the earthen-floored patio we made a pile of books taller than the tallest among us. We all worked, going back and forth until every book had been brought up; the only person that did not move was don Alejandro.
Then came the next order:
"Now set that mound afire."
Twirl was pallid. Nierenstein managed to murmur:
"The Congress of the World cannot do without these precious aids that I have chosen with such love."
"The Congress of the World?" said don Alejandro, laughing scornfully—and I had never heard him laugh.
There is a mysterious pleasure in destruction; the flames crackled brightly while we cowered against the walls or huddled into the bedrooms. Night, ashes, and the smell of burning lingered in the patio. I recall a few lost pages that were saved, lying white upon the packed earth. Nora Erfjord, who professed for don Alejandro that sort of love that young women sometimes harbor for old men, finally, uncomprehending, spoke:
"Don Alejandro knows what he's doing."
Irala, one of literature's faithful, essayed a phrase:
"Every few centuries the Library at Alexandria must be burned."
It was then that we were given the explanation for all this.
"It has taken me four years to grasp what I am about to tell you. The task we have undertaken is so vast that it embraces—as I now recognize— the entire world. It is not a handful of prattling men and women muddying issues in the barracks of some remote cattle ranch. The Congress of the World began the instant the world itself began, and it will go on when we are dust. There is no place it is not. The Congress is the books we have burned. It is the Caledonians who defeated the Cassars' legions. It is Job on the dunghill and Christ on the Cross. The Congress is even that worthless young man who is squandering my fortune on whores."