p. 426: Artigas: José Gervasio Artigas (1764-1850), Uruguayan, a political and military leader who opposed first the Spaniards and then the Argentines who wished to keep the Banda Oriental (the east bank of the River Plate) in fealty to one or another of those powers. When Argentina, instead of supporting the Banda Oriental's independence from Spain, asserted Spain's authority over the area (in part to keep the Brazilians/ Portuguese out), Artigas led a huge exodus of citizens out of Montevideo and "into the wilderness." Recognized as a hero in Uruguay, he might not have been so regarded by a cosmopolite such as Glencoe, especially because of his legendary (but perhaps exaggerated) bloodthirstiness and his association with "the provinces" rather than "the city."
p. 427: Wops: "Gringo" was the somewhat pejorative term used for immigrant Italians; the closest English equivalent is "wop." As with all such designations, the tone of voice with which it is spoken will determine the level of offense; it can even be affectionate if spoken appropriately.
p. 427: Calle Junin: At this time, a street lined with brothels, many of which were relatively tame and in which men might not only solicit the services of prostitutes but also have a drink, talk, and generally be "at their ease."
p. 429: Palace of Running Waters: El Palacio de Aguas Corrientes is a building in central Buenos Aires housing a pumping station and some offices for the water company; it is an extravagantly decorated edifice, its walls covered in elaborate mosaic murals—a building that one Porteño described to this translator as "hallucinatory" and "absurd." The official name of this building is the "Grand Gravitational Repository"; it is, according to Buenos Aires, Ciudad Secreta by Germinal Nogués (Buenos Aires: Editorial Ruiz Diaz, 2nd éd., pp.244-245), located on the block bounded by Avenida Córdoba and calles Riobamba, Viamonte, and Ayacucho. It is set—or at least was—on one of the highest points of the city. The building of the Palace of Running Waters was begun in 1887, and it is a gigantic jigsaw puzzle designed by the Swedish engineer A. B. Nystromer. All this architectural effort was invested in a building destined to store 72,700,000 liters of water per day, which was the amount estimated to be needed for the daily consumption of the Porteños.... The four walls of this palace ... were capable of withstanding this pressure without support except at the center of each side. Solid buttresses were also incorporated into the design; these were set at intervals between the corner towers and the central towers, both inside and outside-----Vicente Blasco Ibáñez said of this edifice: "This 'palace' is not a palace. It has arcades and grand doors and windows but it is all a fake. Inside, there are no rooms. Its four imposing façades mask the retaining walls of the reservoir inside. The builders tried to beautify it with all this superfluity, so that it would not of-fend the aesthetic of the [city's] central streets."[Trans., A. H.]
p. 430: The chiripá... the wide-legged bombacha:These are articles of the dress of the gaucho. The chiripá was a triangular worsted shawl tied about the waist with the third point pulled up between the legs and looped into the knot to form a rudimentary pant or a sort of diaper. It was worn over a pair of pantaloons (ordinarily white) that "stick out" underneath. The bombacha is a wide-legged pant that was worn gathered at the calf or ankle and tucked into the soft boots, sometimes made of the hide of a young horse, that the gaucho wore. The bombacha resembles the pant of the Zouave infantryman.
p. 430: Those mournful characters in Hernández or Rafael Obligado: José Hernández (1834-1886), author of Martín Fierro, a long semi-epic poem celebrating the gaucho and his life; Rafael Obligado (1851-1920), a litterateur who hosted a literary salon and founded the Academia Argentina. Obligado was the author of a very well-known poem dealing with the life of a payador, or traveling singer, named Santos Vega. While the characters in these poems were portrayed not without defects, their lives and they themselves were to a degree romanticized; as ways of life perse, the gaucho and the payador were part of the mythology of Argentina. Borges examines these ways of life (and the literature that chronicled them) in many of his essays.
p. 430: Calle Jujuy near the Plaza del Once: At its northern end Calle Jujuy runs directly into the Plaza del Once; on the other (north) side of the Plaza, it has become Puerreydon. Thus, in a sense, it begins at Rivadavia, where Borges (and apparently all older Porteños) said "the Southside began." The "Plaza del Once" (pronounced ohn-say, not wunce) is generally called "Plaza Once" in Buenos Aires, but the homonymy of the English and Spanish words make it advisable, the translator thinks, to slightly modify the name in order to alert the English reader to the Spanish ("eleven"), rather than English ("onetime" or "past"), sense of the word. Plaza Once is one of Buenos Aires' oldest squares, "associated in Borges's memory with horse-drawn carts" (Fishburn and Hughes), though later simply a modern square.
p. 431: Lugones' Lunario sentimentaclass="underline" Leopoldo Lugones (1874-1938) was one of Argentina's most famous and influential (and most talented) poets; the Lunario sentimental is a 1909 book of his poetry.
There Are More Things
p. 437: Turdera: A town south of Buenos Aires, rustic and apparently at this time somewhat uninviting (see the story "The Interloper," p. 348, set there). p. 438: Glew: A town near Turdera.
The Night of the Gifts
p. 446:Café Águila, on Calle Florida near the intersection of Piedad: Here two things need pointing out: First the Café Águila , whose name in Spanish is theConfiteríadelÁguila, actually existed. The confitería was the equivalent of a coffeehouse or tearoom, a place for conversation and taking one's time over coffee or tea and pastry (or light food) in the late afternoon and early evening. (One might think of Paris.) The Águila was a center for intellectuals and artists, as this sketch clearly suggests. Second is the location:Calle Florida (pronounced Flor-ee-da) was, and remains, at least near the Plazade Mayo, one of the most exclusive streets in downtown Buenos Aires; this intersection is just one block from that square. Piedad's name was changed to Bartolomé Mitre in 1906; therefore, this story must take place before that date. If this"Borges,"like Borges himself, was born in 1899, he must have been just a young boy overhearing this conversation, and the "we," in that case, must be something of a stretch!
p. 449: Juan Moreira: Agaucho turned outlaw (1819-1874) who was famous dur-ing his lifetime and legendary after death. Like Jesse James and Billy the Kid in the United States, he was seen as a kind of folk hero, handy with weapons (in Moreira's case a knife), and hunted down and killed (as this story shows) by a corrupt police. That does not mean he was not to be feared by all when he was "on a tear," as this story also shows.