/ARTS WEEKLY/ BOOKS-ARGENTINA: Señor Borges and the Maid

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 11 2004 (IPS) - The great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges may well have laughed to learn that a woman who never read his work has published a critically acclaimed book about his life. "El señor Borges" is the testimony of the housekeeper who looked after him for more than 35 years.

Epifanía Uveda de Robledo, who Borges nicknamed Fanny, brings together behind-the-scenes commentaries by this literary figure, who died in 1986. It is a collection of what he said after the cameras and recorders were turned off and the journalists had left.

It also covers Borges’ dreams, his fears, his relationship with his mother, his frustrated marriage and his disappointment at not receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature despite being short-listed for the honour many years running.

But the reader who thinks scandalous revelations about the renowned author of "Ficciones" are to be found in these pages is greatly mistaken.

"El señor Borges" has its intimate side, but it is done in a respectful way and underscores the personality of a man who was ethical, austere, generous, of simple customs and surprised by his own fame.

The book harkens back to "Monsieur Proust", written in 1972 by Céleste Albaret. The woman who took care of Marcel Proust and his home was, like Fanny was to Borges, a privileged witness of the writer’s private life, and her side of the story is an important contribution to literary history.

"El señor Borges" was distilled from more than 10 years of conversations between Fanny and the noted Argentine biographer of Borges, Alejandro Vaccaro. It is based on what the housekeeper said, but is backed by documents and other sources.

"Fanny is now 82 years old. She never read Borges, or any other author. She barely reads and writes, but is very content with this book," Vaccaro told IPS. "I asked her to sign a copy for me, and she did so but had great difficulty writing," said the author of "Georgie 1898-1930. A Life of Jorge Luis Borges".

One of Vaccaro’s aims in his work is to encourage more followers of the man who also wrote "El Aleph", but he recognises that Borges, although famous, is not widely read, even in Argentina.

"He was erudite, his writing was complex, and a lazy reader would fail in the attempt," he says.

In an interview cited in the book, Borges says that the best part of his life as a writer was that people would buy his books but not read them. "Why do they buy them? About that I have no doubt: to give them as gifts… After all these years I will get used to being a gift," he joked.

Fanny began working for the Borges family in the mid-1950s. She took care of the writer’s mother, Leonor Acevedo, and as Borges’ vision began to fail, she became his eyes, and his guide of sorts. The arrival of the controversial María Kodama, Borges’ second wife, relegated Fanny to the background, and later, to the streets.

The housekeeper remembers Borges’ mother with affection but also says she was an "authoritarian" woman who arranged the 1967 marriage of her son to Elsa Astete, when the author was 68. Borges refused to spend the wedding night with Astete in the Dorá Hotel as his mother had planned.

Acevedo had opinions about the women who were attracted to her son, and she predicted correctly that Kodama would "end up with everything." It is said that his second wife pressed Borges to change his last will and testament and to travel to Switzerland despite being ill. That is where he died and was buried.

Fanny conveys that Borges always wanted a Nobel, although in public he expressed disdain for the prize. "He would grow very sad" every year when he did not win it, she says. In any case, he was very happy to receive in 1979 the Miguel de Cervantes Literature Award, granted by Spain, and considered the highest honour in Spanish letters.

"He was very pleased and said that with the prize money he would buy the Espasa Calpe Encyclopaedia. He said so in a radio interview, and the next day someone sent it as a gift. Later he told me, ‘Now I know, Fanny, what I have to do each time I need or want something’," the housekeeper said.

She also recounts Borges’ close relationship with his sister Norah, the family dinners, his ties to his nieces and nephews and his relationships of love and friendship with other Argentine and foreign artists and journalists who visited his home and accompanied him in his outings.

There was no television, record player or radio in the Borges household – just books.

"Sometimes Mr. Borges asked me to make up a package with some books and he would go to La Ciudad bookshop, where at the time they were just finishing building the shelves, and he would leave the books in any empty spot. That’s what he did with books he didn’t like."

But sometimes this strange method of book disposal failed. The writer once purposely left books under a table in a bar, and later the waiter, who knew Borges, delivered them back to the writer’s apartment. Meanwhile, with newspapers, the answer was simple: "He threw them off the balcony." He didn’t like their smell, recalls Fanny.

Borges’ "faithful servant", as he himself referred to her at one point, says the author’s death was a heavy blow. "It was very said. He would pass the day saying, ‘mother, mother’." He continued the habit of standing at his mother’s bedroom door each night and report what he had done that day.

Blind almost since Fanny had known him, Borges would ask her after receiving visitors what the people looked like. And she would describe them.

Once, he was paid a visit by Cesar Luis Menotti, the coach of Argentina’s national football team that won the 1978 World Cup, but was not aware of that fact until after Menotti had left. Borges later reproached Fanny for failing to inform him of his visitor’s status.

One of the most moving passages in the book is Fanny’s recollection that Borges did not want to leave Argentina when he was about to travel to Geneva, where he died just months later. "I don’t want to go, Fanny. I don’t want to leave here, because if I go, I’m going to die" far from home, he said in his tearful farewell.

Borges married Kodama, changed his will – which had left half of his estate to Fanny – to leave his wealth to his wife instead. The housekeeper was fired by Kodama, who later sued Fanny for taking some small items from the kitchen and a photo of her former employer.

Fanny currently lives in Buenos Aires, getting by with the charity of Borges’ friends, who continue to visit her. Now she will also be receiving royalties from sales of the book – a turn of events that would likely have pleased Borges.