Amsterdam, Holland. Early 2001.

A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn’t see each other’s faces. With an off-handedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernández’ voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio’s pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it’s been misrepresented to them as being old…I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so that we might have our discussion without all that racket.

Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment your reconsidered.

A: (now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don’t remember whether we committed suicide that night or not.

The complete text of ‘A Dialog about a Dialog’ from The Maker by Jorge Luis Borges. Published in Collected Fictions by Viking, New York, 1998.