The lesoon of the master

In 1969, on the dot of four every afternoon, five days a week, I picked Borges up to Belgrano flat and, his arm firmly gripping mine, we walked the ten slow blocks cast to the National Library, in Mexico Street, where our early evening´s work awaited us... Deep down, he was proud of the library, of the position, and grateful fot it too. Almost in the manner of a credulous child, he would recite for visitors that the library contained 800,000 volumes. Or later, 900,000. It was one of the few facts were the antithesis of the essence of truth, and he found them meaningless.