A lovely Borges anecdote

Just stumbled on the following, rather wondeful, story about my favourite author, Jorge Luis Borges here. I’m sure he would smile at this:

A few years ago, I was in Buenos Aires for a meeting, and took advantage of a dull day to walk over to the old National Library and see where Borges had worked.When I got in, I asked the guard at the desk about Borges. He offered to get somebody who spoke English to help me; and in a few minutes, a very nice lady showed up and escorted me to the very office on the second floor where Borges had worked. “You can even go in, and sit in his chair,” she said.

I opened the door, and the man in the chair said, “What are you doing here, Andy?” It was Helmut Abt, the editor of the Astrophysical Journal. Of course, he had made exactly the same pilgrimage as I, and had arrived a few minutes earlier.

The library itself is a huge octagonal room three stories high; obviously the model for one cell of the Infinite Library in one of his stories. Definitely worth seeing if you get to B.A.

They said he used to go along the shelves of the library and just feel the backs of the books, after he was blind.