Volume 40, Number 10 · May 27, 1993
Looking for the Center
By Ian Buruma
In a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, a medical student leaves Buenos Aires for the pampas. There he stays with a family of peasants. The peasants are ignorant people, with no knowledge of their own history. Instead of conversation, which is difficult, the man from the city reads them the Gospel according to Saint Mark. He is not a religious man—though he habitually says his prayers, the way his mother taught him as a child—but there happens to be a Bible at hand, left behind by the Scottish pioneers, from whom the peasants, unknown to themselves, are partly descended. The Gospel, to the young man from the capital, is but a story. It keeps him amused. But it appears to cast a spell on his hosts.
Feature, 3104 words
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