A Borges blaster boiled down in two brief paragraphs. A burning question deserving reflection: To what extent could 'The Traitor' be considered what Carl Jung termed a primal image or archetype? Recognizing our capacity to metaphorically destroy a past phase of our life frequently centered around one individual when we move on (go off to college, make a career switch, change cities, change partners, decide to retire early), could we be judged, at least on some level, a traitor? Is such a judgement too harsh?
THE PLOT
To make his horror perfect, Caesar, hemmed about at the foot of a statue by his friends' impatient knives, discovers among the faces and the blades the face of Marcus Junius Brutus, his ward, perhaps his very son—and so Caesar stops defending himself, and cries out Et tu, Brute? Shakespeare and Quevedo record that pathetic cry.
Fate is partial to repetitions, variations, symmetries. Nineteen centuries later, in the southern part of the province of Buenos Aires, a gauchois set upon by other gauchos, and as he falls he recognizes a godson of his, and says to him in gentle remonstrance and slow surprise (these words must be heard, not read): Pero, ¡che! Heches, but he does not know that he has died so that a scene can be played out again.
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