[ ]¹Corroborating this point is Agheana's Reasoned Thematic Dictionary of the Prose of Jorge Luis Borges, in which there is no entry for sex or sexuality and the entry on "Women" covers less than one page. Agheana identifies only eleven stories in which women are "important for the organicity of the story" ("La viuda Ching, pirata," "Historia del guerrero y de la cautiva," "Emma Zunz," "Delia Elena San Marco," "La intrusa," "Juan Muraña," "La señora mayor," "El duelo," "El evangelio según Marcos," "La noche de los dones," and "Los espejos vedados." To this group I would add "Hombre de la esquina rosada," "El congreso," and "Ulrica." Agheana notes the first two as having women "who are tangential" to the story, while "Ulrica" is not included on either list. It is unclear why Agheana leaves "Ulrica" off the list of but notes that "Ulrica [the character] is a feminist" (381).
[2]The issue of character in Borgesian fiction is extremely complex. I am inclined to agree, in part, with Sylvia Molloy's view that "Borges fragments character to the point of anonymity, reducing it to a letter, a sign, one more element in the text. Characters are rarely persons, they are narrative functions" (40; original emphasis). Although Borges' characters do function as structural elements in the narration, they also embody human characteristics and qualities. I cannot concur, therefore, with those critics who consider Borges' characters as nothing more than intellectual abstractions. The problem with this view is that it tends to neutralize the very important differences between the way Borges characterizes males and females. While the characters in Borges' stories may or may not have fully rounded human personalities, they always have gender. And in the Borgesian universe, gender distinctions are used to place males in a privileged and central position while females are subservient to male prerogatives and function as instruments in male development. Demonstrative of the inherent problem with the view of Borges' characters as intellectual abstractions is Psiche Hughes' 1979 study in which she concludes that all characters in Borges' works are simply "prototypes of the human species, representing facets of the human mind" (36), and finds, as a consequence, that characters have male or female gender for purely symbolic purposes. Female characters, for example, represent "fate" or "destiny" and the presence of such female characters "marks the moment of revelation" (41)--for male characters, not for themselves. By relying on the false premise that Borgesian characters are "facets of the human mind," Hughes does not examine the assumptions underlying the link she is forging between a character's feminine gender and her role as catalyst for the life-altering experiences of males. In order to show that gender is only symbolic and to apply this concept to males as well as females, Hughes must deny the specificity of masculine gender in Borges' male characters. She states, for example, that even those characters who seem to be "ostentatiously male, because they are gauchos or cuchilleros, [...] are not men in the totality of their masculinity. For example, none of them refers to a wife, to a home or to children..." (36). In an attempt to negate gender, Hughes combines a patriarchal dismissal of female characters with a heterosexist rejection of male characters. E. D. Carter agrees with Hughes when he notes that "[a]s is often the case with his male characters, Borges' women are at times little more than abstractions, vehicles for satire or for the symbolic representation of his philosophical views; at other times, they are presented as sex objects, to be used and discarded by men, because they ultimately stand in the way of what Borges has called `The one redeeming Argentine passion': friendship" (13). Carter concludes that women and sex are merely a means to an end and that Borges uses them in abstract ways to demonstrate that he has risen above the material level of desire to an intellectual one. The fact remains that it is always a male who is in the position of power. Carter fails to recognize that Borges' characters, as intellectualized as they may be, are still coded with gender that privileges males over females.

[3]Altamiranda, for example, notes that Borges' "female characters are despised and denigrated figures, objects or goods that men can use, associated with danger or destruction" (77). Magnarelli, too, finds that "unlike much of Latin-American fiction, Borges' prose does not portray the woman in terms of fecundity, nature, nor birth. There are no maternal figures in his stories... Instead, rather than a life-giving principle, women are depicted in Borges in relation to death, violence, and often sacrifice" (142).

[4]It must be noted that a male character's sexual "object choice" of a female does not determine, beyond doubt, that the male character is, by definition, exclusively and permanently heterosexual. The issue of object choice as a determinant of sexual orientation is a concept that has never been applicable to Hispanic culture.

[5]Here I am using Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's formulation of the "potential unbrokenness of a continuum between homosocial and homosexual" (1) as a means to describe the range of responses between men in Borges' works. On one side of the scale are the non-sexual behaviors of male-bonding activities, while on the other are the eroticized linkages between men involving sexual contact.

[6]Sedgwick keenly observes that there are "important correspondences and similarities between the most sanctioned forms of male-homosocial bonding, and the most reprobated expressions of male homosexual sociality. To put it in twentieth-century terms, the fact that what goes on at football games, in fraternities, at the Bohemian Grove, and at climactic moments in war novels can look, with only a slight shift of optic, quite startlingly `homosexual,' is not most importantly an expression of the psychic origin of these institutions in a repressed or sublimated homosexual genitality. Instead, it is the coming to visibility of the normally implicit terms of a coercive double bind. [...] For a man to be a man's man is separated only by an invisible, carefully blurred, always-already-crossed line from being `interested in men'" (89).

[7]It is instructive to note that Lima's next sentence reads, "Neither bestiality nor forms of homosexuality are visible in his published works to date; indeed, he has chosen to avoid altogether what society currently terms deviate sexual behavior, regardless of caste" (417). I find it deplorable and irresponsible that the critic dares to couple bestiality with homosexuality under the general rubric of "deviate sexual behavior," as if the two were equivalent or even linked in any way.

[8]Reference to the stories will be noted in the text by the abbreviated title of the volume in which they appear (Aleph for "El muerto" and Brodie for "La intrusa") followed by the page number.

[9]I have developed this argument more fully in my study, "The Mark of the Phallus: Homoerotic Desire in Borges' `La forma de la espada'."

[10]It has been noted that violence leading to death is an all too common behavior between men in Borges' stories. The view that this violence may be the result of (homo)erotic desire is hinted at in Ariel Dorfman's exceptional 1968 essay: in exploring why violent death is linked to the revelation that gives meaning to human existence, Dorfman concludes that "[t]he desire for death is not grounded in the needs of metaphysical revelation in Borges: If the character desires that moment it is because in it he finds his own tearing apart, his other, the one who must kill him or make him die, the double who is both feared and loved, that being who is found deep inside each one of us, ready to destroy or be destroyed" (34). Balderston makes the connection explicit: "homoeroticism is coded in violent contact between men, particularly in the important leitmotiv of the knife fight" (39).

[11]Rivero notes, too, that the woman is not valued for her womanliness: "No tiene nombre ni voz. El sustantivo mujer la nombra y los epítetos la describen, destacando de su fría displicencia un solo rasgo vital y agresivo: el color fulgurante del cabello... [...] Esa mujer, al igual que el apero y el colorado, es uno de los símbolos del poder del jefe, cuyas posesiones son deseadas por Otálora, no por lo que son en sí sino por lo que representan como afirmación de una superioridad" (175-76).

[12]Although most criticism on "El muerto" rightly emphasizes the significance of the horse and woman, critics have completely passed over another highly valued and meaningful possession that Otálora also desires: Bandeira's bodyguard, Suárez. Otálora realizes that in order to make his plan of coinciding with Bandeira work, he must win the friendship of Suárez and shortly before he takes possession of the horse, saddle and mistress, the narrator states that Otálora "[l]ogra, en jornadas de peligro común, la amistad de Suárez. Le confía su plan; Suárez le promete su ayuda" (Aleph 48). Suárez, by giving his support, in Otálora's mind, becomes his possession in the sense that Suárez has switched his allegiance and loyalty from Bandeira to Otálora. Perhaps because heteropatriarchal tradition makes it difficult for critics to view one male as a possession of another male, or perhaps because the implications for such a vision are too "unsavory," Otálora's desire to win Suárez has been overlooked.

[13]Borges' own characterization of male-male sex as an "inimaginable contacto" is carefully and insightfully examined by Balderston to show that through an exacting and systematic suppression of any reference to homosexuality, Borges betrays his own fascination for the topic and proves that homosexual contact was perhaps too powerfully imaginable to the author.

[14]Borges' views on homosexuality, as Canto, Balderston and Altamiranda show, were conflicted and intense. Canto, for example, notes that "Borges, que veía con diversión y hasta simpatía la homosexualidad feminina, nunca hacía alusión a la masculina, ni siquiera para denigrarla. La ignoraba en sus amigos o la ponía a un lado cuando tropezaba con ella en la literatura. (En Melville, por ejemplo, negándose a ver el siniestro fondo homosexual de Billy Budd)." She goes on to explain that Borges' attitudes about male homosexual intercourse are clearly indicated by his use of the word "sodomy" because the "designación bíblica--sodomía--... implicaba la desaprobación divina, con su relente medieval de azufre y hogueras" (170-71).

[15]It is a commonly held heteropatriarchal belief, especially in Hispanic societies, that men who are penetrated by other men must be feminine, and therefore weak and inferior. Brandes, for example, has analyzed this concept in southern Spain and notes that the most vulnerable and, therefore, feminine area on a man is his anus because it can be penetrated by another man: "[t]he anus can be used in homosexual encounters, in which case the passive partner is perceived as playing the feminine role, and indeed of being converted symbolically into a woman" (232-233). This attitude, so prevalent in Hispanic societies, clearly demonstrates the intimate link between misogyny and homophobia.

[16]I believe that Magnarelli is mistaken when she asserts that "Otálora is killed in El muerto along with the woman who represents the power he tried to usurp. It is not irrelevant that the other two symbols of that power--the horse and the tiger skin--are not destroyed. It is only the woman who must die" (142). First of all, there is no direct textual evidence that the mistress is killed along with Otálora: the narrator simply states that "Suárez, casi con desdén, hace fuego" (Aleph 50). If the woman represents Bandeira's power as Magnarelli claims, it is unlikely that she would be an object of Bandeira's revenge against Otálora. Furthermore, once Suárez informs Bandeira of Otálora's plan to replace him, it is Bandeira who permits his mistress to have sex with Otálora, and therefore, no revenge against her would be necessary.

[17]In her intriguing book, Borges a contraluz (1989), Canto explains her ideas on Borges' relationship with women and sex based on her first-hand experience as the object of Borges' obsessional desire. On sex, she notes that "[l]a actitud de Borges hacia el sexo era de terror pánico, como si temiera la revelación que en él podía hallar. Sin embargo, toda su vida fue una lucha por alcanzar esa revelación" (17). Canto confirms, in part, the infamous rumor--repeated in Rodríguez Monegal's 1978 biography--that had circulated for years concerning Borges' psychoanalytic treatment in the 1940s for impotence. Canto states that Borges' psychiatrist, a Dr. Cohen-Miller, told her that while Borges was not physically impotent, he was the "víctima de una exagerada sensibilidad, un temor al sexo y un sentimiento de culpa" and that all of this was due to a scarring sexual trauma that Borges had suffered in Geneva when he was about nineteen years old. At that age, according to tradition, no Argentine boy should still have been a virgin and to remedy the situation, Borges' father decided to take care of the problem by setting up an encounter with a prostitute for his son. Canto explains that "[t]al vez el fantasma de la homosexualidad cruzó por su mente, llenándolo de pánico, impidiéndole comprender que lo que estaba planeando en ese momento estaba más cerca de la homo que de la heterosexualidad. Era un gesto para los hombres, una demostración ante ellos de que uno pertenecía al clan de los varones. No era un gesto para acercarse a las mujeres, sino un acatamiento del mundo masculino y sus exigencias" (114-15). According to Canto, the trauma was related to the belief that the young Jorge Luis Borges would be "sharing" a prostitute who had already had sex with his own father (116). As a result of the incestuous implications of this arrangement, Borges was unable to perform sexually and was, in the process, permanently scarred because of his failure "as a man." The grotesque rite which, as Canto suggests, has little to do with heterosexual initiation and more to do with discovering whether or not a boy is a homosexual, combined with Borges' inability to function sexually with the prostitute in order to "prove his manhood," may have cast lingering doubts in Borges' own mind regarding his own sexual orientation.

[18]Borges' reaction to Carlos Christensen's 1981 film version of the story is fascinating. According to Silvestri, "Borges se indignó porque la película presentaba a los hermanos Nilsen como homosexuales y casi inmediatamente dictó un artículo que tituló La censura donde `a pesar de pronunciarse en contra de esa arbitrariedad tan usual de los gobiernos totalitarios, la aprobaba en el caso específico de la película basada en su cuento'." Silvestri goes on to state that "[l]a indignación de Borges--que siempre ha acogido las interpretaciones de su obra con irónica distanciación--prueba que la película ha dado en el blanco con el núcleo del inconsciente censurado" (57). In a very odd move, however, Silvestri concludes that the censured unconscious content is not homosexuality; in her view, the story depicts an oedipal drama of the murder of his mother (represented by Juliana) by the double representation of his "tyrant-father" (the Nilsen brothers). Although Silvestri does not make clear the connection between this oedipal drama and Borges' outrage at the homosexual characterization of the brothers in the film, she implies that the homosexuality of the characters diluted Borges' guilt-ridden image of his powerful and detested father.

[19]Canto goes on to express her own extraordinary theory about the story. According to her, the story is, in fact, a description of the relationship between Jorge Luis Borges and his mother, doña Leonor Acevedo de Borges, and as such, at least in Borges' mind, there could not possibly be any homosexual content. "Los amigos que conocieron íntimamente a Borges solían comentar la relación que él tenía con su madre, una relación agobiante que los analistas calificarían de `castratoria'. Lo que nos revela La intrusa es la índole de esa relación, que tiene todo el carácter de una relación `viril'. Por eso él no sintió en ningún momento que pudiera haber homosexualidad en ese cuento. Los dos rufianes del relato expresan la forma en que el subconsciente de Borges sentía la relación con su madre. No era una relación tierna. Era una relación parecida a un pacto de sangre entre hombres, basado en códigos secretos y ni siquiera bien entendidos por las partes. No era relación razonable: era un mandato" (231).

[20]I am surprised that critics have not commented on the name of the woman in this story, especially considering that Borges' use of symbolic names is so well documented. "Juliana," repeats the initial consonants of "Jorge Luis" and is coupled with "Burgos," the Castillian version of the Portuguese "Borges." It appears, then, that the author is using his own name, in a slightly altered form, for the communal woman in this story. But why would Borges make such a direct link between himself and the woman who is the intermediary between two men? Perhaps Borges is suggesting that, like Juliana Burgos, he himself was once the powerless object of male sexual aggression and violence and for that reason, the relationship between men in his fiction is almost always a violent one. As horrifying as this hypothesis may sound, Balderston finds support for it in his reading of Canto when she insinuates that "as a boy Borges must have suffered some sort of rape" (43).

[21]Stabb finds that the apparent "fraternal conciliation" at the end of the story is betrayed by the Cain and Abel relationship between the brothers and that this context casts a sinister shadow on the "true circumstances surrounding the older brother's death" (86). Although he does not expand on this thesis, Stabb views the story primarily as a tale of fraternal jealousy and rivalry that leads to fratricide. Unfortunately, Stabb ignores the fact that the narrator makes it explicit that because of their love for each other, the two always turn their anger away from each other and onto others: "Caín andaba por ahí, pero el cariño entre los Nilsen era muy grande... y prefirieron desahogar su exasperación con ajenos. Con un desconocido, con los perros, con la Juliana..." (Brodie 22).

Keller and Van Hooft, whose study at first contains many valuable insights, provides the most unfortunate and distressing interpretation of the story. They conclude that Juliana is merely a test of the brothers' psychological development--a test that they fail. According to Keller and Van Hooft, the Nilsens live in a juvenile state of psychological indifferentiation which they must overcome "in order to attain heterosexual maturity" (314). The murder of Juliana, then, demonstrates that they have failed to develop "correctly" and have returned to "unconscious unity": "In a sense it is the fate of these brothers to be `yoked' to each other like oxen--they are melded. And just as oxen are altered studs, the brothers are not permitted entry into the mature heterosexuality of the adult world" (315). The critics' conclusion, with its inexcusable tone of heterosexist superiority, parrots the chauvinistic and unsupportable assumption in psychoanalysis that adult maturity is achieved through heterosexuality and that homosexuals must be stuck in a state of infantile immaturity.