Death and the Compass
| "Death and the Compass" | |
|---|---|
| Author | Jorge Luis Borges |
| Original title | "La muerte y la brújula" |
| Country | Argentina |
| Language | Spanish |
| Genre(s) | Fantasy, short story |
| Published in | sur |
| Publisher | Editorial Sur |
| Media type | |
| Publication date | May 1942 |
| Published in English | 1954 |
"Death and the Compass" (original Spanish title: "La muerte y la brújula") is a short story by Argentine writer and poet Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986). Published in Sur in May 1942, it was included in the 1944 collection Ficciones. It was first translated into English in the New Mexico Quarterly (Autumn 1954).
In the story, a detective, Erik Lönnrot, attempts to solve a mysterious series of murders which seem to follow a kabbalistic pattern.
Lönnrot is a famous detective in an unnamed city that may or may not be Buenos Aires. When a rabbi is killed in his hotel room on the third of December, Lönnrot is assigned to the case. Based on a cryptic message left on the rabbi's typewriter—"The first letter of the name has been uttered"—the detective determines that the murder was not accidental. He connects this with the Tetragrammaton, the unspeakable four-letter name of God, and with his criminal nemesis Red Scharlach.
Exactly one month later, on the third of January, a second murder takes place with the message "The second letter of the name has been uttered" left at the crime site. Predictably, the same thing happens on the third of February, with the message reading "The last letter of the name has been uttered."
However, Lönnrot isn't convinced that the spree is at an end, as the Tetragrammaton contains four letters—two of them being the same letter repeated. Furthermore, he surmises that the murders may actually have taken place on the fourth of December, January, and February, respectively, since a new day begins at sunset within the Jewish calendar (the murders were all committed at night). He predicts that the next month will see one final killing.
In the meantime, the detective's office receives an anonymous tip to view the locations of the murders on a map, revealing that each coincides to the point of an equilateral triangle. Recognizing that the southern end of the city has yet to be terrorized, Lönnrot extrapolates that the complete pattern will create a rhombus (the south appears frequently in Borges's writings as an allusion to the Argentine frontier, and by extension, as a symbol of solitude, lawlessness, and fate).
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