Quite frankly, I don’t remember

⊕The voice in the dark belongs to Macedonio Fernández (1874–1952), the Buenos Aires metaphysician who was influential to Borges.A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn’t see each other’s faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernández’ voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that the death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio’s pocketknife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Cumparsita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it’s been misrepresented to them as being old…. I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so we might have our discussion without all the racket.

Z (mockingly): But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.

A (now deep in mysticism): Quite frankly, I don’t remember whether we committed suicide that night or not.

I read this for the first time as a teenager: my father recommended it to me as my first Borges short story. I learned it off by heart, and actually used it in a Drama class monologue competition. I still think of the story a lot, and sometimes feel compelled to paraphrase it in conversation, especially when talk turns to questions of existence or whether we live in a simulation (which seems to happen more and more nowadays?).

In my mind, this is one of the best postmodern short stories,Postmodernism as a named movement postdates this story, and critics class Borges as its great precursor rather than a member. and one of the most succinct expressions of the concept.