The South (short story)

"The South" (original Spanish title: "El Sur") is a short story by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges, first published in La Nación in 1953 and later in the second edition (1956) of Ficciones, part two (Artifices).

Although of German descent, he is proud of his criollo maternal ancestors: his military grandfather had died fighting the aboriginals in the wild Pampas "pierced by the Indians of Catriel", a romantic end that he enjoys thinking about.

He takes the book home, and—eager to examine it— he rushes up the stairs to his flat while reading it, slashing his head accidentally with the sharp edge of a window frame left open.

Riding a taxi at dawn to the Southern railway terminal, Dahlmann regards the awakening city sights with great joy, enjoying them as if for the first time.

Three peones (farm hands) sitting at a table nearby throw a bread crumb at him, which he ignores, prompting them to recommence their bullying.

The narrative switches from past to present tense in the story's final sentence, as Dahlmann and the thugs exit the bar and walk into the endless plain for their confrontation.

"The South" long held in the collective imagination of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires the mysterious and romantic associations it has in the mind of the story's protagonist, connected with the vast emptiness that seemed to often extend limitless beyond the last city retaining walls, where even in the early 1800s the memory lingered of the "malon" (Indian raids), and which was the fabled land of the Gaucho.

[1] Later "the South" was also home to the urban industrial and working class districts of Buenos Aires with their factories and warehouses where tango was born, in such traditional neighbourghoods as La Boca, San Telmo, Boedo, Pompeya, etc., also sometimes appearing in Borges imagery.