Explore "Avelino Arredondo" by Jorge Luis Borges on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The event took place in Montevideo in 1897.
Every Saturday, in the way of the honest poor who know they cannot invite people home or else are trying to escape home, a group of young men occupied the same side table at the Café del Globo. They were all from Montevideo, and they had found it hard at first to make friends with Arredondo, a man from the interior, who neither confided in others nor encouraged others to confide in him. A little over twenty years old, he was lean and dark, rather short, and maybe a bit clumsy. His would have been an almost anonymous face had his eyes at one and the same time sleepy and lively not rescued it. He worked as a clerk in a drygoods store on Buenos Aires Street, studying law in his spare time. When the others condemned the war that ravaged the country and that, according to general opinion, the president was prolonging for unworthy reasons, Arredondo remained silent. He also remained silent when they made fun of him for being stingy.