The Anthropologist by Jorge Luis Borges — Read

This story was told to me in Texas, but it took place in another of the Southwestern states. It has one character only, except for the fact that in any story there are thousands of characters, seen and unseen, living and dead. His name, I believe, was Fred Murdock. He was lanky, was neither light nor dark, had a hatchet face, and wasted few words. There was nothing out of the ordinary about him, not even that wish to be out of the ordinary common to most young men. Naturally respectful, he never questioned what he read or what his teachers told him. He was at that age when, not yet knowing who he is, a man is ready to go whichever way a chance wind blows- into Persian Sufism or the unknown beginnings of Hungarian, the adventures of war or of algebra, puritanism or the orgy. At the university, he was advised to take up the study of aboriginal languages. Among a few tribes of the Southwest, certain unexplained rites still survived; his adviser, a man getting along in years, suggested that he go live on a reservation, where he might be initiated into tribal ceremonies, and try to uncover the medicine man's secret. On his return, he would prepare a thesis that the university press would undertake to publish. Murdock jumped at the chance. One of his forebears had been killed by Indians in a frontier raid; this old family bloodshed was now a link. No doubt he foresaw the difficulties that were in store for him; he would have to do his best to get the red men to accept him as one of them.

Murdock undertook the arduous adventure. He lived over two years in the desert in adobe huts or out in the open. He would get up before the dawn, he would go to sleep at nightfall, and he came to dream in a language that was not the language of his fathers. His palate became accustomed to new tastes, he dressed in strange clothes, he forgot his friends and the city, he came to see things in a way his reason rejected. During the first months of his training, he took secret notes that later he was to burn-maybe not to arouse suspicion, maybe because he no longer needed them. At the end of a period of many months, after he had at last undergone certain exercises of a moral and physical nature, the medicine man took him aside and told him that from then on he must remember his dreams and relate them to him every morning. Murdock found out that on nights when the moon was full he dreamed of mustangs. He confided these repeated dreams to his teacher; in time, the teacher taught him the secret. One day without saying goodbye to anyone, Murdock went away.