2025-2026, Borgesian Fiction

"Persistence of Memory" – Julie Noguiera '27

It was a strong impact on his temple that left him inept, with just the slightest clumsy movements of his hands and the wiggle of his toes. Once an esteemed intellectual, João Marcello sits in front of the window in his attic bedroom, the only source of natural light beaming in, creating symmetrical reflections against the grainy wooden flooring. A simple mirror stands against the wall facing his chair. When he was lucid, he seemed to spend most of his time staring at his deformed duplicate in the mirror, as if he were searching for meaning in the distortion. The buzzing of a fly and the quiet rhythmic mechanical sound of the orange ticking clock hung above the skimpy twin bed filled the room. This is how Marcello spent most of his time: in a completely catatonic state, staring into oblivion. He seldom spoke, only occasionally, when his caretaker asked him direct questions, to which he would then answer with a simple “yes” or “no”. 

Marcello was a pure empiricist, believing strictly in what science told him. He had no religion, no faith, no belief in a greater universal force. He lived in rationality, a true scientific skeptic. Before his accident, Marcello was a highly renowned scholar. Besides being cold and straightforward, he was highly praised by his colleagues. He often travelled to give speeches and lectures on his work in classical physics at prestigious universities around the country, publishing papers and books, and winning awards and titles. But that was five years ago. Now he is nothing. 

He spawned at the start of a familiar path he had seen many times before. The entrance to a labyrinth, the start of his every comatose dream. An everlasting dawn painted above, and the top of an olive tree stands on the horizon of the cinder block labyrinth. Reaching down into his trench coat pocket, he grabs a golden-rimmed pocket watch, gleaming from a mysterious source of golden light that drenches the scenery. The hands move in nonsensical motions, never showing a steady time. He nods, looks up into the labyrinth, and, as if he made total sense of what the watch showed, continues through the cinder-lined path with haste. He seemed to know every turn to take. Left, left, right, left, right, left, unshaken by the daunting, seemingly endless maze. After six more nonsensical rotations of the watch hands, Marcello stops at a forking path: left, right, or straight. At this point, he took out the watch again and glanced at the face. The skinny black hands appeared to slow down, pointing in the final directions of seven and eleven. His face stiffens, he swallows hard, expressionless, except for his eyes, which show a blend of expected defeat and fiery frustration.

He sits back in his wooden chair. The feeling of anguish followed him from the dream. This was the second dream he had gone to the labyrinth. Every day, he spent seven hours in his dream state. Not asleep, not awake, but conscious in this world between reality and illusion. He had embarked on an odyssey to the olive tree, the singular guiding star of the endless, redundant maze. Every dream, he worked farther and farther into the maze, memorizing every turn and every step. Unfortunately for him, the nonsense pocket watch ticked away, counting down the seconds until he was taken back to his monotonous reality. Reduced to this helpless state, this was his greatest obstacle.

Staring at his mirror mosaic, he pondered what awaited at the end of the labyrinth. What the lonely tree held on its lush branches, and what lay on its roots. Persistent in his mind, he wondered what existed in between worlds, afraid to forget what he had seen. He dragged his hand to the small wooden table beside the chair, ringing the tiny bell. 

His caretaker enters the room. She runs through the basic questions. “Are you hungry?” “Are you thirsty?” “Do you want to go to the bathroom?” Usually there is a “yes” to one of the questions, given that this is all he really needed from her. To her surprise, she received a “no” for each question. He looks towards the storage closet and nods.

 “Do you want something from the closet?”

 “Yes.” 

             She walks towards the door, opening it a little, confused as to what he would need from inside. He watches attentively as a family of ants crawls along the doorframe. The closet stored mostly old family things, worn clothes, useless files, and papers. When his brother lived in the house, the attic was used for his studio. Besides the other junk, the closet also held the remains of his brother’s art career. They were so different. His brother breathed life onto canvas with the stroke of a brush; creativity and imagination naturally flowed through him. Different than his stone cold self, who had never once touched a canvas.

“Paint,” he murmurs, the most complex word she’s heard him say in a while. 

“You would like to paint? With your brother’s painting supplies?” 

“Yes.” He returned to his monosyllabic responses.

            She pulls out the easel folded in the back, and rising from the dust, she grabs a tin box and a clean canvas. Moving over to the front of his chair, she sets up the easel between him and the mirror. He nods and softly flicks his hand to the left, telling her to move the easel from his line of sight to the mirror. She nudges the easel, clearing his view of the mirror. Laying the canvas on the easel, and opens the tin box on his side table. 

“Do you want help?” She asks, confused at how he was going to paint with his lack of fine motor skills.

“No.” He moves his glare from her to the mirror, then to the canvas. 

“Okay, then.” She walks out. 

            He is left alone with his vision. Shakily grabbing the oil paint and a paintbrush, he manages to create his first stroke. The endless dawn above the labyrinth. He stops there, putting down the oil and the brush, which falls from between his weak fingers. 

            Pocket watch, fly, mirror. Ants, dawn, ticking. Shuffling through his head at night. He didn’t dream about these things or anything else for that matter. He never does at night; dreaming is reserved strictly for those hours in the day. This happened often, where things he’d observe in the daylight would appear in allegories in his mind at night. This was different. Small details he hyperfixated upon during the day on infinite repeat. Pocket watch, fly, mirror. Ants, dawn, ticking. Pocket watch, fly, mirror. Ants, dawn, ticking. 

             He sprang awake, eyes opening before he took a full breath. Minutes later, the caretaker walks in, assisting him from his bed to the chair. He was especially frail and fragile, croaking with every movement. Sitting in his chair, he awaited the moment he would be back in the dream, hoping to reach the olive tree. He stared at the orange clock above his bed, then at his mishapen mirror reflection, then at the canvas. The buzzing of the fly was as persistent as the ticking of the clock. A sudden strain pulled his eyes, blurring and doubling his vision. 

The labyrinth appears in front of him, and like all the times before, he reaches into his pocket, pulling out the watch. Clenching it in his hands, he begins moving through the maze. Every turn a meticulously planned move to reach the olive tree. Left, right, right, left, right. As he marched, he would check the watch. The hands still moving fast, he moved faster. Right, right, left, right, left, right, right. Another glance at the pocket watch. He moves faster and faster with every check. Time seems to melt, his steps as sharp as the ticks of the clock. He checks the clock once more, and the hands start to slow. He speeds up, now sprinting through the corners, disturbing the stillness of the labyrinth. Eyes closed, carried by his soul, he hits a stop, falling to the ground. Lifting from the ground, he looks up. Jaw dropping, tears forming, his hand relaxes, dropping the pocket watch. Behind an invisible force was the olive tree. Dead, shrivelled, its roots planted into the end of the wall of the labyrinth, and on its branches a melting pocket watch. Another lay beside the tree, melting off the side of the wall. A fly quietly buzzes around it. Next to it, he recognized the orange clock swarmed by ants to be the same clock that sits in his room. He looked down at his pocket watch, which he had dropped, and to his surprise found it melting over a familiar figure: his mirror duplicate lay upon a bed of rocks. In the distance, a quiet shoreline met the horizon. Squinting, he could see that the only thing interrupting it was a mirror, lying flat on the sand.

He jolts awake, back in his attic room. His eyes water, a singular tear falling down his cheek. He rummages through the tin box for another paintbrush and oils. He begins to paint his final vision, where his reality and subconscious coexist, and time warps.

João Marcello was later found deceased; beside him was his finished canvas.

Salvador Dalí released his painting “Persistence of Memory” a week later.