I was wowed by the whole of Labyrinths, but it has been a while since I read it. I remember fragments, the tone of the whole, the style of writing–there’s an inevitable impact when you first come across someone doing things in a way so unlike that which you’re used to, and yet finding it still works. What didn’t stick so much was the shape of the individual pieces. Except for this one. Like ‘The Landlady’, understanding only comes towards the end, but once you get there, everything else that has happened falls perfectly into place. The reluctance of the perpetrator of a seemingly meaningless crime because they find the victim so personable, so admirable, and yet their fateful paths are proscribed and entwined, and cannot, whatever happens, be altered.
A perfect short story is often on rails. What comes next is inevitable, and unavoidable, and sometimes all the more horrifying for it. The best twist endings are not twists at all–once you arrive at them.
First published in Spanish in the eponymous collection El jardín de senderos que se bifurcan, Editorial Sur, 1941; translated and collected in Labyrinths, New Directions, 1962 and Fictions, Calder and Boyes, 1965, both still in print. Also available in the Collected Fictions, Viking 1998 and as a Penguin Modern, 1998
A Personal Anthology 