Several people have told the story of the elderly Jorge Luis Borges visiting Hannibal in the early 1980s and asking to be taken to the river's edge so that he could dip his hand in Mark Twain's river.
"The Mississippi River is the source of Mark Twain's strength," the blind author is reported to have said. "I want to touch the river."
I can't vouch for the story, but it has the ring of truth to it. I do know that Borges was visiting the middle of America during the early Eighties because, to my surprise, I saw him one day in that period walking toward me on Kirkwood Avenue in Bloomington, Indiana.
With his large head, thinning silver hair, milky eyes, and elegant three-piece suit, he wasn't easy to miss on a quiet overcast morning. There was a younger woman walking with him, gently guiding him along the wide sidewalk. She didn't introduce herself, but as I later learned she was Maria Kodama, his constant companion in old age and eventually his wife. (I believe that the reason for their visit to Bloomington was to see their friend Indiana University professor Willis Barnstone.)
His face lit up when I said, "Hello, Mr. Borges." I shook his hand and told him the usual things people say at such a time--how much I admired his stories, and how delighted I was to meet him. He had not wearied of meeting admiring strangers like me, for he held on to my hand and thanked me for my praises as though hearing them for the first time.
When I said my name, he replied with gentlemanly grace, "How nice to meet you, Mr. Shell-den."
It's good now to recall his kind smile and to picture that soft hand I held in mine dipping itself into Mark Twain's timeless river.
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