Page 17 - Unlikely Stories 2

Blind Faith

“Señores, thank you for graciously consenting to meet me here, on
the stage of Teatro de la Zarzuela, instead of in my office. I felt it
would be appropriate.”
Boreas Fluegelmann, the flamboyant impresario, spoke loudly but
respectfully to his guests, Jorge Luis Borges and Joaquin Rodrigo. He
was aware that the blind could be insulted by people raising their
voices in conversation with them on the unconscious presumption
that they were also hard of hearing. But he had positioned himself to
play to the galleries, so the two old men could get a feeling for the
sonorities of the hall.
Their guides had led them to straight-back wooden chairs facing
Fluegelmann. They sat impassively, stage lights glinting off their dark
glasses, while the impresario went on at some length about the great
honor they had bestowed upon him, and how fortunate he was to
find both of them in Madrid at the same time. They acknowledged
the flattery modestly, and waited for his proposal.
“As you are aware, our own Spanish opera, the zarzuela, after a
long period of decline, is beginning to revive. That is occurring now,
in the nineteen-seventies, as the Anglo-Saxon world is creating new
forms of musical drama, through rock operas and imported non-
Western epics, driven by the voracious appetite of Broadway
theatregoers and the demands of television. With my finger on the
pulse of popular taste and cultural change, I feel that the time is ripe
for innovation in zarzuela. And I cannot think of two more
distinguished creative talents to make this happen than you two
gentlemen.”
Again Borges and Rodrigo simply nodded.
“Allow me to present our idea for this unprecedented production.
An ancient Hindu fable illustrates the limits of human perception and
the moral that may thereby be drawn. An elephant is encountered by
six blind men, none of whom has previously encountered that beast.
Able only to use their sense of touch, they come up with a different
description of the huge pachyderm, depending upon which part of it
their hands happen to find. That fable is known to all, and provides
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