I found myself in the second basement of the Library, in the section reserved for “rare books,” and I must confess, I was still somewhat shaken by the vision of that brutalist architecture. The taxi, its floor rusted through to reveal impressions of asphalt below, had dropped me at number 2502 on Calle Agüero, an avenue bordered by green spaces in one of the more affluent districts of the Argentine capital. The monumental aspect of the building rising above the treetops had jarred me—quite literally; the pain I felt was anything but imaginary. I had expected a library made sublime, a space emotionally attuned to the books it housed—a jewel case, in short, worthy of the works of its most illustrious former director. Instead, the architects had delivered a concrete blockhouse, a prison for the souls of the poets that haunt this place. “The ingrates!”

I had come to the National Library as part of my doctoral research, to consult one of the twenty-one incunabula contained in its impressive collection: a secular volume printed in 1493, entitled The Chronicle of Babel, and containing numerous hand-enhanced illustrations. I possessed a special authorisation, secured through the mediation of Néstor Ibarra, whom I regrettably never had the chance to meet, as cancer had claimed him a few months before my arrival in Buenos Aires. The journalist and translator’s death had struck me to the heart, and the infamous structure to which he had granted me access now dealt a second blow to the body. Thus it was, with a faltering soul and a grazed knee, that I crossed the threshold of this vertiginous house of memory, passed through the glass doors, took a spiral staircase to the right of the vestibule descending into the depths, gave my details to an attendant—charming, with her wild mane of hair and emaciated frame—waited as the volume was brought to me in a specially controlled chamber, and finally, with infinite care, opened the book near its middle with gloved hands of silk.