"The South," by Jorge Luis Borges, is a short story set in 1939. Its protagonist is Juan Dahlmann, the director of a city library in the northern part of Argentina. The descendant of a German and an Argentinian, Dahlmann has always strongly associated himself with his maternal grandfather, Francisco Flores, who died in battle, run through with a spear. He keeps the Flores house in the south of Argentina and has always longed to go there, as if he belongs there.

One morning in 1939, by chance, he hits his head on a doorjamb. It is a worse injury than it should be, and he is sent to a clinic. He endures a number of treatments and almost dies of septicemia; eventually, it is suggested that he should go south to recuperate.

Part of the story tracks the pleasant part of Dahlmann's journey south. While he had hated being confined to the clinic, he finds something romantic in the journey, thinking that now he is finally going towards the lands of his ancestors. He enjoys petting a cat which lives in a cafe in one of the terminals they stop at on the journey. He eats broth on the train which tastes better than food has tasted since his accident, and he dreams of waking up soon in the "hacienda."

However, before he gets there, the train stops, and Dahlmann goes to get dinner in a local establishment where some "ruffians" are eating and drinking. One of them throws a spitball at Dahlmann. The owner of the cafe tells Dahlmann that the men are "pretty high" and he shouldn't pay any attention to them, but Dahlmann feels overwhelmed by a sense of fate. When one of the men throws him a knife and suggests they take this outside, Dahlmann is fairly sure he will have no idea how to use the knife, and that this is an excuse for them to kill him. However, he takes the knife—"which perhaps he will not know how to wield"—and leaves with the other man, possibly to be killed like his grandfather Flores.