Ficciones refocuses its attention on Europe, during World War II. A playwright, Jaromir Hladik, is arrested by Nationalist Socialist forces. Jewish, resisted the Anschluss. Unpardonable crimes. Hladik is sentenced to die by firing squad. The story here is quite brief. Hladik is at first afraid for his life, but very quickly comes to realize that the true tragedy of his death is his unfinished play The Enemies; the work which he imagines will be the legacy by which his will be judged.
He prays to God on the night before his execution, and dreams of finding the name of God in a map of India in a strange library. He is given to know that his request, a year to finish his play, has been granted. The next morning, before the firing squad, time freezes. Hladik, too freezes. He realizes that this is the realization of his prayer. He spends a subjective year finishing his play, and, as he pens the final epithet in his head, the guns roar and his life ends.
I found this story to be among the least memorable of the collection. Not to say it was a bad story, or that I didn’t enjoy it. The Secret Miracle explores Borges’ familiar themes of inner infinitude in the context of time, which (I admit, it’s been a while since I read the story) I do not believe has been directly addressed in the collection so far. While Hladik receives only a year’s pocket, tucked between moments, the question that asks itself is why only a year? Are there entire lifetimes lived in pocket time, tucked between moments of higher-order time? Is the lifetime I lead now the illusion of a moment tucked between two higher order moments of a greater Platonic reality?
Perhaps. Borges seems content to let these questions form and float out for the reader to draw the implications for himself. Again, we see Borges writing the edge of a puzzle piece, encouraging the reader to blow the dust from all the pieces the reader has collected, try them, see if they fit. Reader engagement emerges as a powerful theme of Borges’ work yet again.
Hladik’s belief that the play is the legacy by which his life will be judged is a tricky element. Hladik, after all, remains paralyzed during his subjective year. His compositional work takes place entirely in his mind. For the soldiers of the firing squad, no time at all passes between the order to fire and the collision of the bullets. Hladik’s work is not written down, is not transmitted, is not known outwardly at all. Who then judges his legacy? Who is aware of the great work, the secret miracle, that has transpired?
The reader is one awareness, though we do not actually see Hladik’s play. Hladik himself is another. It’s possible that the value of his legacy is only in his satisfaction with himself, in an inversion of the medieval idea of heroism, of living on in song and memory. Or God, the granter of the secret miracle, may be the intended recipient of Hladik’s elegy. I found this element of the story puzzling. Someone in the audience should read the story and give me your thoughts.
unorthodoxcaveman 
If I remember correctly, there was a line where he said something like “he wasn’t writing for posterity or even for God, whose literary tastes were unknown to him.” So he no longer thinks of it as his legacy after some point.
I wonder if you considered the theodicity point. It doesn’t resolve the omnisicent-omnipotent-omnibenevolent paradox, but does make some improvements over the standard situation. Here God gets to be at least somewhat benevolent, without contradicting how bad the world looks to human eyes.