PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS
The Tunnel
Ernesto Sábato was born on 24 June 1911 in Rojas, Argentina. He obtained his PhD in Physics from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, but in 1945 he abandoned his career in science to dedicate himself exclusively to writing and painting. In 1948, after being rejected by several editors in Buenos Aires, Sábato published El Túnel in France’s Sur magazine, where it was read by Albert Camus, who commissioned the novel for Gallimard. Thomas Mann and Graham Greene quickly announced their admiration for the novel. It has been further translated into more than ten languages and has become an international bestseller. Sábato’s other novels include On Heroes and Tombs (1961) and The Angel of Darkness (1974).
Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of six novels, including The Blackwater Lightship and The Master, both of which were shortlisted for the Booker Prize and Brooklyn, which won the Costa Novel Award. He is also the author of two short story collections, Mothers and Sons and The Empty Family.
ERNESTO SÁBATO
The Tunnel
Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Sayers Peden
with an Introduction by Colm Tóibín
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PENGUIN CLASSICS
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First published in Spanish as El Tunel by Sur, Buenos Aires 1948
First published in Great Britain by Jonathan Cape 1988
First published in Penguin Classics 2011
Copyright © Ernesto Sábato 1948, 1982
English translation copyright © Random House, Inc., 1988
Introduction copyright © Colm Tóibín, 2011
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-141-96405-8
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Chapter XXXVII
Chapter XXXVIII
Chapter XXXIX
Introduction
‘It is with sadness and sorrow that we have carried out the mission entrusted to us by the constitutional President of the Republic. It has been an extremely arduous task, for we had to piece together a shadowy jigsaw, years after the events had taken place, when all the clues had been deliberately destroyed, all documentary evidence burned, and buildings demolished. The basis for our work has therefore been the statements made by relatives of those who had managed to escape from this hell, or even the testimonies of people who were involved in the repression but who, for whatever obscure motives, approached us to tell us what they knew.’
Ernesto Sábato, Prologue to ‘Nunca Más’, 1984
Ernesto Sábato is not only a central figure in the literary life of Argentina in the twentieth century, but in the political and civil life as well. In the dark days after the fall of the generals who had caused the disappearance of thousands of people and lost the Malvinas war, Sábato was chosen to chair the commission to investigate the crimes against human rights committed during their reign. As a novelist of immense seriousness and power, he was one of the few public figures who had moral authority and independence of mind in Argentina at that time. The commission gave its findings in September 1984 in a report entitled ‘Nunca Más’ (‘Never Again’); it was detailed, horrifying and indisputable. As a result of what it disclosed the generals were put on trial. It was Sábato’s report which established in the minds of people in Argentina the enormity of what had happened in their country.
Sábato was born in the province of Buenos Aires in 1911 and began his career as a scientist. In the early 1940s he was one of those many talented Argentines whose work appeared in the literary magazine Sur, edited by Victoria Ocampo. His first novel, The Tunnel, was published in the magazine in 1948. Although he knew and admired Borges and Bioy Casares and wrote about them in Sur, he was not an intimate of theirs; his early communism, for one thing, would not have endeared him to them. But he had something essential in common with them, and with other Argentine novelists such as Julio Cortázar and Juan José Saer; his work, especially the novels The Tunnel, On Heroes and Tombs (1961) and The Angel of Darkness (1974), was uncompromising and original both in tone and structure.
In his essay ‘The Argentine Writer and Tradition’ Borges made clear the scope and the scale of the ambition of the Argentine writers of the twentieth century. He suggested that by virtue of being so distant and so close to Europe at the same time the Argentine writer had more ‘rights’ to Western culture than anyone in any western nation. They were like Irish writers, he wrote, for whom it was ‘enough, the fact of feeling Irish, different, to become innovators within English culture.’ Thus Borges, Bioy Caseres and Sábato had in common the idea that it was not their role to explain Argentina to itself or to the world, it was not their job to explore changes in morals and manners in their country, or write social realism about Buenos Aires or the Pampas. Their job was not to remake their country in their own image, but remake literature itself, to offer it energy and fresh form.
Thus they took what was available from European literature and set about refining it or undermining it. In The Tunnel, Sábato took the idea of the demented male artist and the city, which had its roots in Russian and French fiction, and transported it to Buenos Aires, not to offer it local colour but to offer it instead further depth and strangeness. He created a hero even less heroic than usual and made his action even more inexplicable to everyone except himself. He allowed the surrounding existential darkness to be more even negative than normal; the protagonist’s obses
sion became more driven and energetic and generally demented than that of his European counterparts, and also more oddly credible and intense.
The intensity and credibility arise from the style. Like Borges and Bioy, as The Tunnel makes clear, Sábato the scientist was interested in the clipped, declarative style of the murder mystery or the police file. While the novel describes extreme states of frenzied feeling and related activity, the prose is fiercely controlled; most of the sentences are short and describe a single action or emotion. Thus the distance between the subject of the novel and the tone of the prose offer a sort of tension to the narrative. This tension allows the narrator not to bother with analysis of motive, or flashbacks or character studies. It forces the reader to accept these as either totally unnecessary or fully understood.
The Tunnel is a novel about madness recollected in a prison cell; but it is not an apology for the madness or the actions which the madness caused, nor is it a rational explanation of them. Instead, it leads the reader into the demented world of the protagonist, using a deliberately calm style to suggest that this world is normal. The mind of Juan Pablo Castel is given a logic by the tone and sentence structure of the novel, which are precise and clear.
As in novels by Dostoyevsky and Kaf ka, there are moments when the rules governing despair are so closely undermined or re-examined or dramatised that the entire enterprise of living or thinking seems deeply absurd. What ensues is pure comedy. This happens, for example, in a classic scene in The Tunnel when Castel posts a letter to María and then decides he wishes to retrieve the letter. The encounter with the woman in the post office and the listing of regulations and demands put the reader on the side of Castel for a while. But not for long. The feeling that Castel is behaving both rationally and outrageously forces the reader to switch loyalty every few sentences; you feel one minute that Castel is a maniac and his own worst enemy and then the next minute you want him to retrieve the letter.
It is clear that The Tunnel belongs to a literary genre which explored dark areas of the self, and violence and irrationality in the anonymous mean streets of the modern city. It is important to remember that it is an Argentine novel only because it was open to European influences and contemporary genres which it set to develop and intensify. In its manic material and its grim laughter, it is not a metaphor for any society, Argentine or otherwise. But yet because of the style, so controlled and factual, and the content, which dealt with a world where violence, disorder and meglomania reigned, it is fascinating to read The Tunnel from 1948 in conjunction with the sober and detailed report which Sábato and his commission produced in 1984, about real murders committed in the real city where the fictional anti-hero Juan Pablo Castel once produced his art and where Sábato produced his first novel.
Colm Tóibín
I
It should be sufficient to say that I am Juan Pablo Castel, the painter who killed María Iribarne. I imagine that the trial is still in everyone’s mind and that no further information about myself is necessary.
Granted, it is true that the devil himself cannot predict what people will remember, or why they remember it. I for one have never believed there is such a thing as a collective memory – which may be one way humans protect themselves. The phrase ‘the good old days’ does not mean that bad things happened less frequently in the past, only – fortunately – that people simply forget they happened. Obviously that view is not universally accepted. I, for example, would characterize myself as a person who prefers to remember the bad things. I might even argue for the past as ‘the bad old days,’ if it were not for the fact I consider the present as horrible as the past. I remember so many catastrophes, so many cynical and cruel faces, so many inhumane actions, that for me memory is a glaring light illuminating a sordid museum of shame. How often have I sat for hours in some dark corner of my studio, driven to despair by reading an account of some crime in the newspaper. Even so, it is not always in accounts of crimes that we find the most reprehensible acts of humankind; to a degree, criminals are the most decent and least offensive people among us. I do not make this statement because I myself killed another human being; it is my profound and honest conviction. Is a certain individual a menace to society? Then eliminate him and let that be an end to it. That is what I could call a good deed. Think how much worse it would be for society if that person were allowed to continue distilling his poison; think how pointless it would be if instead of eliminating him you attempted to forestall him by means of anonymous letters, or slander, or other loathsome measures. As for myself, I frankly confess that I now regret not having used my time to better advantage when I was a free man, that is, for not having done away with six or seven individuals I could name.
It is a terrible world; that truism demands no demonstration. Nonetheless, I will offer a single example as proof. Some years ago I read that in one of the concentration camps when a former pianist complained of hunger he was forced to eat a rat – a live rat.
However, that is not the subject I want to discuss now. If the opportunity arises, I will have more to say on the subject of the rat.
II
As I was saying, my name is Juan Pablo Castel. You may wonder what has motivated me to write this account of my crime (I may not have told you that I am going to relate all those details) and, especially, why I want to publish it. I know the human soul well enough to predict that some of you will believe it is from vanity. Think what you want, I don’t give a damn. It has been a long time since I cared a fig for men’s opinions or their justice. Go ahead, then, believe if you wish that I am publishing this story out of vanity. After all, I am made of flesh and blood and hair and fingernails like any other man, and I would consider it unrealistic for anyone to expect special qualities of me – particularly of me. There are times when a person feels he is a superman, until he realizes that he, too, is low, and vile, and treacherous. I do not need to comment on vanity. As far as I know, no human is devoid of this formidable motivation for Human Progress. People make me laugh when they talk about the modesty of an Einstein, or someone of his kind. My answer to them is that it is easy to be modest when you are famous. That is, appear to be modest. Even when you think a person hasn’t the slightest trace of vanity, suddenly you discover it in its most subtle form: the vanity of modesty. How often we see that kind of person. Even a man like Christ – whether real or symbolic – a being for whom I have always felt, indeed, still do, the deepest reverence, spoke words that were motivated by vanity – or at least by arrogance. And what can you say of a Leon Bloy, who defended himself against the accusation of arrogance by arguing he had spent a lifetime serving people who did not deserve to lick his boots. Vanity is found in the most unlikely places: in combination with kindness, and selflessness, and generosity. When I was a boy I used to despair at the idea that my mother would die one day (as you grow older you learn that death is not only bearable but even comforting). I could not imagine that she might have faults. Now that she is dead, I can say that she was as good as a human being can ever be. But I remember in her last years, when I was a grown man, how at first it pained me to discover a very subtle trace of vanity or pride underlying her kindness and generosity. Something much more illustrative happened to me personally when she had an operation for cancer. In order to arrive in time I had to travel two full days without sleeping. When I reached her bedside, a tender smile lighted her face as she murmured a few words of sympathy (imagine, she was sympathizing with my fatigue!). And in the obscure depths of my being I felt the stirring of vain pride for having come so promptly. I confess this secret so that you will see I am sincere when I say that I am no better than any other man.
No, it is not because of vanity that I am telling this story. I might be willing to concede some degree of pride or arrogance. But why do I have this mania to explain everything that happens? When I began this account I had determined not to offer explanations of any kind. I wanted to tell the story of my crime: that and nothing more. Anyone who was not in
terested did not have to read it. Although I would be very suspicious of that person, because it is precisely people who always demand explanations who are the most curious, and I am sure that none of them would miss the chance to read to the very end the story of a crime.
I could withhold the reasons that motivated me to write these confessional pages, but since I have no desire to be considered an eccentric, I will tell the truth, which is simple enough anyway: I thought that what I wrote might be read by a great many people now that I am a celebrity, and although I do not have many illusions about humanity in general and the readers of these pages in particular, I am animated by the faint hope that someone will understand me – even if it is only one person.
‘Why,’ someone will surely ask, ‘such a faint hope if the book will be read by so many people?’ This is typical of the kinds of questions I consider absolutely pointless; nevertheless, I must be prepared for them, because people constantly ask pointless questions, questions the most superficial analysis reveals to be unnecessary. I could speak until I dropped, yelling at the top of my lungs before an assembly of a hundred thousand Russians: not one would understand me. Do you see what I am saying?
There was one person who could have understood me. But she was the very person I killed.
III
Everyone knows that I killed María Iribarne Hunter. But no one knows how I met her, exactly what our relationship was, or why I came to believe I had to kill her. I will try to recount all this objectively. I may have suffered great pain because of María, but I am not stupid enough to claim that my behavior was exemplary.
In the annual spring art show I had exhibited a painting entitled Motherhood. It was painted in the style typical of many of my earlier works: as the critics say in their unbearable jargon, it was solid, soundly architectural. In short, it has all the qualities those charlatans always saw in my canvases, including a ‘profoundly cerebral je ne sais quoi.’ In the upper left-hand corner of the canvas was a remote scene framed in a tiny window: an empty beach and a solitary woman looking at the sea. She was staring into the distance as if expecting something, perhaps some faint and faraway summons. In my mind that scene suggested the most wistful and absolute loneliness.