The Tunnel

  I tried to create a little order from the chaos of my ideas and emotions, and to proceed methodically, as was my custom. I would have to begin at the beginning, and the beginning (at least the immediate beginning) was, obviously, the telephone conversation. There was more than one foggy detail about that conversation.

  In the first place, if it was the normal thing in that household for María to have relationships with men – as proved by the letter her husband had delivered – then why use a neutral tone of voice until the door was closed? Then, what was the meaning of her comment ‘When I close the door they know I am not to be disturbed’? Apparently it meant she often closed the door to talk on the telephone. But it was not likely she would close the door for trivial conversations with family friends: the reasonable deduction was that it was to have conversations like ours. But that meant there were others like myself in her life. How many? And who?

  My first thought was Hunter, but I ruled him out immediately. Why talk to him by telephone if she could see him at the estancia anytime she wanted? In that case, who were the others?

  Surely that exhausted the question of the telephone conversation. But no, that was not the end of it. There was still the problem of her answer to my explicit question. I recalled with bitterness that when I had asked her whether she had thought of me, she had said only, after much stalling: ‘I told you, I’ve been thinking about everything.’ You do not commit yourself by answering a question with such a reply. After all, the proof that her answer was vague was that she herself, the next day (or that same night) had thought it necessary to reply in very precise terms in a letter.

  ‘So,’ I said to myself, ‘let’s turn to the letter.’ I took it from my pocket, and reread the brief message.

  I think of you, too.

  María

  The handwriting indicated she had been nervous or, if not, that it was the handwriting of a nervous person. These are not the same things, however, because if it is the former, the handwriting betrayed real emotion, which would be a good omen for me. Whichever it was, I was exuberant about the signature: María. Simply, María. Such simplicity gave me a vague feeling of possession, a vague sense that the girl was now a part of my life and that, in a certain way, she now belonged to me.

  Oh, God! My moments of happiness are so fleeting … That impression, as a case in point, could not withstand the feeblest analysis. Did I think that her husband didn’t call her María? And surely Hunter called her that, too. What else would he call her? And all the others she talked to behind closed doors? Certainly no one she spoke to behind closed doors was going to address her respectfully as ‘Señorita Iribarne.’

  Señorita Iribarne! Now I understood the maid’s hesitation the first time I called. How embarrassing! When I examined it logically, it was further proof that this kind of call was not a novelty. Obviously, the first time someone asked for ‘Señorita Iribarne’ the surprised maid had automatically corrected the caller, underlining the ‘Señora.’ But after it happened several times, she must have shrugged her shoulders and decided not to bother anymore. She had hesitated when I called – that was natural. But she had not corrected me.

  When I reconsidered the letter, I decided there was room for any number of deductions. I began with what was most extraordinary: the way the letter was delivered. I remembered the excuse the maid had conveyed: ‘She said to say she was sorry, but she didn’t have your address.’ It was true: she hadn’t asked me my address, nor had it occurred to me to give it to her. But in her place, the first thing I would have done was look it up in the telephone directory. It was too much to believe that she was simply too lazy; the conclusion was unavoidable: María wanted me to come to the house and wanted me to meet her husband face-to-face. But why? At this point, matters became even more complex. One possibility was that María enjoyed using her husband as a go-between. Conversely, it might be the husband who received the pleasure. It might be both. In addition to the pathological explanations, there was one normal possibility: María wanted me to know she was married so I would see why we should not go on.

  I am sure that many of you reading these pages will favor the third hypothesis, and conclude that only a man like myself could choose one of the other two. During the time in my life when I had friends, they often laughed at my passion for always selecting the most tortuous route. I ask myself, though, why reality has to be simple. Experience has taught me just the opposite; it almost never is simple, and when something seems unusually clear, when some action appears to obey a simple logic, there are usually complex motives behind it. A simple example. People who donate to charities are generally considered to be better, more generous, than those who do not. I have enormous contempt for this simplistic notion. Anyone knows that you do not solve the problems of a beggar (an authentic beggar) with a dime or a crust of bread. All it does is solve the psychological problems of the man buying a reputation and peace of mind for practically nothing. Judge for yourself just how niggardly people are when they are not willing to spend more than a few cents a day to assure peace of mind and gain a self-congratulatory sense of their own beneficence. How much greater purity of spirit and courage are required to bear the burden of human misery without this hypocritical (and penny-pinching) practice.

  But I want to get back to the letter.

  Only a simpleminded person could defend the third hypothesis, because it crumbles at the most cursory examination. ‘María wanted me to know she was married so I would see why we should not go on.’ Beautiful. But in that case, why did she resort to such a cumbersome and cruel course of action? Couldn’t she have told me personally, even by telephone? Couldn’t she have written me, if she lacked the nerve to tell me? There was an even more convincing argument: If she wanted me to know, why didn’t the letter say she was married – which I could see for myself; why didn’t it beg me to be satisfied with a less personal friendship? No, my friends. To the contrary, the letter was a letter intended to cement our relationship, to fan the fires, and to lead us down the most dangerous path.

  That left the pathological hypotheses. Was it possible that María enjoyed using Allende as her go-between? Was he the one who sought these opportunities? Or had fate amused itself by uniting those two?

  I was suddenly horrified at the lengths I had gone to in my compulsion to analyze every action and every word. I remembered María staring at the tree in the plaza and listening as I poured out my thoughts to her. I remembered her timidity, how she had fled from me. I was filled with an infinite tenderness. She seemed fragile to me, an unreal child in a cruel world of ugliness and misery. I felt what I had so often felt from the first moment in the art gallery: that she was like me.

  I forgot all my sterile reasoning, my savage deductions. I indulged myself by picturing her face, her expression – that expression that reminded me of something I could not identify – her profound and melancholy way of thinking. I felt that the unfocused love I had nourished through so many years of loneliness had crystallized in María. How could I think such absurd things about her?

  I tried to forget all my moronic deductions about the telephone, about the letter, the estancia, Hunter.

  But I could not.

  XIV

  The days that followed were frantic. In my haste, I had not asked when María would be returning from the estancia. That same day I called to ask about her return. The maid told me she did not know. I asked her for María’s address at the estancia.

  That night I wrote a desperate letter, asking María when she was coming home, and begging her to call me as soon as she was back in Buenos Aires – or at least to write. I took the letter to the main post office and sent it by registered mail, to minimize the risk.

  As I said, I spent some frantic days, and a thousand times the dark thoughts that had tormented me since my visit to Calle Posadas raced through my mind. I had this dream. One night I went to a lonely old house. It was a house that somehow I had known and infinitely desired since my childhood, so that wh
en I went inside, I was guided by old memories. But at times I found myself lost in the darkness, or I had the impression that enemies lurking behind my back were about to attack me, or that people were whispering about me and making fun of me, of my naïveté. Who were those people, and what did they want? And yet, in spite of everything, I felt that my first adolescent loves were being reborn in the house, with the same trembling and sensations of sweet madness and fear and joy. When I awoke, I realized that the house in the dream was María.

  XV

  In the days that preceded the arrival of her letter, my thoughts were like an explorer lost in a misty landscape: here and there, straining my eyes, I could glimpse vague silhouettes of people and objects, blurred outlines of perils and chasms. When the letter came, it was as if the sun had come out.

  But this was a black sun, a nocturnal sun. I do not know whether you can say that, but although I am not a writer and although I am not sure whether it is correct, I will not withdraw the word nocturnal. Of all the words that make up our imperfect language, nocturnal was perhaps the most appropriate for María.

  This is the letter:

  I have spent three strange days: the sea, the beach, the paths keep bringing me memories of other days. Not merely images, voices as well, shouts and long silences from other times. It is curious, but life is a process of constructing future memories; at this very moment, here where I sit facing the sea, I know that I am creating memories that one day will bring me melancholy and despair.

  The sea lies before me, eternal and raging. My weeping from that other time is futile; futile, too, my waiting on the lonely beach, gazing unblinkingly at the sea. Did you somehow divine my memory, or did you paint the memory of many people like us?

  But now your figure is interposed; you stand between me and the sea. My eyes meet your eyes. You are quiet, faintly sad. You are looking at me as if asking for my help.

  María

  How well I understood her; what miraculous emotions welled up in my heart when I read this letter! There was such a tangible intimacy in her words that I was sure María was mine. Mine alone. ‘You stand between me and the sea.’ There was no other person; we two were alone, as I had known intuitively the moment she looked at the scene of the window. In fact, how could we be other than intimate when we had known each other for a thousand years, for all time? When she paused before my painting and looked at that small scene, not hearing or seeing the crowd around us, it was as if we were already on intimate terms, as if I already knew the person she was, how much I needed her, and how she, too, needed me.

  Oh, God! And yet I killed you! It was I who killed you, I, who saw you mute and anxious, but could not touch you through the wall of glass. I, so stupid, so blind, so incredibly selfish and cruel!

  Well, that’s enough of that. I said I would tell this story in a straightforward way, and I will.

  XVI

  I was desperately in love with María, and yet the word love had never been spoken between us. I could scarcely wait for her return from the estancia to say it to her.

  But she did not return. And as the days went by, a kind of madness was growing within me. I wrote her a second letter that said merely, ‘I love you, María, I love you, I love you!’

  After two days, an eternity, I received an answer containing only these words: ‘I am afraid I will bring you great harm.’ I answered that instant. ‘I don’t care what you do to me. If I couldn’t love you, I would die. Every second I spend without seeing you is torture.’

  Day after horrible day went by, but no answer came. Desperate, I wrote: ‘You are tearing me apart.’

  The next day the phone rang and, distantly, I heard her faltering voice.

  Except for the word María, which I repeated incessantly, I could not think what to say. It would have been impossible, anyway; my throat was so tight I couldn’t speak clearly. María said:

  ‘I am coming back to Buenos Aires tomorrow. I will call you as soon as I get there.’

  The next afternoon she called me from her house.

  ‘I must see you,’ I said. ‘Now.’

  ‘All right. I’ll meet you today,’ she replied.

  ‘I’ll be waiting in the Plaza San Martín.’

  María seemed to hesitate. ‘I prefer La Recoleta. I’ll be there at eight.’

  How I had waited for that moment. I wandered aimlessly through the streets to make the time pass more quickly. What tenderness filled my heart. How beautiful the world seemed, the summer afternoon, the children playing on the sidewalks. Today I can reflect on how we are blinded by love; how magically love transforms reality. The world, beautiful? What a laugh!

  It was a few minutes past eight when I saw María looking for me in the darkness. It was so late I could not see her face, but I recognized her from the way she walked.

  We sat down. I held her arm and senselessly repeated her name, over and over. All I could say was ‘María’; she listened without speaking.

  ‘Why did you go to the estancia?’ I asked compulsively. ‘Why did you leave me here alone? Why did you leave that letter at your house? Why didn’t you tell me you were married?’

  She did not answer. I squeezed her arm. She moaned.

  ‘You’re hurting me, Juan Pablo,’ she protested softly.

  ‘Why don’t you say something? Why don’t you answer me?’

  Silence.

  ‘Why? WHY?’

  At last, she spoke.

  ‘Why must there be an answer to everything? I don’t want to talk about myself. Please, let’s talk about you, about your work, about your interests. I thought constantly about your painting, about what you told me in the Plaza San Martín. I want to know what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, whether you have been painting.’

  Again I squeezed her arm angrily.

  ‘No!’ I replied. ‘I don’t want to talk about me. I want to talk about the two of us. I must know whether you love me. That’s all: whether or not you love me.’

  Again there was no answer. Maddened by her silence and by the darkness that prevented me from reading her thoughts in her eyes, I struck a match. Quickly, she turned away, hiding her face from me. Then I took her face with my free hand and forced her to look at me: she was quietly weeping.

  ‘Ah … then you don’t love me,’ I said bitterly.

  Nevertheless, just as the match was burning out I saw the tenderness in her eyes. Then – again in total darkness – I felt her hand stroking my hair. She said, gently:

  ‘Of course I love you. But why must I say certain things?’

  ‘All right,’ I persisted. ‘But how do you love me? There are so many ways of loving. You can love a dog, a little child. I mean love, real love, don’t you understand?’

  I had a flash of intuition. Quickly I struck a second match. Just as I had suspected, María was smiling. That is, she was not smiling then, but a tenth of a second earlier she had been smiling. I sometimes have had the sensation that someone was watching me, and, turning suddenly and not finding anyone, sensed that the emptiness around me was very recent, that something fleeting had just disappeared, leaving a slight ripple vibrating on the air. It was something like that.

  ‘You were smiling,’ I said in a rage.

  ‘Smiling?’ she asked, surprised.

  ‘Yes, smiling. You can’t fool me quite as easily as you think. I never miss anything.’

  ‘And what did you notice?’ Her voice was hard.

  ‘Something on your face. The trace of a smile.’

  ‘What would I be smiling about?’ she asked in the same tone.

  ‘About my naïveté. About my asking whether you really loved me, or loved me like a child. How can I know … But you had been smiling. I’m sure of that.’

  María stood up.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I asked, astonished.

  ‘I’m leaving’ was her brusque reply.

  I sprang to my feet. ‘What, you’re leaving?’

  ‘That’s what I said. I’m leavi
ng.’

  ‘What do you mean, leaving? Why?’

  She did not reply. I seized her arms and almost shook her.

  ‘Why … are … you … leaving?’

  ‘Because I’m afraid that you don’t understand me, either.’

  I was furious.

  ‘Don’t understand you? I ask you something that’s a matter of life or death to me, and instead of answering, you smile. And then you get angry. What makes you think I don’t understand you?’

  ‘You imagined I was smiling,’ she commented coldly.

  ‘I’m sure of it.’

  ‘Then you’re mistaken. And I’m deeply hurt that you could believe that.’

  I did not know what to believe. Strictly speaking, I had not seen a smile, only something like a trace of one on a face that was now serious.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, María. Forgive me.’ Now I was abjectly sorry. ‘I was so sure you had smiled.’

  Dejected, I stood waiting for her to speak. After a moment I felt her hand on my arm, gentle and tender. Then I heard her soft and sorrowful voice:

  ‘But how could you think such a thing?’

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know.’ I was near tears.

  She pulled me back onto the bench, and stroked my hair as she had done earlier.

  ‘I warned you I would only bring you harm.’ Her words broke a brief silence. ‘You see now I was right.’

  ‘It was my fault,’ I objected.

  ‘It may have been my fault,’ she commented pensively, as if talking to herself.

  ‘It’s so strange,’ I thought.

  ‘What’s strange?’ María asked.

  I was dumbfounded. Then I believed (and for days afterward) that María was able to read my mind. Today I wonder whether I spoke those words aloud, without realizing.

  ‘What’s strange?’ she repeated, because in my amazement I had not answered her question.