The Tunnel

  María’s expression grew even sadder. She sat a moment before answering, and then asked in a mournful voice:

  ‘Must I answer that question?’

  My voice was hard. ‘Yes, you absolutely must.’

  ‘I think it is terrible for you to ask me these questions.’

  ‘It’s very simple: you answer yes, or no.’

  ‘The answer isn’t that simple: you can have relations …’

  ‘All right,’ I concluded coldly. ‘That means you do.’

  ‘All right! Yes.’

  ‘So you do sleep with him.’

  As I said this I was carefully observing her eyes. I had an ulterior motive: this was the moment to settle a number of things. I did not believe she really felt physical passion for Allende (although given María’s temperament, that was entirely possible), but I wanted to force her into having to clarify the matter of ‘loving him like a brother.’ Just as I expected, María was very slow to reply. She was choosing her words with extreme care. Finally, she said:

  ‘I said I sleep with him, not that I love him like a lover.’

  ‘Aha!’ I exclaimed triumphantly. ‘Then you sleep with him without loving him, but you pretend you do!’

  María turned pale. Silently, tears began to roll down her face. Her eyes were dull as ground glass.

  ‘That isn’t what I said,’ she murmured slowly.

  ‘Because isn’t it obvious,’ I continued implacably, ‘that if you show that you feel nothing, that you feel no passion for him, if you show that making love is a sacrifice you offer in return for his love for you, your admiration for his greatness of spirit, and so on, Allende would never go to bed with you again. In other words: that he keeps coming to you proves that you are able to deceive him, not only about your love, but even your own feelings. You are able to give a perfect imitation of pleasure!’

  María was weeping silently, staring at the floor.

  When she could speak, she said, ‘You are incredibly cruel.’

  ‘Let’s put appearances aside; I’m interested in fact. The fact is that you have been able to deceive your husband for years, not only in regard to your love for him, but even your own feelings. The corollary should be obvious even to a beginner: How do I know you haven’t been deceiving me as well? Now you can understand why I have questioned you so often about your emotions. I have never forgotten that Desdemona’s father warned Othello that a woman who had deceived her father could deceive another man. And nothing has been able to drive that one thought from my mind: you have been deceiving Allende for years.’

  And for an instant, I felt compelled to carry my cruelty to its extreme, and I added, knowing that it was vulgar and ugly:

  ‘Deceiving a blind man.’

  XX

  Before the words were out of my mouth, I was slightly repentant. Behind the person who wanted the perverse satisfaction of saying them, stood a purer and more compassionate person preparing to take charge the minute the cruelty of that sentence had reached its mark – a person who, in a way, even if silently, had taken María’s part even before those stupid and pointless words had been voiced (what, in truth, was to be accomplished by saying them?). Even as the words left my lips, that suppressed person was listening with amazement, as if in spite of everything he had not seriously believed the other would say them. And with each word he began to take over my consciousness and my will, and he was almost in time to prevent the sentence from being completed. The instant it was (because in spite of him, the words came out), he was totally in control, demanding that I beg forgiveness, that I humble myself before María and acknowledge my stupidity and cruelty. How many times had that damned split in my consciousness been responsible for the most abominable acts? While one part of me strikes a pose of humaneness, the other part cries fraud, hypocrisy, false generosity. While one incites me to insult a fellow being, the other takes pity on him and accuses me of the very thing I am denouncing. While one urges me to see the beauty of the world, the other points out its sordidness and the absurdity of any feeling of happiness. It was too late, in any case, to heal the wound I had inflicted (this was assured with muffled, receding, smug malevolence by the other ‘I,’ who by now had been pushed back into his cave of filth); it was irreparably late. Silently, with infinite weariness, María stood up, while her eyes (how well I knew that look) raised the drawbridge that occasionally was lowered between us. I recognized the hard expression, the impenetrable eyes. I was struck by the conviction that the bridge had been raised for the last time, and in sudden desperation, without hesitation, I subjected myself to the most demeaning acts: kissing her feet, for example. I gained nothing but a pitying look, a momentary mellowing about the eyes. But pity, only pity.

  Even as she was leaving, assuring me, yet again, that she had no hard feelings toward me, I was sinking into paralyzing inertia. I stood in the middle of my studio, oblivious of everything around me, staring blankly ahead like a cretin, until suddenly I became conscious that I must do something.

  I ran outside, but María was nowhere to be seen. I rushed to her house by taxi, theorizing that she would not go directly home and that I could wait for her there. For more than an hour I waited in vain. I called her house from a bar. I was informed that she was not in and that she had not been home since four o’clock (the hour she had left to come to my studio). I waited several hours more. I called again. I was told that María would not be home until late that evening.

  Frantic, I looked for her everywhere, that is, in the places where we used to meet or walk: La Recoleta, Avenida Centenario, Plaza Francia, the port. I could not find her anywhere, and finally it dawned on me that logically she would be anywhere other than the places that reminded her of our happiest moments. Again I hurried to her house, but by then it was so late I was sure that María must be home. I phoned once again. She had, in fact, returned, but she was in bed and could not come to the telephone. I left my name anyway.

  Something between us had been shattered.

  XXI

  I returned home with a feeling of absolute loneliness.

  Usually that feeling of being alone in the world is accompanied by a condescending sense of superiority. I scorn all humankind; people around me seem vile, sordid, stupid, greedy, gross, niggardly. I do not fear solitude; it is almost Olympian.

  That night, like many other nights, I was alone as a consequence of my own failings, my own depravity. At such times the world seems despicable, even though I know that I am necessarily a part of it. Then a frenzy to obliterate everything sweeps over me; I let myself be seduced by the temptation of suicide; I get drunk; I look for prostitutes. I receive a certain satisfaction from proving my own baseness, in confirming that I am no better than the lowest of the low around me.

  That night I got drunk in a cheap little bar. At the height of my drunkenness I felt such revulsion for the woman with me, and for the sailors around me, that I fled outside. I walked down Viamonte to the docks. There, I sat down and sobbed. The filthy water below beckoned to me. Why suffer? The seduction of suicide lies in its easy oblivion: in one second the whole absurd universe would crumble as if it were a gigantic facsimile, as if the solidity of its skyscrapers, its battleships, its tanks, its prisons, were nothing more than a mirage, as illusory as the skyscrapers, battleships, tanks, and prisons of a nightmare.

  In the light of this reasoning, life becomes a long nightmare, but one from which we can be liberated by death – which thus becomes a kind of awakening. But awakening to what? My indecisiveness about plunging into absolute and eternal nothingness had deterred me whenever I was tempted by suicide. In spite of everything, man clings desperately to existence and, ultimately, prefers to bear life’s imperfections, the torment of its sordidness, rather than dispel the mirage through an act of will. It also happens that when we have reached the limits of despair that precede suicide, when we have exhausted the inventory of every evil and reached the point where evil is invincible, then any sign of goodness, however inf
initesimal, becomes momentous, and we grasp for it as we would claw for a tree root to keep from hurtling into an abyss.

  By the time I decided to go home it was almost morning. I do not remember how but, in spite of that decision (which I recall perfectly), I suddenly found myself before Allende’s house. What is curious is that I do not remember the intervening events. I can see myself sitting on the dock, gazing into the filthy water and thinking, ‘I must get to bed,’ and then I see myself standing before Allende’s house, staring up at the fifth floor. What was I doing? It was ludicrous to imagine that I might be able to see María at that hour. I stood there a long time, mesmerized, until an idea came to me. I walked down to the avenue, looked for a bar, and telephoned her. I called without stopping to think what I would say to justify calling at such an hour. When someone answered – the phone had rung for five minutes – I stood paralyzed, unable to open my mouth. Horrified, I hung up the receiver. I left the café and walked aimlessly, until I was surprised to find myself back at the same café. To avoid attracting attention, I ordered a gin, and, while I drank it, decided it was time to get myself home.

  Some time later I was back in my studio. I threw myself, fully clothed, onto the bed and was instantly asleep.

  XXII

  I woke up trying to scream. I was standing in the middle of the studio. This is what I had dreamed. Several persons, including myself, had an appointment at a man’s house. I reached the house, which from the outside looked like any other, and went in. As I entered I immediately sensed that it was not the same, that it was different from any other. The owner said:

  ‘I’ve been expecting you.’

  I suspected I had fallen into a trap, and tried to escape. I made an enormous effort, but it was too late: my body no longer obeyed me. I resigned myself and prepared to observe what was to happen, as if it had no relation to me. The man began to change me into a bird, into a man-size bird. He began with my feet: I saw them gradually turning into something like rooster claws. Then my whole body began to change, from the feet up, like water rising in a pool. My only hope now lay with my friends, who, unaccountably, had not arrived. When finally they did come, something horrible happened: they did not notice my transformation. They behaved normally, proving they thought I looked the same as I always did. Convinced that the magus had cast a spell that caused them to see a normal person, I determined to tell them what he had done to me. I had intended to tell this fantastic experience calmly – in order not to make matters worse with some rash reaction that might anger the magus (causing him to do something even worse) – but when I began to speak it was at the top of my voice. Then I was amazed by two facts: the words I wanted to say came out as squawks, screeches that fell on my ears as desperate and alien, perhaps because there was still something human about them, and, what was infinitely worse, my friends did not hear the squawking, just as they had not seen my enormous bird-body. On the contrary, they seemed to be hearing my normal voice saying normal things, because they showed no surprise. Terrified, I fell silent. The owner of the house was watching me with a sardonic glint in his eyes that was nearly imperceptible – in any case, seen only by me. I understood then that no one, ever, would know that I had been changed into a bird. I was lost; the secret would go with me to the tomb.

  XXIII

  As I said, when I awoke I was standing in the middle of the room, bathed in cold sweat.

  I looked at the clock: it was ten A.M. I ran to the telephone. I was told that María had gone to the estancia. I was stunned. For what seemed hours I lay on my bed unable to move. Finally I decided to write her a letter.

  I do not remember now the exact words of that letter, which was very long, but in essence I asked her to forgive me; I told her I was garbage, that I did not deserve her love, that I was condemned – and justifiably so – to die in utter loneliness.

  Agonizing days went by, without a response. I sent her a second letter, and then a third and a fourth, each saying the same thing, but with growing despair. In the last I decided to tell her everything that had happened the last night I saw her. I spared nothing, no detail of depravity. I also confessed how I had been tempted by suicide. I was ashamed to use that as a weapon, but I did. I must confess that as I was describing my debauchery, and my desolation that night standing before her house on Calle Posadas, I felt sorry for myself, and even shed a few compassionate tears. I cherished the hope that María might feel a little of that compassion when she read my letter, and with that hope, I became rather cheerful. By the time I mailed the letter – by certified mail – I was frankly optimistic.

  By return mail I received a tender letter from María. It made me feel that we might be able to relive some of the early moments of our love, if not with the original magical luminosity, at least in its essence – using the analogy that a king is always a king, even though disloyal and treacherous vassals have temporarily betrayed and reviled him.

  She wanted me to come to the estancia. Like a madman, I packed a suitcase and box of paints and ran to Constitución station.

  XXIV

  Allende is one of those rural train stations with a few men sitting around, a shirt-sleeved stationmaster, a wagon, and a few milk cans.

  I was irritated by two things: that María wasn’t there, and that a chauffeur was.

  I was barely off the train when he approached and asked:

  ‘Are you Señor Castel?’

  ‘No,’ I replied serenely. ‘I am not Señor Castel.’

  Immediately, however, I thought what a bore it would be to wait at the station for the return train; it might be as long as half a day. With ill humor, I reconciled myself to admitting who I was.

  ‘Yes,’ I corrected quickly. ‘I am Señor Castel.’

  The chauffeur could not conceal his amazement.

  ‘Take these,’ I said, handing him my suitcase and paints.

  We walked toward the car.

  ‘Señora María is not feeling well,’ the man explained.

  ‘Not feeling well!’ I muttered. My God, but she was good at that kind of subterfuge! Again I considered returning to Buenos Aires, but besides waiting for a train now there was an additional nuisance: the problem of convincing the chauffeur either that I was not, after all, Castel, or possibly convincing him that although I was Castel, I was not mad. Swiftly I reviewed the alternatives, and concluded that whatever I did, the chauffeur was going to be difficult to convince. I decided I would let myself be carried bodily to the estancia. Besides, what was to be gained by returning? The answer was simple; it would be a familiar replay of previous occasions: I would continue to seethe with anger, which would be magnified because I could not vent it on María; I would suffer because I was not with her; I would be unable to work – and all to effect some hypothetical humiliation on María. I say ‘hypothetical’ because I have never known whether that kind of retaliation actually had any effect.

  Hunter looked a little like Allende (I think I already said they were cousins). He was tall, dark, a bit thin, with evasive eyes. ‘This man is a hypocrite, and totally without will,’ I thought to myself. The thought cheered me (or at least for the moment I thought it did).

  He greeted me with sardonic courtesy and introduced me to a skinny woman with a ridiculously long cigarette holder. She had a Parisian accent, she was perverse and nearsighted, and her name was Mimí Allende.

  But where the devil was María? Was she really not well? I was so preoccupied that I had almost forgotten the two questionable types I had just met. Suddenly remembering where I was, I turned quickly and glared at Hunter, to dominate him. This is a method that yields excellent results with individuals of his sort.

  Hunter’s eyes were mocking, although he immediately tried to hide that expression.

  ‘María is not feeling well, and is lying down,’ he said. ‘But I expect her to be down soon.’

  Mentally I cursed myself for being caught off guard; with these two I would have to be constantly alert. Besides, I fully intended to
take notes of the way their minds worked, their humor, their reactions, their emotions, all of which would be very helpful in regard to María. So, I meant to listen and watch, and to do that, I wanted to be in the best possible frame of mind. But even though I again congratulated myself on the pair’s general air of hypocrisy, my mood remained somber.

  ‘So, you’re a painter,’ said the myopic woman, squinting at me through half-closed eyes, as if peering through a sandstorm. That grimace, obviously caused by trying to see without putting on her glasses (as if glasses could make her any uglier), merely intensified her insolent and hypocritical expression.

  ‘Yes, madam,’ I replied with rage. I was sure she was not married.

  ‘Castel is a magnificent painter,’ her companion explained. Then he added a series of flattering, if moronic, comments, repeating the drivel the critics write about me each time I have a show: ‘solid,’ and all the rest. I cannot deny that as he quoted the clichés I could detect a certain sense of humor. I saw that Mimí was again examining me through her little squinted eyes, and I became quite nervous, wondering what she might say. As yet, I did not know what to expect from her.

  ‘What painters do you prefer?’ she asked, like someone administering an exam.

  No, now I remember, she asked me that question after we came back down. Soon after he had introduced me to that woman, who was sitting in the garden near a table set for tea, Hunter had led me inside to my room. As we went up the stairs (it was a two-story house), he explained that the house, with some improvements, was virtually as his grandfather had built it on the site of his great-grandfather’s estate. ‘What difference does that make to me?’ I thought to myself. It was obvious that this fellow wanted to give the appearance of being forthright and frank, although for what purpose I could not imagine. As he was telling me something about a sundial, or something that had sun in it, I could think of nothing except that María was in one of these upstairs rooms. Perhaps in answer to the inquisitive look on my face, Hunter said: