…at any rate, there is only a single tunnel, isolated and dark, my own
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XXIV
Before five o’clock I was in Recoleta, sitting of the bench were we usually met. My mood, already darkened, fell into total depression when I saw the trees, the paths, and the other benches that were witnesses of our love. With desperate sadness, I thought about the times we had spent in the gardens of Recoleta and the Plaza Francia and how, in those days which seemed to be unmeasurably far away, I had believed in the permanence of our love. Everything had been miraculous and joyful; and now it was dismal and frozen, in an indifferent world without meaning. For a moment the fear of destroying the little that remained of our love, and leaving me completely alone, made me hesitate. I thought that maybe it might be possible to put aside all the doubts that tortured me. What did it matter to me what Maria was, except for our relationship? On seeing those benches, and those trees, I thought that I could never resign myself to losing her support, since there was nothing more than those moments of communication, and mysterious love, that united us. The more I thought about these things, the more I had the idea of accepting her love as it is with no conditions, and the more I was terrified by the idea of ending up with nothing, absolutely nothing. And as a result of this fear I began to have a feeling of modesty that only those who have no choice can feel. Before long I began to be possessed by an overwhelming feeling of happiness as I realized that nothing had been lost, and that after this moment of clarity, a new life could begin. Unfortunately Maria failed me one more time. By five thirty, worried and maddened, I called on the phone again. I was told that she had gone back to the farm. Not thinking what I was doing, I shouted: “But we had agreed to meet at five o’clock!” “I don’t know anything about that, sir,” she answered sounding rather frightened. “I only know that the the lady left by car some time ago, and she told me that she would be there for a weak at least.” At least a week! The world seemed to collapse, and everything seemed incredible and useless. I walked out of the café like a sleepwalker. I saw ridiculous things: streetlights, people walking side by side as if that was worth something. And how much I had wanted to see her this afternoon, and how much I needed her! And how little I was willing to ask and beg her! “However,” I though with ferocious bitterness, “between consoling me in a park, and sleeping with Hunter, there could no longer be any doubt.” And thinking about that, I had an idea. No, not just an idea, I was certain about something. I ran the few blocks it took me to reach my studio, and again I called Allende’s house. I asked if his wife had received a phone call from the farm before she left. “Yes,” the housemaid answered after a moment of hesitation. “A call from Mr. Hunter, right?” The housemaid hesitated once again. I made note of those two hesitations. “Yes,” she answered finally. A bitter feeling of triumph possessed me now, like the devil himself. Just as I had suspected. For a moment I had a feeling of complete aloneness, and a senseless feeling of pride: the pride of not having been mistaken. I thought about Mapelli. I was about to leave at once, when I had an idea. I went into the kitchen and picked up a knife, then went back into my study. How little remained of the old painting of Juan
Pablo Castel! Now those idiots who had once compared me to architect had a reason to be surprised! As if a man could ever really change! How many of the idiots would have guessed that underneath my architecture and “the intellectual quality,” there was also a volcano about to erupt? None. They would have more than enough time to see these columns broken in pieces, these mutilated statues, these smoldering ruins, these infernal staircases. There they were, like a museum of petrified nightmares, like a Museum of Desperation and Shame. But there was something I wanted to destroy without leaving a trace. I looked at it for the last time, I felt that my throat was choking painfully, but I did not hesitate; through my tears I saw that beach, that distant anxious woman, that waiting, breaking up and falling apart. I stomped on the shreds and then I picked them up and converted then into filthy rags. That senseless wait would never, ever, produce a response! Now I knew more than ever that my wait was completely useless! I hurried to Mapelli’s house, but he wasn’t home. They told me he probably was in the Viau Bookstore. I went to the bookstore, I found him, and I took him by the arm and told him that I needed his car. He looked at me with astonishment; he asked me if something bad had happened. Nothing bad had happened, but I decided to tell him that my father was gravely ill and there was no train until the next day. He offered to drive me himself, but I refused; I told him I preferred to go by myself. He looked at me with astonishment again, but ended by giving me the keys.
XXXV
It was six o’clock. I calculated that with Mapelli’s car I could be there in four hours, so I should arrive by ten o’clock. “That’s a good time,” I thought. When I started off on the road to Mar del Plata, I sped up to 130 kilometers an hour, and I began to feel a rare sense of pleasure that I attributed to the certainty that I would finally accomplish something concrete with her. With her, who had been like someone behind an impenetrable wall of glass, who I could see, but not touch; so that with that wall of glass between us we had lived anxiously, and melancholically. During this period of satisfaction, appearing and disappearing, were feelings of guilt, of hate, and love: I had lied about an illness, and that saddened me; I had gone so far as to call Allende for the second time, and that embittered me. She, Maria, could laugh at all this frivolity, she could surrender herself to that cynic, to that womanizer, to that false and presumptuous poet! What scorn I felt for her! I tried to feel the sorrowful pleasure of imagining this last decision of hers in the most repulsive way: on the one hand was her agreement to see this afternoon; what for?, to talk about more obscure unpleasant things, to place ourselves once again face to face on either side of a wall of glass, to see our anxious and desperate looks, to try to understand each other’s purpose, to vainly try and touch each other, to feel each other, to caress each other through the wall of glass, to once more dream this impossible dream. On the other hand, there was Hunter, and a telephone call from him had been enough to make her run to get in bed with him. How grotesque, and how sad, everything was! I arrived at the farm at ten fifteen. I stopped the car on the main road in order not to call attention with the noise of the motor, and I walked from there. The heat was unbearable, there was an overwhelming calmness, and I only heard the sound of the sea. At times the moonlight filtered through the clouds and I was able to walk without difficulty along the entry road between the eucalyptus trees. When I got to the farm house, I saw the the lights were on in the ground floor. I thought they must still be in the dinning room. I felt the same static and threatening heat one feels before the arrival of a violent storm during the summer. It was likely they would want to go outside after they ate, so I hid in a place in the yard where I could watch them come down the steps, and I waited.
XXXVI
It was an interminable wait. I don’t know how much time passed on the clocks, that anonymous and universal time of clocks that is extraneous to our feelings, to our destiny, to the formation or the collapse of of love, to the wait for a death. But my own sense of time was intense and complicated, full of things and changing decisions, an obscure river that was sometimes tumultuous, and sometimes strangely calm, almost immobile, where Maria and I, face to face, were contemplating each other motionlessly. Then other times it was like a river that dragged us, like in a childhood dream where I saw her galloping wildly on a horse with her hair floating in the wind, with her eyes boggled, and I saw myself in my southern town, in my sickroom with my face stuck to the window watching the snow fall with eyes that were also boggled. And it was like the two of us had been living in separate parallel passages or tunnels, without knowing that we were traveling, one next to the other, like similar souls in similar times, to find ourselves finally at the end of the passage, in front of a scene painted by me, like a key meant only for her, like a secret announcement that I was already there and that the passages had finally joined, and that the time for our meeting had arrived. The time for our meeting had arrived? But had the passages really joined, and had our souls really communicated? What a stupid illusion of mine all that had been! No, the passages were still like they were before, although now the wall that separated us was a wall of glass, and I could see Maria like a silent, untouchable figure… No, not even that wall was always there; sometimes it was once again a dark stone wall, and then I didn’t know that, on the other side, which was hers during those anonymous intervals, strange things were happening. And I even thought that in those moments her face changed and that a mocking expression deformed it, that perhaps there was mixed laughter, and that all the history of those passages was only a ridiculous invention, or belief, of mine, and that
transparent places in the wall of stone I had seen that woman and had thought naively that she was moving through another tunnel parallel to mine when, in reality, she was out in the open world, the limitless world of those who do not live in tunnels; and perhaps out of curiosity she had approached one of my strange windows and had glimpsed the spectacle of my insurmountable aloneness, or she had been intrigued by the silent language of my painting. And then, while I was always traveling through my solitary passage, she was outside, living her ordinary life, the excited life of those who live in the open, that strange and absurd life were there are dances and fiestas, as well as happiness and frivolity. And it happened that, as I was passing one of my windows, she was waiting for me anxiously (and why was she waiting, and why anxiously?); but then sometimes it happened that she didn’t arrive on time, or she forgot about this poor isolated person, and then, with my face pressed against the wall of glass, I saw her in the distance where she was smiling or dancing unconcernedly or, which was even worse, I didn’t see her at all and I imagined she was in some inaccessible or inconvenient place. And then I realized that my destiny was infinitely more solitary than I had ever imagined.
After an endless time of speculations and tunnels, they finally came down the stairs. When I saw them arm in arm, I felt my heart become hard and cold, like a chunk of ice. They descended slowly like those who are not in a hurry; “Hurry to what?” I thought with bitterness. And still, she knew I needed her, that his afternoon I had waited for her, that I had suffered terribly during each one of the minutes of that useless wait. And just the same, she knew at that very moment when she was basking in calmness, that I would be tormented in a minute inferno of thoughts and speculations. What implacable, what cold, foul beast could have taken possession of the heart of that weak woman? She could look at the stormy sky, as she was doing at that moment, and walk arm in arm with him (arm in arm with that grotesque animal!), walking slowly with him through the yard, enjoying the pleasant smell of the flowers, and sit by his side on the grass, while she knew that, at that same time I, who had waited for her in vain, who had called her house and knew about her trip to the farm, would be lost in a dark abyss, tormented by a swarm of hungry worms that were quickly devouring each one of my entrails. And here she was, talking to that ridiculous beast! What could Maria be talking about with that disgusting individual? And in what language? Or was I the ridiculous monster? For all I knew, they could be laughing at me at that moment. And wasn’t I the imbecile, the ridiculous man in the tunnel, who had sent secret messages? They walked around the farmyard for a long time. A thunderstorm was now upon us, dark, and torn by lightening flashes and thunderclaps. The wind began to blow and the first drops began to fall. They had to run quickly to take refuge in the house. My heart began to beat with painful violence. From my hiding place between the trees, I was sure that I would finally witness the abominable secret that I had imagined many times. I kept an eye on the lights of the second floor which at that moment were completely dark. A short time later I saw that the light had been turned on in the central bedroom which belonged to Hunter. Until then everything was normal. Hunter’s bedroom was at the head of stairs and it was natural that it would be the first to be illuminated. Now the light of another bedroom should be turned on. The seconds that passed while Maria should be coming up the stairs to her room were tumultuously filled with the savage beats of my heart. But the other light never came on. My God, I don’t have the strength to describe the sensation of empty loneliness that entered my heart! I felt like the only boat that could have rescued me from my desert island had passed by without noticing my signal of abandonment. My body collapsed slowly, as if it had reached the time of its death.
XXXVIII
Standing between the trees rocked by the strong wind and soaked by the rain, I felt that an implacable amount of time had passed. Until, through my eyes drenched by the rain and by my tears, I saw that a light had finally been lit in another bedroom. I remember what happened then like a nightmare. Struggling against the storm, I was able to climb up to the upper floor by hanging onto the bars of a window. Then, I walked along the balcony until I found a door. I walked down a hallway and looked for her bedroom; a strip of light under the door showed me which one it was. Trembling, I took hold of my knife and opened the door. And when she looked at me with astonishment, I was standing in the doorway. I walked over to her bed, and when I was by her side, she said, sadly: “What are you planning to do, Juan Pablo?” Placing my left hand over her hair, I answered: “I have to kill you, Maria. You have left me alone.” Then, weeping, I pushed the knife into her chest. She gritted her jaw and closed her eyes, and when I pulled out the knife dripping with blood, she opened them again, and she looked at me with pained and humble expression. A sudden rage spread through my heart, and I stabbed the knife repeatedly into her chest and her belly. Afterwards, I went back out on the balcony and descended with great impetus, as if the Devil had taken permanent possession of my spirit. The lighting flashes showed me the landscape we had shared for the last time. I hurried back to Buenos Aires. I got there about four or five o’clock in the morning. From a café I called Allende’s house, I had them wake him up, and I told him that I must see him immediately. Then I ran to Posadas. The Polish servant was waiting for me at the front door. When I reached the fifth floor, I saw Allende in front of the elevator, with his useless eyes wide open. I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him inside. Like an idiot, the Pole followed behind me, staring at me with astonishment. I told him to leave and, as soon as he was gone, I shouted at the blind man: “I have come from the farm! Maria was Hunter’s lover!” Allende’s face became mortally rigid. “Imbecile,” I muttered under my breath, with cold hate. And exasperated by his lack of understanding, I shouted: “You’re an imbecile. Maria was also my lover, and the lover of many others!” I had a horrendous feeling of pleasure while Allende stood there looking like he was made of stone. “Yes!” I shouted again. “I deceived you, and she deceived all of us! But now she will deceive no one. Do you understand? No one! Not anybody!” “Stupid!” Allende howled with a voice of fire, and ran toward me with hands that looked like claws. I moved aside, and he bumped into a table, falling over. With incredible rapidity he rose up again and started chasing me through the room, bumping into chairs and tables, while he cried with a dull moan, but with no tears, and shouted that one word: “stupid!” I escaped down the stairs and went out in the street after knocking down the housemaid who tried to stop me. I was possessed by hate, by scorn, and by compassion. By the time I turned myself in at the police station it was almost six o’clock.
Through the little window of my jail cell I saw that a new day had dawned with a sky that now had no clouds. I thought about how by now many men and women would be waking up, and then they would eat breakfast, read the newspaper and go to work, or maybe they would feed their children, or the cat, or they would talk about the movie they had watched the night before. I felt a dark cavern enlarging inside my body.
During these months of incarceration I have tried many times to figure out that last work of Allende, the word “stupid.” A great weariness, or perhaps some dark instinct, kept me from ever doing that. Some day perhaps I will be successful, and then I will also be able to understand the motives that Allende had to commit suicide. At least I am able to paint, although I suspect that the doctors are laughing behind my sback, as I suspect that they laughed during the trial when I told them about the scene with the window. There was only one person who understood my painting. Meanwhile, these paintings must be confirming their stupid point of view more every day. And day by day the walls of this hell will become more and more hermetic.
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