The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato
During an art exhibition, Juan Pablo Castel notices a woman studying a small beach scene set within one of his larger portraits. Tongue-tied at the time, he later becomes obsessed with the task of tracking her down. By chance, he does finds her - and it’s a short, bitter chain from there to murder.
Castel is already in prison when we meet him. Far from feeling remorse, he wishes he’d managed to eliminate a few others before being caught. But in a way he has always been a prisoner: living in the “black desert” of a “personal hell” parallel to everyone else, rarely seen, like a rat. Only ever once understood.
As he narrates, Castel’s logic unspools into whorls of poisonous frenzy. He lashes out at the woman - María, his tunnel-vision blinding him to truth and beauty. He is obsessed with her: obsessed with hidden meanings in her gestures, with her previous lovers, with the authenticity of her lovemaking, with her ready forgiveness of his brutality. He analyses her every word and finds it lacking.
The unravelling of his logic is brilliantly portrayed. Indeed, the whole gem-sized book is finely wrought and economically written. It is both dark and comic, with awful stabs of truth at the worst of human nature. The explanation of the title is heart-wrenching and by saying so I wonder if I answer Castel’s “faint hope that someone will understand me - even if it is only one person.” (5)
It’s not all doom and gloom. There is a comic interlude presented by minor character Mimí who rails against Russian novels and swoons over fictional detectives:
“Mystery stories are the only kind of novel I can bring myself to read. I mean, they are enchanting! Everything is so complicated, and there are those marvellous detectives who know everything from Ming dynasty art, graphology, Einstein’s theory, baseball, archaeology, palmistry, and political science to statistics about raising rabbits in India. I adore it when they are so infallible.” (94)
Details
The Tunnel by Ernesto Sábato
Published by Penguin Classics, 2011
First published in 1948 as El Tunel by Sur, Buenos Aires
ISBN: 978-0-141-19454-7
Note to me
References to Othello (76), a novel by Sartre (106), names in Russian novels (93) and fictional detectives (94).
