The Tunnel

by Ernesto Sabato

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.

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.

‘My dear, I have never been able to finish a Russian novel. They are so tiresome. I think there are thousands of characters, and in the end it turns out there are only four or five. Isn’t it maddening just when you begin to recognize a man called Alexandre, he’s called Sacha, and then Satchka, and later Sachenka, and suddenly something pretentious like Alexandre Alexandrovitch Bunine, and later simply Alexandre Alexandrovitch. The minute you get your bearings, they throw you off the track again. There’s no end to it; each character is a whole family in himself. Even you will agree it is exhausting, even for you!’

Every time we were with other people and I saw her approaching, I thought, ‘There is a secret bond between this marvelous woman and myself.’

That surge of pride, that growing desire to possess her exclusively, should have warned me that I was taking the wrong path – governed by vanity and arrogance.

‘I can’t count the times,’ said María, ‘that I have dreamed of sharing this sea and this sky with you.’