Nobody recommended me this book, nor had I heard about it. Somehow came across this author and subsequently this book while surfing, thought will give it a shot. And a good one it was.
“The Wall” is an eponymous collection of short stories. Each of these short stories delves on grey shades of human mind and emotion.
“The Wall” was one of my favorite short stories amongst these and I actually re read it couple of times more. It is based on the time of Spanish Civil war, and is narrated from the point of view of one of the prisoners, Pablo Ibbieta. Pablo and couple of more prisoners are put into a dark small cold cell and are sentenced to be executed at dawn. The execution will take place by shooting bullets at the prisoners lined up against the Wall. The whole story is about how the human mind and body conflict with each other while awaiting death, about how different people perceive the looming death. How once the illusion of eternity disappears, life and everything in it loses all meaning.
Pablo wants to die neat; he does not want to express any emotions of fear, sadness, pity, remorse or anger. It’s not that he is making an effort not to express emotions; it’s just that he is not feeling any of these emotions. He feels nothing. He isn’t scared to face death, he is neither sad nor angry, nor does he feel any kind of self pity. He thinks about his whole life so far, how he struggled for few things, enthusiastically did others, living as if he was immortal. It’s like the only certainty is death and you are alone in it. Even though he has a loved one, whom he missed at times, he had no feelings for her at this hour, cuz he was alone in this. Even though she will grieve about him, but it is still he who is dying. He found that his mind had accepted this fact but his body was betraying him, as if it wasn’t his. He was perspiring in the cold shivering night, and he wasn’t sure of his body anymore which was showing signs of decaying with fear.
At a point he realized if for some reason he gets to live, life will still be moot, now that the illusion of life was gone. With these thoughts it was dawn and they started to hear bullet shots in background. Soon Pablo’s cell mates were dragged to their death. But Pablo isn’t, with a subtle twist in fate he gets to live, just yet. He is confused about it and when it dawns on him, laughs and cries at the same time.
The narration is awesome. The musings of a man standing at the door of death gives you goose bumps and yet at the same time seems apt.
The second story “The Room” is about a girl, Eve, who is living with her dementia hit husband, Pierre. Her parents are quite worried and wish that she realizes that her husband is sick, needs help and she needs to get on with her life. She on the other hand is quite fine with living with her husband in their dark room which is completely lost from humanity. Pierre lives in his own world, everything he says or feels is a figment of his imagination. He recognizes no one, and is slowly drifting into his own imaginary world. Eve seems unable to extricate herself from his life. She has cut herself from the rest of the world and is confined in that single dark room, with Pierre. One moment she is scared to be in that room, next moment she wants to enter his world. He seems to have such a strong influence on her that she seems hung on the verge of insanity. Again the narration is quite good and makes one wonder “what defines sanity?”
There are 3 more such psycho stories in this collection. I didn't like the last story "Childhood of a leader", didn't even finish reading the whole thing. Other stories did make a good read :)
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