The Zahir Part 2

"What?"

"I have the idea that, if I stopped, life would become meaningless."

"You can't just relax, look at Paris, take my hand and say: I've got what I wanted, now let's enjoy what life remains to us."

"I can look at Paris, take your hand, but I can't say those words."

"I bet you everyone walking along this street now is feeling the same thing. The elegant woman who just pa.s.sed us spends her days trying to hold back time, always checking the scales, because she thinks that is what love depends on. Look across the street: a couple with two children. They feel intensely happy when they're out with their children, but, at the same time, their subconscious keeps them in a constant state of terror: they think of the job they might lose, the disease they might catch, the health insurance that might not come up with the goods, one of the children getting run over. And in trying to distract themselves, they try as well to find a way of getting free of those tragedies, of protecting themselves from the world."

"And the beggar on the corner?"

"I don't know about him. I've never spoken to a beggar. He's certainly the picture of misery, but his eyes, like the eyes of any beggar, seem to be hiding something. His sadness is so obvious that I can't quite believe in it."

"What's missing?"

"I haven't a clue. I look at the celebrity magazines with everyone smiling and contented, but since I am myself married to a celebrity, I know that it isn't quite like that: everyone is laughing and having fun at that moment, in that photo, but later that night, or in the morning, the story is always quite different. 'What do I have to do in order to continue appearing in this magazine?' 'How can I disguise the fact that I no longer have enough money to support my luxurious lifestyle?' 'How can I best manipulate my luxurious lifestyle to make it seem even more luxurious than anyone else's?' 'The actress in thephoto with me and with whom I'm smiling and celebrating could steal a part from me tomorrow!' 'Am I better dressed than she is? Why are we smiling when we loathe each other?' 'Why do we sell happiness to the readers of this magazine when we are profoundly unhappy ourselves, the slaves of fame.'"

"We're not the slaves of fame."

"Don't get paranoid. I'm not talking about us."

"What do you think is going on, then?"

"Years ago, I read a book that told an interesting story. Just suppose that Hitler had won the war, wiped out all the Jews and convinced his people that there really was such a thing as a master race. The history books start to be changed, and, a hundred years later, his successors manage to wipe out all the Indians. Three hundred years later and the Blacks have been eliminated too. It takes five hundred years, but, finally, the all-powerful war machine succeeds in erasing all Asians from the face of the earth as well. The history books speak of remote battles waged against barbarians, but no one reads too closely, because it's of no importance.

"Two thousand years after the birth of n.a.z.ism, in a bar in Tokyo, a city that has been inhabited for five centuries now by tall, blue-eyed people, Hans and Fritz are enjoying a beer. At one point, Hans looks at Fritz and asks: 'Fritz, do you think it was always like this?'

"'What?' asks Fritz.

"'The world.'

"'Of course the world was always like this, isn't that what we were taught?'

"'Of course, I don't know what made me ask such a stupid question,' says Hans. They finish their beer, talk about other things and forget the question entirely."

"You don't even need to go that far into the future, you just have to go back two thousand years. Can you see yourself wors.h.i.+pping a guillotine, a scaffold, or an electric chair?"

"I know where you're heading-to that worst of all human tortures, the cross. I remember that Cicero referred to it as 'an abominable punishment' that inflicted terrible suffering on the crucified person before he or she died. And yet, nowadays people wear it around their neck, hang it on their bedroom wall, and have come to identify it as a religious symbol, forgetting that they are looking at an instrument of torture."

"Two hundred and fifty years pa.s.sed before someone decided that it was time to abolish the pagan festivals surrounding the winter solstice, the time when the sun is farthest from the earth. The apostles, and those who came after them, were too busy spreading Jesus'

message to worry about the natalis invict Solis, the Mithraic festival of the birth of the sun, which occurred on December 25. Then a bishop decided that these solstice festivals were a threat to the faith and that was that! Now we have ma.s.ses, Nativity scenes, presents, sermons, plastic babies in wooden mangers, and the cast-iron conviction that Christ was born on that very day!"

"And then there's the Christmas tree. Do you know where that comes from?"

"No idea."

"Saint Boniface decided to 'christianize' a ritual intended to honor the G.o.d Odin when he was a child. Once a year, the Germanic tribes would place presents around an oak tree for the children to find. They thought this would bring joy to the pagan deity.""Going back to the story of Hans and Fritz: do you think that civilization, human relations, our hopes, our conquests, are all just the product of some other garbled story?"

"When you wrote about the road to Santiago, you came to the same conclusion, didn't you? You used to believe that only a select few knew the meaning of magic symbols, but now you realize that we all know the meaning, it's just that we've forgotten it."

"Knowing that doesn't make any difference. People do their best not to remember and not to accept the immense magical potential they possess, because that would upset their neat little universes."

"But we all have the ability, don't we?"

"Absolutely, we just don't all have the courage to follow our dreams and to follow the signs. Perhaps that's where the sadness comes from."

"I don't know. And I'm not saying that I'm unhappy all the time. I have fun, I love you, I adore my work. Yet now and then, I feel this profound sadness, occasionally mingled with feelings of guilt or fear; the feeling pa.s.ses, but always comes back later on, and then pa.s.ses off again. Like Hans, I ask that same question; when I can't answer it, I simply forget. I could go and help starving children, set up a foundation for street children, start trying to save people in the name of Jesus, do something that would give me the feeling I was being useful, but I don't want to."

"So why do you want to go and cover this war?"

"Because I think that in time of war, men live life at the limit; after all, they could die the next day. Anyone living like that must act differently."

"So you want to find an answer to Hans's question?"

"Yes, I do."

Today, in this beautiful suite in the Hotel Bristol, with the Eiffel Tower glittering for five minutes every time the clock strikes the hour, with an empty bottle of wine beside me and my cigarettes fast running out, with people greeting me as if nothing very serious had happened, I ask myself: Was it then, coming out of the cinema, that it all began?

Should I have let her go off in search of that garbled story or should I have put my foot down and told her to forget the whole idea because she was my wife and I needed her with me, needed her support?

Nonsense. At the time, I knew, as I know now, that I had no option but to accept what she wanted. If I had said: "Choose between me and becoming a war correspondent," I would have been betraying everything that Esther had done for me. I wasn't convinced by her declared aim-to go in search of "a garbled story"-but I concluded that she needed a bit of freedom, to get out and about, to experience strong emotions. And what was wrong with that?

I accepted, not without first making it clear that this const.i.tuted a very large withdrawal from the Favor Bank (which, when I think about it now, seems a ludicrous thing to say).

For two years, Esther followed various conflicts at close quarters, changing continents more often than she changed her shoes. Whenever she came back, I thought that this time she would give it up-it's just not possible to live for very long in a place where there's no decent food, no daily bath, and no cinemas or theaters. I asked her if she had found the answer to Hans's question, and she always told me that she was on the right track, and Ihad to be satisfied with that. Sometimes, she was away from home for months at a time; contrary to what it says in the "official history of marriage" (I was starting to use her terminology), that distance only made our love grow stronger, and showed us how important we were to each other. Our relations.h.i.+p, which I thought had reached its ideal point when we moved to Paris, was getting better and better.

As I understand it, she first met Mikhail when she needed a translator to accompany her to some country in Central Asia. At first, she talked about him with great enthusiasm-he was a very sensitive person, someone who saw the world as it really was and not as we had been told it should be. He was five years younger than she, but had a quality that Esther described as "magical." I listened patiently and politely, as if I were really interested in that boy and his ideas, but the truth is, I was far away, going over in my mind all the things I had to do, ideas for articles, answers to questions from journalists and publishers, strategies for how to seduce a particular woman who appeared to be interested in me, plans for future book promotions.

I don't know if Esther noticed this. I certainly failed to notice that Mikhail gradually disappeared from our conversations, then vanished completely. Esther's behavior became increasingly eccentric: even when she was in Paris, she started going out several nights a week, telling me that she was researching an article on beggars.

I thought she must be having an affair. I agonized for a whole week and asked myself: should I tell her my doubts or just pretend that nothing is happening? I decided to ignore it, on the principle that "what the eye doesn't see, the heart doesn't grieve over." I was utterly convinced that there wasn't the slightest possibility of her leaving me; she had worked so hard to help me become the person I am, and it would be illogical to let all that go for some ephemeral affair.

If I had really been interested in Esther's world, I should at least have asked what had happened to her translator and his "magical" sensibility. I should have been suspicious of that silence, that lack of information. I should have asked to go with her on one of those "research trips" to visit beggars.

When she occasionally asked if I was interested in her work, my answer was always the same: "Yes, I'm interested, but I don't want to interfere, I want you to be free to follow your dream in your chosen way, just as you helped me to do the same."

This, of course, was tantamount to saying that I wasn't the slightest bit interested. But because people always believe what they want to believe, Esther seemed satisfied with my response.

The words spoken by the inspector when I was released from the police cell come back to me again: You're a free man. But what is freedom? Is it seeing that your husband isn't interested in what you are doing? Is it feeling alone and having no one with whom to share your innermost feelings, because the person you married is entirely focused on his own work, on his important, magnificent, difficult career?

I look at the Eiffel Tower: another hour has pa.s.sed, and it is glittering again as if it were made of diamonds. I have no idea how often this has happened since I have been at the window.

I know that, in the name of the freedom of our marriage, I did not notice that Mikhail had disappeared from my wife's conversations, only to reappear in a bar and disappear again,this time taking her with him and leaving behind the famous, successful writer as prime suspect.

Or, worse still, as a man abandoned.

HANS'S QUESTION

In Buenos Aires, the Zahir is a common 20-centavo coin; the letters N and T and the number 2 bear the marks of a knife or a letter opener; 1929 is the date engraved on the reverse. (In Gujarat, at the end of the eighteenth century, the Zahir was a tiger; in Java, it was a blind man from the Surakarta Mosque who was stoned by the faithful; in Persia, an astrolabe that Nadir Shah ordered to be thrown into the sea; in the Mahdi's prisons, in around 1892, a small compa.s.s that had been touched by Rudolf Karl von Slatin....)

A year later, I wake thinking about the story by Jorge Luis Borges, about something which, once touched or seen, can never be forgotten, and which gradually so fills our thoughts that we are driven to madness. My Zahir is not a romantic metaphor-a blind man, a compa.s.s, a tiger, or a coin.

It has a name, and her name is Esther.

Immediately after leaving prison, I appeared on the covers of various scandal sheets: they began by alleging a possible crime, but, in order to avoid ending up in court, they always concluded with the statement that I had been cleared. (Cleared? I hadn't even been accused!) They allowed a week to pa.s.s; they checked to see if the sales had been good (they had, because I was the kind of writer who was normally above suspicion, and everyone wanted to find out how it was possible for a man who writes about spirituality to have such a dark side). Then they returned to the attack, alleging that my wife had run away because of my many extramarital affairs: a German magazine even hinted at a possible relations.h.i.+p with a singer, twenty years my junior, who said she had met me in Oslo, in Norway (this was true, but the meeting had only taken place because of the Favor Bank-a friend of mine had asked me to go and had been with us throughout the only supper we had together). The singer said that there was nothing between us (so why put a photo of us on the cover?) and took the opportunity to announce that she was releasing a new alb.u.m: she had used both the magazine and me, and I still don't know whether the failure of the alb.u.m was a consequence of this kind of cheap publicity. (The alb.u.m wasn't bad, by the way-what ruined everything were the press releases.) The scandal over the famous writer did not last long; in Europe, and especially in France, infidelity is not only accepted, it is even secretly admired. And no one likes to read about the sort of thing that could so easily happen to them.

The topic disappeared from the front covers, but the hypotheses continued: she had been kidnapped, she had left home because of physical abuse (photo of a waiter saying that we often argued: I remember that I did, in fact, have an argument with Esther in a restaurant about her views on a South American writer, which were completely opposed to mine). A British tabloid alleged-and luckily this had no serious repercussions-that my wife had gone into hiding with an Islamist terrorist organization.

This world is so full of betrayals, divorces, murders, and a.s.sa.s.sination attempts that a month later the subject had been forgotten by the ordinary public. Years of experience had taught me that this kind of thing would never affect my faithful readers.h.i.+p (it had happened before, when a journalist on an Argentinian television program claimed that he had "proof" that I had had a secret meeting in Chile with the future first lady of thecountry-but my books remained on the bestseller lists). As an American artist almost said: Sensationalism was only made to last fifteen minutes. My main concern was quite different: to reorganize my life, to find a new love, to go back to writing books, and to put away any memories of my wife in the little drawer that exists on the frontier between love and hate.

Or should I say memories of my ex-wife (I needed to get used to the term).

Part of what I had foreseen in that hotel room did come to pa.s.s. For a while, I barely left the apartment: I didn't know how to face my friends, how to look them in the eye and say simply: "My wife has left me for a younger man." When I did go out, no one asked me anything, but after a few gla.s.ses of wine I felt obliged to bring the subject up-as if I could read everyone's mind, as if I really believed that they had nothing more to occupy them than what was happening in my life, but that they were too polite or smug to say anything. Depending on my mood, Esther was either a saint who deserved better or a treacherous, perfidious woman who had embroiled me in such a complicated situation that I had even been thought a criminal.

Friends, acquaintances, publishers, people I sat next to at the many gala dinners I was obliged to attend, listened with some curiosity at first. Gradually, though, I noticed that they tended to change the subject; they had been interested in the subject at some point, but it was no longer part of their current curiosities: they were more interested in talking about the actress who had been murdered by a singer or about the adolescent girl who had written a book about her affairs with well-known politicians. One day, in Madrid, I noticed that the number of guests at events and suppers was beginning to fall off.

Although it may have been good for my soul to unburden myself of my feelings, to blame or to bless Esther, I began to realize that I was becoming something even worse than a betrayed husband: I was becoming the kind of boring person no one wants to be around.

I decided, from then on, to suffer in silence, and the invitations once more flooded in through my mailbox.

But the Zahir, about which I initially used to think with either irritation or affection, continued to grow in my soul. I started looking for Esther in every woman I met. I would see her in every bar, every cinema, at bus stops. More than once I ordered a taxi driver to stop in the middle of the street or to follow someone, until I could persuade myself that the person was not the person I was looking for.

With the Zahir beginning to occupy my every thought, I needed an antidote, something that would not take me to the brink of despair.

There was only one possible solution: a girlfriend.

I encountered three or four women I felt drawn to, but then I met Marie, a thirty-five- year-old French actress. She was the only one who did not spout such nonsense as: "I like you as a man, not as the celebrity everyone wants to meet" or "I wish you weren't quite so famous," or worse still: "I'm not interested in money." She was the only one who was genuinely pleased at my success, because she too was famous and knew that celebrity counts. Celebrity is an aphrodisiac. It was good for a woman's ego to be with a man and know that he had chosen her even though he had had the pick of many others.

We were often seen together at parties and receptions; there was speculation about our relations.h.i.+p, but neither she nor I confirmed or denied anything, and the matter was left hanging, and all that remained for the magazines was to wait for the photo of the famouskiss-which never came, because both she and I considered such public exhibitionism vulgar. She got on with her filming and I with my work; when I could, I would travel to Milan, and when she could, she would meet me in Paris; we were close, but not dependent on each other.

Marie pretended not to know what was going on in my soul, and I pretended not to know what was going on in hers (an impossible love for a married neighbor, even though she could have had any man she wanted). We were friends, companions, we enjoyed the same things; I would even go so far as to say that there was between us a kind of love, but different from the love I felt for Esther or that Marie felt for her neighbor.

I started taking part in book signings again, I accepted invitations to give lectures, write articles, attend charity dinners, appear on television programs, help out with projects for up-and-coming young artists. I did everything except what I should have been doing, namely, writing a book.

This didn't matter to me, however, for in my heart of hearts I believed that my career as a writer was over, because the woman who had made me begin was no longer there. I had lived my dream intensely while it lasted, I had got further than most people are lucky enough to get, I could spend the rest of my life having fun.

I thought this every morning. In the afternoon, I realized that the only thing I really liked doing was writing. By nightfall, there I was once more trying to persuade myself that I had fulfilled my dream and should try something new.

The following year was a Holy Year in Spain, the Ano Santo Compostelano, which occurs whenever the day of Saint James of Compostela, July 25, falls on a Sunday. A special door to the cathedral in Santiago stands open for 365 days, and, according to tradition, anyone who goes through that door receives a series of special blessings.

There were various commemorative events throughout Spain, and since I was extremely grateful for the pilgrimage I had made, I decided to take part in at least one event: a talk, in January, in the Basque country. In order to get out of my routine-trying to write a book/going to a party/to the airport/visiting Marie in Milan/going out to supper/to a hotel/to the airport/surfing the Internet/going to the airport/to an interview/to another airport-I chose to drive the 1,400 kilometers there alone.

Everywhere-even those places I have never visited before-reminds me of my private Zahir. I think how Esther would love to see this, how much she would enjoy eating in this restaurant or walking by this river. I spend the night in Bayonne and, before I go to sleep, I turn on the television and learn that there are about five thousand trucks stuck on the frontier between France and Spain, due to a violent and entirely unexpected snowstorm.

I wake up thinking that I should simply drive back to Paris: I have an excellent excuse for canceling the engagement, and the organizers will understand perfectly-the traffic is in chaos, there is ice on the roads, both the French and Spanish governments are advising people not to leave home this weekend because the risk of accidents is so high. The situation is worse than it was last night: the morning paper reports that on one stretch of road alone seventeen thousand people are trapped; civil defense teams have beenmobilized to provide them with food and temporary shelters, since many people have already run out of fuel and cannot use their car heaters.

The hotel staff tell me that if I really have to travel, if it's a matter of life or death, there is a minor road I can take, which, while it will avoid the blockages, will add about two hours to my journey time, and no one can guarantee what state the road will be in.

Instinctively, I decide to go ahead; something is forcing me on, out onto the icy asphalt and to the hours spent patiently waiting in bottlenecks.

Perhaps it is the name of the city: Vitoria-Victory. Perhaps it is the feeling that I have grown too used to comfort and have lost my ability to improvise in crisis situations.

Perhaps it is the enthusiasm of the people who are, at this moment, trying to restore a cathedral built many centuries ago and who, in order to draw attention to their efforts, have invited a few writers to give talks. Or perhaps it is the old saying of the conquistadors of the Americas: "It is not life that matters, but the journey."

And so I keep on journeying. After many long, tense hours, I reach Vitoria, where some even tenser people are waiting for me. They say that there hasn't been a snowstorm like it for more than thirty years, they thank me for making the effort, and continue with the official program, which includes a visit to the Cathedral of Santa Maria.

A young woman with s.h.i.+ning eyes starts telling me the story. To begin with there was the city wall. The wall remained, but one part of it was used to build a chapel. Many years pa.s.sed, and the chapel became a church. Another century pa.s.sed, and the church became a Gothic cathedral. The cathedral had had its moments of glory, there had been structural problems, for a time it had been abandoned, then restoration work had distorted the whole shape of the building, but each generation thought it had solved the problem and would rework the original plans. Thus, in the centuries that followed, they raised a wall here, took down a beam there, added a b.u.t.tress over there, created or bricked up stained- gla.s.s windows.

And the cathedral withstood it all.

I walk through the skeleton of the cathedral, studying the restoration work currently being carried out: this time the architects guarantee that they have found the perfect solution. Everywhere there are metal supports, scaffolding, grand theories about what to do next, and some criticism about what was done in the past.

And suddenly, in the middle of the central nave, I realize something very important: the cathedral is me, it is all of us. We are all growing and changing shape, we notice certain weaknesses that need to be corrected, we don't always choose the best solution, but we carry on regardless, trying to remain upright and decent, in order to do honor not to the walls or the doors or the windows, but to the empty s.p.a.ce inside, the s.p.a.ce where we wors.h.i.+p and venerate what is dearest and most important to us.

Yes, we are all cathedrals, there is no doubt about it; but what lies in the empty s.p.a.ce of my inner cathedral?

Esther, the Zahir.

She fills everything. She is the only reason I am alive. I look around, I prepare myself for the talk I am to give, and I understand why I braved the snow, the traffic jams, and the ice on the roads: in order to be reminded that every day I need to rebuild myself and to accept-for the first time in my entire existence-that I love another human being more than I love myself.On the way back to Paris-in far more favorable weather conditions-I am in a kind of trance: I do not think, I merely concentrate on the traffic. When I get home, I ask the maid not to let anyone in, and ask her if she can sleep over for the next few nights and make me breakfast, lunch, and supper. I stamp on the small apparatus that connects me to the Internet, destroying it completely. I unplug the telephone. I put my cell phone in a box and send it to my publisher, saying that he should only give it back to me when I come around personally to pick it up.

For a week, I walk by the Seine each morning, and when I get back, I lock myself in my study. As if I were listening to the voice of an angel, I write a book, or, rather, a letter, a long letter to the woman of my dreams, to the woman I love and will always love. This book might one day reach her hands and even if it doesn't, I am now a man at peace with his spirit. I no longer wrestle with my wounded pride, I no longer look for Esther on every corner, in every bar and cinema, at every supper. I no longer look for her in Marie or in the newspapers.

On the contrary, I am pleased that she exists; she has shown me that I am capable of a love of which I myself knew nothing, and this leaves me in a state of grace.

I accept the Zahir, and will let it lead me into a state of either holiness or madness.