The Zahir Part 9

"Are you going to say what exactly, or will you tell me later?"

"I'll tell you in a moment. I haven't yet properly understood the message."

"But you promise to give me the address and the map."

"I promise. In the name of the divine energy of love, I promise. Now what was it you wanted to show me?"I pointed to a golden statue of a young woman riding a horse.

"This. She used to hear voices. As long as people respected what she said, everything was fine. When they started to doubt her, the wind of victory changed direction."

Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, the heroine of the Hundred Years War, who, at the age of seventeen, was made commander of the French troops because she heard voices and the voices told her the best strategy for defeating the English. Two years later, she was condemned to be burned at the stake, accused of witchcraft. I had used part of the interrogation, dated February 24, 1431, in one of my books.

She was questioned by Maitre Jean Beaupere. Asked how long it had been since she had heard the voice, she replied: "I heard it three times, yesterday and today. In the morning, at Vespers, and again when the Ave Maria rang in the evening..."

Asked if the voice was in the room, she replied that she did not know, but that she had been woken by the voice. It wasn't in the room, but it was in the castle.

She asked the voice what she should do, and the voice asked her to get out of bed and place the palms of her hands together.

Then she said to the bishop who was questioning her: "You say you are my judge. Take care what you are doing; for in truth I am sent by G.o.d, and you place yourself in great danger. My voices have entrusted to me certain things to tell to the King, not to you. The voice comes to me from G.o.d. I have far greater fear of doing wrong in saying to you things that would displease it than I have of answering you."

Mikhail looked at me: "Are you suggesting..."

"That you're the reincarnation of Joan of Arc? No, I don't think so. She died when she was barely nineteen, and you're twenty-five. She took command of the French troops and, according to what you've told me, you can't even take command of your own life."

We sat down on the wall by the Seine.

"I believe in signs," I said. "I believe in fate. I believe that every single day people are offered the chance to make the best possible decision about everything they do. I believe that I failed and that, at some point, I lost my connection with the woman I loved. And now, all I need is to put an end to that cycle. That's why I want the map, so that I can go to her."

He looked at me and he was once more the person who appeared on stage and went into a trancelike state. I feared another epileptic fit-in the middle of the night, here, in an almost deserted place.

"The vision gave me power. That power is almost visible, palpable. I can manage it, but I can't control it."

"It's getting a bit late for this kind of conversation. I'm tired, and so are you. Will you give me that map and the address?"

"The voice...Yes, I'll give you the map tomorrow afternoon. What's your address?"

I gave him my address and was surprised to realize that he didn't know where Esther and I had lived.

"Do you think I slept with your wife?"

"I would never even ask. It's none of my business."

"But you did ask when we were in the pizzeria."I had forgotten. Of course it was my business, but I was no longer interested in his answer.

Mikhail's eyes changed. I felt in my pocket for something to place in his mouth should he have a fit, but he seemed calm and in control.

"I can hear the voice now. Tomorrow I will bring you the map, detailed directions, and times of flights. I believe that she is waiting for you. I believe that the world would be happier if just two people, even two, were happier. Yet the voice is telling me that we will not see each other tomorrow."

"I'm having lunch with an actor over from the States, and I can't possibly cancel, but I'll be home during the rest of the afternoon."

"That's not what the voice is telling me."

"Is the voice forbidding you to help me find Esther?"

"No, I don't think so. It was the voice that encouraged me to go to the book signing.

From then on, I knew more or less how things would turn out because I had read A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew."

"Right, then," and I was terrified he might change his mind, "let's stick to our arrangement. I'll be at home from two o'clock onward."

"But the voice says the moment is not right."

"You promised."

"All right."

He held out his hand and said that he would come to my apartment late tomorrow afternoon. His last words to me that night were: "The voice says that it will only allow these things to happen when the time is right."

As I walked back home, the only voice I could hear was Esther's, speaking of love. And as I remembered that conversation, I realized that she had been talking about our marriage.

When I was fifteen, I was desperate to find out about s.e.x. But it was a sin, it was forbidden. I couldn't understand why it was a sin, could you? Can you tell me why all religions, all over the world, even the most primitive of religions and cultures, consider that s.e.x is something that should be forbidden?"

"How did we get onto this subject? All right, why is s.e.x something to be forbidden?"

"Because of food."

"Food?"

"Thousands of years ago, tribes were constantly on the move; men could make love with as many women as they wanted and, of course, have children by them. However, the larger the tribe, the greater chance there was of it disappearing. Tribes fought among themselves for food, killing first the children and then the women, because they were the weakest. Only the strongest survived, but they were all men. And without women, men cannot continue to perpetuate the species.

"Then someone, seeing what was happening in a neighboring tribe, decided to avoid the same thing happening in his. He invented a story according to which the G.o.ds forbade men to make love indiscriminately with any of the women in a tribe. They could only make love with one or, at most, two. Some men were impotent, some women weresterile, some members of the tribe, for perfectly natural reasons, thus had no children at all, but no one was allowed to change partners.

"They all believed the story because the person who told it to them was speaking in the name of the G.o.ds. He must have been different in some way: he perhaps had a deformity, an illness that caused convulsions, or some special gift, something, at any rate, that marked him out from the others, because that is how the first leaders emerged. In a few years, the tribe grew stronger, with just the right number of men needed to feed everyone, with enough women capable of reproducing and enough children to replace the hunters and reproducers. Do you know what gives a woman most pleasure within marriage?"

"s.e.x."

"No, making food. Watching her man eat. That is a woman's moment of glory, because she spends all day thinking about supper. And the reason must lie in that story hidden in the past-in hunger, the threat of extinction, and the path to survival."

"Do you regret not having had any children?"

"It didn't happen, did it? How can I regret something that didn't happen?"

"Do you think that would have changed our marriage?"

"How can I possibly know? I look at my friends, both male and female. Are they any happier because they have children? Some are, some aren't. And if they are happy with their children that doesn't make their relations.h.i.+p either better or worse. They still think they have the right to control each other. They still think that the promise to live happily ever after must be kept, even at the cost of daily unhappiness."

"War isn't good for you, Esther. It brings you into contact with a very different reality from the one we experience here. I know I'll die one day, but that just makes me live each day as if it were a miracle. It doesn't make me think obsessively about love, happiness, s.e.x, food, and marriage."

"War doesn't leave me time to think. I simply am, full stop. Whenever it occurs to me that, at any moment, I could be hit by a stray bullet, I just think: 'Good, at least I don't have to worry about what will happen to my child.' But I think too: 'What a shame, I'm going to die and nothing will be left of me. I am only capable of losing a life, not bringing a life into the world.'"

"Do you think there's something wrong with our relations.h.i.+p? I only ask because I get the feeling sometimes that you want to tell me something, but that you keep stopping yourself."

"Yes, there is something wrong. We feel obliged to be happy together. You think you owe me everything that you are, and I feel privileged to have a man like you at my side."

"I have a wife whom I love, but I don't always remember that and find myself asking: 'What's wrong with me?'"

"It's good that you're able to recognize that, but I don't think there's anything wrong with you, or with me, because I ask myself the same question. What's wrong is the way in which we show our love now. If we were to accept that this creates problems, we could live with those problems and be happy. It would be a constant battle, but it would at least keep us active, alive and cheerful, with many universes to conquer; the trouble is we're heading toward a point where things are becoming too comfortable, where love stops creating problems and confrontations and becomes instead merely a solution."

"What's wrong with that?""Everything. I can no longer feel the energy of love, what people call pa.s.sion, flowing through my flesh and through my soul."

"But something is left."

"Left? Does every marriage have to end like this, with pa.s.sion giving way to something people call 'a mature relations.h.i.+p'? I need you. I miss you. Sometimes I'm jealous. I like thinking about what to give you for supper, even though sometimes you don't even notice what you're eating. But there's a lack of joy."

"No, there isn't. Whenever you're far away, I wish you were near. I imagine the conversations we'll have when you or I come back from a trip. I phone you to make sure everything's all right. I need to hear your voice every day. I'm still pa.s.sionate about you, I can guarantee you that."

"It's the same with me, but what happens when we're together? We argue, we quarrel over nothing, one of us wants to change the other, to impose his or her view of reality.

You demand things of me that make no sense at all, and I do the same. Sometimes, in the silence of our hearts, we say to ourselves: 'How good it would be to be free, to have no commitments.'"

"You're right. And at moments like that, I feel lost, because I know that I'm with the woman I want to be with."

"And I'm with the man I always wanted to have by my side."

"Do you think that could change?"

"As I get older, and fewer men look at me, I find myself thinking: 'Just leave things as they are.' I'm sure I can happily deceive myself for the rest of my life. And yet, whenever I go off to cover a war, I see that a greater love exists, much greater than the hatred that makes men kill each other. And then, and only then, do I think I can change things."

"But you can't be constantly covering wars."

"Nor can I live constantly in the sort of peace that I find with you. It's destroying the one important thing I have: my relations.h.i.+p with you, even if the intensity of my love remains undiminished."

"Millions of people the world over are thinking the same thing right now, they resist fiercely and allow those moments of depression to pa.s.s. They withstand one, two, three crises and, finally, find peace."

"You know that isn't how it is. Otherwise you wouldn't have written the books you've written."

I had arranged to meet the American actor-director for lunch at Roberto's pizzeria. I needed to go back there as soon as possible in order to dispel any bad impression I might have made. Before I left, I told the maid and the caretaker of the apartment building that if I was not back in time and a young man with Mongolian features should deliver a package for me, they must take him up to my apartment, ask him to wait in the living room, and give him anything he needed. If, for some reason, the young man could not wait, then they should ask him to leave the package with one of them.

Above all, they must not let him leave without handing over the package!I caught a taxi and asked to be dropped off on the corner of Boulevard St-Germain and Rue des Sts-Peres. A fine rain was falling, but it was only a few yards to the restaurant, its discreet sign, and Roberto's generous smile, for he sometimes stood outside, smoking a cigarette. A woman with a baby stroller was coming toward me along the narrow pavement, and because there wasn't room for both of us, I stepped off the curb to let her pa.s.s.

It was then, in slow motion, that the world gave a giant lurch: the ground became the sky, the sky became the ground; I had time to notice a few architectural details on the top of the building on the corner-I had often walked past before, but had never looked up. I remember the sensation of surprise, the feeling of a wind blowing hard in my ear, and the sound of a dog barking in the distance; then everything went dark.

I was bundled abruptly down a black hole at the end of which was a light. Before I could reach it, however, invisible hands were dragging me roughly back up, and I woke to voices and shouts all around me: it could only have lasted a matter of seconds. I was aware of the taste of blood in my mouth, the smell of wet asphalt, and then I realized that I had had an accident. I was conscious and unconscious at the same time; I tried without success to move; I could make out another person lying on the ground beside me; I could smell that person's smell, her perfume; I imagined it must be the woman who had been pus.h.i.+ng her baby along the pavement. Oh, dear G.o.d!

Someone came over and tried to help me up; I yelled at them not to touch me, any movement could be dangerous. I had learned during a trivial conversation one trivial night that if I ever injured my neck, any sudden movement could leave me permanently paralyzed.

I struggled to remain conscious; I waited for a pain that never came; I tried to move, then thought better of it. I experienced a feeling like cramp, like torpor. I again asked not to be moved. I heard a distant siren and knew then that I could sleep, that I no longer needed to fight to save my life; whether it was won or lost, it was no longer up to me, it was up to the doctors, to the nurses, to fate, to "the thing," to G.o.d.

I heard the voice of a child-she told me her name, but I couldn't quite grasp it-telling me to keep calm, promising me that I wouldn't die. I wanted to believe what she said, I begged her to stay by my side, but she vanished; I was aware of someone placing something plastic around my neck, putting a mask over my face, and then I went to sleep again, and this time there were no dreams.

When I regained consciousness, all I could hear was a horrible buzzing in my ears; the rest was silence and utter darkness. Suddenly, I felt everything moving, and I was sure I was being carried along in my coffin, that I was about to be buried alive!

I tried banging on the walls, but I couldn't move a muscle. For what seemed an eternity, I felt as if I were being propelled helplessly forward; then, mustering all my remaining strength, I uttered a scream that echoed around the enclosed s.p.a.ce and came back to my own ears, almost deafening me; but I knew that once I had screamed, I was safe, for a light immediately began to appear at my feet: they had realized I wasn't dead!

Light, blessed light-which would save me from that worst of all tortures, suffocation-was gradually illuminating my whole body: they were finally removing thecoffin lid. I broke out in a cold sweat, felt the most terrible pain, but was also happy and relieved that they had realized their mistake and that joy could return to the world!

The light finally reached my eyes: a soft hand touched mine, someone with an angelic face was wiping the sweat from my brow.

"Don't worry," said the angelic face, with its golden hair and white robes. "I'm not an angel, you didn't die, and this isn't a coffin, it's just a body scanner, to find out if you suffered any other injuries. There doesn't appear to be anything seriously wrong, but you'll have to stay in for observation."

"No broken bones?"

"Just general abrasions. If I brought you a mirror, you'd be horrified, but the swelling will go down in a few days."

I tried to get up, but she very gently stopped me. Then I felt a terrible pain in my head and groaned.

"You've had an accident; it's only natural that you should be in pain."

"I think you're lying to me," I managed to say. "I'm a grown man, I've had a good life, I can take bad news without panicking. Some blood vessel in my head is about to burst, isn't it?"

Two nurses appeared and put me on a stretcher. I realized that I had an orthopedic collar around my neck.

"Someone told us that you asked not to be moved," said the angel. "Just as well. You'll have to wear this collar for a while, but barring any unforeseen events-because one can never tell what might happen-you'll just have had a nasty shock. You're very lucky."

"How long? I can't stay here."

No one said anything. Marie was waiting for me outside the radiology unit, smiling. The doctors had obviously already told her that my injuries were not, in principle, very serious. She stroked my hair and carefully disguised any shock she might feel at my appearance.

Our small cortege proceeded along the corridor-Marie, the two nurses pus.h.i.+ng the stretcher, and the angel in white. The pain in my head was getting worse all the time.

"Nurse, my head..."

"I'm not a nurse. I'm your doctor for the moment. We're waiting for your own doctor to arrive. As for your head, don't worry. When you have an accident, your body closes down all the blood vessels as a defense mechanism, to avoid loss of blood. When it sees that the danger is over, the vessels open up again, the blood starts to flow, and that feels painful, but that's all it is. Anyway, if you like, I can give you something to help you sleep."

I refused. And as if surfacing from some dark corner of my soul, I remembered the words I had heard the day before: "The voice says that it will only allow these things to happen when the time is right."

He couldn't have known. It wasn't possible that everything that had happened on the corner of Boulevard St-Germain and Rue des Sts-Peres was the result of some universal conspiracy, of something predetermined by the G.o.ds, who, despite being fully occupied in taking care of this precariously balanced planet on the verge of extinction, had all downed tools merely to prevent me from going in search of the Zahir. Mikhail could not possibly have foreseen the future, unless he really had heard a voice and there was a plan and this was all far more important than I imagined.Everything was beginning to be too much for me: Marie's smiles, the possibility that someone really had heard a voice, the increasingly agonizing pain in my head.

"Doctor, I've changed my mind. I want to sleep. I can't stand the pain."

She said something to one of the nurses pus.h.i.+ng the trolley, who went off and returned even before we had reached my room. I felt a p.r.i.c.k in my arm and immediately fell asleep.