The Zahir

"No, love."

"You're becoming like them."

"I think I am."

"Tell your news agency you've had enough."

"I can't. It's like a drug. As long as I'm in a war zone, my life has meaning. I go for days without having a bath, I eat whatever the soldiers eat, I sleep three hours a night and wake up to the sound of gunfire. I know that at any moment someone could lob a grenade into the place where we're sitting, and that makes me live, do you see? Really live, I mean, loving every minute, every second. There's no room for sadness, doubts, nothing; there's just a great love for life. Are you listening?"

"Absolutely."

"It's as if there was a divine light shining in the midst of every battle, in the midst of that worst of all possible situations. Fear exists before and after, but not while the shots are being fired, because, at that moment, you see men at their very limit, capable of the most heroic of actions and the most inhumane. They run out under a hail of bullets to rescue a comrade, and at the same time shoot anything that moves--children, women--anyone who comes within their line of fire will die. People from small, provincial towns where nothing ever happened and where they were always

decent citizens find themselves invading museums, destroying centuries-old works of art, and stealing things they don't need. They take photos of atrocities that they themselves committed and, rather than trying to conceal these, they feel proud. And people who, before, were always disloyal and treacherous feel a kind of camaraderie and solidarity and become incapable of doing wrong. It's a mad world, completely topsy-turvy."

"Has it helped you answer the question that Hans asked Fritz in that bar in Tokyo in the story you told me?"

"Yes, the answer lies in some words written by the Jesuit Teilhard de Chardin, the same man who said that our world is surrounded by a layer of love. He said: 'We can harness the energy of the winds, the seas, the sun. But the day man learns to harness the energy of love, that will be as important as the discovery of fire.'"

"And you could only learn that by going to a war zone?"

"I'm not sure, but it did allow me to see that, paradoxical though it may seem, people are happy when they're at war. For them, the world has meaning. As I said before, total power or sacrificing themselves for a cause gives meaning to their lives. They are capable of limitless love, because they no longer have anything to lose. A fatally wounded soldier never asks the medical team: 'Please save me!' His last words are usually: 'Tell my wife and my son that I love them.' At the last moment, they speak of love!"

"So, in your opinion, human beings only find life meaningful when they're at war."

"But we're always at war. We're at war with death, and we know that death will win in the end. In armed conflicts, this is simply more obvious, but the same thing happens in daily life. We can't allow ourselves the luxury of being unhappy all the time."

"What do you want me to do?"

"I need help. And that doesn't mean saying to me, 'Go and hand in your notice,' because that would only leave me feeling even more confused than before. We need to find a way of channeling all this, of allowing the energy of this pure, absolute love to flow through our bodies and spread around us. The only person so far who has helped me understand this is a rather otherworldly interpreter who says he's had revelations about this energy."

"Are you talking about the love of God?"

"If someone is capable of loving his partner without restrictions, unconditionally, then he is manifesting the love of God. If the love of God becomes manifest, he will love his neighbor. If he loves his neighbor, he will love himself. If he loves himself, then everything returns to its proper place. History changes."

"History will never change because of politics or conquests or theories or wars; that's mere repetition, it's been going on since the beginning of time. History will only change when we are able to use the energy of love, just as we use the energy of the wind, the seas, the atom."

"Do you think we two could save the world?"

"I think there are more people out there who think the same way. Will you help me?"

"Yes, as long as you tell what I have to do."

"But that's precisely what I don't know!"

I had been a regular customer at this charming pizzeria ever since my very first visit to Paris, so much so that it has become part of my history. Most recently, I had held a supper here to celebrate receiving the medal of Officer of Arts and Literature presented to me by the Ministry of Culture, even though many people felt that the commemoration of such an important event should have taken place somewhere more elegant and more expensive. But Roberto, the owner, had become a kind of good-luck charm to me; whenever I went to his restaurant, something good happened in my life.

"I could start with some small talk about the success of A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew or the contradictory emotions I felt last night as I watched your performance."

"It's not a performance, it's a meeting," he said. "We tell stories and we dance in order to feel the energy of love."

"I could talk about anything just to put you at your ease, but we both know why we're here."

"We're here because of your wife," said Mikhail, who was now full of a young man's defiance and in no way resembled the shy boy at the book signing or the spiritual leader of that "meeting."

"You mean my ex-wife. And I would like to ask you a favor: take me to her. I want her to look me in the eye and tell me why she left. Only then will I be free of the Zahir. Otherwise, I'll go on thinking about her day and night, night and day, going over and over our story, our history, again and again, trying to pinpoint the moment when I went wrong and our paths began to diverge."

He laughed.