The Zahir

On the way, Marie kept asking him what the meeting was about, and he always gave the same answer: it's a way of recovering love. He said that he had liked my story about the railway tracks.

"That's how love got lost," he said. "When we started laying down rules for when love should or shouldn't appear."

"When was that?" Marie asked.

"I don't know, but I know it's possible to retrieve that Energy. I know, because when I dance, or when I hear the voice, love speaks to me."

Marie didn't know what he meant by "hearing the voice," but, by then, we had reached the bridge. Mikhail and I got out and started walking in the cold Paris night.

"I know you were frightened by what you saw. The biggest danger when someone has a fit is that their tongue will roll back and they'll suffocate. The owner of the restaurant knew what to do, so it's obviously happened there before. It's not that unusual. But your diagnosis is wrong. I'm not an epileptic. It happens whenever I get in touch with the Energy."

Of course he was an epileptic, but there was no point in contradicting him. I was trying to act normally. I needed to keep the situation under control. I was surprised how easily he had agreed to this second meeting.

"I need you. I need you to write something about the importance of love," said Mikhail.

"Everyone knows that love is important. That's what most books are about."

"All right, let me put my request another way. I need you to write something about the new Renaissance."

"What's the new Renaissance?"

"It's similar to the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when geniuses like Erasmus, Leonardo, and Michelangelo rejected the limitations of the present and the oppressive conventions of their own time and turned instead to the past. We're beginning to see a return to a magical language, to alchemy and the idea of the Mother Goddess, to people reclaiming the freedom to do what they believe in and not what the church or the government demand of them. As in fifteenth-and sixteenth-century Florence, we are discovering that the past contains the answers to the future.

"Your story about the railway tracks, for example: In how many other areas of our lives are we obeying rules we don't understand? People read what you write--couldn't you introduce the subject somewhere?"

"I never make deals over what I write," I replied, remembering once more that I needed to keep my self-respect. "If it's an interesting subject, if it's in my soul, if the boat called The Word carries me to that particular island, I might write about it. But none of this has anything to do with my search for Esther."

"I know, and I'm not trying to impose any conditions, I'm just suggesting something that seems important to me."

"Did she tell you about the Favor Bank?"

"She did. But this isn't a matter for the Favor Bank. It's to do with a mission that I can't fulfill on my own."

"What you do in the Armenian restaurant, is that your mission?"

"That's just a tiny part of it. We do the same thing on Fridays with a group of beggars. And on Wednesdays we work with a group of new nomads."

New nomads? It was best not to interrupt; the Mikhail who was talking to me now had none of the arrogance he had shown in the pizzeria, none of the charisma he had revealed on stage or the vulnerability he had revealed on that evening at the book signing. He was a normal person, a colleague with whom we always end up, late at night, talking over the world's problems.

"I can only write about things that really touch my soul," I insist.

"Would you like to come with us to talk to the beggars?"

I remembered Esther's remark about the phony sadness in the eyes of those who should be the most wretched people in the world.

"Let me think about it first."

We were approaching the Louvre, but he paused to lean on the parapet, and we both stood there contemplating the passing boats, which dazzled us with their spotlights.

"Look at them," I said, because I needed to talk about something, afraid that he might get bored and go home. "They only see what the spotlights show them. When they go home, they'll say they know Paris. Tomorrow, they'll go and see the Mona Lisa and claim they've visited the Louvre. But they don't know Paris and have never really been to the Louvre. All they did was go on a boat and look at a painting, one painting, instead of looking at a whole city and trying to find out what's happening in it, visiting the bars, going down streets that don't appear in any of the tourist guides, and getting lost in order to find themselves again. It's the difference between watching a porn movie and making love."

"I admire your self-control. There you are talking about the boats on the Seine, all the while waiting for the right moment to ask the question that brought you to me. Feel free to talk openly about anything you like."

There was no hint of aggression in his voice, and so I decided to come straight to the point.

"Where is Esther?"

"Physically, she's a long way away, in Central Asia. Spiritually, she's very close, accompanying me day and night with her smile and the memory of her enthusiastic words. She was the one who brought me here, a poor twenty-one-year-old with no future, an aberration in the eyes of the people in my village, or else a madman or some sort of shaman who had made a pact with the devil, and, in the eyes of the people in the city, a mere peasant looking for work.