The Zahir

"Possibly, but again, I can't see the point."

"This isn't the most important part of the evening; it's just a way of not feeling so alone. By talking about our lives, we come to realize that most people have experienced the same thing."

"And what's the practical result?"

"If we're not alone, then we have more strength to find out where we went wrong and to change direction. But, as I said, this is just an interval between what the young man says at the beginning and the moment when we invoke the energy."

"Who is the young man?"

Our conversation is interrupted by the sound of the cymbal. This time, it is the older man with the conga drum who speaks.

"The time for reasoning is over. Let us move on now to the ritual, to the emotion that crowns and transforms everything. For those of you who are here for the first time tonight, this dance develops our capacity to accept love. Love is the only thing that activates our intelligence and our creativity, that purifies and liberates us."

The cigarettes are extinguished, the clink of glasses stops. That same strange silence descends upon the room; one of the young women says a prayer:

"We wi

ll dance, Lady, in homage to you. May our dancing make us fly up to heaven."

Did I hear right? Did she say "Lady"? She did.

The other young woman lights the candles in four candelabra; the other lights are switched off. The four figures in white, with their starched white skirts, come down from the stage and mingle with the audience. For nearly half an hour, the second young man, with a voice that seems to emerge from his belly, intones a monotonous, repetitive song, which, curiously, makes me forget the Zahir a little and slip into a kind of somnolence. Even one of the children, who had kept running up and down during the "talking about love" session, is now quiet and still, her eyes fixed on the stage. Some of those present have their eyes closed, others are staring at the floor or at some invisible point in space, as I had seen Mikhail do.

When he stops singing, the percussion--the cymbal and the drum--strike up a rhythm familiar to me from religious ceremonies originating in Africa.

The white-clothed figures start to spin, and in that packed space, the audience makes room so that the wide skirts can trace movements in the air. The instruments play faster, the four spin ever faster too, emitting sounds that belong to no known language, as if they were speaking directly with angels or with the Lady.

My neighbor gets to his feet and begins to dance too and to utter incomprehensible words. Ten or twelve other people in the audience do the same, while the rest watch with a mixture of reverence and amazement.

I don't know how long the dance went on for, but the sound of the instruments seemed to keep time with the beating of my heart, and I felt an enormous desire to surrender myself, to say strange things, to move my body; it took a mixture of self-control and a sense of the absurd to stop myself from spinning like a mad thing on the spot. Meanwhile, as never before, the figure of Esther, my Zahir, seemed to hover before me, smiling, calling on me to praise the Lady.

I struggled not to enter into that unknown ritual, wanting it all to end as quickly as possible. I tried to concentrate on my main reason for being there that night--to talk to Mikhail, to have him take me to my Zahir--but I found it impossible to remain still. I got up from my chair and just as I was cautiously, shyly, taking my first steps, the music abruptly stopped.

In the room lit only by the candles, all I could hear was the labored breathing of those who had danced. Gradually, the sound faded, the lights were switched back on, and everything seemed to have returned to normal. Glasses were again filled with beer, wine, water, soft drinks; the children started running about and talking loudly, and soon everyone was chatting as if nothing, absolutely nothing, had happened.

"It's nearly time to close the meeting," said the young woman who had lit the candles. "Alma has one final story."

Alma was the woman playing the cymbal. She spoke with the accent of someone who has lived in the East.

"The master had a buffalo. The animal's widespread horns made him think that if he could manage to sit between them, it would be like sitting on a throne. One day, when the animal was distracted, he climbed up between the horns and did just that. The buffalo, however, immediately lumbered to its feet and threw him off. When his wife saw this, she began to cry.

"'Don't cry,' said the master, once he had recovered. 'I may have suffered, but I also realized my dream.'"

People started leaving. I asked my neighbor what he had felt.

"You should know. You write about it in your books."

I didn't know, but I had to pretend that I did.

"Maybe I do know, but I want to be sure."

He looked at me, unconvinced, and clearly began to doubt that I really was the author he thought he knew.

"I was in touch with the energy of the universe," he replied. "God passed through my soul."

And he left, so as not to have to explain what he had said.

In the empty room there were now only the four actors, the two musicians, and myself. The women went off to the ladies' bathroom, presumably to change their clothes. The men took off their white costumes right there in the room and donned their ordinary clothes. They immediately began putting away the candelabra and the musical instruments in two large cases.