The Witch of Portobello

He agrees, shakes my hand, and congratulates me. I don't have time to talk to Andrea, because when I get home, she's still at the theater. I fall asleep at once and again wake up to find a note saying that she's gone to work and that coffee is on the table.

I go to the office, try to ingratiate myself with the boss who has "improved my life," and phone various experts on radiation and energy. I discover that, in total, nine million people worldwide were directly affected by the disaster, including three to four million children. The initial thirty deaths became, according to the expert John Gofmans, 475,000 cases of fatal cancers and an equal number of nonfatal cancers.

A total of two thousand towns and villages were simply wiped off the map. According to the Health Ministry in Belarus, the incidence of cancer of the thyroid will increase considerably between 2005 and 2010, as a consequence of continuing high levels of radioactivity. Another specialist explains that in addition to the nine million people directly exposed to radiation, more than sixty-five million in many countries around the world were indirectly affected by consuming contaminated foodstuffs.

It's a serious matter, which deserves to be treated with respect. At the end of the day, I go back to the deputy editor and suggest that I travel to Chernobyl for the actual anniversary of the accident, and meanwhile do more research, talk to more experts, and find out how the British government responded to the tragedy. He agrees.

I phone Athena. After all, she claims to be going out with someone from Scotland Yard and now is the time to ask her a favor, given that Chernobyl is no longer classified as secret and the Soviet Union no longer exists. She promises that she'll talk to her "boyfriend" but says she can't guarantee she'll get the answers I want.

She also says that she's leaving for Scotland the following day and will only be back in time for the next group meeting.

"What group?"

The group, she says. So that's become a regular thing, has it? What I want to know is when we can meet to talk and clear up various loose ends.

But she's already hung up. I go home, watch the news, have supper alone, and later go out again to pick Andrea up from the theater. I get there in time to see the end of the play, and to my surprise, the person onstage seems totally unlike the person I've been living with for nearly two years; there's something magical about her every gesture; monologues and dialogues are spoken with an unaccustomed intensity. I am seeing a stranger, a woman I would like to have by my side, then I realize that she is by my side and is in no way a stranger to me.

"How did your chat with Athena go?" I ask on the way home.

"Fine. How was work?"

She was the one to change the subject. I tell her about my promotion and about Chernobyl, but she doesn't seem interested. I start to think that I'm losing the love I have without having yet won the love I hope to win. However, as soon as we reach our apartment, she suggests we take a bath together, and before I know it, we're in bed. First, she puts on that percussion music at full volume (she explains that she managed to get hold of a copy) and tells me not to worry about the neighbors--people worry too much about them, she says, and never live their own lives.

What happens from then on is something that goes beyond my understanding. Has this woman making positively savage love with me finally discovered her sexuality, and was this taught to her or provoked in her by that other woman? While she was clinging to me with a violence I've never known before, she kept saying, "Today I'm your man, and you're my woman."

We carried on like this for almost an hour, and I experienced things I'd never dared experience before. At certain moments, I felt ashamed, wanted to ask her to stop, but she seemed to be in complete control of the situation, and so I surrendered, because I had no choice. In fact, I felt really curious.

I was exhausted afterward, but Andrea seemed reenergized.

"Before you go to sleep, I want you to know something," she said. "If you go forward, sex will offer you the chance to make love with gods and goddesses. That's what you experienced today. I want you to go to sleep knowing that I awoke the Mother that was in you."

I wanted to ask if she'd learned this from Athena, but my courage failed.

"Tell me that you liked being a woman for a night."

"I did. I don't know if I would always like it, but it was something that simultaneously frightened me and gave me great joy."

"Tell me that you've always wanted to experience what you've just experienced."

It's one thing to allow oneself to be carried away by the situation, but quite another to comment coolly on the matter. I said nothing, although I was sure that she knew my answer.

"Well," Andrea went on, "all of this was inside me and I had no idea. As was the person behind the mask that fell away while I was onstage today. Did you notice anything different?"

"Of course. You were radiating a special light."

"Charisma--the divine force that manifests itself in men and women. The supernatural power we don't need to show to anyone because everyone can see it, even usually insensitive people. But it only happens when we're naked, when we die to the world and are reborn to ourselves. Last night, I died. Tonight, when I walked onstage and saw that I was doing exactly what I had chosen to do, I was reborn from my ashes. I was always trying to be who I am but could never manage it. I was always trying to impress other people, have intelligent conversations, please my parents, and at the same time, I used every available means to do the things I would really like to do. I've always forged my path w

ith blood, tears, and willpower, but last night, I realized that I was going about it the wrong way. My dream doesn't require that of me. I have only to surrender myself to it, and if I find I'm suffering, grit my teeth, because the suffering will pass."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"Let me finish. In that journey where suffering seemed to be the only rule, I struggled for things for which there was no point struggling. Like love, for example. People either feel it or they don't, and there isn't a force in the world that can make them feel it. We can pretend that we love each other. We can get used to each other. We can live a whole lifetime of friendship and complicity, we can bring up children, have sex every night, reach orgasm, and still feel that there's a terrible emptiness about it all, that something important is missing. In the name of all I've learned about relationships between men and women, I've been trying to fight against things that weren't really worth the struggle. And that includes you.

"Today, while we were making love, while I was giving all I have, and I could see that you too were giving of your best, I realized that your best no longer interests me. I will sleep beside you tonight, but tomorrow I'll leave. The theater is my ritual, and there I can express and develop whatever I want to express and develop."

I started to regret everything--going to Transylvania and meeting a woman who might be destroying my life, arranging that first meeting of the "group," confessing my love in that restaurant. At that moment, I hated Athena.

"I know what you're thinking," said Andrea. "That your friend Athena has brainwashed me, but that isn't true."