Aleph

“More or less. I h

ad rather a lot to drink, but I remember Yao standing up to that Englishman.”

“I talked about the past.”

“Yes, I remember. I understood perfectly what you said, because during that moment when we were in the Aleph, I saw that your eyes were full of a mixture of love and indifference, and your head was covered by a hood. I felt betrayed and humiliated. But I’m not interested in what our relationship was in a past life. We’re here in the present.”

“You see this river? Well, in the living room in my apartment at home is a painting of a rose immersed in just such a river. Half of the painting was exposed to the effects of the water and the elements, so the edges are a bit rough, and yet I can still see part of that beautiful red rose against a gold background. I know the artist. In 2003, we went to a forest in the Pyrenees, found a dried-up stream, and hid the painting under the stones on the streambed.

“The artist is my wife. At this moment, she’s thousands of kilometers away and will still be sleeping because day has not yet dawned in her city, even though here it’s four o’clock in the afternoon. We’ve been together for more than a quarter of a century. When I met her, I was convinced that our relationship wouldn’t work out, and for the first two years, I was sure that one of us would leave. In the five years that followed, I continued to think that we had simply got used to one another and that as soon as we realized this, we would each go our separate ways. I thought that a more serious commitment would deprive me of my ‘liberty’ and keep me from experiencing everything I wanted to experience.”

I see that Hilal is starting to feel uncomfortable.

“And what has that got to do with the river and the rose?”

“By the summer of 2002, I was already a well-known writer with plenty of money, and I believed that my basic values hadn’t changed. But how could I be sure? I decided to test things out. We rented a small room in a two-star hotel in France, intending to spend five months of the year there. There was just one small wardrobe in the room, and so we had to keep clothes to a minimum. We went for long walks in the forests and the mountains, ate out, spent hours talking, and went to the cinema every day. Living like that confirmed to us that the most sophisticated things in the world are precisely those within the reach of everyone.

“We both love what we do, but whereas all I need is a laptop, my wife is a painter, and painters need vast studios in which to produce and store their paintings. I didn’t want her to give up her vocation for my sake, and so I suggested renting a studio. Meanwhile, though, she had looked around her at the mountains, valleys, rivers, lakes, and forests, and thought, Why don’t I store my paintings here? Why don’t I let nature work with me?”

Hilal’s eyes are fixed on the river.

“That was where she got the idea of ‘storing’ pictures in the open air. I would take my laptop and do my writing, while she knelt on the grass and painted. A year later, when we went back for the first canvases, the results were quite extraordinary and totally original. The first painting we ‘unearthed’ was the one of the rose. Nowadays, even though we have a house in the Pyrenees, she continues to inter and disinter her paintings wherever she happens to be. Something that was born out of necessity has become her main creative method. When I look at this river, I remember that rose and feel an almost palpable, physical love for her, as if she were here.”

The wind isn’t blowing quite as hard now, and the sun warms us a little. The light surrounding us could not be more perfect.

“I understand and respect what you’re saying,” she says. “But in the restaurant, when you were talking about the past, you said something about love being stronger than the individual.”

“Yes, but love is made up of choices.”

“In Novosibirsk, you made me forgive you, and I did. Now I’m asking you for a favor: tell me that you love me.”

I take her hand. We are both gazing at the river.

“Silence is also an answer,” she says.

I put my arms around her, so that her head is resting on my shoulder.

“I love you,” I tell her. “I love you because all the loves in the world are like different rivers flowing into the same lake, where they meet and are transformed into a single love that becomes rain and blesses the earth.

“I love you like a river that creates the right conditions for trees and bushes and flowers to flourish along its banks. I love you like a river that gives water to the thirsty and takes people where they want to go.

“I love you like a river that understands that it must learn to flow differently over waterfalls and to rest in the shallows. I love you because we are all born in the same place, at the same source, which keeps us provided with a constant supply of water. And so, when we feel weak, all we have to do is wait a little. The spring returns, and the winter snows melt and fill us with new energy.

“I love you like a river that begins as a solitary trickle in the mountains and gradually grows and joins other rivers until, after a certain point, it can flow around any obstacle in order to get where it wants.

“I receive your love, and I give you mine. Not the love of a man for a woman, not the love of a father for a child, not the love of God for his creatures, but a love with no name and no explanation, like a river that cannot explain why it follows a particular course but simply flows onward. A love that asks for nothing and gives nothing in return; it is simply there. I will never be yours, and you will never be mine; nevertheless, I can honestly say: I love you, I love you, I love you.”

Maybe it’s the afternoon, maybe it’s the light, but at that moment, the Universe seems finally to be in perfect harmony. We stay where we are, feeling not the slightest desire to go back to the hotel, where Yao will doubtless be waiting for me.

The Eagle of Baikal

ANY MOMENT NOW, it will be dark. There are six of us standing near a small boat moored at the lakeshore: Hilal, Yao, the shaman, I, and two older women. They are all speaking in Russian. The shaman is shaking his head. Yao appears to be arguing with him, but the shaman turns away and walks over to the boat.

Now Yao and Hilal are arguing. He seems concerned, but I think he’s rather enjoying the situation. We have been practicing the Path of Peace together, and I can interpret his body language now. He is pretending an irritation that he doesn’t actually feel.

“What are you talking about?” I ask.

“Apparently, I can’t go with you,” Hilal says. “I have to stay with these two women whom I’ve never seen in my life and spend the whole night here in the cold, because there’s no one to take me back to the hotel.”