Aleph

“If you like, you can withdraw your forgiveness.”

“No, I don’t want to. You are forgiven. And if you needed me to forgive you a hundred times over, I would. But the images were very confused in my mind. I need you to tell me exactly what happened. I remember only that I was naked. You were looking at me, and I was telling everyone there that I loved you and that was why I was condemned to death. My love condemned me.”

“Can I turn around now?”

“Not yet. First, tell me what happened. All I know is that in a past life I died because of you. It could have been here, it could have been somewhere else in the world, but I sacrificed myself in the name of love to save you.”

My eyes ha

ve grown accustomed to the darkness now, but the heat in the room is unbearable.

“What did those women do, exactly?”

“We sat down together on the lakeshore; they lit a fire, beat on a drum, went into a trance, and gave me something to drink. When I drank, I started getting these confusing images in my head. They didn’t last long. All I remember is what I’ve just told you. I thought it was some kind of nightmare, but they assured me that you and I had been together in a past life. You told me so yourself.”

“No, it happened in the present; it’s happening now. At this moment, I’m in a hotel room in some nameless Siberian village, but I’m also in a dungeon near Córdoba in Spain. I’m with my wife in Brazil, as well as with the many other women I’ve known, and in some of those lives I myself am a woman. Play something.”

I take off my sweater. She starts to play a sonata not originally written for the violin. My mother used to play it on the piano when I was a child.

“There was a time when the world, too, was a woman, and her energy was very beautiful. People believed in miracles; the present moment was all there was, and so time did not exist. The Greeks have two words for time, the first of which is kairos, meaning God’s time, eternity. Then a change occurred. The battle for survival, the need to know when to plant crops so that they could be harvested. That was when time as we know it now became part of our history. The Greeks call it Chronos; the Romans called it Saturn, a god whose first act was to devour his own children. We became the slaves of memory. Keep playing, and I’ll explain more clearly.”

She continues to play. I start to cry but manage to keep talking.

“At this moment, I am in a garden in a town, sitting on a bench at the back of my house, looking up at the sky and trying to work out what people mean when they use the expression ‘building castles in the air,’ an expression I first heard an hour ago. I am seven years old. I am trying to build a golden castle but finding it hard to concentrate. My friends are having supper in their houses, and my mother is playing the same music I’m hearing now, only on the piano. If I didn’t feel the need to describe what I’m feeling, I would be entirely there. The smell of summer, cicadas singing in the trees, and me thinking about the little girl I’m in love with.”

I’m not in the past, I’m in the present. I am the little boy I was then. I will always be that little boy; we will all be the children, grown-ups, and old people we were and will become. I am not remembering, I am reliving that time.

I can’t go on. I cover my face with my hands and weep while she plays ever more intensely, ever more exquisitely, transporting me back to the many people I am and was. I am not crying for my dead mother, because she is here now, playing for me. I am not crying for the child who, puzzled by a strange turn of phrase, is trying to build a golden castle that keeps disappearing. That child is here as well, listening to Chopin; having listened to it often, he knows how lovely the music is and would happily hear it again and again. I am crying because there is no other way to show what I feel: I am alive. I am alive in every pore and every cell of my body. I am alive. I was never born and never died.

I may have my moments of sadness or confusion, but above me is the great I who understands everything and laughs at my suffering. I am crying for what is ephemeral and eternal, because I know that words are much poorer than music, and so I will never be able to describe this moment. I let Chopin, Beethoven, and Wagner lead me into that past that is also the present, for their music is far more powerful than any golden ring.

I cry while Hilal plays, and she plays until I grow tired of crying.

SHE WALKS OVER TO THE LIGHT SWITCH. The shattered bulb short-circuits. The room remains in darkness. She goes to the bedside table and switches on the lamp.

“Now you can turn around.”

When my eyes get used to the brightness, I see that she is completely naked, her arms spread wide, her bow and violin in her hands.

“Today you said that you loved me like a river. I want to tell you now that I love you like the music of Chopin. Simple and profound, as blue as the lake, capable of—”

“The music speaks for itself. There’s no need to say anything.”

“I’m afraid, very afraid. What was it I saw, exactly?”

I describe in detail everything that happened in the dungeon, my own cowardice and the girl who looked then exactly as she does now, except that her hands were bound with lengths of rope, a far cry from the strings on her bow or violin. She listens in silence, her arms still spread wide, absorbing my every word. We are both standing in the middle of the room. Her body is as white as that of the fifteen-year-old girl now being led to a pyre built near the city of Córdoba. I will not be able to save her, and I know that she will vanish into the flames along with her friends. This happened once and is happening over and over again, and will continue to happen as long as the world exists. I mention to her that the girl had pubic hair, whereas she has shaved hers off, something I hate, as if all men were looking for a child to have sex with. I ask her not to do that again, and she promises she won’t.

I show her the patches of eczema on my skin, which seem angrier and more visible than usual. I explain that they are the marks from that same place and past. I ask if she remembers what she said, or what the other girls said, while they were being led to the pyre.

She shakes her head and asks, “Do you desire me?”

“Yes, I do. We’re here alone in this unique place on the planet. You are standing naked before me. I desire you very much.”

“I’m afraid of my fear. I’m asking myself for forgiveness not for being here but because I have always been selfish in my pain. Instead of forgiving, I sought vengeance. Not because I was the stronger party but because I always felt myself to be the weaker one. Whenever I hurt other people, I was only hurting myself even more. I humiliated others in order to feel humiliated; I attacked others in order to feel that my own feelings were being violated.

“I know I’m not the only person to have been through what I described that night at the embassy, being abused by a neighbor and friend of the family. I said then that it wasn’t a rare experience, and I’m sure that at least one of the women there had been sexually abused as a child. But not everyone behaves as I have. I’m simply not at peace with myself.”

She takes a deep breath, trying to find the right words, then goes on.