the zahir | Page 3

I tell him we have never even considered the possibility, and say again that
�like all couples� we have our occasional disagreements.
Frequent or only occasional?
Occasional, I say.
He asks still more delicately if she suspected that I was having an affair with her friend. I
tell him that it was the first�and last�time that her friend and I had slept together. It
wasn�t an affair; it came about simply because we had nothing else to do. It had been a
bit of a dull day, neither of us had any pressing engagements after lunch, and the game of
seduction always adds a little zest to life, which is why we ended up in bed together.
�You go to bed with someone just because it�s a bit of a dull day?�
I consider telling him that such matters hardly form part of his investigations, but I need
his help, or might need it later on. There is, after all, that invisible institution called the
Favor Bank, which I have always found so very useful.
�Sometimes, yes. There�s nothing else very interesting to do, the woman is looking for
excitement, I�m looking for adventure, and that�s that. The next day, you both pretend
that nothing happened, and life goes on.�
He thanks me, holds out his hand and says that in his world, things aren�t quite like that.
Naturally, boredom and tedium exist, as does the desire to go to bed with someone, but
everything is much more controlled, and no one ever acts on their thoughts or desires.
�Perhaps artists have more freedom,� he remarks.
I say that I�m familiar with his world, but have no wish to enter into a comparison
between our different views of society and people. I remain silent, awaiting his next
move.
�Speaking of freedom,� he says, slightly disappointed at this writer�s refusal to enter into
a debate with a police officer, �you�re free to go. Now that I�ve met you, I�ll read your
books. I know I said I didn�t like them, but the fact is I�ve never actually read one.�
This is not the first or the last time that I will hear these words. At least this whole
episode has gained me another reader. I shake his hand and leave.
I�m free. I�m out of prison, my wife has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, I
have no fixed timetable for work, I have no problem meeting new people, I�m rich,
famous, and if Esther really has left me, I�ll soon find someone to replace her. I�m free,
independent.
But what is freedom?
I�ve spent a large part of my life enslaved to one thing or another, so I should know the
meaning of the word. Ever since I was a child, I have fought to make freedom my most
precious commodity. I fought with my parents, who wanted me to be an engineer, not a
writer. I fought with the other boys at school, who immediately homed in on me as the
butt of their cruel jokes, and only after much blood had flowed from my nose and from
theirs, only after many afternoons when I had to hide my scars from my mother�because
it was up to me, not her, to solve my problems�did I manage to show them that I could
take a thrashing without bursting into tears. I fought to get a job to support myself, and
went to work as a delivery man for a hardware store, so as to be free from that old line in
family blackmail: �We�ll give you money, but you�ll have to do this, this, and this.�
I fought�although without success�for the girl I was in love with when I was an
adolescent, and who loved me too; she left me in the end because her parents convinced
her that I had no future.
I fought against the hostile world of journalism�my next job�where my first boss kept
me hanging around for three whole hours and only deigned to take any notice of me when
I started tearing up the book he was reading: he looked at me in surprise and saw that
here was someone capable of persevering and confronting the enemy, essential qualities
for a good reporter. I fought for the socialist ideal, went to prison, came out and went on
fighting, feeling like a working-class hero�until, that is, I heard the Beatles and decided
that rock music was much more fun than Marx. I fought for the love of my first, second,
and third wives. I fought to find the courage to leave my first, second, and third wives,
because the love I felt for them hadn�t lasted, and I needed to move on, until I found the
person who had been put in this world to find me�and she was none of those three.
I fought for the courage to leave my job on the newspaper and launch myself into the
adventure of writing a book, knowing full well that no one in my country could make a
living as a writer. I gave up after a year, after writing more than a thousand pages�pages
of such genius