the zahir | Page 6

questions, and she never told me anything. We were both free, and
we were proud of that.
But Esther had disappeared and left clues that were visible only to me, as if it were a
secret message: I�m leaving.
Why?
Is that question worth answering?
No. Because hidden in the answer is my own inability to keep the woman I love by my
side. Is it worth finding her and persuading her to come back? Begging and imploring her
to give our marriage another chance?
That seems ridiculous: it would be better merely to suffer as I had in the past, when other
people I loved had left me. It would be better just to lick my wounds, as I had also done
in the past. For a while, I�ll think obsessively about her, I�ll become embittered, I�ll bore
my friends because all I ever talk about is my wife leaving me. I�ll try to justify what
happened, spend days and nights reviewing every moment spent by her side, I�ll conclude
that she was too hard on me, even though I always tried to do my best. I�ll find other
women. When I walk down the street, I�ll keep seeing women who could be her. I�ll
suffer day and night, night and day. This could take weeks, months, possibly a year or
more.
Until one morning, I�ll wake up and find I�m thinking about something else, and then I�ll
know the worst is over. My heart might be bruised, but it will recover and become
capable of seeing the beauty of life once more. It�s happened before, it will happen again,
I�m sure. When someone leaves, it�s because someone else is about to arrive�I�ll find
love again.
For a moment, I savor the idea of my new state: single and a millionaire. I can go out in
broad daylight with whomever I want. I can behave at parties in a way I haven�t behaved
in years. The news will travel fast, and soon all kinds of women, the young and the not so
young, the rich and the not as rich as they would like to be, the intelligent and those
trained to say only what they think I would like to hear, will all come knocking at my
door.
I want to believe that it is wonderful to be free. Free again. Ready to find my one true
love, who is waiting for me and who will never allow me to experience such humiliation
again.
I finish my hot chocolate and look at the clock; I know it is still too soon for me to be
able to enjoy the agreeable feeling that I am once more part of humanity. For a few
moments, I imagine that Esther is about to come in through that door, walk across the
beautiful Persian carpets, sit down beside me and say nothing, just smoke a cigarette,
look out at the courtyard garden and hold my hand. Half an hour passes, and for half an
hour I believe in the story I have just created, until I realize that it is pure fantasy.
I decide not to go home. I go over to reception, ask for a room, a toothbrush, and some
deodorant. The hotel is full, but the manager fixes things for me: I end up with a lovely
suite looking out at the Eiffel Tower, a terrace, the rooftops of Paris, the lights coming on
one by one, the families getting together to have Sunday supper. And the feeling I had in
the Champs-Elys�es returns: the more beautiful everything is around me, the more
wretched I feel.
No television. No supper. I sit on the terrace and look back over my life, a young man
who dreamed of becoming a famous writer, and who suddenly saw that the reality was
completely different�he writes in a language almost no one reads, in a country which is
said to have almost no reading public. His family forces him to go to university (any
university will do, my boy, just as long as you get a degree; otherwise you�ll never be
anyone). He rebels, travels the world during the hippie era, meets a singer, writes a few
song lyrics, and is suddenly earning more money than his sister, who listened to what her
parents said and decided to become a chemical engineer�.
I write more songs, the singer goes from strength to strength; I buy a few apartments and
fall out with the singer, but still have enough capital not to have to work for the next few
years. I get married for the first time, to an older woman, I learn a lot�how to make love,
how to drive, how to speak English, how to lie in bed until late�but we split up because
she considers me to be �emotionally immature, and too ready to chase after any girl with
big enough breasts.� I get married for a second and a third time to women I think will
give me emotional stability: I get what I want, but discover that the stability I wanted is
inseparable from a deep sense of tedium.
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