"He is caught out by the Communist government, who accuse him of consorting with criminals and, despite being a war hero, he spends the next ten years in Siberia labeled 'a traitor of the people.' When he is finally released, he is an old man and the only thing he knows anything about is carpets. He manages to reestablish his old contacts, someone gives him a few carpets to sell, but no one is interested in buying--times are hard. He decides to go a long way away, begging as he goes, and ends up in Kazakhstan.
"He is old and alone, but he needs to work in order to eat. He spends the days doing odd jobs and, at night, sleeps only fitfully and is woken by his own cries of 'Get down!' Strangely enough, despite all that he has been through, despite the insomnia, the poor food, the frustrations, the physical wear and tear, and the cigarettes that he smokes whenever he can scrounge them, he still has an iron constitution.
"In a small village, he meets a young woman. She lives with her parents; she takes him to her house, for, in that region, hospitality is paramount. They let him sleep in the living room, but are woken by his screams. The girl goes to him, says a prayer, strokes his head, and for the first time in many decades, he sleeps peacefully.
"The following day, she says that, when she was a girl, she had dreamed that a very old man would give her a child. She waited for years, had various suitors, but was always disappointed. Her parents were terribly worried, for they did not want to see their only daughter end up a spinster, rejected by the community.
"She asks him if he will marry her. He is taken aback; after all, she is young enough to be his granddaughter, and so he says nothing. At sunset, in the small living room, she asks if she can stroke his head before he goes to sleep. He enjoys another peaceful night.
"The following day, the subject of marriage comes up again, this time in the presence of her parents, who seem to think it a good idea; they just want their daughter to find a husband and to cease being a source of family shame. They invent a story about an old man who has come from far away and who is, in fact, a wealthy trader in carpets, but has grown weary of living a life of luxury and comfort, and has given it all up in order to go in search of adventure. People are impressed, they imagine a generous dowry, huge bank accounts, and think how lucky my mother is to have finally found someone who can take her away from that village in the back of beyond. My father listens to these stories with a mixture of fascination and surprise; he thinks of all the years he has spent alone, traveling, of all he has suffered, of how he never again found his own family, and he thinks that now, for the first time in his life, he could have a home of his own. He accepts the proposal, colludes with the lies about his past, and they get married according to the Muslim tradition. Two months later, she is pregnant with me.
"I live with my father until I am seven years old; he sleeps well, works in the fields, goes hunting, and talks to the other villagers about his money and his lands; and he looks at my mother as if she were the only good thing that has ever happened to him. I grow up believing that I am the son of a rich man, but one night, by the fire, he tells me about his past and why he married, but begs me not to tell anyone else. Soon, he says, he will die, and four months later he does. He breathes his last in my mother's arms, smiling, as if he had never known a moment's sadness. He dies a happy man."
Mikhail is telling his story on a very cold spring night, although it is certainly not as cold as in Stalingrad, where temperatures can plummet to <35degC. We are sitting with some beggars who are warming themselves before an improvised bonfire. I had gone there after a second phone call from Mikhail, asking me to keep my part of the promise. During our conversation, he did not once mention the envelope he had left at my apartment, as if he knew--perhaps through the voice--that I had, in the end, decided to follow the signs and allow things to happen in their own time and thus free myself from the power of the Zahir.
When he asked me to meet him in one of the most dangerous parts of Paris, my first reaction was one of alarm. Normally, I would have said that I was far too busy and tried to convince him that we would be better off going to some cozy bar where we could safely discuss important matters. I was still afraid that he might have another epileptic fit in public, even though I now knew what to do, but that was preferable to the risk of being mugged when I was wearing an orthopedic collar and had no way of defending myself.
Mikhail insisted: I had to meet the beggars; they were part of his life and part of Esther's life too. I had realized while I was in the hospital that there was something wrong with my own life and that change was urgently needed. How best to achieve that change? By doing something totally different; for example, going to dangerous places and meeting social outcasts.
There is a story about a Greek hero, Theseus, who goes into a labyrinth in order to slay a monster. His beloved, Ariadne, gives him one end of a thread so that he can unroll it as he goes and thus be able to find his way out again. Sitting with those people, listening to Mikhail's story, it occurs to me that I have not experienced anything like this for a long time--the taste of the unknown, of adventure. Who knows, perhaps Ariadne's thread was waiting for me in precisely the kind of place that I would never normally visit, or only if I was convinced that I had to make an enormous effort to change my story and my life.
Mikhail continued his story, and I saw that the whole group was listening to what he was saying: the most satisfying encounters do not always happen around elegant tables in nice, warm restaurants.
"Every day, I have to walk nearly an hour to the village where I go to school. I see the women going to fetch water, the endless steppes, the Russian soldiers driving past in long convoys, the snow-capped mountains which, I am told, conceal a vast country: China. The village I walk to each day has a museum dedicated to its one poet, a mosque, a school, and three or four streets. We are taught about the existence of a dream, an ideal: we must fight for the victory of Communism and for equality among all human beings. I do not believe in this dream, because even in this wretchedly poor village, there are marked differences: the Party representatives are above everyone else; now and again, they visit the big city, Almaty, and return bearing packages of exotic food, presents for their children, expensive clothes.
"One afternoon, on my way home, I feel a strong wind blowing, see lights all around me, and lose consciousness for a few moments. When I come to, I am sitting on the ground, and a very white little girl, wearing a white dress with a blue belt, is floating in the air above me. She smiles but says nothing, then disappears.
"I run home, interrupt my mother's work, and tell her what I have seen. She is terrified and asks me never to repeat what I have just told her. She explains to me--as well as one can explain such a complicated concept to an eight-year-old boy--that it was just a hallucination. I tell her that I really did see the girl, that I can describe her in every detail. I add that I wasn't afraid and came home at once because I wanted her to know what had happened.
"The following day, coming back from school, I look for the girl, but she isn't there. Nothing happens for a whole week, and I begin to think that perhaps my mother was right: I must simply have dropped asleep and dreamed it all.
"Then, this time very early one morning, on my way to school, I again see the girl floating in the air and surrounded by a white halo. I don't fall to the ground or see any flashing lights. We stand for a while, looking at each other; she smiles and I smile back; I ask her name, but receive no answer. At school, I ask my classmates if they have ever seen a girl floating in the air. They all laugh.
"During class, I am summoned to the headmaster's office. He explains to me that I must have some mental problem--there is no such thing as 'visions'; the only reality is what we see around us; religion was merely invented to fool the people. I ask about the mosque in the city; he says that only the old and superstitious go there, ignorant, idle people who lack the necessary energy to rebuild the socialist world. Then he issues a threat: if I repeat the story about the little girl, I will be expelled. Terr
ified, I beg him not to say anything to my mother, and he agrees, as long as I tell my classmates that I made the whole thing up.
"He keeps his promise and I keep mine. My friends aren't much interested anyway and don't even ask me to show them the place where I saw the girl. However, she continues to appear to me for the whole of the following month. Sometimes I faint first, sometimes I don't. We never talk, we simply stay together for as long as she chooses to stay. My mother is beginning to grow worried because I always arrive home at a different time. One night, she forces me to explain what I do between leaving school and getting home. I again tell her about the little girl.
"To my surprise, this time, instead of scolding me, she says that she will go to the place with me. The following day, we wake early and, when we arrive, the girl appears, but my mother cannot see her. My mother tells me to ask the girl something about my father. I don't understand the question, but I do as she requests, and then, for the first time, I hear the voice. The girl does not move her lips, but I know she is talking to me: She says that my father is fine and is watching over us, and that he is being rewarded now for all his sufferings on earth. She suggests that I remind my mother about the heater. I do so, and my mother starts to cry and explains that because of his many hardships during the war, the thing my father most enjoyed was sitting next to a heater. The girl says that the next time my mother passes that way she should tie a scrap of fabric and a prayer around the small tree growing there.
"The visions continue for a whole year. My mother tells some of her closest friends, who tell other friends, and soon the tree is covered in scraps of fabric. Everything is done in the greatest secrecy; the women ask about loved ones who have died; I listen to the voice's answers and pass on the messages. Usually, their loved ones are fine, and on only two occasions does the girl ask the group to go to a nearby hill at sunrise and say a wordless prayer for the souls of those people. Apparently, I sometimes go into a trance, fall to the ground, and babble incomprehensibly, but I can never remember anything about it. I only know that when I am about to go into a trance, I feel a warm wind blowing and see bubbles of light all around me.
"One day, when I am taking a group to meet the little girl, we are prevented from doing so by the police. The women protest and shout, but we cannot get through. I am escorted to school, where the headmaster informs me that I have just been expelled for provoking rebellion and encouraging superstition.
"On the way back, I see that the tree has been cut down and the ribbons scattered on the ground. I sit down alone and weep, because those had been the happiest days of my life. At that moment, the girl reappears. She tells me not to worry, that this was all part of the plan, even the destruction of the tree, and that she will accompany me now for the rest of my days and will always tell me what I must do."
"Did she never tell you her name?" asks one of the beggars.
"Never. But it doesn't matter because I always know when she's talking to me."
"Could we find out something about our dead?"
"No. That only happened during one particular period. Now my mission is different. May I go on with my story?"
"Absolutely," I say. "But can I just ask one thing? There's a town in southwest France called Lourdes. A long time ago, a shepherdess saw a little girl, who seems to correspond to your vision."
"No, you're wrong," says one of the older beggars, who has an artificial leg. "The shepherdess, whose name was Bernadette, saw the Virgin Mary."
"I've written a book about her visions and I had to study the matter closely," I say. "I read everything that was published about it at the end of the nineteenth century; I had access to Bernadette's many statements to the police, to the church, and to scholars. At no point does she say that she saw a woman; she insists it was a girl. She repeated the same story all her life and was deeply angered by the statue that was placed in the grotto; she said it bore no resemblance to her vision, because she had seen a little girl, not a woman. Nevertheless, the church appropriated the story, the visions, and the place and transformed the apparition into the Mother of Jesus, and the truth was forgotten. If a lie is repeated often enough, it ends up convincing everyone. The only difference is that 'the little girl'--as Bernadette always referred to her--had a name."
"What was it?" asks Mikhail.
"'I am the Immaculate Conception.' Obviously that isn't a name like Beatriz or Maria or Isabelle. She describes herself as a fact, an event, a happening, which is sometimes translated as 'I am birth without sex.' Now, please, go on with your story."
"Before he does, can I ask you something?" says another beggar, who must be about my age. "You just said that you've written a book; what's the title?"
"I've written many books."
And I tell him the title of the book in which I mention the story of Bernadette and her vision.
"So you're the husband of the journalist?"
"Are you Esther's husband?" asks a female beggar, wide-eyed; she is dressed garishly, in a green hat and a purple coat.
I don't know what to say.
"Why hasn't she been back here?" asks someone else. "I hope she isn't dead. She was always going to such dangerous places. I often told her she shouldn't. Look what she gave me!"
And she shows me a scrap of bloodstained fabric, part of the dead soldier's shirt.
"No, she's not dead," I say. "But I'm surprised to hear that she used to come here."
"Why? Because we're different?"
"No, you misunderstand me. I'm not judging you. I'm surprised and pleased to know that she did."
However, the vodka we have been drinking to ward off the cold is having an effect on all of us.
"Now you're being ironic," says a burly man with long hair, who looks as if he hasn't shaved for several days. "If you think you're in such bad company, why don't you leave."
I have been drinking too and that gives me courage.
"Who are you? What kind of life is this? You're healthy, you could work, but instead you prefer to hang around doing nothing!"
"We choose to stay outside, outside a world that is fast collapsing, outside people who live in constant fear of losing something, who walk along the street as if everything was fine, when, in fact, everything is bad, very bad indeed! Don't you beg too? Don't you ask for alms from your boss to pay the owner of your apartment?"
"Aren't you ashamed to be wasting your life?" asks the woman in the purple coat.
"Who said I'm wasting my life? I do precisely what I want to do."
The burly man interrupts, saying:
"And what is it you want? To live on top of the world? Who told you that the mountain is necessarily better than the plain? You think we don't know how to live, don't you? Well, your wife understood that we know exactly what we want from life. Do you know what we want? Peace! Freedom! And not to be obliged to follow the latest fashions--we make our own fashions here! We drink when we want to and sleep whenever we feel like it! Not one person here chose slavery and we're proud of it, even though you and people like you may think we're just a lot of pathetic freeloaders!"
The voices are beginning to grow aggressive. Mikhail steps in:
"Do you want to hear the rest of my story or shall we leave now?"
"He's criticizing us!" says the man with the artificial leg. "He came here to judge us, as if he were God!"
There are a few more rumbles of complaint, someone slaps me on the back, I offer around my cigarettes, the bottle of vodka is placed in my hand again. People gradually calm down, and I am still surprised and shocked that these people knew Esther, apparently better than I did, since she gave them--and not me--a piece of that bloodstained shirt.
Mikhail goes on with his story.
"Since I have nowhere to go and study and I'm still too young to look after horses--which are the pride of our region and our country--I become a shepherd. During the first week, one of the sheep dies and a rumor goes around that I'm cursed, that I'm the son of a man who came from far away and p
romised my mother great wealth, then ended up leaving us nothing. The Communists may have told them that religion is just a way of giving false hopes to the desperate, they may all have been brought up to believe that only reality exists and that anything our eyes can't see is just the fruit of the human imagination; but the ancient traditions of the steppes remain untouched and are passed by word of mouth across the generations.
"Now that the tree has been felled, I no longer see the little girl, although I still hear her voice. I ask her to help me in tending the flocks, and she tells me to be patient; there are difficult times ahead, but before I am twenty-two a woman from far away will come and carry me off to see the world. She also tells me that I have a mission to fulfill, and that mission is to spread the true energy of love throughout the world.
"The owner of the sheep is worried by the increasingly wild rumors. Oddly, the people spreading these rumors and trying to destroy my life are the very people whom the little girl had helped during the whole of the previous year. One day, he decides to go to the Communist Party office in the next village, where he learns that both I and my mother are considered to be enemies of the people. I am immediately dismissed. Not that this greatly affects our life, because my mother does embroidery for a company in the largest city in the region and there no one knows that we are enemies of the people and of the working classes; all the factory owners want is for her to continue working on her embroidery from dawn to dusk.
"I now have all the time in the world and so I wander the steppes with the hunters, who know my story and believe that I have magical powers, because they always find foxes when I'm around. I spend whole days at the museum of the poet, studying his possessions, reading his books, listening to the people who come there to recite his verses. Now and then, I feel the warm wind blowing, see the lights, and fall to the ground, and then the voice tells me concrete facts--when the next drought will come, when the animals will fall sick, when the traders will arrive. I tell no one except my mother, who is becoming ever more anxious and concerned about me.