The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession. Paulo Coelho

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      I find her comment absurd; I can write a book whenever I want to; I know publishers, journalists, all of whom owe me favours. Esther is just a woman who’s afraid of losing me, she’s inventing things. I tell her it’s over, our relationship is at an end, it isn’t a matter of what she thinks would make me happy, it’s about love.

      What is love? she asks. I spend half an hour explaining and realise that I can’t come up with a good definition.

      She says that, since I don’t know how to define love, I should try and write a book.

      I say that the two things are completely unrelated. I’m going to leave the apartment that very day; she can stay there for as long as she likes. I’ll go and stay in a hotel until she has found somewhere else to live. She says that’s fine by her, I can leave now, the apartment will be free within the month – she’ll start looking for a new place tomorrow. I pack my bags, and she goes and reads a book. I say it’s getting late, I’ll leave tomorrow. She says I should leave at once because, tomorrow, I won’t feel as strong or as determined. I ask her if she’s trying to get rid of me. She laughs and says I was the one who wanted to end the relationship. We go to bed, and the following day, the desire to leave is not as urgent, and I decide I need to think things through. Esther, however, says the matter isn’t over yet: this scenario will simply keep recurring as long as I refuse to risk everything for what I believe to be my real reason for living; in the end, she’ll become unhappy and will leave me. Except that, if she left, she would do so immediately and burn any bridges that would allow her to come back. I ask her what she means. She’d get another boyfriend, she says, fall in love.

      She goes off to her work at the newspaper, and I decide to take a day’s leave (apart from writing lyrics, I’m also working for a recording company). I sit down at the typewriter. I get up again, read the papers, reply to some urgent letters and, when I’ve done that, start replying to non-urgent letters. I make a list of things I need to do, I listen to music, I take a walk around the block, chat to the baker, come home, and suddenly the whole day has gone and I still haven’t managed to type a single sentence. I decide that I hate Esther, that she’s forcing me to do things I don’t want to do.

      When she gets home, she doesn’t ask me anything, but I admit that I haven’t managed to do any writing. She says that I have the same look in my eye as I did yesterday.

      The following day I go to work, but that evening I again go over to the desk on which the typewriter is sitting. I read, watch television, listen to music, go back to the machine, and so two months pass, with me accumulating pages and more pages of ‘first sentences’, but never managing to finish a paragraph.

      I come up with every possible excuse – no one reads in this country, I haven’t worked out a plot, or I’ve got a fantastic plot, but I’m still looking for the right way to develop it. Besides, I’m really busy writing an article or a song lyric. Another two months pass, and one day, she comes home bearing a plane ticket.

      ‘Enough,’ she says. ‘Stop pretending that you’re busy, that you’re weighed down by responsibilities, that the world needs you to do what you’re doing, and just go travelling for a while.’ I can always become the editor of the newspaper where I publish a few articles, I can always become the president of the recording company for whom I write lyrics, and where I work simply because they don’t want me to write lyrics for their competitors. I can always come back to do what I’m doing now, but my dream can’t wait. Either I accept it or I forget it.

      Where is the ticket for?

      Spain.

      I’m shocked. Air tickets are expensive; besides, I can’t go away now, I’ve got a career ahead of me, and I need to look after it. I’ll lose out on a lot of potential music partnerships; the problem isn’t me, it’s our marriage. If I really wanted to write a book, no one would be able to stop me.

      ‘You can, you want to, but you don’t,’ she says. ‘Your problem isn’t me, but you, so it would be best if you spent some time alone.’

      She shows me a map. I must go to Madrid, where I’ll catch a bus up to the Pyrenees, on the border with France. That’s where a medieval pilgrimage route begins: the road to Santiago. I have to walk the whole way. She’ll be waiting for me at the other end and then she’ll accept anything I say: that I don’t love her any more, that I still haven’t lived enough to create a literary work, that I don’t even want to think about being a writer, that it was nothing but an adolescent dream.

      This is madness! The woman I’ve been living with for two long years – a real eternity in relationship terms – is making decisions about my life, forcing me to give up my work and expecting me to walk across an entire country! It’s so crazy that I decide to take it seriously. I get drunk several nights running, with her beside me getting equally drunk – even though she hates drinking. I get aggressive; I say she’s jealous of my independence, that the only reason this whole mad idea was born is because I said I wanted to leave her. She says that it all started when I was still at school and dreaming of becoming a writer – no more putting things off; if I don’t confront myself now, I’ll spend the rest of my life getting married and divorced, telling cute anecdotes about my past and going steadily downhill.

      Obviously, I can’t admit she’s right, but I know she’s telling the truth. And the more aware I am of this, the more aggressive I become. She accepts my aggression without complaint; she merely reminds me that the departure date is getting closer.

      One night, shortly before that date, she refuses to make love. I smoke a whole joint of marihuana, drink two bottles of wine and pass out in the middle of the living room. When I come to, I realise that I have reached the bottom of the pit, and now all that remains is for me to clamber back up to the top. And I, who so pride myself on my courage, see how cowardly, mean and unadventurous I am being with my own life. That morning, I wake her with a kiss and tell her that I’ll do as she suggests.

      I set off and for thirty-eight days I follow the road to Santiago. When I arrive, I understand that my real journey only starts there. I decide to settle in Madrid and live off my royalties, to allow an ocean to separate me from Esther’s body, even though we are still officially together and often talk on the phone. It’s very comfortable being married and knowing that I can always return to her arms, meanwhile enjoying all the independence in the world.

      I fall in love with a Catalan scientist, with an Argentine woman who makes jewellery, and with a young woman who sings in the metro. The royalties from my lyrics keep rolling in and are enough for me to live comfortably without having to work and with plenty of time to do everything, even…write a book.

      The book can always wait until tomorrow, though, because the mayor of Madrid has decreed that the city should be one long party and has come up with an interesting slogan – ‘Madrid is killing me’ – and urges us all to visit several bars each night, coining the phrase la movida madrileña (‘the Madrid scene’), which is something I cannot possibly put off until tomorrow; everything is such fun; the days are short and the nights are long.

      One day, Esther phones СКАЧАТЬ