Aleph (26 page)

The girls continue calling to me. And weary of being a coward, I finally decide to raise my head and look at them.

At that point, everything freezes and I can see nothing more.

I
CONSIDER TAKING
H
ILAL
to where the Aleph is, so close by, but is that what this journey is all about? Using someone who loves me just to get an answer to a tormenting question? Will that really make me once again the king of my kingdom? If I don’t find the answer now, I will find it later. There are doubtless another three women waiting for me along my path—if I have the courage to follow it to the end. Surely I will not leave this incarnation without knowing the answer.

I
T’S LIGHT NOW
, and we can see the big city through the windows of the train. People get up from their seats with no show of enthusiasm, no sign that they are pleased to be arriving. Perhaps this is where our journey really begins.

The train, this city of steel, slows to a halt, this time for good. I turn to Hilal and say, “Let’s get out together.”

People are waiting on the platform. A girl with large
eyes is holding up a poster bearing the Brazilian flag and some words in Portuguese. Journalists come over to me, and I thank the Russian people for their kindness as I crossed their vast continent. I receive bunches of flowers, and the photographers ask me to pose in front of a large bronze column topped by a two-headed eagle. There’s a number engraved at the base of the column: 9,288.

There is no need to add the word “kilometers.” Everyone who arrives here knows what that number means.

T
HE SHIP IS SAILING CALMLY
over the Pacific Ocean while the sun sets slowly behind the hills where the city of Vladivostok lies. The sadness I thought I saw in my traveling companions when we arrived at the station has given way to wild euphoria. We all behave as if this were the first time we had ever seen the sea. No one wants to think that we’ll be saying good-bye shortly and promising to meet up again soon, knowing that the purpose of this promise is simply to make parting easier.

The journey is coming to a close, the adventure is about to end, and in three days’ time, we will all be going back to our respective houses, where we will embrace our families, see our children, read through the correspondence that has accumulated in our absence, show off the hundreds of photos we’ve taken, and tell our stories about the train, the cities we passed through, and the people we met along the way.

And all to convince ourselves that the journey really did happen. In another three days’ time, once we’re back in our
daily routine, it will feel as if we had never left and never made that long journey. We have the photos, the tickets, the souvenirs, but time—the only absolute, eternal master of our lives—will be telling us:
You never left this house, this room, this computer
.

Two weeks? What’s that in a whole lifetime? Nothing has changed in the street. The neighbors are still gossiping about the same old things; the newspaper you bought this morning carries exactly the same news: the World Cup about to start in Germany, the debate over whether Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the latest celebrity scandal, the constant complaints about things the government promised to do but hasn’t.

No, nothing has changed. But we—who went off in search of our kingdom and discovered lands we had never seen before—know we are different. However, the more we try to explain, the more we will persuade ourselves that this journey, like all the others, exists only in our memory. Perhaps we will tell our grandchildren about it or even write a book on the subject, but what exactly will we say?

Nothing, or perhaps only what happened outside, not what changed inside.

We may never see one another again. And the only person with her eyes fixed on the horizon now is Hilal. She must be thinking about how to resolve this problem. No, for her the Trans-Siberian Railway doesn’t end here. Yet she doesn’t show her feelings, and when someone talks to her, she replies kindly and politely, something she has never done for as long as we’ve known each other.

…

Y
AO TRIES TO STRIKE UP
a conversation with her. He has already made a couple attempts, but she always moves away after exchanging only a few words. In the end, he gives up and comes to join me.

“What can I do?”

“Just respect her silence.”

“Yes, I agree, but—”

“I know. Meanwhile, try thinking about yourself for a change. Remember what the shaman said: you killed God. If you don’t take this opportunity to bring Him back to life, this journey will have been a waste of time. I know a lot of people who help others simply as a way of avoiding their own problems.”

Yao pats me on the back as if to say “I understand,” then leaves me alone to gaze out to sea.

Now that I’ve reached the farthest point in my journey, my wife is once more by my side. That afternoon, I met some more readers, had the usual party, visited the local prefect, and, for the first time in my life, held in my hands a real Kalashnikov, the one the prefect keeps in his office. As we were leaving, I noticed the newspaper lying on his desk. I don’t understand a word of Russian, but the photos spoke for themselves: football.

The World Cup is due to start in a few days’ time! She’s waiting for me in Munich, where we will meet very shortly. I’ll tell her how much I’ve missed her and describe in detail what happened between me and Hilal.

She’ll say, “Please, I’ve heard this story four times
already,” and we’ll go out for a drink at some German
Bierkeller
.

I didn’t make this journey in order to find the words missing from my life but to be the king of my own world again. And it’s here that I’m back in touch with myself and with the magical universe all around me.

Yes, I could have reached the same conclusions without ever leaving Brazil, but just like Santiago, the shepherd boy in one of my books, sometimes you have to travel a long way to find what is near. When the rain returns to earth, it brings with it the things of the air. The magical and the extraordinary are with me and with everyone in the Universe all the time, but sometimes we forget and need to be reminded, even if we have to cross the largest continent in the world from one side to the other. We return laden with treasures that might end up getting buried again, and then we will have to set off once more in search of them. That’s what makes life interesting—believing in treasures and in miracles.

“Let’s celebrate. Is there any vodka on the boat?”

No, there isn’t, and Hilal fixes me with angry eyes.

“Celebrate what? The fact that I’m going to be stuck here alone until I get the train all the way back and spend endless days and nights thinking about everything we’ve been through together?”

“No, I need to celebrate what I’ve just experienced, to raise a glass to myself. And you need to toast your courage. You set off in search of adventure, and you found it. You might be sad for a while, but someone is sure to light a fire on a nearby mountain. You’ll see the light, go toward
it, and find the man you’ve been looking for all your life. You’re young, and, you know, I sensed last night that it wasn’t your hands playing the violin but the hands of God. Let God use your hands. You
will
be happy, even if right now you feel only despair.”

“You have absolutely no idea what I’m feeling. You’re just an egotist who thinks the world owes you something. I gave myself to you entirely, and yet here I am again, being left high and dry.”

There’s no point in arguing, but I know she’s right. That’s how it will be. I’m fifty-nine and she’s twenty-one.

W
E GO BACK TO THE PLACE
where we’re staying. Not a hotel this time but a vast house built in 1974 for a summit on disarmament between Leonid Brezhnev, then general-secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the American president at the time, Gerald Ford. It is made all of white marble, with a vast hall in the middle and a series of rooms leading off it. These must once have been intended for political delegations but are now used for occasional guests.

We intend to take a shower, change our clothes, and go straight out to supper in the city, far from that chilly atmosphere. However, a man is standing right in the middle of the hall. My publishers go over to him. Yao and I keep a prudent distance.

The man takes out his cell phone and dials a number. Now my publisher is speaking respectfully into the phone, his eyes bright with happiness. My editor is smiling, too. My publisher’s voice echoes around the marble walls.

“What’s going on?” I ask.

“You’ll find out in a minute,” answers Yao.

My publisher turns off the phone and comes toward me, beaming.

“We’re going back to Moscow tomorrow,” he says. “We have to be there by five in the afternoon.”

“Weren’t we going to stay here for a couple of days? I haven’t even had time for a wander around the city. Besides, it’s a nine-hour flight to Moscow. How could we possibly be there by five o’clock?”

“There’s a seven-hour time difference. If we leave here at midday, we’ll be there by two. That’s plenty of time. I’m going to cancel the restaurant booking this evening and ask them to serve supper here. I’ve got a lot of arranging to do.”

“But why the urgency? My plane for Germany leaves on—”

He interrupts me, saying, “It seems that President Vladimir Putin has read all about your journey and would like to meet you.”

“A
ND WHAT ABOUT ME
?”

My publisher turns to Hilal.

“It was your decision to come with us, and you can go back how and when you want. It’s nothing to do with us.”

The man with the cell phone has vanished. My publishers leave, and Yao goes with them. Hilal and I are alone in the middle of that vast, oppressive marble hallway.

Everything happened so fast that we still haven’t recovered from the shock. I had no idea President Putin even knew about my journey. Hilal cannot believe that things are going to end so abruptly, so suddenly, without her having another opportunity to talk to me of love, to explain how important everything we’ve experienced is for our lives and that we should carry on, even if I am married. That, at least, is what I imagine is going through her mind.

You can’t do this to me! You can’t just leave me here! You killed me once because you didn’t have the guts to say “no,” and now you’re going to kill me again!

She runs to her room, and I fear the worst. If she’s serious, anything is possible. I want to phone my publisher and ask him to buy a ticket for her; otherwise, we could be faced by a terrible tragedy, and then there will be no meeting with Putin, no kingdom, no redemption, no conquest, and my big adventure will end in suicide and death. I run to her room, which is on the second floor, but she has already opened the windows.

“Stop! You won’t kill yourself if you jump from this height—you’ll just be crippled for the rest of your life.”

She isn’t listening. I have to stay calm and in control of the situation. I have to be as authoritative as she was in Baikal when she ordered me not to turn around and see her naked. A thousand thoughts go through my mind, and I take the easiest route.

“Look, I love you. I would never leave you here alone.”

She knows this isn’t true, but my words of love have an instantaneous effect.

“You love me like a river, you said, but I love you the way a woman loves a man.”

Hilal doesn’t want to die. If she did, she would have said nothing. But quite apart from the words she used, her voice is saying, “You’re part of me, the most important part, and it’s being left behind. I will never be the person I was.” She’s quite wrong, but this is not the moment to explain something she won’t understand.

“And I love you the way a man loves a woman, as I did before and always will for as long as the world exists. I explained to you once: time doesn’t pass. Do I have to say it again?”

She turns around.

“That’s a lie. Life is a dream from which we wake only when we meet death. Time passes while we live. I’m a musician, and I have to deal with the time of musical notation every day. If time didn’t exist, there would be no music.”

She’s speaking coherently now. And I do love her. Not as a woman, but I do love her.

“Music isn’t a succession of notes. It’s the constant movement of a note between sound and silence,” I say.

“What do you know about music? Even if you were right, what does it matter now? You’re a prisoner of your past, and so am I. If I loved you in one life, I will continue to love you forever! I have no heart, no body, no soul, nothing! All I have is love. You think I exist, but that’s just an optical illusion. What you’re seeing is Love in its purest state, yearning to reveal itself, but there is no time or space where it can do that.”

She moves away from the window and starts pacing up and down the room. She has no intention of throwing herself out the window now. Apart from her footsteps on the wooden floor, all I can hear is the infernal tick-tock of a clock, proving me wrong about time. Time does exist, and, at that very moment, it is busily consuming us. I need Yao, that poor man through whose soul the black wind of loneliness still blows but who always feels good whenever he can help someone else; he could have calmed her down.