by Paulo Coelho
I refused. And as if surfacing from some dark corner of my soul, I remembered the words I had heard the day before:
“The voice says that it will only allow these things to happen when the time is right.”
He couldn’t have known. It wasn’t possible that everything that had happened on the corner of Boulevard St-Germain and Rue des Sts-Pères was the result of some universal conspiracy, of something predetermined by the gods, who, despite being fully occupied in taking care of this precariously balanced planet on the verge of extinction, had all downed tools merely to prevent me from going in search of the Zahir. Mikhail could not possibly have foreseen the future, unless he really had heard a voice and there was a plan and this was all far more important than I imagined.
Everything was beginning to be too much for me: Marie’s smiles, the possibility that someone really had heard a voice, the increasingly agonizing pain in my head.
“Doctor, I’ve changed my mind. I want to sleep. I can’t stand the pain.”
She said something to one of the nurses pushing the trolley, who went off and returned even before we had reached my room. I felt a prick in my arm and immediately fell asleep.
When I woke up, I wanted to know exactly what had happened; I wanted to know if the woman passing me on the pavement had escaped injury and what had happened to her baby. Marie said that I needed to rest, but, by then, Dr. Louit, my doctor and friend, had arrived and felt that there was no reason not to tell me. I had been knocked down by a motorbike. The body I had seen lying on the ground beside me had been the young male driver. He had been taken to the same hospital and, like me, had escaped with only minor abrasions. The police investigation carried out immediately after the accident made it clear that I had been standing in the middle of the road at the time of the accident, thus putting the motorcyclist’s life at risk.
It was, apparently, all my fault, but the motorcyclist had decided not to press charges. Marie had been to see him and talk to him; she had learned that he was an immigrant working illegally and was afraid of having any dealings with the police. He had been discharged twenty-four hours later, because he had been wearing a helmet, which lessened the risk of any damage to the brain.
“Did you say he left twenty-four hours later? Does that mean I’ve been in here more than a day?”
“You’ve been in here for three days. When you came out of the body scanner, the doctor here phoned me to ask if she could keep you on sedatives. It seemed to me that you’d been rather tense, irritated, and depressed lately, and so I told her she could.”
“So what happens next?”
“Two more days in the hospital and then three weeks with that contraption around your neck; you’re through the critical forty-eight-hour period. Of course, part of your body could still rebel against the idea of continuing to behave itself and then we’d have a problem on our hands. But let’s face that emergency if and when it arises; there’s no point in worrying unnecessarily.”
“So, I could still die?”
“As you well know, all of us not only can, but will, die.”
“Yes, but could I still die as a result of the accident?”
Dr. Louit paused.
“Yes. There’s always the chance that a blood clot could have formed which the machines have failed to pick up and that it could break free at any moment and cause an embolism. There’s also the possibility that a cell has gone berserk and is starting to form a cancer.”
“You shouldn’t say things like that,” said Marie.
“We’ve been friends for five years. He asked me a question and I gave him an answer. And now, if you don’t mind, I have to get back to my office. Medicine isn’t quite as you think. In the world we live in, if a boy goes out to buy five apples, but arrives home with only two, people would conclude that he had eaten the three missing apples. In my world, there are other possibilities: he could have eaten them, but he could also have been robbed; the money he’d been given might not have been enough to buy the five apples he’d been sent for; he could have lost them on the way home; he could have met someone who was hungry and decided to share the fruit with that person, and so on. In my world, everything is possible and everything is relative.”
“What do you know about epilepsy?”
Marie knew at once that I was talking about Mikhail and could not conceal a flicker of displeasure. She said she had to go, there was a film crew waiting.
Dr. Louit, however, having picked up his things ready to leave, stopped to answer my question.
“It’s an excess of electrical impulses in one specific area of the brain, which provokes convulsions of greater or lesser severity. There’s no definitive study on the subject, but they think attacks may be provoked when the person is under great strain. But don’t worry, while epileptic symptoms can appear at any age, epilepsy itself is unlikely to be brought on by colliding with a motorcycle.”
“So what causes it?”
“I’m not a specialist, but, if you like, I can find out.”
“Yes, if you would. And I have another question too, but please don’t go thinking that my brain’s been affected by the accident. Is it possible that epileptics can hear voices and have premonitions?”
“Did someone tell you this accident was going to happen?”
“Not exactly, but that’s what I took it to mean.”
“Look, I can’t stay any longer, I’m giving Marie a lift, but I’ll see what I can find out about epilepsy for you.”
For the two days that Marie was away, and despite the shock of the accident, the Zahir took up its usual space in my life. I knew that if Mikhail had kept his word, there would be an envelope waiting for me at home containing Esther’s address; now, however, the thought frightened me.
What if Mikhail was telling the truth about the voice?
I started trying to remember the details of the accident: I had stepped down from the curb, automatically looking to see if anything was coming; I’d seen a car approaching, but it had appeared to be a safe distance away. And yet I had still been hit, possibly by a motorbike that was trying to overtake the car and was outside my field of vision.
I believe in signs. After I had walked the road to Santiago, everything had changed completely: what we need to learn is always there before us, we just have to look around us with respect and attention in order to discover where God is leading us and which step we should take next. I also learned a respect for mystery. As Einstein said, God does not play dice with the universe; everything is interconnected and has a meaning. That meaning may remain hidden nearly all the time, but we always know we are close to our true mission on earth when what we are doing is touched with the energy of enthusiasm.
If it is, then all is well. If not, then we had better change direction.
When we are on the right path, we follow the signs, and if we occasionally stumble, the Divine comes to our aid, preventing us from making a mistake. Was the accident a sign? Had Mikhail intuited a sign that was intended for me?
I decided that the answer to these questions was yes.
And perhaps because of this, because I accepted my destiny and allowed myself to be guided by something greater than myself, I noticed that, during the day, the Zahir began to diminish in intensity. I knew that all I had to do was open the envelope, read her address, and go and knock on her door, but the signs all indicated that this was not the moment. If Esther really was as important in my life as I thought, if she still loved me (as Mikhail said she did), why force a situation that would simply lead me into making the same mistakes I had made in the past?
How to avoid repeating them?
By knowing myself better, by finding out what had changed and what had provoked this sudden break in a road that had always been marked by joy.
Was that enough?
No, I also needed to know who Esther was, what changes she had undergone during the time we were together.
And was it enough to be able to answer these two questions
?
There was a third: Why had fate brought us together?
I had a lot of free time in that hospital room, and so I made a general review of my life. I had always sought both adventure and security, knowing that the two things did not really mix. I was sure of my love for Esther and yet I easily fell in love with other women, merely because the game of seduction is the most interesting game in the world.
Had I shown my wife that I loved her? Perhaps for a while, but not always. Why? Because I didn’t think it was necessary; she must know I loved her; she couldn’t possibly doubt my feelings.
I remember that, many years ago, someone asked me if there was a common denominator among all the various girlfriends I had had in my life. The answer was easy: me. And when I realized this, I saw how much time I had wasted looking for the right person—the women changed, but I remained the same and so got nothing from those shared experiences. I had lots of girlfriends, but I was always waiting for the right person. I controlled and was controlled and the relationship never went any further than that, until Esther arrived and changed everything.
I was thinking tenderly of my ex-wife; I was no longer obsessed with finding her, with finding out why she had left without a word of explanation. A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew had been a true account of my marriage, but it was, above all, my own testimony, declaring that I am capable of loving and needing someone else. Esther deserved more than just words, especially since I had never said those words while we were together.
It is always important to know when something has reached its end. Closing circles, shutting doors, finishing chapters, it doesn’t matter what we call it; what matters is to leave in the past those moments in life that are over. Slowly, I began to realize that I could not go back and force things to be as they once were: those two years, which up until then had seemed an endless inferno, were now beginning to show me their true meaning.
And that meaning went far beyond my marriage: all men and all women are connected by an energy which many people call love, but which is, in fact, the raw material from which the universe was built. This energy cannot be manipulated, it leads us gently forward, it contains all we have to learn in this life. If we try to make it go in the direction we want, we end up desperate, frustrated, disillusioned, because that energy is free and wild.
We could spend the rest of our life saying that we love such a person or thing, when the truth is that we are merely suffering because, instead of accepting love’s strength, we are trying to diminish it so that it fits the world in which we imagine we live.
The more I thought about this, the weaker the Zahir became and the closer I moved to myself. I prepared myself mentally to do a great deal of work, work that would require much silence, meditation, and perseverance. The accident had helped me understand that I could not force something that had not yet reached its time to sew.
I remembered what Dr. Louit had said: after such a trauma to the body, death could come at any moment. What if that were true? What if in ten minutes’ time, my heart stopped beating?
A nurse came into the room to bring me my supper and I asked him:
“Have you thought about your funeral?”
“Don’t worry,” he replied. “You’ll survive; you already look much better.”
“I’m not worried. I know I’m going to survive. A voice told me I would.”
I mentioned the “voice” deliberately, just to provoke him. He eyed me suspiciously, thinking that perhaps it was time to call for another examination and check that my brain really hadn’t been affected.
“I know I’m going to survive,” I went on. “Perhaps for a day, for a year, for thirty or forty years, but one day, despite all the scientific advances, I’ll leave this world and I’ll have a funeral. I was thinking about it just now and I wondered if you had ever thought about it.”
“Never. And I don’t want to either; besides, that’s what really terrifies me, knowing that everything will end.”
“Whether you like it or not, whether you agree or disagree, that is a reality none of us can escape. Do you fancy having a little chat about it?”
“I’ve got other patients to see, I’m afraid,” he said, putting the food down on the table and leaving as quickly as possible, as if running away—not from me, but from my words.
The nurse might not want to talk about it, but how about me thinking about it alone? I remembered some lines from a poem I had learned as a child:
When the Unwanted Guest arrives…
I might be afraid.
I might smile or say:
My day was good, let night fall.
You will find the fields ploughed, the house clean,
the table set,
and everything in its place.
It would be nice if that were true—everything in its place. And what would my epitaph be? Esther and I had both made wills, in which, among other things, we had chosen cremation: my ashes were to be scattered to the winds in a place called Cebreiro, on the road to Santiago, and her ashes were to be scattered over the sea. So there would be no inscribed headstone.
But what if I could choose an epitaph? I would ask to have these words engraved:
“He died while he was still alive.”
That might sound like a contradiction in terms, but I knew many people who had ceased to live, even though they continued to work and eat and engage in their usual social activities. They did everything automatically, oblivious to the magic moment that each day brings with it, never stopping to think about the miracle of life, never understanding that the next minute could be their last on the face of this planet.
It was pointless trying to explain this to the nurse, largely because it was a different nurse who came to collect the supper dish. This new nurse started bombarding me with questions, possibly on the orders of some doctor. He wanted to know if I could remember my name, if I knew what year it was, the name of the president of the United States, the sort of thing they ask when they’re assessing your mental state.
And all because I asked the questions that every human being should ask: Have you thought about your funeral? Do you realize that sooner or later you’re going to die?
That night, I went to sleep smiling. The Zahir was disappearing, and Esther was returning, and if I were to die then, despite all that had happened in my life, despite all my failures, despite the disappearance of the woman I loved, the injustices I had suffered or inflicted on others, I had remained alive until the last moment, and could, with all certainty, affirm: “My day was good, let night fall.”
Two days later, I was back home. Marie went to prepare lunch, and I glanced through the accumulated correspondence. The entry phone rang. It was the caretaker to say that the envelope I had expected the previous week had been delivered and should be on my desk.
I thanked him, but, contrary to all my expectations, I was not in a rush to open it. Marie and I had lunch; I asked her how filming had gone and she asked me about my immediate plans, given that I wouldn’t be able to go out much while I was wearing the orthopedic collar. She said that she could, if necessary, come and stay.
“I’m supposed to do an appearance on some Korean TV channel, but I can always put it off or even cancel it altogether. That’s, of course, if you need my company.”
“Oh, I do, and it would be lovely to have you around.”
She smiled broadly and picked up the phone to call her manager and ask her to change her engagements. I heard her say: “Don’t tell them I’m ill though. I’m superstitious, and whenever I’ve used that excuse in the past, I’ve always come down with something really horrible. Just tell them I’ve got to look after the person I love.”
I had a series of urgent things to do too: interviews to be postponed, invitations that required replies, letters to be written thanking various people for the phone calls and flowers I’d received, things to read, prefaces and recommendations to write. Marie spent the whole day on the phone to my agent, reorganizing my diary so t
hat no one would be left without a response. We had supper at home every evening, talking about the interesting and the banal, just like any other couple. During one of these suppers, after a few glasses of wine, she remarked that I had changed.
“It’s as if having a brush with death had somehow brought you back to life,” she said.
“That happens to everyone.”
“But I must say—and, don’t worry, I don’t want to start an argument and I’m not about to have an attack of jealousy—you haven’t mentioned Esther once since coming home. The same thing happened when you finished A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew: the book acted as a kind of therapy, the effects of which, alas, didn’t last very long.”
“Are you saying that the accident has affected my brain?”
My tone wasn’t aggressive, but she nevertheless decided to change the subject and started telling me about a terrifying helicopter trip she’d had from Monaco to Cannes. Later, in bed, we made love—with great difficulty given my orthopedic collar—but we made love nevertheless and felt very close.
Four days later, the vast pile of paper on my desk had disappeared. There was only a large, white envelope bearing my name and the number of my apartment. Marie went to open it, but I told her it could wait.
She didn’t ask me about it; perhaps it was information about my bank accounts or some confidential correspondence, possibly from another woman. I didn’t explain either. I simply removed it from the desk and placed it on a shelf among some books. If I kept looking at it, the Zahir would come back.
At no point had the love I felt for Esther diminished, but every day spent in the hospital had brought back some intriguing memory: not of conversations we had had, but of moments we had spent together in silence. I remembered her eyes, which reflected her inner being. Whenever she set off on some new adventure, she was an enthusiastic young girl, or a wife proud of her husband’s success, or a journalist fascinated by every subject she wrote about. Later, she was the wife who no longer seemed to have a place in my life. That look of sadness in her eyes had started before she told me she wanted to be a war correspondent; it became a look of joy every time she came back from an assignment, but it was only a matter of days before the look of sadness returned.
