by Robin Sharma
I went to my backpack, and from the bottom I dug out the journal that Julian had given me. Then I slipped the parchment between its covers and put the journal back inside. I picked up the talisman again and turned it back and forth in my hands. Then I took the little leather pouch from my pocket and slipped the disk inside before turning back the covers on the bed and crawling in.
I WOKE THE NEXT MORNING, realizing that I had not moved a muscle all night. It was the kind of deep sleep I enjoyed only on vacation. When I padded into the kitchen, the wonderful aroma of Turkish coffee, pungent and dark, filled my nostrils. Ahmet served rich yogurt and fruit with the coffee, and then hustled me out the door, back through the cobbled village streets and to the water once more.
After we climbed into the boat, Ahmet started the engine and carefully backed away from the dock. Once the boat was out in the open water, he accelerated. We were moving faster than we had the night before, but that wasn’t the only thing that was utterly changed.
Despite the early hour, the sun was blazing in the sky. The villages, the green hills, the water—everything seemed bright and clear, sharp and vibrant. It was stunning, but the myth and mysteries of the previous night had evaporated. “It all looks so different,” I said to Ahmet. “Beautiful, but different.”
“Yes,” said Ahmet thoughtfully. “I often find that myself. Night hides many things, but reveals others.”
“It happens in cities, too,” I said. “Some often look magical at night but humdrum during the day.”
“And yet both versions are equally real.” Ahmet paused, and then added, “I suppose that is why it is never a good idea to make quick judgments about things. It takes a long time to really get to know places, people, even ourselves.”
The boat was humming through the water as birds circled and swung above us. Up ahead I could see two men throw a net from a small fishing boat. A young boy broke away from a group of people gathered on a dock and waved vigorously at us. I felt for a moment that I had traveled along these shores before but was only noticing them for the first time.
“Yes,” I said to my new friend Ahmet. “Yes, I am beginning to see the truth in that.”
CHAPTER FOUR
THERE HAD BEEN MOMENTS WHEN, moving around Istanbul, I felt as if I were a character in a movie. As if I were seeing the world through a camera, as if every word that came out of my mouth had been written by someone else. It was disorienting, but at the same time refreshing, as if the world was full of possibility. The night I’d floated down the Bosphorus, with the moon above, the water below—I don’t think I’d felt that sense of wonder since I was a child. Julian had said that life was about “becoming.” I was beginning to feel that.
But here, sitting in the Atatürk airport, that Istanbul was slipping quickly into the rearview mirror. I had shut off my phone previous afternoon and, until now, had forgotten to turn it on. It hummed awake, producing an inbox stuffed with semi-hysterical subject lines: “Urgent shipping request”; “QC question”; “XD95 failure”; “Monthly account reports due!”; “Where the Hell R U?” I noticed several texts from Nawang, and I read through those first. It sounded as if the first quality control tests were going well. Then I tackled the ones from David. Just requests for reports I’d already given him, information I had already shared. How much of my time did I waste resending stuff, repeating myself, churning out documents and messages no one ever bothered to read (but were nevertheless due—and submitted—on time, each month, each week)? Forty minutes clicked by before I turned to the messages from Annisha and Adam. Annisha wanted to know if I had arrived in Istanbul safely. Damn. I should have let her know as soon as I had arrived. Adam wanted to tell me about his school play. I quickly typed replies and then called the office, hoping I could catch Nawang.
BY THE TIME I was herded into my seat on the plane, I was thoroughly back in my world. I couldn’t keep ignoring my work, my life, every time I landed in a new place. And if my inbox wasn’t full the next time I turned on my phone, what would that mean? It couldn’t be a good thing. I pulled a few items from my carry-on and then wrestled it into the overhead bin. I could hear the fellow behind me huffing and puffing. A baby was already wailing at the back of the plane. I gritted my teeth and sighed. As I struggled into the kindergarten-sized seats that pass as airline accommodation these days, I could feel the muscles in my neck tightening up. The leather pouch that Julian had given me for the talismans was on a long leather cord. I had put it around my neck, figuring I was less likely to lose it this way. But now I could feel the leather string digging into my skin. The pouch felt unnaturally heavy. Too heavy for the tiny amulet it contained. I clicked my seat belt in place, then took the pouch from under my shirt. I pulled out the little coin and turned it back and forth. The sun and the moon. Yin and yang. Heart and head. Heaven and Earth. Hidden and revealed. I put it in the pouch and dropped the leather bag back under my shirt.
Then I pulled the journal from my jacket pocket. Julian’s note about authenticity was inside. I hadn’t really thought about it since I first read it. In Istanbul, I felt as if I wasn’t really living my life. Or maybe it was more like standing outside my life, looking at it as a stranger might. Now I wondered if what I saw was real. What was my “authentic” self? Who was I, really? I remembered my conversation with Ahmet on the boat. I had told him I was an electrical engineer. A husband. A father. All those things were true, but they could apply to thousands of other men. How would I describe myself if I couldn’t rely on those three labels?
I pulled down the tray table and laid the notebook open on top of it. As I’ve said, I have never been the kind of person who spends a great deal of time on self-reflection. Mostly, I just couldn’t see the point.
I took a pen from my pocket and, at the top of the first page, wrote, “Who am I?” I felt foolish.
I stared at the blank page until the flight attendant broke my trance by offering me a beverage. She served me with a bright smile and then continued down the aisle. I took a sip of coffee and was about to snap the notebook shut, but stopped myself. This was ridiculous. I should be able to answer the question I had posed.
But even after I had finished my coffee, I was staring at a blank page. The flight was almost four hours long. I had promised myself I would write something before it was over. Maybe if I couldn’t describe my “authentic” self, I could think about times in my life when I felt I really knew who I was, when I felt aware of my life, when I felt I was living just as I wanted to rather than how everyone around me suggested I live.
The first thing I wrote was “story time.” It seemed like a strange moment to highlight because it wasn’t a single moment or even a single time. And it was so, so long ago. During all the years of my childhood, we had a family ritual. Once dinner and baths were out of the way, my mother would take my sister and me into one of our bedrooms. The three of us would climb into bed, and Mom would begin to read. When I was tiny it was picture books. Later it was short novels, and then, eventually, long tomes, like Kidnapped or Gulliver’s Travels. We kept that up longer than I would ever have admitted to any of my friends. There was something about those times as a child, however, that acted as a touchstone for me. No matter what had happened during the day, what trouble I had got into, what fights Kira and I had had, what disasters had befallen me at school—in that hour on the bed at night, my mother’s soft voice reverberating in the air, the sound of Dad downstairs banging around the kitchen as he cleaned up, my sister’s contented breathing filling in the spaces—everything fell into place. I knew who I was and where I belonged.
Next I wrote about a more specific memory. “Hiking with Annisha in the Rockies,” I put down. That was just before we got married. Climbing the Grassi Lake trail outside of Canmore, a town in western Canada, we had crossed a small creek. Annisha was following me; I reached out to help her across. When we got to the top of the trail we gazed at the landscape surrounding us, the mountains that encircled us. Then I looked at Annisha. I
remember so clearly that I was overcome with the feeling that this improbable place was exactly where I wanted to be, exactly where I should be at this moment.
Of course, back then I couldn’t imagine the feeling that overcame me when Adam was born. That was my third point. I remember thinking, while holding him as Annisha dozed in the hospital bed, that my place in the universe was forever defined by this small baby. I was a father. And I always would be. There was a certainty about it that was sobering and yet comforting.
And finally I wrote, “Fuel-injection design trial run.” It seemed like an oddly technical, professional event to follow Adam’s birth, but there it was. The first independent project I had completed at work. Juan had asked me to take a crack at a new fuel-injection system. “Don’t just tinker with the previous designs,” he said. “You’ve talked to me about doing things differently. So do it. Start from scratch. Rethink the whole thing.”
I worked for months on that design. But it hardly felt like that. I would sit down at my desk in the morning and barely move until it was six p.m. I would get out of my car in the evening, stand in the driveway and wonder how I got there. I was so consumed with ideas, overcome with energy. I got up in the mornings itching to get to the office.
When I eventually presented my drawings and schematics to Juan, he looked thoughtful. “Well,” he told me. “There’s really only one way we can find out if this will work. Let’s build it.”
So we did. Then we ran it. Eventually we put it into a vehicle. And we drove that car. I didn’t sleep at all the night before. Watching the car speed around the test track, I could almost hear my heart ringing, like a chiming clock.
Four things. That was enough for one day. I closed the book and shoved it into my pocket. I leaned my seat back as far as it would go, closed my eyes and tried to sleep.
AS SOON AS I got into the terminal at Charles de Gaulle Airport, my pulse started to race. The lineup at customs seemed interminable, the wait for my bag an eternity. When I burst through the glass doors in front of the cab stand, I sped to the first taxi like a kid running for an ice cream truck. I love Paris, and I was eager to start walking its streets.
But the cab ride into the city was slow. It was about six p.m., the expressway thick with traffic. Unlike my time in Istanbul, this felt oddly familiar. I was surrounded by commuters: drivers watching the road with only half-hearted attention, their minds congested with thoughts of their day—what they had accomplished and what they would face tomorrow. That should have been me, only on the other side of the globe. Instead, here I was, a passenger, chugging through a landscape that was familiar yet foreign, the wall of gray suburban high-rises lining the highway reminding me that, in a city of millions, I knew no one.
Julian had told me that I would be staying at a hotel on the Champs Élysées. But I didn’t want to get out of the cab when it pulled in front. I almost told the driver to keep going. Nothing appealed to me more at that moment than the thought of driving through the Paris streets until the sun set—the lights of the Eiffel Tower twinkling in the background everywhere we went. Julian, however, had said that I would be meeting with a man named Antoine Gaucher, but he couldn’t tell me exactly when. Antoine, he said, would leave a letter for me at the desk, telling me where to meet him—and I supposed that Antoine could be waiting for me even now. After all, Julian had said, “Antoine is an interesting individual. It may be an unusual meeting.”
As the cab drove away, down the Champs Élysées, I pushed myself through the doors of the hotel. The lobby was crowded. Dozens of people in business clothes, their name tags around their necks, lined up in front of the reception desk, with more of the group gathered in clusters throughout the lobby. Near the concierge’s desk, a small girl sat on top of a suitcase, sobbing. A haggard-looking woman stood over her, digging in her purse for something. The lobby was reverberating with shouts, laughter, chatter and tears.
I guess the flight, the ride from the airport and the noise had worn me down a bit because by the time I got to the reception desk, I was no longer thinking of the bright lights of Paris but rather of a café chair and a stiff drink. When the clerk handed me the key card and said “Room 1132,” I snapped.
“No, absolutely not,” I said. I wasn’t even trying to speak in French. “Nothing higher than the fourth floor.” The clerk looked at me quizzically. “I can’t …” I said, then stopped. I didn’t want to explain myself.
The authentic me? Well, here’s a bit of authentic me. I’m claustrophobic; petrified of small, cramped spaces. And that makes elevators a challenge. Not too many people know this about me—I’ve made climbing the stairs seem like part of my dedication to a healthy lifestyle. Juan started referring to me as “the Stairmaster” after I’d climbed the stairs to an eighteenth-floor hospitality suite at an automotive convention. But the truth was I’d rather appear sweaty and winded in front of my colleagues than panic-stricken.
It took a few minutes for the clerk to find me a room on the fourth floor. Before I left the counter, she slid a small envelope across the surface with my room key. It must be from Antoine, I thought, dropping it in my pocket. I sent my bags up with the bellhop and headed for the stairs.
Once in the room, I kicked off my shoes and dropped onto the bed. I lay back and pulled the envelope from my pocket. It contained a single sheet of paper with this short note: “Antoine Gaucher, archivist,” it said. “Catacombes de Paris, 1, avenue du Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy. Meet me at my place of work, s’il vous plaît. Wednesday, 17:30 hours, after the museum closes.”
Clearly, Antoine was not a chatty fellow.
Wednesday—that was tomorrow. I would have the whole day in Paris to myself. My first reaction was delight. A day to roam around one of the most spectacular cities on the planet. Where would I go? Notre Dame? Le Marais? Montmartre? The Louvre? But another thought began to nudge those places out of my mind. A whole day. I pulled my phone from my pocket. I had been away for two days, and I still had eight more talismans to collect. At this rate, how long would I be gone? Three weeks seemed possible, but very ambitious—and what if something went wrong? I tried to slow my breathing, loosen my clenched jaw. There was nothing I could do about the timing. Why worry about it, I told myself. Relax. Relax. Enjoy the opportunity you’ve been given. I took a deep breath and headed into the bathroom to clean up.
STROLLING DOWN THE Champs Élysées as the sun began to set, I felt wistful. Paris was really a place to be with someone else. I watched couples holding hands as they walked, men and women leaning close to each other as they sat at small tables in the outdoor cafés. If Annisha were here… If Annisha were here, we would have to talk about our relationship. What went wrong, how I was frustrating her, disappointing Adam. Damn. The magic of Paris was evaporating. Change tack. What would it be like to be here with Tessa? That was better. The romance of the unknown.
I walked a distance into the park, before turning around and heading back up the wide avenue. I could see the magnificent outline of the Arc de Triomphe in the distance. I stopped in one of the little bistros for dinner. I was ravenous. I ordered a salad and a carafe of red wine. Duck to follow, and then a selection of cheeses to end the meal. This was the way to eat.
The bistro was crowded. I tried to listen in on the conversations around me. A mother and daughter, clearly on vacation. What would they do tomorrow? Shopping or take the train to Versailles? Some businessmen talking about a presentation they would do at the end of the week. A couple talking about their neighbor’s bad-tempered dog.
I lingered over the cheese tray for a long while, then paid my bill and headed back into the night. The sun had set, and the City of Lights was … alight. I made my way up the avenue to the Arc de Triomphe and climbed the three hundred or so stairs to the roof. I wouldn’t be going up the Eiffel Tower (elevators), so this was the next best way to look at the city. Once at the top, I walked around the perimeter of the observation area. The Eiffel Tower was shimmering to the west. Cars and cabs blink
ed their way down the streets radiating from the Place de l’Étoile. Tiny figures moved down the sidewalks, in and out of storefronts and doorways. So many people, so many lives; all different, all shifting and changing. Were all these souls living “authentic” lives? And if they weren’t, would they know it?
I was still uncertain about what my authentic life was, but I had a suspicion I wasn’t leading it. If I were, would there be so much that I wanted to avoid thinking about? Annisha? My father? Juan? If I were, wouldn’t I be feeling a lot happier more of the time? I turned to head back down the stairs. Around and around the steps, the stone walls cool and silent. With each turn I felt energy draining from me. It had been a long day. A long several days, actually. Since meeting Julian, it had all been a whirlwind. My home, my work, seemed distant now. And the coming weeks loomed ahead like gigantic question marks. Time to head for the hotel bed; time for the forgetfulness of sleep.
THE NEXT MORNING, I took the metro to the Marais district of Paris, to a little café I remembered from a previous visit. A café au lait and a pain au chocolat. As I sat at the tiny table, I pulled out my phone. I answered a few messages and then switched to the Internet. I typed in “Catacombs of Paris.”
I had heard about the catacombs but had never seen them. Reading about them now, that seemed like a very wise decision.
Like people in other Christian countries, Parisians buried their dead in the consecrated ground of the churchyards. The problem, apparently, was that as the centuries unfolded, these cemeteries began to fill. And of course, as time marched on, the populations who lived around the cemeteries grew. By the late 1700s the earth of the graveyards was choked with the victims of plague, epidemics, starvation and war. For decades, the corpses were piled one on top of the other, and the burial grounds spat bones and decomposing flesh through the mud. The air around these fields was rank; the oozing soil was contaminating the water and the food supplies. Diseased rats invaded homes and public space, and in one particularly grisly incident, the walls in a restaurant basement crumbled under the pressure of the rotting contents of the Saints Innocents Cemetery on the other side. Cadavers and bones flooded into the restaurant’s cellar. I read that a mason inspecting the mess contracted gangrene after putting his hand on the remains of the cellar wall.
