Adultery

by Paulo Coelho

  Then she holds out her hand, which I dutifully shake, and she moves off without another word.

  I SPEND the whole of Monday morning trying to call Jacob's private mobile number. I never get through. I block his number, on the assumption that he has done the same with mine. I try ringing again, but still no luck.

  I ring his aides. I'm told that he's very busy after the elections, but I need to speak to him. I continue trying.

  I adopt a strategy I often have to resort to: I use the phone of someone whose number will not be on his list of contacts.

  The telephone rings twice and Jacob answers.

  It's me. I need to see you urgently.

  Jacob replies politely and says that today is impossible, but he'll call me back. He asks:

  "Is this your new number?"

  No, I borrowed it from someone because you weren't answering my calls.

  He laughs. I imagine he's surrounded by people. He's very good at pretending that he's talking about something perfectly legitimate.

  Someone took a photo of us in the park and is trying to blackmail me, I lie. I'll say that it was all your fault, that you grabbed me. The people who elected you and thought that the last extramarital affair was a one-off will be disappointed. You may have been elected to the Council of States, but you could miss out on becoming a minister, I say.

  "Are you feeling all right?"

  Yes, I say, and hang up, but only after asking him to send me a text confirming where and when we should meet tomorrow.

  I feel fine.

  Why wouldn't I? I finally have something to fill my boring life. And my sleepless nights will no longer be full of crazy thoughts: now I know what I want. I have an enemy to destroy and a goal to achieve.

  A man.

  It isn't love (or is it?), but that doesn't matter. My love belongs to me and I'm free to offer it to whomever I choose, even if it's unrequited. Of course, it would be great if it were requited, but if not, who cares. I'm not going to give up digging this hole, because I know that there's water down below. Fresh water.

  I'm pleased by that last thought: I'm free to love anyone in the world. I can decide who without asking anyone's permission. How many men have fallen in love with me in the past and not been loved in return? And yet they still sent me presents, courted me, accepted being humiliated in front of their friends. And they never became angry.

  When they see me again, there is still a glimmer of failed conquest in their eyes. They will keep trying for the rest of their lives.

  If they can act like that, why shouldn't I do the same? It's thrilling to fight for a love that's entirely unrequited.

  It might not be much fun. It might leave profound and lasting scars. But it's interesting--especially for a person who, for years now, has been afraid of taking risks and who has begun to be terrified by the possibility that things might change without her being able to control them.

  I'm not going to repress my feelings any longer. This challenge is my salvation.

  Six months ago, we bought a new washing machine and had to change the plumbing in the laundry room. We had to change the flooring, too, and paint the walls. In the end, it looked far prettier than the kitchen.

  To avoid an unfortunate contrast, we had to replace the kitchen. Then we noticed that the living room looked old and faded. So we redecorated the living room, which then looked more inviting than the study we hadn't touched for ten years. So then we went to work on the study. Gradually, the refurbishment spread to the whole house.

  I hope the same doesn't happen to my life. I hope that the small things won't lead to great transformations.

  I SPEND quite a long time finding out more about Marianne, or Mme Konig, as she calls herself. She was born into a wealthy family, co-owners of one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies. In photos on the Internet she always looks very elegant, whether she's at a social or sporting event. She's never over-or underdressed for the occasion. She would never, like me, wear jogging pants to Nyon or a Versace dress to a nightclub full of youngsters.

  It's possible that she is the most enviable woman in Geneva and its environs. Not only is she heiress to a fortune and married to a promising politician, she also has her own career as an assistant professor of philosophy. She has written two theses, one of them--"Vulnerability and Psychosis Among the Retired" (published by Editions Universite de Geneve)--for her doctorate. And she's had two essays published in the respected journal Les Rencontres, in whose pages Adorno and Piaget, among others, have also appeared. She has her own entry in the French Wikipedia, although it's not often updated. There she is described as "an expert on aggression, conflict, and harassment in the nursing homes of French-speaking Switzerland."

  She must have a profound understanding of the agonies and ecstasies of being human--so profound that she was not even shocked by her husband's "consensual sex."

  She must be a brilliant strategist to have succeeded in persuading a mainstream newspaper to believe in her, an anonymous informer. (They are normally never taken seriously and are, besides, few and far between in Switzerland.) I doubt that she identified herself as a source.

  She is a manipulator who was able to transform something that could have proved devastating to her husband's career into a lesson in marital tolerance and solidarity, as well as a struggle against corruption.

  She is a visionary, intelligent enough to wait before having children. She still has time. Meanwhile, she can build the career she wants without being troubled by babies crying in the middle of the night or by neighbors saying that she should give up her work and pay more attention to the children (as mine do).

  She has excellent instincts, and doesn't see me as a threat. Despite appearances, the only person I am a danger to is myself.

  She is precisely the kind of woman I would like to destroy pitilessly.

  Because she is not some poor wretch without a resident's permit who wakes at five in the morning in order to travel into the city, terrified that one day she'll be exposed as an illegal worker. Because she isn't a lady of leisure married to some high-ranking official in the United Nations, always seen at parties in order to show the world how rich and happy she is (even though everyone knows that her husband has a mistress ten years her junior). And because she isn't the mistress of a high-ranking official at the United Nations, where she works and, however hard she tries, will never be recognized for what she does because "she's having an affair with the boss."

  She isn't a lonely, powerful female CEO who had to move to Geneva to be close to the World Trade Organization's headquarters, where everyone takes sexual harassment in the workplace so seriously that no one dares to even look at anyone else. And at night, she doesn't lie staring at the wall of the vast mansion she has rented, occasionally hiring a male escort to distract her and help her forget that she'll spend the rest of her life without a husband, children, or lovers.

  No, Marianne doesn't fit any of those categories. She's the complete woman.

  I'VE BEEN sleeping better. I should be meeting Jacob before the end of the week--at least that's what he promised, and I doubt he would have the courage to change his mind. He sounded nervous during our telephone conversation on Monday.

  My husband thinks that the Saturday we spent in Nyon did me good. Little does he know that's where I discovered what was really troubling me: a lack of passion and adventure.

  One of the symptoms I've noticed in myself is a kind of psychological nearsightedness. My world, which once seemed so broad and full of possibilities, began to shrink as my need for security grew. Why could that be? It must be a quality we inherited from when our ancestors lived in caves. Groups provide protection; loners die.

  Even though we know that the group can't possibly control everything--for example, your hair falling out or a cell in your body that suddenly goes crazy and becomes a tumor--the false sense of security makes us forget this. The more clearly we can see the walls of our life, the better. Even if it's only a psychologic
al boundary, even if, deep down, we know that death will still enter without asking, it's comforting to pretend that we have everything under control.

  Lately, my mind has been as rough and tempestuous as the sea. When I look back now, it's as if I am making a transoceanic voyage on a rudimentary raft, in the middle of the stormy season. Will I survive? I ask, now that there is no going back.

  Of course I will.

  I've survived storms before. I've also made a list of things to focus on whenever I feel I'm in danger of falling back into the black hole:

  * Play with my children. Read them stories that provide a lesson for them and for me, because stories are ageless.

  * Look up at the sky.

  * Drink lots of iced mineral water. That may seem simple, but it always invigorates me.

  * Cook. Cooking is the most beautiful and most complete of the arts. It involves all our five senses, plus one more--the need to give of our best. That is my preferred therapy.

  * Write down a list of complaints. This was a real discovery! Every time I feel angry about something, I write it down. At the end of the day, when I read the list, I realize that I've been angry about nothing.

  * Smile, even if I feel like crying. That is the most difficult thing on the list, but you get used to it. Buddhists say that a fixed smile, however false, lights up the soul.

  * Take two showers a day, instead of one. It dries the skin because of the hard water and chlorine, but it's worth it, because it washes the soul clean.

  But this is working now only because I have a goal: to win the heart of a man. I'm a cornered tiger with nowhere to run; the only option that remains is to attack.

  I FINALLY have a date: tomorrow at three o'clock in the restaurant of the Golf Club de Geneve in Cologny. It could have been in a bistro in the city or in a bar on one of the roads that lead off from the city's main (or you might say only) commercial street, but he chose the restaurant at the golf club.

  In the middle of the afternoon.

  Because at that hour, the restaurant will be empty and we'll have more privacy. I need to come up with a good excuse for my boss, but that's not a problem. After all, the article I wrote about the elections was picked up by lots of other newspapers.

  A discreet place, that's what he must have had in mind. But in my usual mania for believing whatever I want, I think of it as romantic. Autumn has already painted the trees many shades of gold; perhaps I'll invite Jacob to go for a walk. I think better when I'm moving, especially when I run, as proven in Nyon, but I doubt very much that we'll do any running.

  Ha, ha, ha.

  Tonight for dinner we had a cheese fondue that we Swiss call raclette, accompanied by thin slices of raw bison meat and traditional rosti potatoes with cream. My family asked if we were celebrating something special, and I said that we were: the fact that we were together and could enjoy a quiet dinner in one another's company. Then I took my second shower of the day and allowed the water to wash away my anxiety. Afterward, I slathered on plenty of moisturizer and went to the children's bedroom to read them a story. I found them glued to their tablets, which I think should be forbidden for anyone under fifteen.

  I told them to turn their electronics off, and they reluctantly obeyed. I picked up a book of traditional stories, opened it at random, and began to read.

  During the ice age, many animals died of cold, so the porcupines decided to band together to provide one another with warmth and protection. But their spines or quills kept sticking into their surrounding companions, precisely those who provided the most warmth. And so they drifted apart again.

  And again many of them died of cold.

  They had to make a choice: either risk extinction or accept their fellow porcupines' spines.

  Very wisely, they decided to huddle together again. They learned to live with the minor wounds inflicted by their relatives, because the most important thing to their survival was that shared warmth.

  The children want to know if they can see a real porcupine.

  "Are there any at the zoo?"

  I don't know.

  "What's the ice age?"

  A time when it was very, very cold.

  "Like winter?"

  Yes, but a winter that never ended.

  "But why didn't they remove their prickly spines before they snuggled up together?"

  Oh, dear, I should have chosen another story. I turn out the light and decide to sing them to sleep with a traditional song from a village in the Alps, stroking their hair as I do so. They soon fall asleep.

  My husband brings me some Valium. I've always refused to take any medicine because I'm afraid of becoming dependent, but I need to be in top form tomorrow.

  I take a ten-milligram pill and fall into a deep, dreamless sleep. I don't wake up all night.

  I GET there early, and go straight to the clubhouse and out into the garden. I walk to the trees at the far end, determined to enjoy this lovely afternoon to the full.

  Melancholy. That is always the first word that comes into my head when autumn arrives, because I know the summer is over. The days will grow shorter, and we don't live in the charmed world of those ice-age porcupines; we can't bear to be wounded by the sharp spines of others, even slightly.

  We already hear about people in other countries dying of the cold, traffic jams on snowbound highways, airports closed. Fires are lit and blankets are brought out of cupboards. But that happens only in the world we humans create.

  In nature, the landscape looks magnificent. The trees, which seemed so similar before, take on their own personalities and paint the forests in a thousand different shades. One part of the cycle of life is coming to an end. Everything will rest for a while and come back to life in the spring, in the form of flowers.

  There is no better time than the autumn to begin forgetting the things that trouble us, allowing them to fall away like dried leaves. There is no better time to dance again, to make the most of every crumb of sunlight and warm body and soul with its rays before it falls asleep and becomes only a dim lightbulb in the skies.

  I see him arrive. He looks for me in the restaurant and on the terrace, finally going over to the waiter at the bar, who points in my direction. Jacob has seen me now and waves. Slowly, I begin to walk back to the clubhouse. I want him to appreciate my dress, my shoes, my fashionable lightweight jacket, the way I walk. My heart may be pounding furiously, but I must keep cool.

  I'm thinking about what words to use. What mysterious reason did I give for meeting again? Why hold back now when we know there's something between us? Are we afraid of stumbling and falling, like we have before?

  As I walk, I feel as if I were entering a tunnel I've never traveled before, one that leads from cynicism to passion, from irony to surrender.

  What is he thinking as he watches me? Do I need to explain that we shouldn't be frightened and that "if Evil exists, it's to be found in our fears"?

  Melancholy. The word is transforming me into a romantic and rejuvenating me with each step I take.

  I keep thinking about what I should say when I reach his side. No, best not to think and just let the words flow naturally. They are inside me. I may not recognize or accept them, but they are more powerful than my need to control everything.

  Why don't I want to hear my own words before I say them to him?

  Could it be fear? But what could be worse than living a sad, gray life, in which every day is the same? What could be worse than the fear that everything will disappear, including my own soul, and leave me completely alone in this world when I once had everything I needed to be happy?

  I see the leaves falling, their shapes silhouetted against the sun. The same thing is happening inside me: with every step I take, another barrier falls, another defense is destroyed, another wall collapses, and my heart, hidden behind it all, is beginning to see and enjoy the autumn light.

  What shall we talk about? About the music I heard in the car on the way here? About the wind rustling the trees? Abo
ut the human condition with all its contradictions, both dark and redemptive?

  We will talk about melancholy, and he'll say that it's a sad word. I'll say, no, it's nostalgic, it describes something forgotten and fragile, as we all are when we pretend we can't see the path to which life has led us without asking our permission. When we deny our destiny because it's leading us toward happiness, and all we want is security.

  A few more steps, a few more fallen barriers. More light floods into my heart. It doesn't even occur to me to try to control anything, only to experience this afternoon that will never be repeated. I don't need to convince him of anything. If he doesn't understand now, he will understand later. It's simply a matter of time.

  Despite the cold, we'll sit out on the terrace so he can smoke. At first, he'll be on the defensive, wanting to know about that photo taken in the park.

  We will talk about the possibility of life on other planets and the presence of God, so often forgotten in the lives we lead. We will talk about faith, miracles, and meetings that were planned even before we were born.

  We will discuss the eternal struggle between science and religion. We will talk about love, and how it's always seen as both desirable and threatening. He will insist that my definition of melancholy is incorrect, but I will simply sip my tea in silence, watching the sun set behind the Jura Mountains and feeling happy to be alive.

  Ah, yes, we will also talk about flowers, even if the only ones we can see are those decorating the bar inside, the ones that came from some vast greenhouse where they're produced en masse. But it's good to talk about flowers in the autumn. That gives us hope for the spring.

  Only a few more feet. The walls have all fallen. I have just been reborn.

  I reach his side, and we greet each other with the usual three kisses--right cheek, left cheek, right cheek, as demanded by Swiss tradition (although whenever I travel abroad, people are always surprised by that third kiss). I sense how nervous he is and suggest we stay out on the terrace; we'll have more privacy there and he can smoke. The waiter knows him. Jacob orders a Campari and tonic, and I order tea, as planned.