The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession

When I used to read biographies of writers, I always thought they were simply trying to make their profession seem more interesting when they said that ‘the book writes itself, the writer is just the typist’. Now I know that this is absolutely true, no one knows why the current took them to that particular island and not to the one they wanted to reach. The obsessive re-drafting and editing begins, and when I can no longer bear to re-read the same words one more time, I send it to my publisher, where it is edited again, and then published.

And it is a constant source of surprise to me to discover that other people were also in search of that very island and that they find it in my book. One person tells another person about it, the mysterious chain grows, and what the writer thought of as a solitary exercise becomes a bridge, a boat, a means by which souls can travel and communicate.

From then on, I am no longer the man lost in the storm: I find myself through my readers, I understand what I wrote when I see that others understand it too, but never before. On a few rare occasions, like the one that is just about to happen, I manage to look those people in the eye and then I understand that my soul is not alone.

At the appointed time, I start signing books. There is brief eye-to-eye contact and a feeling of solidarity, joy and mutual respect. There are handshakes, a few letters, gifts, comments. Ninety minutes later, I ask for a tenminute rest, no one complains, and my publisher (as has become traditional at my book-signings in France) orders champagne to be served to everyone still in the line (I have tried to get this tradition adopted in other countries, but they always say that French champagne is too expensive and end up serving mineral water instead, but that, too, shows respect for those still waiting).

I return to the table. Two hours later, contrary to what anyone observing the event might think, I am not tired, but full of energy; I could carry on all night. The shop, however, has closed its doors and the queue is dwindling. There are forty people left inside, they become thirty, twenty, eleven, five, four, three, two…and suddenly our eyes meet.

‘I waited until the end. I wanted to be the last because I have a message for you.’

I don’t know what to say. I glance to one side, at the publishers, sales people and booksellers, who are all talking enthusiastically; soon we will go out to eat and drink and share the excitement of the day, and describe some of the strange things that happened while I was signing books.

I have never seen him before, but I know who he is. I take the book from him and write: ‘For Mikhail, with best wishes.’

I say nothing. I must not lose him – a word, a sentence, a sudden movement might cause him to leave and never come back. In a fraction of a second, I understand that he and only he can save me from the blessing – or the curse – of the Zahir, because he is the only one who knows where to find it, and I will finally be able to ask the questions I have been repeating to myself for so long.

‘I wanted you to know that she’s all right, that she may even have read your book.’

The publishers, sales people and booksellers come over. They all embrace me and say it’s been a great afternoon. Let’s go and relax and drink and talk about it all.

‘I’d like to invite this young man to supper,’ I say. ‘He was the last in the queue and he can be the representative of all the other readers who were here with us today.’

‘I can’t, I’m afraid. I have another engagement.’

And turning to me, rather startled, he adds:

‘I only came to give you that message.’

‘What message?’ asks one of the sales people.

‘He never usually invites anyone!’ says my publisher. ‘Come on, let’s all go and have supper!’

‘It’s very kind of you, but I have a meeting I go to every Thursday.’

‘When does it start?’

‘In two hours’ time.’

‘And where is it?’

‘In an Armenian restaurant.’

My driver, who is himself Armenian, asks which one and says that it’s only fifteen minutes from the place where we are going to eat. Everyone is doing their best to please me: they think that the person I’m inviting to supper should be happy and pleased to be so honoured, that anything else can surely wait.

‘What’s your name?’ asks Marie.

‘Mikhail.’

‘Well, Mikhail,’ and I see that Marie has understood everything, ‘why don’t you come with us for an hour or so; the restaurant we’re going to is just around the corner. Then the driver will take you wherever you want to go. If you prefer, though, we can cancel our reservation and all go and have supper at the Armenian restaurant instead – that way, you’d feel less anxious.’

I can’t stop looking at him. He isn’t particularly handsome or particularly ugly. He’s neither tall nor short. He’s dressed in black, simple and elegant – and by elegance I mean a complete absence of brand names or designer labels.

Marie links arms with Mikhail and heads for the exit. The bookseller still has a pile of books waiting to be signed for readers who could not come to the signing, but I promise that I will drop by the following day. My legs are trembling, my heart pounding, and yet I have to pretend that everything is fine, that I’m glad the book-signing was a success, that I’m interested in what other people are saying. We cross the Champs-Elysées, the sun is setting behind the Arc de Triomphe, and, for some reason, I know that this is a sign, a good sign.

As long as I can keep control of the situation.

Why do I want to speak to him? The people from the publishing house keep talking to me and I respond automatically; no one notices that I am far away, struggling to understand why I have invited to supper someone whom I should, by rights, hate. Do I want to find out where Esther is? Do I want to have my revenge on this young man, so lost, so insecure, and yet who was capable of luring away the person I love? Do I want to prove to myself that I am better, much better than him? Do I want to bribe him, seduce him, make him persuade my wife to come back?

I can’t answer any of these questions, and that doesn’t matter. The only thing I have said up until now is: ‘I’d like to invite this young man to supper.’ I had imagined the scene so often before: we meet, I grab him by the throat, punch him, humiliate him in front of Esther; or I get a thrashing and make her see how hard I’m fighting for her, suffering for her. I had imagined scenes of aggression or feigned indifference or public scandal, but the words ‘I’d like to invite this young man to supper’ had never once entered my head.

No need to ask what I will do next, all I have to do now is to keep an eye on Marie, who is walking along a few paces ahead of me, holding on to Mikhail’s arm, as if she were his girlfriend. She won’t let him go and yet I wonder, at the same time, why she’s helping me, when she knows that a meeting with this young man could also mean that I’ll find out where my wife is living.

We arrive. Mikhail makes a point of sitting far away from me; perhaps he wants to avoid getting caught up in a conversation with me. Laughter, champagne, vodka and caviar – I glance at the menu and am horrified to see that the bookseller is spending about a thousand dollars on the entrées alone. There is general chatter; Mikhail is asked what he thought of the afternoon’s event; he says he enjoyed it; he is asked about the book; he says he enjoyed it very much. Then he is forgotten, and attention turns to me – was I happy with how things had gone, was the queue organised to my liking, had the security team been up to scratch? My heart is still pounding, but I present a calm front, I thank them for everything, for the efficient way in which the event was run.

Half an hour of conversation and a lot of vodka later, I can see that Mikhail is beginning to relax. He isn’t the centre of attention any more, he doesn’t need to say very much, he just has to endure it for a little while longer and then he can go. I know he wasn’t lying about the Armenian restaurant, so at least now I have a clue. My wife must still be in Paris! I must pretend to be friendly, try to win his confidence, the initial tensions have all disappeared.

An hour passes. Mikhail looks at his watch and I can see that he is about to leave. I must do something – now. Every time I look at him, I feel more and more insignificant and understand less and less how Esther could have exchanged me for someone who seems so unworldly (she mentioned that he had ‘magical’ powers). However difficult it might be to pretend that I feel perfectly at ease talking to someone who is my enemy, I must do something.

‘Let’s find out a bit more about our reader,’ I say, and there is an immediate silence. ‘Here he is, about to leave at any moment, and he’s hardly said a word about his life. What do you do?’

Despite the number of vodkas he has drunk, Mikhail seems suddenly to recover his sobriety.

‘I organise meetings at the Armenian restaurant.’

‘What does that involve?’

‘I stand on stage and tell stories. And I let the people in the audience tell their stories too.’

‘I do the same thing in my books.’

‘I know, that’s how I first met…‘

He’s going to say who he is!

‘Were you born here?’ asks Marie, thus preventing him from finishing his sentence (‘…how I first met your wife’).

‘I was born in the Kazakhstan steppes.’

Kazakhstan. Who’s going to be brave enough to ask where Kazakhstan is?

‘Where’s Kazakhstan?’ asks the sales representative.

Blessed are those who are not afraid to admit that they don’t know something.

‘I was waiting for someone to ask that,’ and there is an almost gleeful look in Mikhail’s eyes now. ‘Whenever I say where I was born, about ten minutes later people are saying that I’m from Pakistan or Afghanistan…My country is in Central Asia. It has barely 14 million inhabitants in an area far larger than France with its population of 60 million.’

‘So it’s a place where no one can complain about the lack of space, then,’ says my publisher, laughing.

‘It’s a place where, during the last century, no one had the right to complain about anything, even if they wanted to. When the Communist regime abolished private ownership, the livestock were simply abandoned and 48.6 per cent of the population died. Do you understand what that means? Nearly half the population of my country died of hunger between 1932 and 1933.’

Silence falls. After all, tragedies get in the way of celebrations, and one of the people present tries to change the subject. However, I insist that my ‘reader’ tells us more about his country.

‘What are the steppes like?’ I ask.

‘They’re vast plains with barely any vegetation, as I’m sure you know.’

I do know, but it had been my turn to ask a question, to keep the conversation going.

‘I’ve just remembered something about Kazakhstan,’ says my publisher. ‘Some time ago, I was sent a typescript by a writer who lives there, describing the atomic tests that were carried out on the steppes.’

‘Our country has blood in its soil and in its soul. Those tests changed what cannot be changed, and we will be paying the price for many generations to come. We even made an entire sea disappear.’

It is Marie’s turn to speak.

‘No one can make a sea disappear.’

‘I’m twenty-five years old, and that is all the time it took, just one generation, for the water that had been there for millennia to be transformed into dust. Those in charge of the Communist regime decided to divert two rivers, Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya, so that they could irrigate some cotton plantations. They failed, but, by then, it was too late – the sea had ceased to exist, and the cultivated land became a desert.

The lack of water affected the whole climate. Nowadays, vast sandstorms scatter 150,000 tons of salt and dust every year. Fifty million people in five countries were affected by the Soviet bureaucrats’ irresponsible – and irreversible – decision. The little water that was left is polluted and is the source of all kinds of diseases.’

I made a mental note of what he was saying. It could be useful in one of my lectures. Mikhail went on, and his tone of voice was no longer ecological, but tragic.

‘My grandfather says that the Aral Sea was once known as the Blue Sea, because of the colour of its waters. It no longer exists, and yet the people there refuse to leave their houses and move somewhere else: they still dream of waves and fishes, they still have their fishing rods and talk about boats and bait.’

‘Is it true about the atomic tests, though?’ asks my publisher.

‘I think that everyone born in my country feels what the land felt, because every Kazakh carries his land in his blood. For forty years, the plains were shaken by nuclear or thermonuclear bombs, a total of 456 in 1989. Of those tests, 116 were carried out in the open, which amounts to a bomb 2,500 times more powerful than the one that was dropped on Hiroshima during the Second World War. As a result, thousands of people were contaminated by radioactivity and subsequently contracted lung cancer, whilst thousands of children were born with motor deficiencies, missing limbs or mental problems.’

Mikhail looks at his watch.

‘Now, if you don’t mind, I have to go.’

Half of those around the table are sorry, the conversation was just getting interesting. The other half are glad: it’s absurd to talk about such tragic events on such a happy occasion.

Mikhail says goodbye to everyone with a nod of his head and gives me a hug, not because he feels a particular affection for me, but so that he can whisper:

‘As I said before, she’s fine. Don’t worry.’

‘“Don’t worry,” he says. Why should I worry about a woman who left me? It was because of her that I was questioned by the police, splashed all over the front pages of the scandal sheets; it was because of her that I spent all those painful days and nights, nearly lost all my friends and…‘

‘…and wrote A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew. Come on, we’re both adults, with plenty of experience of life. Let’s not deceive ourselves. Of course, you’d like to know how she is. In fact, I’d go further: you’d like to see her.’

‘If you’re so sure about that, why did you help persuade him to come to supper with us? Now I have a clue: he appears every Thursday at that Armenian restaurant.’

‘I know. You’d better follow that up.’

‘Don’t you love me?’

‘More than yesterday and less than tomorrow, as it says on those postcards you can buy in stationery shops. Yes, of course, I love you. I’m hopelessly in love, if you must know. I’m even considering changing my address and coming to live in this huge, empty apartment of yours, but whenever I suggest it, you always change the subject. Nevertheless, I forget my pride and try to explain what a big step it would be for us to live together, and hear you say that it’s too soon for that; perhaps you’re afraid you’ll lose me the way you lost Esther, or perhaps you’re still waiting for her to come back, or perhaps you don’t want to lose your freedom, or are simultaneously afraid of being alone and afraid of living with someone – in short, our relationship’s a complete disaster. But, now that you ask, there’s my answer: I love you very much.’

‘So why did you help?’

‘Because I can’t live for ever with the ghost of a woman who left without a word of explanation. I’ve read your book. I believe that only by finding her and resolving the matter will your heart ever truly be mine. That’s what happened with the neighbour I was in love with. I was close enough to him to be able to see what a coward he was when it came to our relationship, how he could never commit himself to the thing he wanted with all his heart, but which he always felt was too dangerous to actually have. You’ve often said that absolute freedom doesn’t exist; what does exist is the freedom to choose anything you like and then commit yourself to that decision. The closer I was to my neighbour, the more I admired you: a man who decided to go on loving the wife who had abandoned him and who wanted nothing more to do with him. You not only decided to do that, you made your decision public. This is what you say in your book; it’s a passage I know by heart:

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