Part 9 (1/2)
”Are you going to say what exactly, or will you tell me later?”
”I'll tell you in a moment. I haven't yet properly understood the message.”
”But you promise to give me the address and the map.”
”I promise. In the name of the divine energy of love, I promise. Now what was it you wanted to show me?”I pointed to a golden statue of a young woman riding a horse.
”This. She used to hear voices. As long as people respected what she said, everything was fine. When they started to doubt her, the wind of victory changed direction.”
Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orleans, the heroine of the Hundred Years War, who, at the age of seventeen, was made commander of the French troops because she heard voices and the voices told her the best strategy for defeating the English. Two years later, she was condemned to be burned at the stake, accused of witchcraft. I had used part of the interrogation, dated February 24, 1431, in one of my books.
She was questioned by Maitre Jean Beaupere. Asked how long it had been since she had heard the voice, she replied: ”I heard it three times, yesterday and today. In the morning, at Vespers, and again when the Ave Maria rang in the evening...”
Asked if the voice was in the room, she replied that she did not know, but that she had been woken by the voice. It wasn't in the room, but it was in the castle.
She asked the voice what she should do, and the voice asked her to get out of bed and place the palms of her hands together.
Then she said to the bishop who was questioning her: ”You say you are my judge. Take care what you are doing; for in truth I am sent by G.o.d, and you place yourself in great danger. My voices have entrusted to me certain things to tell to the King, not to you. The voice comes to me from G.o.d. I have far greater fear of doing wrong in saying to you things that would displease it than I have of answering you.”
Mikhail looked at me: ”Are you suggesting...”
”That you're the reincarnation of Joan of Arc? No, I don't think so. She died when she was barely nineteen, and you're twenty-five. She took command of the French troops and, according to what you've told me, you can't even take command of your own life.”
We sat down on the wall by the Seine.
”I believe in signs,” I said. ”I believe in fate. I believe that every single day people are offered the chance to make the best possible decision about everything they do. I believe that I failed and that, at some point, I lost my connection with the woman I loved. And now, all I need is to put an end to that cycle. That's why I want the map, so that I can go to her.”
He looked at me and he was once more the person who appeared on stage and went into a trancelike state. I feared another epileptic fit-in the middle of the night, here, in an almost deserted place.
”The vision gave me power. That power is almost visible, palpable. I can manage it, but I can't control it.”
”It's getting a bit late for this kind of conversation. I'm tired, and so are you. Will you give me that map and the address?”
”The voice...Yes, I'll give you the map tomorrow afternoon. What's your address?”
I gave him my address and was surprised to realize that he didn't know where Esther and I had lived.
”Do you think I slept with your wife?”
”I would never even ask. It's none of my business.”
”But you did ask when we were in the pizzeria.”I had forgotten. Of course it was my business, but I was no longer interested in his answer.
Mikhail's eyes changed. I felt in my pocket for something to place in his mouth should he have a fit, but he seemed calm and in control.
”I can hear the voice now. Tomorrow I will bring you the map, detailed directions, and times of flights. I believe that she is waiting for you. I believe that the world would be happier if just two people, even two, were happier. Yet the voice is telling me that we will not see each other tomorrow.”
”I'm having lunch with an actor over from the States, and I can't possibly cancel, but I'll be home during the rest of the afternoon.”
”That's not what the voice is telling me.”
”Is the voice forbidding you to help me find Esther?”
”No, I don't think so. It was the voice that encouraged me to go to the book signing.
From then on, I knew more or less how things would turn out because I had read A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew.”
”Right, then,” and I was terrified he might change his mind, ”let's stick to our arrangement. I'll be at home from two o'clock onward.”
”But the voice says the moment is not right.”
”You promised.”
”All right.”
He held out his hand and said that he would come to my apartment late tomorrow afternoon. His last words to me that night were: ”The voice says that it will only allow these things to happen when the time is right.”
As I walked back home, the only voice I could hear was Esther's, speaking of love. And as I remembered that conversation, I realized that she had been talking about our marriage.
When I was fifteen, I was desperate to find out about s.e.x. But it was a sin, it was forbidden. I couldn't understand why it was a sin, could you? Can you tell me why all religions, all over the world, even the most primitive of religions and cultures, consider that s.e.x is something that should be forbidden?”
”How did we get onto this subject? All right, why is s.e.x something to be forbidden?”
”Because of food.”
”Food?”
”Thousands of years ago, tribes were constantly on the move; men could make love with as many women as they wanted and, of course, have children by them. However, the larger the tribe, the greater chance there was of it disappearing. Tribes fought among themselves for food, killing first the children and then the women, because they were the weakest. Only the strongest survived, but they were all men. And without women, men cannot continue to perpetuate the species.
”Then someone, seeing what was happening in a neighboring tribe, decided to avoid the same thing happening in his. He invented a story according to which the G.o.ds forbade men to make love indiscriminately with any of the women in a tribe. They could only make love with one or, at most, two. Some men were impotent, some women weresterile, some members of the tribe, for perfectly natural reasons, thus had no children at all, but no one was allowed to change partners.
”They all believed the story because the person who told it to them was speaking in the name of the G.o.ds. He must have been different in some way: he perhaps had a deformity, an illness that caused convulsions, or some special gift, something, at any rate, that marked him out from the others, because that is how the first leaders emerged. In a few years, the tribe grew stronger, with just the right number of men needed to feed everyone, with enough women capable of reproducing and enough children to replace the hunters and reproducers. Do you know what gives a woman most pleasure within marriage?”
”s.e.x.”
”No, making food. Watching her man eat. That is a woman's moment of glory, because she spends all day thinking about supper. And the reason must lie in that story hidden in the past-in hunger, the threat of extinction, and the path to survival.”
”Do you regret not having had any children?”
”It didn't happen, did it? How can I regret something that didn't happen?”
”Do you think that would have changed our marriage?”
”How can I possibly know? I look at my friends, both male and female. Are they any happier because they have children? Some are, some aren't. And if they are happy with their children that doesn't make their relations.h.i.+p either better or worse. They still think they have the right to control each other. They still think that the promise to live happily ever after must be kept, even at the cost of daily unhappiness.”
”War isn't good for you, Esther. It brings you into contact with a very different reality from the one we experience here. I know I'll die one day, but that just makes me live each day as if it were a miracle. It doesn't make me think obsessively about love, happiness, s.e.x, food, and marriage.”