Part 16 (1/2)
”I've no complaints,” said the man behind the register. ”I got worried because they were talking so loudly, but it looks like they weren't actually doing any harm.”
”Is the vodka for you, sir?”
I nodded. They knew that everyone there was drunk, but they didn't want to make a big deal out of a harmless situation.
”A world without stupid people would be complete chaos!” said the boy wearing leather and metal studs. ”Instead of all the unemployed people we have today, there would be too many jobs and no one to do the work!”
”Shut up!”
My voice sounded authoritative, decisive.
”Just stop talking, all of you!”
To my surprise, silence fell. My heart was beating furiously, but I continued talking to the policemen as if I were the calmest person in the world.
”If they were really dangerous, they wouldn't be talking like that.”
The policeman turned to the cas.h.i.+er: ”If you need us, we'll be around.”
And before going out, he said to his colleague, so that his voice echoed around the whole shop, ”I love stupid people. If it wasn't for them, we might be having to tackle some real criminals.”
”You're right,” said the other policeman. ”Stupid people are a nice safe distraction.”
They gave their usual salute and left.
The only thing that occurred to me to do when we left the shop was to smash the bottles of vodka. I saved one of them, though, and it was pa.s.sed rapidly from mouth to mouth.
By the way they were drinking, I could see they were frightened, as frightened as I was.
The only difference was that they had gone on the offensive when threatened.
”I don't feel good,” said Mikhail to one of them. ”Let's go.”
I didn't know what he meant by ”Let's go”: each to his own home or town or bridge? No one asked me if I wanted to go with them, so I simply followed after. Mikhail's remark ”I don't feel good” unsettled me; that meant we wouldn't have another chance that night to talk about the trip to Central Asia. Should I just leave? Or should I stick it out and seewhat ”Let's go” meant? I discovered that I was enjoying myself and that I'd like to try seducing the girl in the vampire outfit.
Onward, then.
I could always leave at the first sign of danger.
As we headed off-where, I didn't know-I was thinking about this whole experience. A tribe. A symbolic return to a time when men traveled in protective groups and required very little to survive. A tribe in the midst of another hostile tribe called society, crossing society's lands and using aggression as a defense against rejection. A group of people who had joined together to form an ideal society, about which I knew nothing beyond the body piercing and the clothes that they wore. What were their values? What did they think about life? How did they earn their money? Did they have dreams or was it enough just to wander the world? All this was much more interesting than the supper I had to go to the following evening, where I knew exactly what would happen. I was convinced that it must be the effect of the vodka, but I was feeling free, my personal history was growing ever more remote, there was only the present moment, instinct; the Zahir had disappeared....
The Zahir?
Yes, it had disappeared, but now I realized that the Zahir was more than a man obsessed with an object, with a vein in the marble of one of the twelve hundred columns in the mosque in Cordoba, as Borges puts it, or, as in my own painful case for the last two years, with a woman in Central Asia. The Zahir was a fixation on everything that had been pa.s.sed from generation to generation; it left no question unanswered; it took up all the s.p.a.ce; it never allowed us even to consider the possibility that things could change.
The all-powerful Zahir seemed to be born with every human being and to gain full strength in childhood, imposing rules that would thereafter always be respected: People who are different are dangerous; they belong to another tribe; they want our lands and our women.
We must marry, have children, reproduce the species.
Love is only a small thing, enough for one person, and any suggestion that the heart might be larger than this is considered perverse.
When we marry, we are authorized to take possession of the other person, body and soul.
We must do jobs we detest because we are part of an organized society, and if everyone did what they wanted to do, the world would come to a standstill.
We must buy jewelry; it identifies us with our tribe, just as body piercing identifies those of a different tribe.
We must be amusing at all times and sneer at those who express their real feelings; it's dangerous for a tribe to allow its members to show their feelings.
We must at all costs avoid saying no because people prefer those who always say yes, and this allows us to survive in hostile territory.
What other people think is more important than what we feel.
Never make a fuss-it might attract the attention of an enemy tribe.
If you behave differently, you will be expelled from the tribe because you could infect others and destroy something that was extremely difficult to organize in the first place.
We must always consider the look of our new cave, and if we don't have a clear idea of our own, then we must call in a decorator who will do his best to show others what good taste we have.We must eat three meals a day, even if we're not hungry, and when we fail to fit the current ideal of beauty we must fast, even if we're starving.
We must dress according to the dictates of fas.h.i.+on, make love whether we feel like it or not, kill in the name of our country, wish time away so that retirement comes more quickly, elect politicians, complain about the cost of living, change our hairstyle, criticize anyone who is different, go to a religious service on Sunday, Sat.u.r.day, or Friday, depending on our religion, and there beg forgiveness for our sins and puff ourselves up with pride because we know the truth and despise the other tribe, who wors.h.i.+ps a false G.o.d.
Our children must follow in our footsteps; after all, we are older and know about the world.
We must have a university degree even if we never get a job in the area of knowledge we were forced to study.
We must study things that we will never use, but which someone told us were important to know: algebra, trigonometry, the code of Hammurabi.
We must never make our parents sad, even if this means giving up everything that makes us happy.
We must play music quietly, talk quietly, weep in private, because I am the all-powerful Zahir, who lays down the rules and determines the distance between railway tracks, the meaning of success, the best way to love, the importance of rewards.
We stop outside a relatively chic building in an expensive area. One of the group taps in the code at the front door and we all go up to the third floor. I thought we would find one of those understanding families who put up with their son's friends in order to keep him close to home and keep an eye on him. But when Lucrecia opened the door, everything was in darkness. As my eyes grew accustomed to the light from the street filtering in through the windows, I saw a large empty living room. The only decoration was a fireplace that probably hadn't been used for years.
A fair-haired boy, who was nearly six feet tall and wore a long rain cape and a mohawk, went into the kitchen and returned with some lighted candles. We all sat around in a circle on the floor and, for the first time that night, I felt afraid: it was like being in a horror movie in which a satanic ritual is about to begin, and where the victim will be the stranger who was unwise enough to tag along.
Mikhail was looking pale and his eyes kept darting about, unable to fix on any one place, and that only increased my feeling of unease. He was on the point of having an epileptic fit. Would the people there know what to do in that situation? Wouldn't it be better just to leave now and not get involved in a potential tragedy?
That would perhaps be the most prudent thing to do, in keeping with a life in which I was a famous author who writes about spirituality and should therefore be setting an example.
Yes, if I was being sensible, I would say to Lucrecia that, in case of an attack, she should place something in her boyfriend's mouth to stop his tongue rolling back and prevent him choking to death. She must know this already, but in the world of the followers of the social Zahir, we leave nothing to chance, we need to be at peace with our conscience.
That is how I would have acted before my accident, but now my personal history had become unimportant. It had stopped being history and was once more becoming a legend, a search, an adventure, a journey into and away from myself. I was once more in a timein which the things around me were changing and that is how I wanted it to be for the rest of my days. (I remembered one of my ideas for an epitaph: ”He died while he was still alive.”) I was carrying with me the experiences of my past, which allowed me to react with speed and precision, but I wasn't bothered about the lessons I had learned. Imagine a warrior in the middle of a fight, pausing to decide which move to make next? He would be dead in an instant.
And the warrior in me, using intuition and technique, decided that I needed to stay, to continue the night's experiences, even if it was late and I was tired and drunk and afraid that a worried or angry Marie might be waiting up for me. I sat down next to Mikhail so that I could act quickly if he had a fit.
I noticed that he seemed to be in control of his epileptic attack. He gradually grew calmer, and his eyes took on the same intensity as when he was the young man in white standing on the stage at the Armenian restaurant.
”We will start with the usual prayer,” he said.