Aleph

‘But you do remember the commitments you’ve taken on, don’t you? There’s still time to cancel, if you want to.’

I tell her that I’m perfectly happy with the commitments, that’s not the problem. It’s too late to start explaining about the clairvoyant, the predictions, and Véronique’s accident. I ask Mônica again if I have arranged a visit to Turkey.

‘No,’ she says. ‘The Turkish publishers are staying in a different hotel. Otherwise …’

We both laugh.

I can sleep easy.

The Stranger’s Lantern

Almost two months of travelling, of pilgrimage. My joy in life has returned, but I lie awake all night wondering if that sense of joy will stay with me when I return home. Am I doing what I need to do to make the Chinese bamboo grow? I’ve been to seven countries, met my readers, had fun and temporarily driven away the depression that was threatening to engulf me, but something tells me that I still haven’t re-conquered my kingdom. The trip so far hasn’t really been any different from other similar journeys made in previous years.

All that remains now is Russia. And then what will I do? Continue making commitments in order to keep moving or stop and see what the results have been?

I still haven’t reached a decision. I only know that a life without cause is a life without effect. And I can’t allow that to happen to me. If necessary, I’ll spend the rest of the year travelling.

I’m in the African city of Tunis, in Tunisia. The talk is about to begin and – thank heavens – the room is packed. I’m going to be introduced by two local intellectuals. In the short meeting we held beforehand, one of them showed me a text that would take just two minutes to deliver and the other a veritable thesis on my work that would take at least half an hour.

The coordinator very tactfully explains to the latter that since the event is only supposed to last, at most, fifty minutes, there won’t be time for him to read his piece. I imagine how hard he must have worked on that essay, but the coordinator is right. The purpose of my visit to Tunis is to meet my readers. There is a brief discussion, after which the author of the essay says that he no longer wishes to take part and he leaves.

The talk begins. The introductions and acknowledgements take only five minutes; the rest of the time is free for open dialogue. I tell the audience that I haven’t come here to explain anything, and that, ideally, the event should be more of a conversation than a presentation.

A young woman asks about the signs I speak of in my books. What form do they take? I explain that signs are an extremely personal language that we develop throughout our lives, by trial and error, until we begin to understand that God is guiding us. Someone else asks if a sign had brought me all the way to Tunisia. Without going into any detail, I say that it had.

The conversation continues, time passes quickly and I need to wrap things up. For the last question, I choose, at random, out of the six hundred people there, a middle-aged man with a bushy moustache.

‘I don’t want to ask a question,’ he says. ‘I just want to say a name.’

The name he pronounces is that of Barbazan-Debat, a chapel in the middle of nowhere, thousands of kilometres from here, the same chapel where, one day, I placed a plaque in gratitude for a miracle and which I had visited, before setting out on this pilgrimage, in order to pray for Our Lady’s protection.

I don’t know how to respond. The following words were written by one of the other people on stage with me.

In the room, the Universe seemed suddenly to have stopped moving. So many things happened: I saw your tears and the tears of your dear wife, when that anonymous reader pronounced the name of that distant chapel.

You could no longer speak. Your smiling face grew serious. Your eyes filled with shy tears that trembled on your lashes, as if wishing to apologise for appearing there uninvited.

Even I had a lump in my throat, although I didn’t know why. I looked for my wife and daughter in the audience, because I always look to them whenever I feel myself to be on the brink of something unknown. They were there, but they were sitting as silently as everyone else, their eyes fixed on you, trying to support you with their gaze, as if a gaze could ever support anyone.

Then I looked to Christina for help, trying to understand what was going on, how to bring to an end that seemingly interminable silence. And I saw that she was silently crying too, as if you were both notes from the same symphony and as if your tears were touching, even though you were sitting far apart.

For several long seconds, nothing existed, there was no room, no audience, nothing. You and your wife had set off for a place where we could not follow; all that remained was the joy of living, expressed in silence and emotion.

Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end. Thank you, then, for your tears.

I should have said to the young woman who asked the first question about signs that this was a sign, confirming that I was where I should be, in the right place, at the right time, even though I didn’t understand what had brought me there.

I suspect there was no need though. She would probably have understood anyway.

(#litres_trial_promo)

My wife and I are walking along, hand-in-hand, through the bazaar in Tunis, 15 kilometres from the ruins of Carthage, which, centuries before, had defied the might of Rome. We are discussing the great Carthaginian warrior, Hannibal. Since Carthage and Rome were separated by only a few hundred kilometres of sea, the Romans were expecting a sea battle. Instead, Hannibal took his vast army and crossed first the desert and then the Straits of Gibraltar, marched through Spain and France, climbed the Alps with soldiers and elephants, and attacked the Romans from the north, scoring one of the most resounding military victories ever recorded.

He overcame all the enemies in his path and yet – for reasons we still do not understand – he stopped short of conquering Rome and failed to attack at the right moment. As a result of his indecision, Carthage was wiped from the map by the Roman legions.

‘Hannibal stopped and was defeated,’ I say, thinking out loud. ‘I’m glad that I’m able to go on, even though the beginning was difficult. I’m starting to get used to the journey now.’

My wife pretends not to have heard, because she realises that I’m trying to convince myself of something. We’re on our way to a café to meet one of my readers, Samil, chosen at random at the post-talk party. I ask him to avoid all the usual monuments and tourist sights and show us where the real life of the city goes on.

He takes us to a beautiful building where, in 1754, a man killed his own brother. The brothers’ father resolved to build this palace as a school, as a way of keeping alive the memory of his murdered son. I say that surely the son who had committed the murder would also be remembered.

‘It’s not quite like that,’ says Samil. ‘In our culture, the criminal shares his guilt with everyone who allowed him to commit the crime. When a man is murdered, the person who sold him the weapon is also responsible before God. The only way in which the father could correct what he perceived as his own mistake was to transform the tragedy into something useful to others.’

Suddenly everything vanishes – the palace, the street, the city, Africa. I take a gigantic leap into the dark and enter a tunnel that emerges into a damp dungeon. I’m standing before J. in one of my many previous lives, two hundred years before the crime committed in that house. He fixes me with stern, admonitory eyes.

I return just as quickly to the present. It all happened in a fraction of a second. I’m back at the palace, with Samil, my wife and the hubbub of the street in Tunis. But why that dip into the past? Why do the roots of the Chinese bamboo insist on poisoning the plant? That life was lived and the price paid.

‘You were cowardly only once, while I acted unfairly many times. But that discovery freed me,’ J. had said in Saint Martin, he, who had never encouraged me to go back into the past, who was vehemently opposed to the books, manuals and exercises that taught such things.

‘Instead of resorting to vengeance, which would be merely a one-off punishment, he created a school in which wisdom and learning was passed on for more than two centuries,’ Samil says.

I haven’t missed a single word he has said and yet I also made that gigantic leap back in time.

‘That’s it.’

‘What is?’ asks my wife.

‘I’m walking. I’m beginning to understand. It’s all making sense.’

I feel euphoric. Samil is confused.

‘What does Islam have to say about reincarnation?’ I ask.

Samil looks at me, surprised.

‘I’ve no idea, I’m not a scholar,’ he says.

I ask him to find out. He takes his mobile phone and starts ringing various people. Christina and I go to a bar and order two strong black coffees. We’re both tired, but we’ll be having a seafood supper later on and have to resist the temptation to have a snack now.

‘I just had a déjà vu moment,’ I tell her.

‘Everyone has them from time to time. You don’t have to be a magus to have one,’ jokes Christina.

Of course not, but déjà vu is more than just that fleeting moment of surprise, instantly forgotten because we never bother with things that make no sense. It shows that time doesn’t pass. It’s a leap into something we have already experienced and that is being repeated.

Samil has vanished.

‘While he was telling us about the palace, I was drawn back into the past for a millisecond. I’m sure this happened when he was talking about how any crime was not only the responsibility of the murderer, but of all those who created the conditions in which the crime could occur. The first time I met J., in 1982, he talked about my connection with his father. He never mentioned the subject again, and I forgot about it too. But a few moments ago, I saw his father. And I understand now what he meant.’