er name is Esther; she is a war correspondent who has just returned from Iraq because of the imminent invasion of that country; she is thirty years old, married, without children. He is an unidentified male, between twenty-three and twenty-five years old, with dark, Mongolian features. The two were last seen in a café on the Rue du Faubourg St-Honoré.

The police were told that they had met before, although no one knew how often: Esther had always said that the man—who concealed his true identity behind the name Mikhail—was someone very important, although she had never explained whether he was important for her career as a journalist or for her as a woman.

The police began a formal investigation. Various theories were put forward—kidnapping, blackmail, a kidnapping that had ended in murder—none of which were beyond the bounds of possibility given that, in her search for information, her work brought her into frequent contact with people who had links with terrorist cells. They discovered that, in the weeks prior to her disappearance, regular sums of money had been withdrawn from her bank account: those in charge of the investigation felt that these could have been payments made for information. She had taken no change of clothes with her, but, oddly enough, her passport was nowhere to be found.

He is a stranger, very young, with no police record, with no clue as to his identity.

She is Esther, thirty years old, the winner of two international prizes for journalism, and married.

My wife.

 

I immediately come under suspicion and am detained because I refuse to say where I was on the day she disappeared. However, a prison officer has just opened the door of my cell, saying that I’m a free man.

And why am I a free man? Because nowadays, everyone knows everything about everyone; you just have to ask and the information is there: where you’ve used your credit card, where you spend your time, whom you’ve slept with. In my case, it was even easier: a woman, another journalist, a friend of my wife, and divorced—which is why she doesn’t mind revealing that she slept with me—came forward as a witness in my favor when she heard that I had been detained. She provided concrete proof that I was with her on the day and the night of Esther’s disappearance.

I talk to the chief inspector, who returns my belongings and offers his apologies, adding that my rapid detention was entirely within the law, and that I have no grounds on which to accuse or sue the state. I say that I haven’t the slightest intention of doing either of those things, that I am perfectly aware that we are all under constant suspicion and under twenty-four-hour surveillance, even when we have committed no crime.

“You’re free to go,” he says, echoing the words of the prison officer.

I ask: Isn’t it possible that something really has happened to my wife? She had said to me once that—understandably given her vast network of contacts in the terrorist underworld—she occasionally got the feeling she was being followed.

The inspector changes the subject. I insist, but he says nothing.

I ask if she would be able to travel on her passport, and he says, of course, since she has committed no crime. Why shouldn’t she leave and enter the country freely?

“So she may no longer be in France?”

“Do you think she left you because of that woman you’ve been sleeping with?”

That’s none of your business, I reply. The inspector pauses for a second and grows serious; he says that I was arrested as part of routine procedure, but that he is nevertheless very sorry about my wife’s disappearance. He is married himself and although he doesn’t like my books (So he isn’t as ignorant as he looks! He knows who I am!), he can put himself in my shoes and imagine what I must be going through.

I ask him what I should do next. He gives me his card and asks me to get in touch if I hear anything. I’ve watched this scene in dozens of films, and I’m not convinced; inspectors always know more than they say they do.

He asks me if I have ever met the person who was with Esther the last time she was seen alive. I say that I knew his code name, but didn’t know him personally.

He asks if we have any domestic problems. I say that we’ve been together for ten years and have the same problems most married couples have—nothing more.

He asks, delicately, if we have discussed divorce recently, or if my wife was considering leaving me. I tell him we have never even considered the possibility, and say again that “like all couples” we have our occasional disagreements.

Frequent or only occasional?

Occasional, I say.

He asks still more delicately if she suspected that I was having an affair with her friend. I tell him that it was the first—and last—time that her friend and I had slept together. It wasn’t an affair; it came about simply because we had nothing else to do. It had been a bit of a dull day, neither of us had any pressing engagements after lunch, and the game of seduction always adds a little zest to life, which is why we ended up in bed together.

“You go to bed with someone just because it’s a bit of a dull day?”

I consider telling him that such matters hardly form part of his investigations, but I need his help, or might need it later on. There is, after all, that invisible institution called the Favor Bank, which I have always found so very useful.

“Sometimes, yes. There’s nothing else very interesting to do, the woman is looking for excitement, I’m looking for adventure, and that’s that. The next day, you both pretend that nothing happened, and life goes on.”

He thanks me, holds out his hand and says that in his world, things aren’t quite like that. Naturally, boredom and tedium exist, as does the desire to go to bed with someone, but everything is much more controlled, and no one ever acts on their thoughts or desires.

“Perhaps artists have more freedom,” he remarks.

I say that I’m familiar with his world, but have no wish to enter into a comparison between our different views of society and people. I remain silent, awaiting his next move.

“Speaking of freedom,” he says, slightly disappointed at this writer’s refusal to enter into a debate with a police officer, “you’re free to go. Now that I’ve met you, I’ll read your books. I know I said I didn’t like them, but the fact is I’ve never actually read one.”

This is not the first or the last time that I will hear these words. At least this whole episode has gained me another reader. I shake his hand and leave.

 

I’m free. I’m out of prison, my wife has disappeared under mysterious circumstances, I have no fixed timetable for work, I have no problem meeting new people, I’m rich, famous, and if Esther really has left me, I’ll soon find someone to replace her. I’m free, independent.

But what is freedom?

I’ve spent a large part of my life enslaved to one thing or another, so I should know the meaning of the word. Ever since I was a child, I have fought to make freedom my most precious commodity. I fought with my parents, who wanted me to be an engineer, not a writer. I fought with the other boys at school, who immediately homed in on me as the butt of their cruel jokes, and only after much blood had flowed from my nose and from theirs, only after many afternoons when I had to hide my scars from my mother—because it was up to me, not her, to solve my problems—did I manage to show them that I could take a thrashing without bursting into tears. I fought to get a job to support myself, and went to work as a delivery man for a hardware store, so as to be free from that old line in family blackmail: “We’ll give you money, but you’ll have to do this, this, and this.”

I fought—although without success—for the girl I was in love with when I was an adolescent, and who loved me too; she left me in the end because her parents convinced her that I had no future.

I fought against the hostile world of journalism—my next job—where my first boss kept me hanging around for three whole hours and only deigned to take any notice of me when I started tearing up the book he was reading: he looked at me in surprise and saw that here was someone capable of persevering and confronting the enemy, essential qualities for a good reporter. I fought for the socialist ideal, went to prison, came out and went on fighting, feeling like a working-class hero—until, that is, I heard the Beatles and decided that rock music was much more fun than Marx. I fought for the love of my first, second, and third wives. I fought to find the courage to leave my first, second, and third wives, because the love I felt for them hadn’t lasted, and I needed to move on, until I found the person who had been put in this world to find me—and she was none of those three.

I fought for the courage to leave my job on the newspaper and launch myself into the adventure of writing a book, knowing full well that no one in my country could make a living as a writer. I gave up after a year, after writing more than a thousand pages—pages of such genius that even I couldn’t understand them.

While I was fighting, I heard other people speaking in the name of freedom, and the more they defended this unique right, the more enslaved they seemed to be to their parents’ wishes, to a marriage in which they had promised to stay with the other person “for the rest of their lives,” to the bathroom scales, to their diet, to half-finished projects, to lovers to whom they were incapable of saying “No” or “It’s over,” to weekends when they were obliged to have lunch with people they didn’t even like. Slaves to luxury, to the appearance of luxury, to the appearance of the appearance of luxury. Slaves to a life they had not chosen, but which they had decided to live because someone had managed to convince them that it was all for the best. And so their identical days and nights passed, days and nights in which adventure was just a word in a book or an image on the television that was always on, and whenever a door opened, they would say:

“I’m not interested. I’m not in the mood.”

How could they possibly know if they were in the mood or not if they had never tried? But there was no point in asking; the truth was they were afraid of any change that would upset the world they had grown used to.

The inspector says I’m free. I’m free now and I was free in prison too, because freedom continues to be the thing I prize most in the world. Of course, this has led me to drink wines I did not like, to do things I should not have done and which I will not do again; it has left scars on my body and on my soul, it has meant hurting certain people, although I have since asked their forgiveness, when I realized that I could do absolutely anything except force another person to follow me in my madness, in my lust for life. I don’t regret the painful times; I bear my scars as if they were medals. I know that freedom has a high price, as high as that of slavery; the only difference is that you pay with pleasure and a smile, even when that smile is dimmed by tears.

 

I leave the police station, and it’s a beautiful day outside, a sunny Sunday that does not reflect my state of mind at all. My lawyer is waiting for me with a few consoling words and a bunch of flowers. He says that he’s phoned around to all the hospitals and morgues (the kind of thing you do when someone fails to return home), but has not as yet found Esther. He says that he managed to prevent journalists from finding out where I was being held. He says he needs to talk to me in order to draw up a legal strategy that will help me defend myself against any future accusation. I thank him for all his trouble; I know he’s not really interested in drawing up a legal strategy, he just doesn’t want to leave me alone, because he’s not sure how I’ll react. (Will I get drunk and be arrested again? Will I cause a scandal? Will I try to kill myself?) I tell him I have some important business to sort out and that we both know perfectly well that I have no problem with the law. He insists, but I give him no choice—after all, I’m a free man.

Freedom. The freedom to be wretchedly alone.

I take a taxi to the center of Paris and ask to be dropped near the Arc de Triomphe. I set off down the Champs-Elysées toward the Hôtel Bristol, where Esther and I always used to meet for hot chocolate whenever one of us came back from some trip abroad. It was our coming-home ritual, a plunge back into the love that bound us together, even though life kept sending us off along ever more diverging paths.

I keep walking. People smile, children are pleased to have been given these few hours of spring in the middle of winter, the traffic flows freely, everything seems to be in order—except that none of them know that I have just lost my wife; they don’t even pretend not to know, they don’t even care. Don’t they realize the pain I’m in? They should all be feeling sad, sympathetic, supportive of a man whose soul is losing love as if it were losing blood; but they continue laughing, immersed in their miserable little lives that only happen on weekends.

What a ridiculous thought! Many of the people I pass must also have their souls in tatters, and I have no idea how or why they are suffering.

I go into a bar and buy some cigarettes; the person answers me in English. I go into a chemist’s to buy a mint I particularly like, and the assistant speaks to me in English (both times I asked for the products in French). Before I reach the hotel, I am stopped by two boys just arrived from Toulouse who are looking for a particular shop; they have asked several other people, but no one understands what they say. What’s going on? Have they changed languages on the Champs-Elysées in the twenty-four hours since I was arrested?

Tourism and money can perform miracles, but how come I haven’t noticed this before? It has obviously been a long time since Esther and I met here to drink hot chocolate, even though we have each been away and come back several times during that period. There is always something more important. There is always some unpostponable appointment. Yes, my love, we’ll have that hot chocolate next time, come back soon; I’ve got a really important interview today and won’t be able to pick you up at the airport, take a taxi; my cell phone’s on, call me if there’s anything urgent; otherwise, I’ll see you tonight.

My cell phone! I take it out of my pocket and immediately turn it on; it rings several times, and each time my heart turns over. On the tiny screen I see the names of the people who have been trying to get in touch with me, but reply to none of them. I hope for someone “unidentified” to appear, because that would be she, since only about twenty people know my number and have sworn not to pass it on. It doesn’t appear, only the numbers of friends or trusted colleagues. They must be eager to know what happened, they want to help (but how?), to ask if I need anything.

The telephone keeps ringing. Should I answer it? Should I arrange to meet up with some of these people?

I decide to remain alone until I’ve managed to work out what is going on.

I reach the Hôtel Bristol, which Esther always described as one of the few hotels in Paris where customers are treated like guests rather than homeless people in search of shelter. I am greeted as if I were a friend of the family; I choose a table next to an exquisite clock; I listen to the piano and look out at the garden.

I need to be practical, to study the options; after all, life goes on. I am not the first nor will I be the last man whose wife has left him, but did it have to happen on a sunny day, with everyone in the street smiling and children singing, with the first signs of spring just beginning to show, the sun shining, and drivers stopping at pedestrian crossings?

I pick up a napkin. I’m going to get these ideas out of my head and put them down on paper. Let’s leave sentiment to one side and see what I should do:

(a) Consider the possibility that she really has been kidnapped and that her life is in danger at this very moment, and that I, as her husband and constant companion, must therefore move heaven and earth to find her.

Response to this possibility: she took her passport with her. The police don’t know this, but she also took several other personal items with her, among them a wallet containing images of various patron saints which she always carries with her whenever she goes abroad. She also withdrew money from her bank.

Conclusion: she was clearly preparing to leave.

(b) Consider the possibility that she believed a promise someone gave her and it turned out to be a trap.

Response: she had often put herself in dangerous situations before; it was part of her job, but she always warned me when she did so, because I was the only person she could trust completely. She would tell me where she was going to be, who she was going to see (although, so as not to put me at risk, she usually used the person’s nom de guerre), and what I should do if she did not return by a certain time.

Conclusion: she was not planning a meeting with one of her informants.

(c) Consider the possibility that she has met another man.

Response: there is no response. Of all the hypotheses, this is the only one that makes any sense. And yet I can’t accept it, I can’t accept that she would leave like that, without giving me a reason. Both Esther and I have always prided ourselves on confronting all life’s difficulties together. We suffered, but we never lied to each other, although it was part of the rules of the game not to mention any extramarital affairs. I was aware that she had changed a lot since meeting this fellow Mikhail, but did that justify ending a marriage that has lasted ten years?

Even if she had slept with him and fallen in love, wouldn’t she weigh in the balance all the time that we had spent together and everything we had conquered before setting off on an adventure from which there was no turning back? She was free to travel whenever she wanted to, she lived surrounded by men, soldiers who hadn’t seen a woman in ages, but I never asked any questions, and she never told me anything. We were both free, and we were proud of that.

But Esther had disappeared and left clues that were visible only to me, as if it were a secret message: I’m leaving.

Why?

Is that question worth answering?

No. Because hidden in the answer is my own inability to keep the woman I love by my side. Is it worth finding her and persuading her to come back? Begging and imploring her to give our marriage another chance?

That seems ridiculous: it would be better merely to suffer as I had in the past, when other people I loved had left me. It would be better just to lick my wounds, as I had also done in the past. For a while, I’ll think obsessively about her, I’ll become embittered, I’ll bore my friends because all I ever talk about is my wife leaving me. I’ll try to justify what happened, spend days and nights reviewing every moment spent by her side, I’ll conclude that she was too hard on me, even though I always tried to do my best. I’ll find other women. When I walk down the street, I’ll keep seeing women who could be her. I’ll suffer day and night, night and day. This could take weeks, months, possibly a year or more.

Until one morning, I’ll wake up and find I’m thinking about something else, and then I’ll know the worst is over. My heart might be bruised, but it will recover and become capable of seeing the beauty of life once more. It’s happened before, it will happen again, I’m sure. When someone leaves, it’s because someone else is about to arrive—I’ll find love again.

For a moment, I savor the idea of my new state: single and a millionaire. I can go out in broad daylight with whomever I want. I can behave at parties in a way I haven’t behaved in years. The news will travel fast, and soon all kinds of women, the young and the not so young, the rich and the not as rich as they would like to be, the intelligent and those trained to say only what they think I would like to hear, will all come knocking at my door.

I want to believe that it is wonderful to be free. Free again. Ready to find my one true love, who is waiting for me and who will never allow me to experience such humiliation again.

 

I finish my hot chocolate and look at the clock; I know it is still too soon for me to be able to enjoy the agreeable feeling that I am once more part of humanity. For a few moments, I imagine that Esther is about to come in through that door, walk across the beautiful Persian carpets, sit down beside me and say nothing, just smoke a cigarette, look out at the courtyard garden and hold my hand. Half an hour passes, and for half an hour I believe in the story I have just created, until I realize that it is pure fantasy.

I decide not to go home. I go over to reception, ask for a room, a toothbrush, and some deodorant. The hotel is full, but the manager fixes things for me: I end up with a lovely suite looking out at the Eiffel Tower, a terrace, the rooftops of Paris, the lights coming on one by one, the families getting together to have Sunday supper. And the feeling I had in the Champs-Elysées returns: the more beautiful everything is around me, the more wretched I feel.

No television. No supper. I sit on the terrace and look back over my life, a young man who dreamed of becoming a famous writer, and who suddenly saw that the reality was completely different—he writes in a language almost no one reads, in a country which is said to have almost no reading public. His family forces him to go to university (any university will do, my boy, just as long as you get a degree; otherwise you’ll never be anyone). He rebels, travels the world during the hippie era, meets a singer, writes a few song lyrics, and is suddenly earning more money than his sister, who listened to what her parents said and decided to become a chemical engineer….

I write more songs, the singer goes from strength to strength; I buy a few apartments and fall out with the singer, but still have enough capital not to have to work for the next few years. I get married for the first time, to an older woman, I learn a lot—how to make love, how to drive, how to speak English, how to lie in bed until late—but we split up because she considers me to be “emotionally immature, and too ready to chase after any girl with big enough breasts.” I get married for a second and a third time to women I think will give me emotional stability: I get what I want, but discover that the stability I wanted is inseparable from a deep sense of tedium.

Two more divorces. Free again, but it’s just a feeling; freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose—and commit myself to—what is best for me.

I continue my search for love, I continue writing songs. When people ask me what I do, I say I’m a writer. When they say they only know my song lyrics, I say that’s just part of my work. When they apologize and say they’ve never read any of my books, I explain that I’m working on a project—which is a lie. The truth is that I have money, I have contacts, but what I don’t have is the courage to write a book. My dream is now realizable, but if I try and fail, I don’t know what the rest of my life will be like; that’s why it’s better to live cherishing a dream than face the possibility that it might all come to nothing.

One day, a journalist comes to interview me. She wants to know what it’s like to have my work known all over the country but to be entirely unknown myself, since normally it’s only the singer who appears in the media. She’s pretty, intelligent, quiet. We meet again at a party, where there’s no pressure of work, and I manage to get her into bed that same night. I fall in love, but she’s not remotely interested. When I phone, she always says she’s busy. The more she rejects me, the more interested I become, until, at last, I manage to persuade her to spend a weekend at my house in the country. (I may have been the black sheep of the family, but sometimes rebellion pays off: I was the only one of my friends at that stage in our lives to have bought a house in the country.)

We spend three days alone, contemplating the sea. I cook for her, and she tells me stories about her work and ends up falling in love with me. We come back to the city, she starts sleeping at my apartment on a regular basis. One morning, she leaves earlier than usual and returns with her typewriter; from then on, without anything being said, my home becomes her home too.

The same conflicts I had with my previous wives begin to surface: women are always looking for stability and fidelity, while I’m looking for adventure and the unknown. This time, though, the relationship lasts longer. Nevertheless, two years on, I decide it’s time for Esther to take her typewriter back to her own apartment, along with everything else she brought with her.

“It’s not going to work.”

“But you love me and I love you, isn’t that right?”

“I don’t know. If you’re asking me if I like your company, the answer is yes. If, on the other hand, you’re asking me if I could live without you, the answer is also yes.”

“I’m glad I wasn’t born a man. I’m very content with my female condition. All you expect of us women is that we can cook well. Men, on the other hand, are expected to be able to do everything—they’ve got to be able to keep a home afloat, make love, take care of the children, bring in the money, and be successful.”

“That’s not it either: I’m very happy with myself. I enjoy your company, but I just don’t think it’s going to work.”

“You enjoy my company, but hate being by yourself. You’re always looking for adventure in order to forget more important things. You always want to feel the adrenaline flowing in your veins and you forget that the only thing that should be flowing through them is blood.”

“I’m not running away from important things. Give me an example of something important.”

“Writing a book.”

“I can do that any time.”

“Go on then, do it. Then, if you like, we can go our separate ways.”

 

I find her comment absurd; I can write a book whenever I want to; I know publishers, journalists, all of whom owe me favors. Esther is just a woman who’s afraid of losing me, she’s inventing things. I tell her it’s over, our relationship is at an end, it isn’t a matter of what she thinks would make me happy, it’s about love.

What is love? she asks. I spend half an hour explaining and realize that I can’t come up with a good definition.

She says that, since I don’t know how to define love, I should try and write a book.

I say that the two things are completely unrelated. I’m going to leave the apartment that very day; she can stay there for as long as she likes. I’ll go and stay in a hotel until she has found somewhere else to live. She says that’s fine by her, I can leave now, the apartment will be free within the month—she’ll start looking for a new place tomorrow. I pack my bags, and she goes and reads a book. I say it’s getting late, I’ll leave tomorrow. She says I should leave at once because, tomorrow, I won’t feel as strong or as determined. I ask her if she’s trying to get rid of me. She laughs and says I was the one who wanted to end the relationship. We go to bed, and the following day, the desire to leave is not as urgent, and I decide I need to think things through. Esther, however, says the matter isn’t over yet: this scenario will simply keep recurring as long as I refuse to risk everything for what I believe to be my real reason for living; in the end, she’ll become unhappy and will leave me. Except that, if she left, she would do so immediately and burn any bridges that would allow her to come back. I ask her what she means. She’d get another boyfriend, she says, fall in love.

She goes off to her work at the newspaper, and I decide to take a day’s leave (apart from writing lyrics, I’m also working for a recording company). I sit down at the typewriter. I get up again, read the papers, reply to some urgent letters, and, when I’ve done that, start replying to nonurgent letters. I make a list of things I need to do, I listen to music, I take a walk around the block, chat to the baker, come home, and suddenly the whole day has gone and I still haven’t managed to type a single sentence. I decide that I hate Esther, that she’s forcing me to do things I don’t want to do.

When she gets home, she doesn’t ask me anything, but I admit that I haven’t managed to do any writing. She says that I have the same look in my eye as I did yesterday.

The following day I go to work, but that evening I again go over to the desk on which the typewriter is sitting. I read, watch television, listen to music, go back to the machine, and so two months pass, with me accumulating pages and more pages of “first sentences,” but never managing to finish a paragraph.

I come up with every possible excuse—no one reads in this country; I haven’t worked out a plot; I’ve got a fantastic plot, but I’m still looking for the right way to develop it. Besides, I’m really busy writing an article or a song lyric. Another two months pass, and one day, she comes home bearing a plane ticket.

“Enough,” she says. “Stop pretending that you’re busy, that you’re weighed down by responsibilities, that the world needs you to do what you’re doing, and just go traveling for a while.” I can always become the editor of the newspaper where I publish a few articles, I can always become the president of the recording company for which I write lyrics, and where I work simply because they don’t want me to write lyrics for their competitors. I can always come back to do what I’m doing now, but my dream can’t wait. Either I accept it or I forget it.

Where is the ticket for?

Spain.

I’m shocked. Air tickets are expensive; besides, I can’t go away now, I’ve got a career ahead of me, and I need to look after it. I’ll lose out on a lot of potential music partnerships; the problem isn’t me, it’s our marriage. If I really wanted to write a book, no one would be able to stop me.

“You can, you want to, but you don’t,” she says. “Your problem isn’t me, but you, so it would be best if you spent some time alone.”

She shows me a map. I must go to Madrid, where I’ll catch a bus up to the Pyrenees, on the border with France. That’s where a medieval pilgrimage route begins: the road to Santiago. I have to walk the whole way. She’ll be waiting for me at the other end and then she’ll accept anything I say: that I don’t love her anymore, that I still haven’t lived enough to create a literary work, that I don’t even want to think about being a writer, that it was nothing but an adolescent dream.

This is madness! The woman I’ve been living with for two long years—a real eternity in relationship terms—is making decisions about my life, forcing me to give up my work and expecting me to walk across an entire country! It’s so crazy that I decide to take it seriously. I get drunk several nights running, with her beside me getting equally drunk—even though she hates drinking. I get aggressive; I say she’s jealous of my independence, that the only reason this whole mad idea was born is because I said I wanted to leave her. She says that it all started when I was still at school and dreaming of becoming a writer—no more putting things off; if I don’t confront myself now, I’ll spend the rest of my life getting married and divorced, telling cute anecdotes about my past and going steadily downhill.

Obviously, I can’t admit she’s right, but I know she’s telling the truth. And the more aware I am of this, the more aggressive I become. She accepts my aggression without complaint; she merely reminds me that the departure date is getting closer.

One night, shortly before that date, she refuses to make love. I smoke a whole joint of marijuana, drink two bottles of wine, and pass out in the middle of the living room. When I come to, I realize that I have reached the bottom of the pit, and now all that remains is for me to clamber back up to the top. And I, who so pride myself on my courage, see how cowardly, mean, and unadventurous I am being with my own life. That morning, I wake her with a kiss and tell her that I’ll do as she suggests.

I set off, and for thirty-eight days I follow the road to Santiago. When I arrive, I understand that my real journey only starts there. I decide to settle in Madrid and live off my royalties, to allow an ocean to separate me from Esther’s body, even though we are still officially together and often talk on the phone. It’s very comfortable being married and knowing that I can always return to her arms, meanwhile enjoying all the independence in the world.

I fall in love with a Catalan scientist, with an Argentine woman who makes jewelry, and with a young woman who sings in the metro. The royalties from my lyrics keep rolling in and are enough for me to live comfortably without having to work and with plenty of time to do everything—even write a book.

The book can always wait until tomorrow, though, because the mayor of Madrid has decreed that the city should be one long party and has come up with an interesting slogan—“Madrid is killing me”—and urges us all to visit several bars each night, coining the phrase la movida madrileña (“the Madrid scene”), which is something I cannot possibly put off until tomorrow; everything is such fun; the days are short and the nights are long.

One day, Esther phones to say that she’s coming to see me: according to her, we need to sort out our situation once and for all. She has booked her ticket for the following week, which gives me just enough time to organize a series of excuses. (“I’m going to Portugal, but I’ll be back in a month,” I tell the blonde girl who used to sing in the metro and who now sleeps in the rented apartment where I live and with whom I go out every night to enjoy la movida madrileña.) I tidy the apartment, expunge any trace of a female presence, and ask my friends not to breathe a word, because my wife is coming to stay for a month.

Esther gets off the plane sporting a hideous, unrecognizable haircut. We travel to the interior of Spain, discover little towns that mean a great deal for one night, but which, if I went back there today, I wouldn’t even be able to find. We go to bullfights, flamenco shows, and I am the best husband in the world, because I want her to go home feeling that I still love her. I don’t know why I want to give this impression—perhaps because, deep down, I know that the Madrid dream will eventually end.

I complain about her haircut and she changes it and is pretty again. There are only ten days left of her holiday and I want her to go home feeling happy and to leave me alone to enjoy this Madrid that is killing me, the discotheques that open at ten in the morning, the bullfights, the endless conversations about the same old topics, the alcohol, the women, more bullfights, more alcohol, more women, and absolutely no timetable.

One Sunday, while we are walking to a bar that serves food all night, she brings up the forbidden topic: the book I said I was writing. I drink a whole bottle of sherry, kick any metal doors we pass on the way back, verbally abuse other people in the street, ask why she bothered traveling all this way if her one aim was to make my life a hell and destroy my happiness. She says nothing, but we both know that our relationship has reached its limits. I have a dreamless night’s sleep, and the following morning, having complained to the building manager about the phone that doesn’t work, having told off the cleaning woman because she hasn’t changed the sheets for a week, having taken a long, long bath to get rid of the hangover from the night before, I sit down at my typewriter, just to show Esther that I am trying, honestly trying, to work.

And suddenly, the miracle happens. I look across at the woman who has just made some coffee and is now reading the newspaper, whose eyes look tired and desperate, who is her usual silent self, who does not always show her affection in gestures, the woman who made me say yes when I wanted to say no, who forced me to fight for what she, quite rightly, believed was my reason for living, who let me set off alone because her love for me was greater even than her love for herself, who made me go in search of my dream; and, suddenly, seeing that small, quiet woman, whose eyes said more than any words, who was often terrified inside, but always courageous in her actions, who could love someone without humbling herself and who never ever apologized for fighting for her man—suddenly, my fingers press down on the keys.

The first sentence emerges. Then the second.

I spend two days without eating, I sleep the bare minimum, the words seem to spring from some unknown place, as they did when I used to write lyrics, in the days when, after much arguing and much meaningless conversation, my musical partner and I would know that “it” was there, ready, and it was time to set “it” down in words and notes. This time, I know that “it” comes from Esther’s heart; my love is reborn, I write the book because she exists, because she has survived all the difficult times without complaint, without ever once seeing herself as a victim. I start by describing the experience that has affected me most profoundly in those last few years—the road to Santiago.

 

As I write, I realize that the way I see the world is going through a series of major changes. For many years, I studied and practiced magic, alchemy, and the occult; I was fascinated by the idea of a small group of people being in possession of an immense power that could in no way be shared with the rest of humanity, because it would be far too dangerous to allow such vast potential to fall into inexperienced hands. I was a member of secret societies, I became involved in exotic sects, I bought obscure, extremely expensive books, spent an enormous amount of time performing rituals and invocations. I was always joining and leaving different groups and fraternities, always thinking that I had finally met the person who could reveal to me the mysteries of the invisible world, but in the end I was always disappointed to discover that most of these people, however well-intentioned, were merely following this or that dogma and tended to be fanatics, because fanaticism is the only way to put an end to the doubts that constantly trouble the human soul.

I discovered that many of the rituals did actually work, but I discovered, too, that those who declared themselves to be the masters and holders of the secrets of life, who claimed to know techniques that gave them the ability to achieve their every desire, had completely lost touch with the teachings of the ancients. Following the road to Santiago, coming into contact with ordinary people, discovering that the universe spoke its own language of “signs” and that, in order to understand this language, we had only to look with an open mind at what was going on around us—all this made me wonder if the occult really was the one doorway into those mysteries. In my book about the road to Santiago, I discuss other possible ways of growing and end with this thought: All you have to do is to pay attention; lessons always arrive when you are ready, and if you can read the signs, you will learn everything you need to know in order to take the next step.

 

We humans have two great problems: the first is knowing when to begin; the second is knowing when to stop.

A week later, I have finished the first, second, and third draft. Madrid is no longer killing me, it is time to go back home. I feel that one cycle has ended and that I urgently need to begin another. I say goodbye to the city as I have always said goodbye in life: thinking that I might change my mind and come back one day.

I return to my own country with Esther, convinced that it might be time to get another job, but until I do (and I don’t because I don’t need to) I continue revising the book. I can’t believe that anyone will have much interest in the experiences of one man following a romantic but difficult route across Spain.

Four months later, when I am busy on my tenth draft, I discover that both the typescript and Esther have gone. Just as I’m about to go mad with anxiety, she returns with a receipt from the post office—she has sent it off to an old boyfriend of hers, who now runs a small publishing house.

The ex-boyfriend publishes the book. There is not a word about it in the press, but a few people buy it. They recommend it to other people, who also buy it and recommend it to others. Six months later, the first edition has sold out. A year later, there have been three more print runs and I am beginning to earn money from the one thing I never dreamed I would—from literature.

I don’t know how long this dream will continue, but I decide to live each moment as if it were the last. And I see that this success opens the door I have so long wanted to open: other publishers are keen to publish my next book.

Obviously, I can’t follow the road to Santiago every year, so what am I going to write about next? Will I have to endure the same rigmarole of sitting down in front of the typewriter and then finding myself doing everything but writing sentences and paragraphs? It’s important that I continue to share my vision of the world and to describe my experiences of life. I try for a few days and for many nights, and decide that it’s impossible. Then, one evening, I happen upon (happen upon?) an interesting story in The Thousand and One Nights; in it I find the symbol of my own path, something that helps me to understand who I am and why I took so long to make the decision that was always there waiting for me. I use that story as the basis for another story about a shepherd who goes in search of his dream, a treasure hidden in the pyramids of Egypt. I speak of the love that lies waiting for him there, as Esther had waited for me while I walked around and around in circles.

I am no longer someone dreaming of becoming something: I am. I am the shepherd crossing the desert, but where is the alchemist who helps him to carry on? When I finish this novel, I don’t entirely understand what I have written: it is like a fairy tale for grown-ups, and grown-ups are more interested in war, sex, or stories about power. Nevertheless, the publisher accepts it, the book is published, and my readers once again take it into the bestseller lists.

Three years later, my marriage is in excellent shape; I am doing what I always wanted to do; the first translation appears, then the second, and success—slowly but surely—takes my work to the four corners of the earth.

I decide to move to Paris because of its cafés, its writers, and its cultural life. I discover that none of this exists anymore: the cafés are full of tourists and photographs of the people who made those places famous. Most of the writers there are more concerned with style than content; they strive to be original, but succeed only in being dull. They are locked in their own little world, and I learn an interesting French expression: renvoyer l’ascenseur, meaning literally “to send the elevator back,” but used metaphorically to mean “to return a favor.” In practice, this means that I say nice things about your book, you say nice things about mine, and thus we create a whole new cultural life, a revolution, an apparently new philosophy; we suffer because no one understands us, but then that’s what happened with all the geniuses of the past: being misunderstood by one’s contemporaries is surely just part and parcel of being a great artist.

They “send the elevator back,” and, at first, such writers have some success: people don’t want to run the risk of openly criticizing something they don’t understand, but they soon realize they are being conned and stop believing what the critics say.

The Internet and its simple language are all that it takes to change the world. A parallel world emerges in Paris: new writers struggle to make their words and their souls understood. I join these new writers in cafés that no one has heard of, because neither the writers nor the cafés are as yet famous. I develop my style alone and I learn from a publisher all I need to know about mutual support.

 

What is this Favor Bank?”

“You know. Everyone knows.”

“Possibly, but I still haven’t quite grasped what you’re saying.”

“It was an American writer who first mentioned it. It’s the most powerful bank in the world, and you’ll find it in every sphere of life.”

“Yes, but I come from a country without a literary tradition. What favors could I do for anyone?”

“That doesn’t matter in the least. Let me give you an example: I know that you’re an up-and-coming writer and that, one day, you’ll be very influential. I know this because, like you, I too was once ambitious, independent, honest. I no longer have the energy I once had, but I want to help you because I can’t or don’t want to grind to a halt just yet. I’m not dreaming about retirement, I’m still dreaming about the fascinating struggle that is life, power, and glory.

“I start making deposits in your account—not cash deposits, you understand, but contacts. I introduce you to such-and-such a person, I arrange certain deals, as long as they’re legal. You know that you owe me something, but I never ask you for anything.”

“And then one day…”

“Exactly. One day, I’ll ask you for a favor and you could, of course, say no, but you’re conscious of being in my debt. You do what I ask, I continue to help you, and other people see that you’re a decent, loyal sort of person and so they too make deposits in your account—always in the form of contacts, because this world is made up of contacts and nothing else. They too will one day ask you for a favor, and you will respect and help the people who have helped you, and, in time, you’ll have spread your net worldwide, you’ll know everyone you need to know and your influence will keep on growing.”

“I could refuse to do what you ask me to do.”

“You could. The Favor Bank is a risky investment, just like any other bank. You refuse to grant the favor I asked you, in the belief that I helped you because you deserved to be helped, because you’re the best and everyone should automatically recognize your talent. Fine, I say thank you very much and ask someone else into whose account I’ve also made various deposits; but from then on, everyone knows, without me having to say a word, that you are not to be trusted.

“You’ll grow only half as much as you could have grown, and certainly not as much as you would have liked to. At a certain point, your life will begin to decline, you got halfway, but not all the way, you are half-happy and half-sad, neither frustrated nor fulfilled. You’re neither cold nor hot, you’re lukewarm, and as an evangelist in some holy book says: ‘Lukewarm things are not pleasing to the palate.’”

 

The publisher places a lot of deposits—or contacts—into my account at the Favor Bank. I learn, I suffer, my books are translated into French, and, in the tradition of that country, the stranger is welcomed. Not only that, the stranger is an enormous success! Ten years on, I have a large apartment with a view over the Seine, I am loved by my readers and loathed by the critics (who adored me until I sold my first 100,000 copies, but, from that moment on, I ceased to be “a misunderstood genius”). I always repay promptly any deposits made and soon I too am a lender—of contacts. My influence grows. I learn to ask for favors and to do the favors others ask of me.

Esther gets permission to work as a journalist in France. Apart from the normal conflicts in any marriage, I am contented. I understand for the first time that all the frustrations I felt about previous love affairs and marriages had nothing to do with the women involved, but with my own bitterness. Esther, however, was the only woman who understood one very simple thing: in order to be able to find her, I first had to find myself. We have been together for eight years; I believe she is the love of my life, and although I do occasionally (or, to be honest, frequently) fall in love with other women who cross my path, I never consider the possibility of divorce. I never ask her if she knows about my extramarital affairs. She never makes any comment on the subject.

That is why I am astonished when, as we are leaving a cinema, she tells me that she has asked her magazine if she can file a report on a civil war in Africa.

 

What are you saying?”

“That I want to be a war correspondent.”

“You’re mad. You don’t need to do that. You’re already doing the work you want to do now. You earn good money—not that you need that money to live on. You have all the contacts you need in the Favor Bank. You have talent and you’ve earned your colleagues’ respect.”

“All right then, let’s just say I need to be alone.”

“Because of me?”

“We’ve built our lives together. I love my man and he loves me, even though he’s not always the most faithful of husbands.”

“You’ve never said anything about that before.”

“Because it doesn’t matter to me. I mean, what is fidelity? The feeling that I possess a body and a soul that aren’t mine? Do you imagine I haven’t been to bed with other men during all these years we’ve been together?”

“I don’t care and I don’t want to know.”

“Well, neither do I.”

“So, what’s all this about wanting to write about a war in some godforsaken part of the world?”

“As I said, I need to.”

“Haven’t you got everything you need?”

“I have everything a woman could want.”

“What’s wrong with your life then?”

“Precisely that. I have everything, but I’m not happy. And I’m not the only one either; over the years, I’ve met and interviewed all kinds of people: the rich, the poor, the powerful, and those who just make do. I’ve seen the same infinite bitterness in everyone’s eyes, a sadness which people weren’t always prepared to acknowledge, but which, regardless of what they were telling me, was nevertheless there. Are you listening?”

“Yes, I’m listening. I was just thinking. So, according to you, no one is happy?”

“Some people appear to be happy, but they simply don’t give the matter much thought. Others make plans: I’m going to have a husband, a home, two children, a house in the country. As long as they’re busy doing that, they’re like bulls looking for the bullfighter: they react instinctively, they blunder on, with no idea where the target is. They get their car, sometimes they even get a Ferrari, and they think that’s the meaning of life, and they never question it. Yet their eyes betray the sadness that even they don’t know they carry in their soul. Are you happy?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t know if everyone is unhappy. I know they’re all busy: working overtime, worrying about their children, their husband, their career, their degree, what they’re going to do tomorrow, what they need to buy, what they need to have in order not to feel inferior, etc. Very few people actually say to me: ‘I’m unhappy.’ Most say: ‘I’m fine, I’ve got everything I ever wanted.’ Then I ask: ‘What makes you happy?’ Answer: ‘I’ve got everything a person could possibly want—a family, a home, work, good health.’ I ask again: ‘Have you ever stopped to wonder if that’s all there is to life?’ Answer: ‘Yes, that’s all there is.’ I insist: ‘So the meaning of life is work, family, children who will grow up and leave you, a wife or husband who will become more like a friend than a real lover. And, of course, one day your work will end too. What will you do when that happens?’ Answer: There is no answer. They change the subject.”

“No, what they say is: ‘When the children have grown up, when my husband—or my wife—has become more my friend than my passionate lover, when I retire, then I’ll have time to do what I always wanted to do: travel.’ Question: ‘But didn’t you say you were happy now? Aren’t you already doing what you always wanted to do?’ Then they say they’re very busy and change the subject.”

“If I insist, they always do come up with something they’re lacking. The businessman hasn’t yet closed the deal he wanted, the housewife would like to have more independence and more money, the boy who’s in love is afraid of losing his girlfriend, the new graduate wonders if he chose his career or if it was chosen for him, the dentist wanted to be a singer, the singer wanted to be a politician, the politician wanted to be a writer, the writer wanted to be a farmer. And even when I did meet someone who was doing what he had chosen to do, that person’s soul was still in torment. He hadn’t found peace yet either. So I’ll ask you again: ‘Are you happy?’”

“No. I have the woman I love, the career I always dreamed of having, the kind of freedom that is the envy of all my friends, the travel, the honors, the praise. But there’s something…”

“What?”

“I have the idea that, if I stopped, life would become meaningless.”

“You can’t just relax, look at Paris, take my hand and say: I’ve got what I wanted, now let’s enjoy what life remains to us.”

“I can look at Paris, take your hand, but I can’t say those words.”

“I bet you everyone walking along this street now is feeling the same thing. The elegant woman who just passed us spends her days trying to hold back time, always checking the scales, because she thinks that is what love depends on. Look across the street: a couple with two children. They feel intensely happy when they’re out with their children, but, at the same time, their subconscious keeps them in a constant state of terror: they think of the job they might lose, the disease they might catch, the health insurance that might not come up with the goods, one of the children getting run over. And in trying to distract themselves, they try as well to find a way of getting free of those tragedies, of protecting themselves from the world.”

“And the beggar on the corner?”

“I don’t know about him. I’ve never spoken to a beggar. He’s certainly the picture of misery, but his eyes, like the eyes of any beggar, seem to be hiding something. His sadness is so obvious that I can’t quite believe in it.”

“What’s missing?”

“I haven’t a clue. I look at the celebrity magazines with everyone smiling and contented, but since I am myself married to a celebrity, I know that it isn’t quite like that: everyone is laughing and having fun at that moment, in that photo, but later that night, or in the morning, the story is always quite different. ‘What do I have to do in order to continue appearing in this magazine?’ ‘How can I disguise the fact that I no longer have enough money to support my luxurious lifestyle?’ ‘How can I best manipulate my luxurious lifestyle to make it seem even more luxurious than anyone else’s?’ ‘The actress in the photo with me and with whom I’m smiling and celebrating could steal a part from me tomorrow!’ ‘Am I better dressed than she is? Why are we smiling when we loathe each other?’ ‘Why do we sell happiness to the readers of this magazine when we are profoundly unhappy ourselves, the slaves of fame.’”

“We’re not the slaves of fame.”

“Don’t get paranoid. I’m not talking about us.”

“What do you think is going on, then?”

“Years ago, I read a book that told an interesting story. Just suppose that Hitler had won the war, wiped out all the Jews and convinced his people that there really was such a thing as a master race. The history books start to be changed, and, a hundred years later, his successors manage to wipe out all the Indians. Three hundred years later and the Blacks have been eliminated too. It takes five hundred years, but, finally, the all-powerful war machine succeeds in erasing all Asians from the face of the earth as well. The history books speak of remote battles waged against barbarians, but no one reads too closely, because it’s of no importance.

“Two thousand years after the birth of Nazism, in a bar in Tokyo, a city that has been inhabited for five centuries now by tall, blue-eyed people, Hans and Fritz are enjoying a beer. At one point, Hans looks at Fritz and asks: ‘Fritz, do you think it was always like this?’

“‘What?’ asks Fritz.

“‘The world.’

“‘Of course the world was always like this, isn’t that what we were taught?’

“‘Of course, I don’t know what made me ask such a stupid question,’ says Hans. They finish their beer, talk about other things and forget the question entirely.”

“You don’t even need to go that far into the future, you just have to go back two thousand years. Can you see yourself worshipping a guillotine, a scaffold, or an electric chair?”

“I know where you’re heading—to that worst of all human tortures, the cross. I remember that Cicero referred to it as ‘an abominable punishment’ that inflicted terrible suffering on the crucified person before he or she died. And yet, nowadays people wear it around their neck, hang it on their bedroom wall, and have come to identify it as a religious symbol, forgetting that they are looking at an instrument of torture.”

“Two hundred and fifty years passed before someone decided that it was time to abolish the pagan festivals surrounding the winter solstice, the time when the sun is farthest from the earth. The apostles, and those who came after them, were too busy spreading Jesus’ message to worry about the natalis invict Solis, the Mithraic festival of the birth of the sun, which occurred on December 25. Then a bishop decided that these solstice festivals were a threat to the faith and that was that! Now we have masses, Nativity scenes, presents, sermons, plastic babies in wooden mangers, and the cast-iron conviction that Christ was born on that very day!”

“And then there’s the Christmas tree. Do you know where that comes from?”

“No idea.”

“Saint Boniface decided to ‘christianize’ a ritual intended to honor the god Odin when he was a child. Once a year, the Germanic tribes would place presents around an oak tree for the children to find. They thought this would bring joy to the pagan deity.”

“Going back to the story of Hans and Fritz: do you think that civilization, human relations, our hopes, our conquests, are all just the product of some other garbled story?”

“When you wrote about the road to Santiago, you came to the same conclusion, didn’t you? You used to believe that only a select few knew the meaning of magic symbols, but now you realize that we all know the meaning, it’s just that we’ve forgotten it.”

“Knowing that doesn’t make any difference. People do their best not to remember and not to accept the immense magical potential they possess, because that would upset their neat little universes.”

“But we all have the ability, don’t we?”

“Absolutely, we just don’t all have the courage to follow our dreams and to follow the signs. Perhaps that’s where the sadness comes from.”

“I don’t know. And I’m not saying that I’m unhappy all the time. I have fun, I love you, I adore my work. Yet now and then, I feel this profound sadness, occasionally mingled with feelings of guilt or fear; the feeling passes, but always comes back later on, and then passes off again. Like Hans, I ask that same question; when I can’t answer it, I simply forget. I could go and help starving children, set up a foundation for street children, start trying to save people in the name of Jesus, do something that would give me the feeling I was being useful, but I don’t want to.”

“So why do you want to go and cover this war?”

“Because I think that in time of war, men live life at the limit; after all, they could die the next day. Anyone living like that must act differently.”

“So you want to find an answer to Hans’s question?”

“Yes, I do.”

 

Today, in this beautiful suite in the Hôtel Bristol, with the Eiffel Tower glittering for five minutes every time the clock strikes the hour, with an empty bottle of wine beside me and my cigarettes fast running out, with people greeting me as if nothing very serious had happened, I ask myself: Was it then, coming out of the cinema, that it all began? Should I have let her go off in search of that garbled story or should I have put my foot down and told her to forget the whole idea because she was my wife and I needed her with me, needed her support?

Nonsense. At the time, I knew, as I know now, that I had no option but to accept what she wanted. If I had said: “Choose between me and becoming a war correspondent,” I would have been betraying everything that Esther had done for me. I wasn’t convinced by her declared aim—to go in search of “a garbled story”—but I concluded that she needed a bit of freedom, to get out and about, to experience strong emotions. And what was wrong with that?

I accepted, not without first making it clear that this constituted a very large withdrawal from the Favor Bank (which, when I think about it now, seems a ludicrous thing to say). For two years, Esther followed various conflicts at close quarters, changing continents more often than she changed her shoes. Whenever she came back, I thought that this time she would give it up—it’s just not possible to live for very long in a place where there’s no decent food, no daily bath, and no cinemas or theaters. I asked her if she had found the answer to Hans’s question, and she always told me that she was on the right track, and I had to be satisfied with that. Sometimes, she was away from home for months at a time; contrary to what it says in the “official history of marriage” (I was starting to use her terminology), that distance only made our love grow stronger, and showed us how important we were to each other. Our relationship, which I thought had reached its ideal point when we moved to Paris, was getting better and better.

As I understand it, she first met Mikhail when she needed a translator to accompany her to some country in Central Asia. At first, she talked about him with great enthusiasm—he was a very sensitive person, someone who saw the world as it really was and not as we had been told it should be. He was five years younger than she, but had a quality that Esther described as “magical.” I listened patiently and politely, as if I were really interested in that boy and his ideas, but the truth is, I was far away, going over in my mind all the things I had to do, ideas for articles, answers to questions from journalists and publishers, strategies for how to seduce a particular woman who appeared to be interested in me, plans for future book promotions.

I don’t know if Esther noticed this. I certainly failed to notice that Mikhail gradually disappeared from our conversations, then vanished completely. Esther’s behavior became increasingly eccentric: even when she was in Paris, she started going out several nights a week, telling me that she was researching an article on beggars.

I thought she must be having an affair. I agonized for a whole week and asked myself: should I tell her my doubts or just pretend that nothing is happening? I decided to ignore it, on the principle that “what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.” I was utterly convinced that there wasn’t the slightest possibility of her leaving me; she had worked so hard to help me become the person I am, and it would be illogical to let all that go for some ephemeral affair.

If I had really been interested in Esther’s world, I should at least have asked what had happened to her translator and his “magical” sensibility. I should have been suspicious of that silence, that lack of information. I should have asked to go with her on one of those “research trips” to visit beggars.

When she occasionally asked if I was interested in her work, my answer was always the same: “Yes, I’m interested, but I don’t want to interfere, I want you to be free to follow your dream in your chosen way, just as you helped me to do the same.”

This, of course, was tantamount to saying that I wasn’t the slightest bit interested. But because people always believe what they want to believe, Esther seemed satisfied with my response.

 

The words spoken by the inspector when I was released from the police cell come back to me again: You’re a free man. But what is freedom? Is it seeing that your husband isn’t interested in what you are doing? Is it feeling alone and having no one with whom to share your innermost feelings, because the person you married is entirely focused on his own work, on his important, magnificent, difficult career?

I look at the Eiffel Tower: another hour has passed, and it is glittering again as if it were made of diamonds. I have no idea how often this has happened since I have been at the window.

I know that, in the name of the freedom of our marriage, I did not notice that Mikhail had disappeared from my wife’s conversations, only to reappear in a bar and disappear again, this time taking her with him and leaving behind the famous, successful writer as prime suspect.

Or, worse still, as a man abandoned.