The Zahir: A Novel of Obsession. Paulo Coelho
come up with every possible excuse – no one reads in this country, I haven’t worked out a plot, or 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 travelling 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 whom 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 any more, 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 marihuana, drink two bottles of wine and pass out in the middle of the living room. When I come to, I realise 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 jewellery, 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 organise 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, unrecognisable 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 travelling all this way if her one aim was to make my life a hell and to 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 bedclothes 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 apologised 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 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 realise that the way I see the world is going through a series of major changes. For many years, I studied and practised magic, alchemy and the