Aleph (25 page)

Summer! Heat!

Later, I realize that anyone moving from a very cold place to a warmer place experiences the same sensation. There I was, with no shirt on, knee-deep in the waters of Lake Baikal, as happy as a child, because I had been enfolded in an energy that was now part of me.

Yao and Hilal had followed me and were watching incredulously from the shore.

“Come on! Come on in!”

They both start getting undressed. Hilal has nothing on underneath and is once again completely naked. But what does that matter? Some people gather on the pier and watch us. But, again, who cares? The lake is ours. The world is ours.

Yao is first in. He doesn’t realize how uneven the bottom
of the lake is and falls. He gets up, wades in a little farther, then takes the plunge. Hilal must have levitated over the pebbles, because she enters at a run, going farther out than either of us before plunging in; then she opens her arms to the skies and laughs like a loon.

No more than five minutes could have passed from the moment when I started running toward the lake until the moment we emerged. The driver, beside himself with worry, comes running toward us, bearing towels hastily borrowed from the hotel. We are leaping gleefully up and down, hugging one another, singing, shouting, and saying, “It’s so hot out here!”—like the children we will never, ever cease to be.

F
OR THE LAST TIME ON THIS JOURNEY
, I adjust my watch. It’s five o’clock in the morning on May 30, 2006. In Moscow, which is seven hours behind, people are still having supper on the night of the 29th.

Everyone in the carriage woke early and found it impossible to get back to sleep, not because of the motion of the train, to which we have become accustomed, but because we will shortly be arriving in Vladivostok, our final stop. We have spent the last two days in the carriage, mostly sitting around the table that has been the center of our universe during this seemingly unending journey. We ate and told stories, and I described what it felt like to plunge into Lake Baikal, although the others were more interested in our meeting with the shaman.

My publishers had a brilliant idea: they would forewarn the stations en route of our arrival time. That way, whether it was day or night, I would get out of the carriage to find people waiting on the platform with books to sign. They
thanked me, and I thanked them. Sometimes we stayed for only five minutes, sometimes for twenty. They blessed me, and I gratefully received their blessings, which came from all kinds of people, from elderly ladies in long coats, boots, and head scarves to young men who had just left work or were heading home, usually wearing only a jacket, as if to say, “I’m too tough for the cold to get to me.”

The previous day, I had decided to walk the whole length of the train. This was something I had thought of doing several times but always put off for another day, given that we had such a long journey ahead of us. Then I realized that we were nearly at our final destination.

I asked Yao to go with me. We opened and closed numerous doors, too many to count. Only then did I understand that I wasn’t on a train but in a city, a country, a whole universe. I should have done this before. The journey would have been so much richer; I might have met fascinating people and heard stories I could later turn into books.

I spent the whole afternoon investigating that city on wheels, pausing only to get off whenever we pulled into a station to meet any waiting readers. I walked through that great city as I have through many others and saw all the usual scenes: a man talking on his cell phone, a boy hurrying back to fetch something he had left behind in the dining car, a mother with a baby on her lap, two young people kissing in the narrow corridor outside the compartments, oblivious to the landscape speeding past outside, radios at full blast, signs I couldn’t understand, people offering and asking for things, a man with a gold tooth laughing with friends, a woman in a head scarf weeping and gazing into
space. I smoked a few cigarettes with a group of people waiting by the narrow door into the next carriage while discreetly studying those thoughtful, well-dressed men who seemed to have the weight of the world on their shoulders.

I walked through that city, which stretched out like an ever-flowing river of steel, a city where I don’t speak the local language, but what does that matter? I heard all kinds of languages and sounds, and noticed that, as happens in all large cities, most people weren’t talking to anyone, each passenger absorbed in his or her own problems and dreams, forced to share the same compartment with three perfect strangers, people they will never meet again and who have their own problems and dreams to contend with. However miserable or lonely they might feel, however much they would like to share their joy at some triumph or their grief at some overwhelming sadness, it’s always best and safest to keep silent.

I decided to strike up a conversation with someone, a woman of about my own age. I asked if she knew what part of the country we were passing through. Yao began to translate my words, but I stopped him. I wanted to imagine what it would be like to make this journey alone. Would I have made it to the end? I wondered. The woman made a gesture indicating that she couldn’t hear what I was saying above the deafening noise of the wheels on the tracks. I repeated my question, and this time she did hear but didn’t understand. She clearly thought I was slightly touched and hurriedly moved away.

I tried a second and a third person. I asked a different question: why were they traveling, and what were they doing on that train? No one understood what I was asking,
and I was glad in a way, because it was a pretty stupid question. They all knew what they were doing and where they were going—even I knew that, although I hadn’t perhaps reached precisely the place I wanted to reach. Someone squeezing past us down the narrow corridor heard me speaking English, stopped, and said very calmly, “May I help you? Are you lost?”

“No, I’m not lost, but where exactly are we?”

“We’re on the Chinese frontier and will soon be going south, down to Vladivostok.”

I thanked him and walked on. I had at least managed to have a brief conversation, which meant that it would have been possible to travel on that train alone. I would never be lost as long as there were people willing to help.

I walked through that apparently endless city and returned to the point where I had started, carrying with me the smiles, looks, kisses, music, and babble of words, as well as the forest passing by outside that I would probably never see again, although it would stay with me forever, in my mind’s eye and in my heart.

I returned to the table that had been the center of our universe, wrote a few lines on a piece of paper, and stuck it on the mirror, where Yao always put his daily thoughts.

I
’M READING WHAT
I
WROTE YESTERDAY
after my walk through the train.

These, I remember, were the words of the shaman. Soon this carriage will go back where it came from. This piece of paper will disappear as soon as the cleaners arrive. But I will never forget what I wrote, because I am not and never will be a foreigner.

H
ILAL MOSTLY STAYED IN HER COMPARTMENT
, frantically playing her violin. Sometimes it seemed to me that she was once again talking to the angels, but at others that she was merely practicing in order to maintain her technique. On the drive back to Irkutsk, I had felt sure that I was not alone on my flight with the eagle of Baikal. Our spirits—hers and mine—had seen the same marvels.

The previous night, I had again asked if we could sleep in the same bed together. I had tried doing the ring-of-light exercise alone but had never gotten anywhere apart from making another unintended visit to the writer I had been in nineteenth-century France. He (or I) was just finishing a paragraph:

That night as she lay by my side, I rested my head on her breast and we remained like that in silence, as if our souls had known each other for a long time and there was no need for words, only that physical contact. I finally managed to get the golden ring to take me to the very place I wanted to be: a small town outside Córdoba.

T
HE SENTENCE IS PRONOUNCED IN PUBLIC
, in the middle of the square, as if this were a day of celebration. The eight girls, wearing white dresses down to their ankles, are shivering with cold, but soon they will experience the fires of Hell lit by men who believe they are acting in the name of Heaven. I asked my Superior to excuse me from being there with the other members of the Church. He did not take much persuading. I think he is still furious with me for my cowardice and glad to see the back of me. I am mingling with the crowd, feeling deeply ashamed, my head still covered by the hood of my Dominican habit.

All day, curious onlookers have been arriving from the nearby towns, and by the time dusk falls, the square is packed. The nobles sitting in the special seats reserved for them in the front row are wearing their most colorful outfits. The women have had time to arrange their hair and put on makeup so that the crowd can appreciate what they deem to be their great beauty. There is something
more than just curiosity in the eyes of the people present; the most common emotion appears to be a desire for vengeance. It isn’t just relief to see the guilty being punished but also glee because the guilty also happen to be the young, pretty, sensual daughters of very rich families. They deserve to be punished for having everything that most of the people there either left behind in their youth or never had at all. Let us, then, have our revenge on beauty. Let us avenge ourselves on joy, laughter, and hope. There is no room in such a world for feelings that show us up only for what we are—wretched, frustrated, and impotent.

The Inquisitor is saying a Mass in Latin. His sermon, in which he speaks of the terrible punishments awaiting all those found guilty of heresy, is interrupted by shouts. They come from the parents of the young women about to be burned. They had been kept out of the square until then but have managed to get through.

The Inquisitor stops his sermon, the crowd boos, and the guards go over to the interlopers and drag them away.

An ox-drawn cart arrives. The girls put their arms behind them so that their hands can be bound, and the Dominican monks then help them into the cart. The guards form a security cordon around the vehicle, the crowd moves back to let them through, and the oxen with their macabre cargo are driven toward the pyre that will be lit in a nearby field.

The girls have their heads bowed, and from where I am, I cannot know what is in their eyes, whether tears or terror. One of them was tortured so barbarously that she can stand only with the help of the others. The soldiers are having difficulty controlling the crowd, which is laughing,
hurling insults, and throwing things. I see that the cart will pass close by where I am standing. I try to leave, but it’s too late. The dense mass of men, women, and children behind me won’t allow me to move.

The cart approaches. The girls’ white dresses are now stained with eggs, beer, wine, and potato peels.
God have mercy on them
. I hope that when the fire is lit, they ask pardon again for their sins, sins that will one day be transformed into virtues, unimaginable though that is for any of us there now. If they ask for absolution, a monk will hear their confessions once again and commend their souls to God. They will then be garroted, and only their corpses will be burned.

If they refuse to admit their guilt, they will be burned alive.

I have witnessed other executions and sincerely hope that the girls’ parents have bribed the executioner. If they have, he will pour a little oil over the wood, so that the fire burns more quickly, and the smoke will suffocate them before the flames begin to consume first their hair, then their feet, hands, faces, legs, and, finally, their bodies. If they have given no bribe, their daughters will burn slowly and endure indescribable pain.

The cart is now immediately in front of me. I bow my head, but one of the girls sees me. They all turn, and I prepare to be insulted and attacked as I deserve to be, for I am the guiltiest of all, the one who washed his hands of them when just one word could have changed everything.

They call my name. The people nearby turn to look at me in surprise. Do I know these witches? Were it not for
my Dominican habit, they might well attack me. A fraction of a second later, the people around me realize that I must be one of those who condemned the girls. Someone gives me a congratulatory slap on the back, and a woman says, “Well done, you are a man of good faith.”