The Zahir Page 0,61

tree has been cut down and the ribbons scattered on the ground. I sit down alone and weep, because those had been the happiest days of my life. At that moment, the girl reappears. She tells me not to worry, that this was all part of the plan, even the destruction of the tree, and that she will accompany me now for the rest of my days and will always tell me what I must do."

"Did she never tell you her name?" asks one of the beggars.

"Never. But it doesn't matter because I always know when she's talking to me."

"Could we find out something about our dead?"

"No. That only happened during one particular period. Now my mission is different. May I go on with my story?"

"Absolutely," I say. "But can I just ask one thing? There's a town in southwest France called Lourdes. A long time ago, a shepherdess saw a little girl, who seems to correspond to your vision."

"No, you're wrong," says one of the older beggars, who has an artificial leg. "The shepherdess, whose name was Bernadette, saw the Virgin Mary."

"I've written a book about her visions and I had to study the matter closely," I say. "I read everything that was published about it at the end of the nineteenth century; I had access to Bernadette's many statements to the police, to the church, and to scholars. At no point does she say that she saw a woman; she insists it was a girl. She repeated the same story all her life and was deeply angered by the statue that was placed in the grotto; she said it bore no resemblance to her vision, because she had seen a little girl, not a woman. Nevertheless, the church appropriated the story, the visions, and the place and transformed the apparition into the Mother of Jesus, and the truth was forgotten. If a lie is repeated often enough, it ends up convincing everyone. The only difference is that 'the little girl' - as Bernadette always referred to her - had a name."

"What was it?" asks Mikhail.

"'I am the Immaculate Conception.' Obviously that isn't a name like Beatriz or Maria or Isabelle. She describes herself as a fact, an event, a happening, which is sometimes translated as 'I am birth without sex.' Now, please, go on with your story."

"Before he does, can I ask you something?" says another beggar, who must be about my age. "You just said that you've written a book; what's the title?"

"I've written many books."

And I tell him the title of the book in which I mention the story of Bernadette and her vision.

"So you're the husband of the journalist?"

"Are you Esther's husband?" asks a female beggar, wide-eyed; she is dressed garishly, in a green hat and a purple coat.

I don't know what to say.

"Why hasn't she been back here?" asks someone else. "I hope she isn't dead. She was always going to such dangerous places. I often told her she shouldn't. Look what she gave me!"

And she shows me a scrap of bloodstained fabric, part of the dead soldier's shirt.

"No, she's not dead," I say. "But I'm surprised to hear that she used to come here."

"Why? Because we're different?"

"No, you misunderstand me. I'm not judging you. I'm surprised and pleased to know that she did."

However, the vodka we have been drinking to ward off the cold is having an effect on all of us.

"Now you're being ironic," says a burly man with long hair, who looks as if he hasn't shaved for several days. "If you think you're in such bad company, why don't you leave."

I have been drinking too and that gives me courage.

"Who are you? What kind of life is this? You're healthy, you could work, but instead you prefer to hang around doing nothing!"

"We choose to stay outside, outside a world that is fast collapsing, outside people who live in constant fear of losing something, who walk along the street as if everything was fine, when, in fact, everything is bad, very bad indeed! Don't you beg too? Don't you ask for alms from your boss to pay the owner of your apartment?"

"Aren't you ashamed to be wasting your life?" asks the woman in the purple coat.

"Who said I'm wasting my life? I do precisely what I want to do."

The burly man interrupts, saying:

"And what is it you want? To live on top of the world? Who told you that the mountain is necessarily better than the plain? You think we don't