my desk. The envelope Mikhail left for me is open. I now know where Esther is; I just need to know how to get there. I phone him and tell him about my walk across the ice. He is impressed. I ask him what he's doing tonight, and he says he's going out with his girlfriend, Lucrecia. I suggest taking them both to supper. No, not tonight, but, if I like, I could go out with him and his friends next week.
I tell him that next week I'm giving a talk in the United States. There's no hurry, he says, we can wait two weeks.
"You must have heard a voice telling you to walk on the ice," he says.
"No, I heard no voice."
"So why did you do it?"
"Because I felt it needed to be done."
"That's just another way of hearing the voice."
"I made a bet. If I could cross the ice, that meant I was ready. And I think I am."
"Then the voice gave you the sign you needed."
"Did the voice say anything to you about it?"
"No, it didn't have to. When we were on the banks of the Seine and I said that the voice would tell us when the time had come, I knew that it would also tell you."
"As I said, I didn't hear a voice."
"That's what you think. That's what everyone thinks. And yet, judging by what the presence tells me, everyone hears voices all the time. They are what help us to know when we are face to face with a sign, you see."
I decide not to argue. I just need some practical details: where to hire a car, how long the journey takes, how to find the house, because otherwise all I have, apart from the map, are a series of vague indications - follow the lakeshore, look for a company sign, turn right, etc. Perhaps he knows someone who can help me.
We arrange our next meeting. Mikhail asks me to dress as discreetly as possible - the "tribe" is going for a walkabout in Paris.
I ask him who this tribe is. "They're the people who work with me at the restaurant," he replies, without going into detail. I ask him if he wants me to bring him anything from the States, and he asks for a particular remedy for heartburn. There are, I think, more interesting things I could bring, but I make a note of his request.
And the article?
I go back to the desk, think about what I'm going to write, look again at the open envelope, and conclude that I was not surprised by what I found inside. After a few meetings with Mikhail, it was pretty much what I had expected.
Esther is living in the steppes, in a small village in Central Asia; more precisely, in a village in Kazakhstan.
I am no longer in a hurry. I continue reviewing my own story, which I tell to Marie in obsessive detail; she has decided to do the same, and I am surprised by some of the things she tells me, but the process seems to be working; she is more confident, less anxious.
I don't know why I so want to find Esther, now that my love for her has illumined my life, taught me new things, which is quite enough really. But I remember what Mikhail said: "The story needs to reach its end," and I decide to go on. I know that I will discover the moment when the ice of our marriage cracked, and how we carried on walking through the chill water as if nothing had happened. I know that I will discover this before I reach that village, in order to close the circle or make it larger still.
The article! Has Esther become the Zahir again, thus preventing me from concentrating on anything else?
No, when I need to do something urgent, something that requires creative energy, this is my working method: I get into a state of near hysteria, decide to abandon the task altogether, and then the article appears. I've tried doing things differently, preparing everything carefully, but my imagination only works when it's under enormous pressure. I must respect the Favor Bank, I must write three pages about - guess what! - the problems of male-female relationships. Me, of all people! But the editors believe that the man who wrote A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew must know the human soul well.
I try to log on to the Internet, but it's not