The Zahir by Coelho Paulo

Author:Coelho, Paulo [Paulo, Coelho,]
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Published: 2010-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

Two days later, I was back home. Marie went to prepare lunch, and I glanced through the accumulated correspondence. The entry phone rang. It was the caretaker to say that the envelope I had expected the previous week had been delivered and should be on my desk.

I thanked him, but, contrary to all my expectations, I was not in a rush to open it. Marie and I had lunch; I asked her how filming had gone and she asked me about my immediate plans, given that I wouldn’t be able to go out much while I was wearing the orthopedic collar. She said that she could, if necessary, come and stay.

“I’m supposed to do an appearance on some Korean TV channel, but I can always put it off or even cancel it altogether. That’s, of course, if you need my company.”

“Oh, I do, and it would be lovely to have you around.”

She smiled broadly and picked up the phone to call her manager and ask her to change her engagements. I heard her say: “Don’t tell them I’m ill though. I’m superstitious, and whenever I’ve used that excuse in the past, I’ve always come down with something really horrible. Just tell them I’ve got to look after the person I love.”

I had a series of urgent things to do too: interviews to be postponed, invitations that required replies, letters to be written thanking various people for the phone calls and flowers I’d received, things to read, prefaces and recommendations to write. Marie spent the whole day on the phone to my agent, reorganizing my diary so that no one would be left without a response. We had supper at home every evening, talking about the interesting and the banal, just like any other couple. During one of these suppers, after a few glasses of wine, she remarked that I had changed.

“It’s as if having a brush with death had somehow brought you back to life,” she said.

“That happens to everyone.”

“But I must say—and, don’t worry, I don’t want to start an argument and I’m not about to have an attack of jealousy—you haven’t mentioned Esther once since coming home. The same thing happened when you finished A Time to Rend and a Time to Sew: the book acted as a kind of therapy, the effects of which, alas, didn’t last very long.”

“Are you saying that the accident has affected my brain?”

My tone wasn’t aggressive, but she nevertheless decided to change the subject and started telling me about a terrifying helicopter trip she’d had from Monaco to Cannes. Later, in bed, we made love—with great difficulty given my orthopedic collar—but we made love nevertheless and felt very close.

Four days later, the vast pile of paper on my desk had disappeared. There was only a large, white envelope bearing my name and the number of my apartment. Marie went to open it, but I told her it could wait.

She didn’t ask me about it; perhaps it was information about my bank accounts or some confidential correspondence, possibly from another woman.

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