Adultery (15 page)

He suggests we leave and walk through the park. At one of its gates are huge plastic chess pieces and several black and white squares painted on the ground. Some people are playing, despite the cold weather.

He hardly says anything more; I keep on talking nonstop, sometimes thankful and sometimes cursing the life I lead. We stop in front of one of the giant chessboards. He seems more attentive to the game than to my words. I stop whining and also start following the game, though it doesn’t interest me one bit.

“Go all the way,” he says.

Go all the way? Cheat on my husband, put the cocaine in my rival’s purse, and call the police?

He laughs.

“Do you see these players? They always have to make the
next move. They can’t stop in the middle, because that means accepting defeat. There comes a time when defeat is inevitable, but at least they fought until the end. We already have everything we need. There is nothing to improve. Thinking we are good or bad, fair or unfair, all that is nonsense. We know that today Geneva is covered by a cloud that might take months to go away, but sooner or later, it will leave. So go ahead and let yourself go.”

Not one word to stop me from doing something I shouldn’t?

“No. By doing what you shouldn’t, you will realize it yourself. As I said in the restaurant, the light in your soul is greater than the darkness. But for this you must go all the way to the end of the game.”

In my whole life, I don’t think that I’ve ever heard such a preposterous piece of advice. I thank him for his time, ask if I owe him anything. He says no.

Back at the newspaper, the editor asks what took me so long. I explain that because it’s a rather unorthodox topic, it took me a long time to get what I needed.

“And since it’s not all that orthodox, might we be encouraging any unlawful activity?”

Are we encouraging unlawful activity when we bombard young people with incentives for excessive consumption? Are we encouraging accidents when we advertise that new cars can reach speeds of up to 250 kilometers per hour? Are we encouraging depression and suicidal tendencies when we publish articles on successful people without explaining how they got there and make everyone else convince themselves they’re worthless?

The editor-in-chief doesn’t want to discuss this. It could be interesting for the newspaper, whose headline piece of the
day was “Chain of Happiness Raises 8 Million Francs for Asian Country.” I write a six-hundred-word article—the most space they would give me—and it’s all taken from Internet searches. I wasn’t able to use anything from my conversation with the shaman that had turned into a treatment session.

JACOB!
He’s just risen from the dead and sends me a message inviting me for coffee—as if there weren’t so many other interesting things to do in life. Where is the sophisticated wine taster? Where is the man who now holds power, the greatest aphrodisiac in the world?

But most of all, where is the teenage boyfriend I met back when anything was possible?

He married, changed, and sends a message inviting me for coffee. Couldn’t he be more creative and suggest a nudist run in Chamonix? Maybe then I’d be more interested.

I have no intention of answering. I was given the cold shoulder and humiliated by his silence for weeks on end. Does he think I’ll come running just because he gave me the honor of an invitation?

After I go to bed, I listen with headphones to one of the tapes I recorded of the Cuban shaman. When I was still pretending that I was just a journalist—and not a woman frightened by herself—I had asked if self-hypnosis (or his preferred term, “meditation”) could make someone forget about another person. I broached the subject in a way that would allow him to understand “love” as “trauma by verbal attack,” which was exactly what we were talking about at that moment.

“That is a somewhat murky area,” he replied. “Yes, we can induce relative amnesia, but since this person is associated with other facts and events, it would be practically impossible to eliminate someone completely. What’s more, forgetting is the wrong approach. You should face things head-on.”

I listen to the whole tape, and then try to distract myself, making pledges and jotting down a few more things in my calendar, but nothing works. Before I go to sleep, I send a message to Jacob accepting his invitation.

I can’t control myself, that’s my problem.

I WON’T
tell you I missed you because you won’t believe me. I won’t tell you I didn’t reply to your messages because I’m afraid of falling in love again.”

I really don’t believe any of that. But I let him continue to try to explain the unexplainable. Here we are in a regular café, nothing special, in Collonges-sous-Salève, a village on our border with France that’s located fifteen minutes from my work. The small handful of other patrons are truck drivers and workers from a nearby quarry.

I’m the only woman, except for the one working the bar, who walks from one end of it to the other, overly made-up and engaging the customers in witty banter.

“It’s been a living hell since you showed up in my life. Ever since that day in my office when you came to interview me and we exchanged intimacies.”

“Exchanged intimacies” is a figure of speech. I gave him oral sex. He did nothing to me.

“I can’t say I’m unhappy, but I’m increasingly lonely, though no one knows. Even when I’m among friends, and the atmosphere and drinks are great, the conversation is lively and I’m smiling, all of a sudden, for no reason, I can’t pay attention to the conversation. I say I have an important commitment and I leave. I know what I’m missing: you.”

It’s time to get my revenge: You don’t think you might need some marriage counseling?

“I do. But I would have to go with Marianne, and I can’t convince her. For her, philosophy explains everything. She’s noticed I’m different, but attributes it to the elections.”

The shaman was right when he said we must take things
all the way. At this moment, Jacob has just saved his wife from a serious drug-trafficking charge.

“I’ve taken on too many responsibilities and I’m not yet accustomed to it. According to her, I’ll be used to everything soon. What about you?”

What about me? What exactly do you want to know?

All my efforts to resist fell apart the moment I saw him sitting alone at a table in the corner with a Campari and soda in front of him, and he smiled as soon as he saw me enter. We’re like teenagers again, only this time we can drink alcohol without breaking any laws. I hold his icy hands—icy from cold or fear, I don’t know.

I’m fine, I say. I suggest that next time we meet earlier—daylight savings time is over and it’s getting dark fast.

He agrees and gives me a discreet kiss on the lips, anxious not to draw attention from the men around us.

“For me, one of the worst things are the beautiful sunny days this autumn. I open the curtains in my office and see people out there, some walking and holding hands without having to worry about the consequences. And I can’t show my love.”

Love? Did that Cuban shaman feel sorry for me and ask for some help from mysterious spirits?

I expected almost anything from this meeting, except a man opening his soul to me like he is doing now. My heart beats stronger and stronger—from joy, surprise. I won’t ask why this is happening.

“See, it’s not that I’m jealous of others. I just don’t understand why they can be happy and I can’t.”

He pays the bill in euros, we cross the border on foot and walk toward our cars, which are parked on the other side of the street—i.e., Switzerland.

There is no more time for displays of affection. We say
good-bye with three kisses on the cheek and each one heads toward his or her destiny.

Just like what happened at the golf club, I am unable to drive when I reach my car. I put on a cowl scarf to protect me from the cold and start to walk aimlessly around the hamlet. I pass a post office and a hairdresser. I see an open bar, but would rather walk to unwind. I have no interest in understanding what is happening. I just want it to happen.

“I open the curtains in my office and see people out there, some walking and holding hands without having to worry about the consequences. And I can’t show my love,”
he’d said.

And when I felt like no one, absolutely no one, was capable of understanding what was going on inside me—not a shaman, not a psychoanalyst, not even my husband—you materialized to explain it to me …

It’s loneliness. Even though I’m surrounded by loved ones who care about me and want only the best, it’s possible they try to help only because they feel the same thing—loneliness—and why, in a gesture of solidarity, you’ll find the phrase “I am useful, even if alone” carved in stone.

Though the brain says all is well, the soul is lost, confused, doesn’t know why life is being unfair to it. But we still wake up in the morning and take care of our children, our husband, our lover, our boss, our employees, our students, those dozens of people who make an ordinary day come to life.

And we often have a smile on our face and a word of encouragement, because no one can explain their loneliness to others, especially when we are always in good company. But this loneliness exists and eats away at the best parts of us because we must use all our energy to appear happy, even though we will never be able to deceive ourselves. But we insist, every morning, on showing only the rose that blooms,
and keep the thorny stem that hurts us and makes us bleed hidden within.

Even knowing that everyone, at some point, has felt completely and utterly alone, it is humiliating to say, “I’m lonely, I need company. I need to kill this monster that everyone thinks is as imaginary as a fairy-tale dragon, but isn’t.” But it isn’t. I wait for a pure and virtuous knight, in all his glory, to come defeat it and push it into the abyss for good, but that knight never comes.

Yet we cannot lose hope. We start doing things we don’t usually do, daring to go beyond what is fair and necessary. The thorns inside us will grow larger and more overwhelming, yet we cannot give up halfway. Everyone is looking to see the final outcome, as though life were a huge game of chess. We pretend it doesn’t matter whether we win or lose, the important thing is to compete. We root for our true feelings to stay opaque and hidden, but then …

… instead of looking for companionship, we isolate ourselves even more in order to lick our wounds in silence. Or we go out for dinner or lunch with people who have nothing to do with our lives and spend the whole time talking about things that are of no importance. We even manage to distract ourselves for a while with drink and celebration, but the dragon lives on until the people who are close to us see that something is wrong and begin to blame themselves for not making us happy. They ask what the problem is. We say that everything is fine, but it’s not …

Everything is awful. Please, leave me alone, because I have no more tears to cry or heart left to suffer. All I have is
insomnia, emptiness, and apathy, and, if you just ask yourselves, you’re feeling the same thing. But they insist that this is just a rough patch or depression because they are afraid to use the real and damning word: loneliness.

Meanwhile, we continue to relentlessly pursue the only thing that would make us happy: the knight in shining armor who will slay the dragon, pick the rose, and clip the thorns. Many claim that life is unfair. Others are happy because they believe that this is exactly what we deserve: loneliness, unhappiness. Because we have everything and they don’t.

But one day those who are blind begin to see. Those who are sad are comforted. Those who suffer are saved. The knight arrives to rescue us, and life is vindicated once again.

Still, you have to lie and cheat, because this time the circumstances are different. Who hasn’t felt the urge to drop everything and go in search of their dream? A dream is always risky, for there is a price to pay. That price is death by stoning in some countries, and in others it could be social ostracism or indifference. But there is always a price to pay. You keep lying and people pretend they still believe, but secretly they are jealous, make comments behind your back, say you’re the very worst, most threatening thing there is. You are not an adulterous man, tolerated and often even admired, but an adulterous woman, one who is sleeping with someone else and deceiving her husband, her poor husband, always so understanding and loving …

But only you know that this husband is unable to keep the loneliness at bay. Because something has been missing that even you don’t know how to pinpoint, because you love him and don’t want to lose him. But a shining knight promising adventure in distant lands is a much stronger lure than your desire for everything to remain as it is, even if at parties people stare at you and whisper among themselves that it would be better to tie a millstone around your neck and toss you overboard than let you be a terrible example.

And to make matters worse, your husband quietly puts up with everything. He doesn’t complain or make a scene. He
believes it will pass. You also know it will pass, but now it’s stronger than you.

That’s the way things go for a month, two months, a year … and everyone quietly puts up with it.

But it’s not about asking permission. You look back and see that you also used to think like these people who have become your accusers. You also used to condemn those you knew were adulterers and imagined that if you lived somewhere else, the punishment would be stoning. Until the day it happens to you. Then you come up with a million excuses for your behavior and say you have the right to be happy, even for a little while, because dragon-slaying knights exist only in fairy tales. The real dragons never die, but you still have the right, just once in your life, to live out an adult fairy tale.

Then comes the moment you tried to avoid at all costs, one that you had been putting off for so long: the moment you must decide to stay together or to separate forever.

Along with this moment, however, comes the fear of making a mistake, no matter what decision you choose. And you hope someone will make the choice for you, throw you out of the house or bed, because it is impossible to go on like this. After all, we are no longer one person, we have become two or many, each completely different. And since you’ve never been through this before, you don’t know where it will end. The fact is that now you are facing a situation that will make one person suffer, or two, or many.