Adultery(42)

“Your problem is with the night,” he says.

Yes, that’s my problem. Why?

“At night, simply because it is night, we are able to revive our childhood terrors: the fear of being alone, the fear of the unknown. But if we can defeat these ghosts, we will easily defeat the ones that appear during the day. We will not fear the darkness because we are partners of the light.”

I feel like I’m sitting with a schoolteacher who is explaining the obvious. Could I go to your house to do a …

“… an exorcism?”

That hadn’t occurred to me, but it is exactly what I need.

“There is no need. I see a lot of darkness in you, but also a lot of light. And in this case, I’m sure that in the end the light will overcome.”

I’m on the verge of tears. The man is actually delving into my soul, and I can’t explain exactly how.

“Let yourself get carried away by the night from time to time. Look up at the stars and try to get drunk on the sense of infinity. The night, with all its charms, is also a path to enlightenment. Just as a dark well has thirst-quenching water at its bottom, the night, whose mystery brings us closer to the mystery of God, has a flame capable of enkindling our soul hidden in its shadows.”

We talk for almost two hours. He insists I need nothing more than to let myself be carried away—and that even my greatest fears are unfounded. I explain my desire for revenge. He listens without commenting or judging a single word. The longer we speak, the better I begin to feel.

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?