Adultery(70)

Instructions. As if we were now familiar with all of this, when the most they had the patience to explain was that the risk lies exactly in wanting to stop in the middle. And that, when we reach the ground, we should keep walking until we feel our feet firmly fixed.

My dream: feet on the ground. I go to my husband and ask him to go last, then he’ll have time to see what happens to me.

“Want to bring the camera?” asks the instructor.

The camera can be attached to an aluminum rod approximately two feet long. No, I do not. For starters, I’m not doing this to show other people. And even if I can overcome my panic, I’d be more worried about filming than admiring the scenery. I learned that with my dad when I was a teenager: we hiked the Matterhorn and I stopped every minute to take pictures until he fumed: “Do you think all this beauty and grandeur can fit in a little square of film? Record things in your heart. It’s more important than trying to show people what you’re experiencing.”

My flight partner, in all his wisdom of twenty-one years, begins attaching ropes to my body with big aluminum clips. The chair is attached to the glider; I will go in front, he in the back. I can still give up, but that’s no longer me. I am completely unresponsive.

The twenty-one-year-old veteran and the ringleader trade opinions about the wind as we get into position.

He also fastens himself to the chair. I can feel his breath on the back of my head. I look behind me and I don’t like what I see: a row of colored pieces of fabric stretches across the white snowy ground, each with a person tied to it. At the end of the row is my husband, also wearing a bicycle helmet. I guess he had no choice and will jump two or three minutes after me.

“We’re ready. Start running.”

I don’t move.

“Let’s go. Start running.”

I explain that I don’t want to keep twirling around in the sky. Let’s go down gently. Five minutes of flight is good for me.

“You can let me know while we’re flying. But, please, there’s a line. We have to jump now.”

As I no longer have free will, I follow orders. I start running toward the void.

“Faster.”

I go faster, my boots kicking snow in all directions. Actually, it’s not me who is running, but a robot who obeys voice commands. I start to scream—not from fear or excitement, but from instinct. I’ve gone back to being a cave woman, like the Cuban shaman said. We’re afraid of spiders and insects, and we scream in situations like this. We’ve always screamed.

Suddenly my feet lift off the ground, and I hold on to the belts securing me to the chair with all my might. I stop screaming. The instructor keeps running for a few more seconds and then immediately we’re no longer going in a straight line. The wind is controlling our lives.



I don’t open my eyes that first minute—I don’t want a concept of height, the mountains, the danger. I try to imagine that I’m at home in the kitchen, telling the kids a story about something that happened during our trip; maybe about the town, or maybe about the hotel room. I can’t tell them their father drank so much he fell down when we were headed back to the hotel. I can’t say I took a risk and went flying, because they’ll want to do it, too. Or, worse, they might try to fly alone and throw themselves from the top floor of our house.

Then I realize I’m being stupid; why be here with my eyes closed? No one made me jump. “I’ve been here for ten years and have never seen a single accident,” said the concierge.

I open my eyes.

And what I see, what I feel, is something I will never be able to accurately describe. Down below is the valley linking the two lakes, and the town between them. I’m flying, free in space and silence as we follow the wind, sailing in circles. The mountains surrounding us no longer seem so high or threatening, but friendly, dressed in white, with the sun glistening all around.

My hands relax, I let go of the straps, and I open my arms like a bird. The man behind me must have realized that I’m a different person. Instead of continuing down, he starts to rise, using invisible currents of warm air in what once seemed like a homogeneous atmosphere.

Ahead of us is an eagle, sailing the same ocean and effortlessly using its wings to control its mysterious flight. Where does it want to go? Is it just having fun, enjoying life and the beauty all around it?

It feels like I’m communicating with the eagle by telepathy. The flight instructor follows it, our guide. Show us where we need to go to climb increasingly skyward—to fly forever. I feel the same thing I felt that day in Nyon when I imagined running until my body couldn’t run anymore.