Adultery(72)

I see the grass in front of me. The thing I had so yearned for before—reaching solid ground—has now turned into the end of something.

Of what, exactly?

My feet hit the ground. I run a little, and the instructor controls the paraglider. Then he comes up to me and loosens the chains. He looks at me. I gaze at the sky. All I can see are other colorful paragliders, approaching where I am.

I realize that I am crying.

“Are you all right?”

I nod yes. I don’t know if he understands what I experienced up there.

Yes, he understands. He says that once a year he flies with someone who has the same reaction as me.

“When I ask what it is, they aren’t able to explain it. The same thing happens to my friends; some people go into a state of shock and they only recover when their feet touch the ground.”

It’s exactly the opposite. But I don’t feel like explaining anything.

I thank him for his comforting words. I would like to explain that I never wanted what I experienced up there to end. But it’s over, and I have no obligation to sit here explaining anything to anyone. I walk away to sit on one of the park benches and wait for my husband.

I can’t stop crying. He lands, approaches me with a big grin, and says it was a fantastic experience. I keep crying. He hugs me, says it’s all over now, and that he shouldn’t have made me do something I didn’t want to.

It’s not that at all, I say. Just leave me alone, please. I’ll be fine in a little while.

Someone from the support team comes to collect our outfits and special shoes and hands us our coats. I do everything automatically, but my every move brings me back to a different world, the one we call the “real” world, the one where I don’t want to be at all.

But I have no choice. The only thing I can do is ask my husband to leave me alone for a while. He asks if we should go back to the hotel because it’s cold. No, I’m fine right here.

I sit there for half an hour, crying. Tears of bliss that wash my soul. Finally, I realize that it is time to return to the world for good.

I get up. We go to the hotel, get our car, and my husband drives back to Geneva. The radio is on so no one feels compelled to talk. I gradually begin to get a terrible headache, but I know what it is: my blood returning to parts that were blocked by emotions that are finally beginning to dissolve. The moment of release is accompanied by pain, but it’s always been that way.

He doesn’t need to explain what he said yesterday. I don’t need to explain what I felt today.

The world is perfect.





IN JUST one hour the year will come to an end. The city decided on significant spending cuts for Geneva’s traditional New Year’s Eve celebrations, so we will have fewer fireworks. It’s just as well; I’ve seen fireworks my whole life and they no longer give me the same thrill as they did when I was a child.

I cannot say I am going to miss these past 365 days. The wind blew, lightning struck, and the sea nearly capsized my boat, but in the end I managed to cross the ocean and reach dry land.

Dry land? No relationship should go off in search of that. What kills a relationship between two people is precisely the lack of challenge, the feeling that nothing is new anymore. We need to continue to be a surprise for each other.

It all begins with a big party. Friends come out, the celebrant says things he’s repeated at hundreds of weddings, like that idea of building a house on rock, and not on sand. The guests throw rice; we throw the bouquet. The single women secretly envy us, and the married women know we are starting on a path that is not at all like what we’ve read about in fairy tales.

And then reality gradually begins to set in, but we don’t accept it. We want our partner to remain the person we met at the altar and with whom we exchanged rings. As if we could stop time.

We cannot. We should not. Wisdom and experience don’t change the man. Time doesn’t change the man. The only thing that changes us is love. While I was in the air, I understood that my love for life, for the universe, was more powerful than anything.





I REMEMBER a sermon written by a young unknown nineteenth-century pastor analyzing the Epistle of Saint Paul to the Corinthians and the various sides that Love reveals as it grows. He tells us that many of the spiritual texts we see today are addressed to only one part of man.

They offer Peace, but do not speak of Life.

They discuss Faith, but forget Love.

They tell us about Justice, and do not mention Revelation, like the one I had when I jumped from the precipice in Interlaken and the one that got me out of the black hole I had dug in my soul.