and probably a certain percentage got shot, while some poor woman died in childbirth and became part of the birth statistics. Only the living die.”
The man who left the restaurant with his cell phone has come back, and the stranger standing by our table continues to show no emotion. For what seems like an eternity, no one in the restaurant speaks. At last, the stranger says, “Another minute has passed. Another hundred or so people must have died and another two hundred or so been born.”
“Exactly.”
Two more men appear at the door of the restaurant and walk over to our table. The stranger sees them and indicates with a jerk of his head that they should leave again.
“The food here may be terrible and the service appalling, but if this is the restaurant of your choice, I can do nothing about it.
“Thank you. But we’ll gladly take you up on your offer to pay the bill.”
“Of course,” he says, addressing Yao only, as if no one else were there. He puts his hand in his pocket. We all imagine that he’s about to pull out a gun, but instead he produces an entirely unthreatening business card.
“Get in touch if you ever need a job or get tired of what you’re doing now. Our property company has a large branch here in Russia, and we need people like you, people who understand that death is just a statistic.”
He hands Yao his card, they shake hands, and he returns to his table. Gradually, the restaurant comes back to life, the silence fills with talk, and we gaze in astonishment at Yao, our hero, the man who defeated the enemy without firing a single shot. Hilal has cheered up, too, and is now trying to keep up with a ridiculous conversation in which everyone appears to have developed a sudden intense interest in stuffed birds and the quality of Mongolian- Siberian vodka. The adrenaline surge brought on by fear had an instantly sobering effect on us all.
I mustn’t let this opportunity slip. I’ll ask Yao later what made him so sure of himself. Now I say, “You know, I’m very impressed by the religious faith of the Russian people. Communism spent seventy years telling them that religion was the opium of the people, but to no avail.”
“Marx clearly knew nothing about the marvels of opium,” says my editor, and everyone laughs.
I go on: “The same thing happened with the church I belong to. We killed in God’s name, we tortured in Jesus’ name, we decided that women were a threat to society and so suppressed all displays of female ingenuity, we practiced usury, murdered the innocent, and made pacts with the Devil. And yet, two thousand years later, we’re still here.”
“I hate churches,” says Hilal, taking the bait. “My least enjoyable moment of this whole trip was when you forced me to go to that church in Novosibirsk.”
“Imagine that you believe in past lives and that in one of your previous existences you had been burned at the stake by the Inquisition in the name of the faith it was trying to impose. Would you hate the Church even more then?”
She barely hesitates before responding. “No. It would still be a matter of indifference to me. Yao didn’t hate the man who came over to our table; he simply prepared himself to do battle over a principle.”
“But what if you were innocent?” my publisher interrupts. Perhaps he has brought out a book on this subject, too…
“I’m reminded of Giordano Bruno. He was respected by the Church as a learned man but was burned alive in the center of Rome itself. During the trial, he said something along the lines of: I am not afraid of the fire, but you are afraid of your verdict. A statue of him now stands in the place where he was murdered by his so-called allies. He triumphed because he was judged by mere men, not by Jesus.”
“Are you trying to justify an injustice and a crime?”
“Not at all. The murderers vanished from the map, but Giordano Bruno continues to influence the world with his ideas. His courage was rewarded. After all, a life without a cause is a life without effect.”
It is as if the conversation is being guided in the direction I want it to go.
“If you were Giordano Bruno,” I say, looking directly at Hilal now, “would you be able to forgive your executioners?”
“What are you getting at?”
“I belong to a religion that perpetrated horrors in the past. That’s what I’m getting at, because, despite everything, I still have the love of Jesus, which is far stronger than the hatred of those who declared themselves to be his successors. And I still believe in the mystery of the transubstantiation of bread and wine.”
“That’s your problem. I just want to keep well away from churches, priests, and sacraments. Music and the silent contemplation of nature are quite enough for me. But does what you’re saying have something to do with what you saw when…” She pauses to consider her words. “When you said you were going to do an exercise involving a ring of light?”
She doesn’t say that we were in bed together. For all her strong character and hasty temperament, she is trying to protect me.
“I don’t know. As I said on the train, everything that happened in the past or will happen in the future is also happening in the present. Perhaps we met because I was your executioner, you were my victim, and it’s time for me to ask your forgiveness.”
Everyone laughs, and I do, too.
“Well, be nicer to me, then,” she says. “Be a little more attentive. Say to me now, in front of everyone, the three-word sentence I long to hear.”
I know that she wants me to say “I love you.”
“I will say three three-word sentences,” I say. “One, you are protected. Two, do not worry. Three, I adore you.”
“Well, I have something to add to that. Only someone who can say ‘I love you’ is capable of saying ‘I forgive you.’ ”
Everyone applauds. We return to the Mongolian-Siberian vodka and talk about love, persecution, crimes committed in the name of truth, and the food in the restaurant. The conversation will go no further tonight. She doesn’t understand what I’m talking about, but the first, most difficult, step has been taken.
AS WE LEAVE, I ask Yao why he decided to take that line of action, thus putting everyone at risk.
“But nothing happened, did it?”
“No, but it could have. People like him aren’t used to being treated with disrespect.”
“I was always getting kicked out of places when I was younger, and I promised myself that it would never happen again once I was an adult. Besides, I didn’t treat him with disrespect; I simply confronted him in the way he wanted to be confronted. The eyes don’t lie, and he knew I wasn’t bluffing.”
“Even so, you did challenge him. We’re in a small city, and he could have felt that you were questioning his authority.”
“When we left Novosibirsk, you said something about that Aleph thing. A few days ago, I realized that the Chinese have a word for it, too: ‘qi.’ Both he and I were standing at the same energy point. I don’t want to philosophize about what might have happened, but anyone accustomed to danger knows that at any moment of his life he could be confronted by an opponent. Not an enemy, an opponent. When an opponent is sure of his power, as he was, you have to confront them or be undermined by your failure to exercise your own power. Knowing how to appreciate and honor our opponents is a far cry from what flatterers, wimps, or traitors do.”
“But you know he was—”
“It doesn’t matter what he was; what mattered was how he handled his energy. I liked his style of fighting, and he liked mine. That’s all.”
The Golden Rose
I HAVE A TERRIBLE HEADACHE after drinking all that Mongolian-Siberian vodka, and none of the pills and potions I’ve taken seem to help. It’s a bright, cloudless day, but there’s a biting wind. It may be spring, but ice still mingles with the pebbles on the shore. Despite the various layers of clothing I’ve put on, the cold is unbearable.
