She walked to the window, and he watched her naked silhouette against the sun outside. No matter how annoying she tried to be, he felt a deep respect for her. He left wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to go to a bazaar—it would be difficult to access the reclusive world of the Sufis, no matter how much he’d read about them.
And Karla stood in the window thinking: Why hadn’t he invited her to go with him? After all, they had six more days there, the bazaar wasn’t about to close, and coming into contact with a tradition like Sufism must be an unforgettable experience.
They were, yet again, traveling in opposite directions, no matter how hard they tried to reach one another.
Karla found most of the bus group downstairs, and everyone invited her to join them on a special excursion—to the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and the archaeological museums. There was no lack of unique tourist attractions—for example, a gigantic cistern, with twelve rows of columns (a total of 336, someone commented) that in the past had served to store the water supply destined for Byzantine emperors. But she told them she had other plans, and no one asked any questions—just as no one asked any questions about her having spent the night in the same room as the Brazilian. They all ate breakfast together and each group set off for its destinations.
Karla’s destination, in theory, wasn’t in any guidebook. She walked to the edge of the Bosphorus and stood staring at the red bridge dividing Europe from Asia. A bridge! Connecting two such different, distant continents! She smoked two, three cigarettes, lowered the straps a bit on the nondescript top she was wearing, getting a little sun until three or four men came up and tried to start a conversation—and soon she was forced to pull her top back over her shoulders and move on.
Ever since boredom had set in among everyone on the trip, Karla had begun to face herself and her favorite question: Why do I want to go to Nepal? I was never one to believe much in these things; my Lutheran upbringing is stronger than any incense, mantras, sitting postures, meditation, sacred books, or esoteric sects. She didn’t want to go to Nepal to find answers to these things—she already had them, and she was tired of the need to make a constant show of her strength, her courage, an unwaning aggressivity, her uncontrollable competitiveness. All she’d ever done in her life was outrun others, but she would never be able to outrun herself. She had gotten used to who she was, despite her young age.
She wanted everything to change, but was incapable of changing herself.
She would have liked to say many more things to the Brazilian than she had, make him believe that with each passing day she was becoming an ever more important part of his life. She felt a morbid pleasure in knowing that Paulo had left feeling guilty for the awful sexual experience of the night before and the fact that she had done nothing to reassure him with sweet words: “Don’t worry, my love [my love!], the first time is always like that, we’re just getting to know each other.”
But circumstances didn’t allow her to get any closer to him, or
anyone else. Either because she lacked patience with others, or because others weren’t much help, weren’t trying to accept her as she was—the first thing they did was keep their distance, incapable of a bit of effort to break through the icy wall she was always hiding behind.
* * *
—
She was still capable of love, without expecting anything—changes, gratitude—in return.
And she had loved many times in her life. Whenever this had happened, love’s energy transformed the universe around her. Whenever this energy appears, it always manages to do its work—but things were different with her, she couldn’t stand to love for very long.
She yearned to be a vase where Love would come and leave its flowers and its fruit. Where the living water would preserve them as though they’d just been picked, ready to be delivered to whoever had the courage—yes, “courage” was the word—to seize them. But no one like that ever showed up—or, more accurately, people would no sooner show up than they would flee in fear because she was no vase but a storm of lightning, wind, and thunder, a force of nature that could never be tamed or merely channeled to stir windmills, light up cities, sow terror.
She wished they could see her for her beauty, but all anyone ever saw was the hurricane, and they never sought shelter from it. They preferred to flee to safer ground.
Her thoughts turned again to her family—though they were practicing Lutherans, they’d never sought to impose their beliefs. Once or twice, when she was a child, she’d been spanked, which was normal and hardly traumatic—everyone who lived in her city had been through the same thing.
She had excelled in school, was terrific at sports, was the most beautiful of all her classmates (and knew it), and had never had any trouble finding a boyfriend. Even so, she preferred her solitude.
Solitude. Her greatest pleasure. The origin of her dream of traveling to Nepal was to find a cave and remain there alone until her teeth fell out, her hair became white, the local villagers stopped bringing her food; spending her final sunset looking at the snow, nothing more.
Alone.
Her school friends envied her easygoing way with the boys, her college friends admired her for her independence and for knowing exactly what she wanted, and the people at work were always stunned and surprised by her creativity—in the end, she was the perfect woman, queen of the mountain, the lioness of the jungle, savior of lost souls. She had received marriage proposals since the day she turned eighteen, from all sorts of people—but above all, rich men, who added to their proposals a series of collateral benefits, such as gifts of jewelry (two diamond rings—of the many she’d received—were enough to pay for her ticket to Nepal and leave plenty to live on for a long time to come).
Anytime she received an expensive gift, she warned her suitor that she would not return it in the event they separated. The men would chuckle; they were used to being challenged by other men, more powerful than she, and didn’t take her seriously. They ended up falling into the abyss she’d created around herself, and it was then they realized that in reality they’d never gotten close to the fascinating girl, but stood on a fragile bridge made of wire unable to support the weight of the same things day after day. Another week, a month, and the inevitable moment of separation would arrive, and it was never necessary to say a thing—none of them had the courage to ask for anything back.
Until, three days into their relationship, as they ate breakfast in their fancy hotel room in Paris, where they’d gone for a book launch (no one refused a trip to Paris, it was one of her mottoes), one of these suitors told her something she would never forget:
“You’re depressed.”
She laughed. They barely knew each other, they’d just had dinner at an excellent restaurant, drunk the best wine and the finest champagne, and that was what he had to tell her?
“Don’t laugh. You suffer from depression. Or anxiety. Or both. But the fact of the matter is that, as you get older, you’ll find yourself at the point of no return. The earlier you accept this the better.”
She felt like telling him just how much luck she’d had in her life; she had a wonderful family, a job she liked, the admiration of others—but something else came out.
“Why would you say a thing like that?”
Her voice was full of scorn. The man, whose name she made a point of forgetting that same afternoon, didn’t want to talk about it—psychiatry was his profession, and he wasn’t there to work.
She insisted. Perhaps, deep down, he wanted to talk about it—at this point, she had the impression he was dreaming about spending the rest of his life at her side.