Paulo Coelho - Aleph

And what seemed like paranoia becomes a reality. One of the men at the other table gets up and comes over to us.

He doesn’t say a word. He merely looks at the young men we invited to supper, and the conversation stops. Everyone seems surprised to see him there. My publisher, slightly befuddled by the vodka and by the distribution problem in Moscow, asks something in Russian.

“No, I’m not his father,” answers the stranger, “but I don’t know if he’s old enough to drink like that and to say things that are completely untrue.”

His English is perfect, and he speaks with the rather affected accent of someone who has studied at one of the most expensive schools in England. His voice is cold and neutral, without a hint of emotion or aggression.

Only a fool makes threats, and only another fool feels threatened. When someone uses that tone, though, it spells danger, because subjects, verbs, and predicates will, if necessary, be transformed into actions.

“You chose the wrong restaurant,” he says. “The food here is terrible, and the service even worse. Perhaps you’d better find somewhere else to eat. I’ll pay the bill.”

The food really isn’t very good, the drinks are clearly as bad as we were warned they were, and the service is appalling. However, the man isn’t concerned about our health and well-being: we are being thrown out.

“Let’s go,” says the young reader.

Before we can do anything, he and his friends have vanished. The man seems pleased and turns to go back to his own table. For a fraction of a second, the tension dissolves.

“Well, I’m really enjoying the food and have no intention of going to another restaurant.”

Yao spoke in a voice equally devoid of emotion or menace. There was no need for him to say anything; the conflict was over. My readers had been the only ones causing the problem. We could simply have finished our meal in peace. The man turns to face him. One of his colleagues picks up his cell phone and goes outside. The restaurant falls silent.

Yao and the stranger stare at each other.

“The food here can give you food poisoning and kill you almost instantly,” the stranger says.

Yao remains seated. “According to statistics, in the three minutes that we’ve been talking, three hundred and twenty people in the world have died and another six hundred and fifty have been born. That’s life. I don’t know how many died of food poisoning, but some must have. Others died after a long illness, some suffered an accident, 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. Bon appétit. ”

“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.”