"What was that song you were singing yesterday?" I asked.
"Balada para un loco" he said. "Why do you ask about it now?"
"I don't know."
But I had a reason: I knew he'd sung the song as a kind of snare. He'd made me memorize the words, just as I would memorize course work for an examination. He could have sung a song I was familiar with—but he'd chosen one I'd never heard before.
It was a trap. Later, if I heard the song played on the radio or at a club, I'd think of him, of Bilbao, and of a time in my life when autumn turned to spring. I'd recall the excitement, the adventure, and the child who was reborn out of God knows where.
That's what he was thinking. He was wise, experienced; he knew how to woo the woman he wanted.
I'm going crazy, I told myself. I must be an alcoholic, drinking so much two days in a row. He knows all the tricks. He's controlling me. leading me along with his sweetness.
"I admire the battle you are waging with your heart," he had said at the restaurant.
But he was wrong. Because I had fought with my heart and defeated it long ago. I was certainly not going to become passionate about something that was impossible. I knew my limits; I knew how much suffering I could bear.
"Say something," I demanded, as we walked back to the car.
"What?"
"Anything. Talk to me."
So he began to tell me about the visions of the Virgin Mary at Fátima. I don't know why he came up with that, but the story of the three shepherds who had spoken to the Virgin distracted me.
My heart relaxed. Yes, I know my limits, and I know how to stay in control.
We arrived at night in a fog so dense we could hardly see where we were. I could make out only a small plaza, a lamppost, some medieval houses barely illuminated by the yellow light, and a well.
"The fog!" he exclaimed.
I couldn't understand why he was so excited.
"We're in Saint-Savin," he explained.
The name meant nothing to me. But we were in France, and that in itself thrilled me.
"Why this place?" I asked.
"Because the house I want you to see is here," he answered, laughing. "Also, I promised that I would come back here on the day of the Immaculate Conception."
"Here?"
"Well, near here."
He stopped the car. When we stepped out, he took my hand, and we began to walk through the fog.
"This place became a part of my life quite unexpectedly," he said.
You too? I thought.
"When I first came here, I thought I was lost. But I wasn't—actually, I was just rediscovering it."
"You talk in riddles sometimes," I said.
"This is where I realized how much I needed you in my life."
I looked away; I couldn't understand him. "But what does that have to do with losing your way?"
"Let's find someone who'll rent us a room, because the two hotels in this village are only open during the summer. Then we'll have dinner at a good restaurant—no tension, no fear of the police, no need to think about running back to the car! And when the wine loosens our tongues, we'll talk about many things."
We both laughed. I already felt more relaxed. During the drive here, I had looked back over the wild things I'd been thinking. And as we crossed over the top of the mountains that separate France from Spain, I'd asked God to cleanse my soul of tension and fear.
I was tired of playing the child and acting the way many of my friends did—the ones who are afraid that love is impossible without even knowing what love is. If I stayed like that, I would miss out on everything good that these few days with him might offer.
Careful, I thought. Watch out for the break in the dam. If that break occurs, nothing in the world will be able to stop it.
"May the Virgin protect us from here on," he said.
I remained silent.
"Why didn't you say 'amen'?" he asked.
"Because I don't think that's important anymore. There was a time when religion was a part of my life, but that time has passed."
He turned around and began to walk back to the car. "I still pray," I went on. "I prayed as we were crossing the Pyrenees. But it's something automatic, and I'm not even sure I still believe in it."
"Why?"
"Because I've suffered, and God didn't listen to my prayers. Because many times in my life I have tried to love with all my heart, and my love has wound up being trampled or betrayed. If God is love, he should have cared more about my feelings.
"God is love. But the one who understands this best is the Virgin."
I burst out laughing. When I turned to look at him, I saw that he was serious—this was not a joke.
"The Virgin understands the mystery of total surrender," he went on. "And having loved and suffered, she freed us from pain. In the same way that Jesus freed us from sin."
"Jesus was the son of God. They say that the Virgin was merely a woman who happened to receive him into her womb," I said. I was trying to make up for my laughter and let him know that I respected his faith.
He opened the car door and took out our bags. When I tried to take mine from his hand, he smiled. "Let me carry your bag." laul
No one's done that for me in a long time, I thought.
We knocked on the door of the first house, but the woman said she didn't rent rooms. At the second door, no one answered. At the third, a kind old man greeted us—but when we looked at the room, there was only a double bed. I turned it down.
"Maybe we should head for a larger city," I suggested as we left.
"We'll find a room," he said. "Do you know the exercise of the Other? It's part of a story written a hundred years ago, whose author…"
"Forget the author, and tell me the story," I interrupted. We were once more walking along the only street in Saint-Savin.
A man runs into an old friend who had somehow never been able to make it in life. "I should give him some money," he thinks. But instead he learns that his old friend has grown rich and is actually seeking him out to repay the debts he had run up over the years.
They go to a bar they used to frequent together, and the friend buys drinks for everyone there. When they ask him how he became so successful, he answers that until only a jew days ago, he had been living the role of the "Other."
"What is the Other?" they ask.
"The Other is the one who taught me what I should be like, but not what I am. The Other believes that it is our obligation to spend our entire life thinking about how to get our hands on as much money as possible so that we will not die of hunger when we are old. So we think so much about money and our plans for acquiring it that we discover we are alive only when our days on earth are practically done. And then it's too late."
"And you? Who are you?"
"I am just like everyone else who listens to their heart: a person who is enchanted by the mystery of life. Who is open to miracles, who experiences joy and enthusiasm for what they do. It's just that the Other, afraid of disappointment, kept me from taking action."
"But there is suffering in life," one of the listeners said.
"And there are defeats. No one can avoid them. But it's better to lose some of the battles in the struggle for your dreams than to be defeated without ever even knowing what you're fighting for."
"That's it?" another listener asked.
"Yes, that's it. When I learned this, I resolved to become the person I had always wanted to be. The Other stood there in the corner of my room, watching me, but I will never let the Other into myself again even though it has already tried to frighten me, warning me that it's risky not to think about the future.