“Switzerland? Where they only know about banks, watches, cows, and chocolate?”
“And laboratories,” Karla added. LSD was originally discovered to cure some disease whose name she couldn’t remember at the moment. Until its synthesizer—or inventor, as we’d say—decided, years later, to try a bit of the product that was already making millions for pharmaceutical companies around the world. He ingested a tiny amount and decided to ride home on his bike (the country was in the midst of a war, and even in a neutral Switzerland of chocolates, watches, and cows, gasoline was rationed), when he noticed everything looked different.
Karla noticed a change in Marie. She needed to get on with her story.
“Well then, this Swiss man—you’re probably asking how I know this whole story, but the truth is there was a long article on this recently in a magazine I read at the library—noticed that he couldn’t mount his bike…He asked one of his assistants to take him home, but then he thought perhaps it was better he go to a hospital instead; he must be having a heart attack. Then suddenly, and I’m using his words, or close to them, I can’t remember them exactly: ‘I began seeing colors I’d never seen, shapes I’d never noticed which wouldn’t disappear even after I closed my eyes. It was like standing before a giant kaleidoscope opening and closing in circles and spirals, bursting into colorful fountains, flowing as though rivers of joy.’
“Are you paying attention?”
“More or less. I’m not sure I’m taking it all in, there’s a lot of information: Switzerland, bicycles, the war, a kaleidoscope—could you simplify a bit?”
Red flag. Karla ordered more tea.
“Try to concentrate. Look at me and listen to what I’m telling you. Concentrate. This awful feeling will be gone soon. I need to make a confession: I only gave you half the dose I used to take when I used LSD.”
That seemed to relieve Marie. The waiter brought the tea Karla had ordered. She made her companion drink it, paid the bill, and they went out once again into the cold air.
“And what about the Swiss man?”
It was a good sign that Marie remembered where they’d left off. Karla asked herself if she’d be able to buy a sedative if the situation got worse—if the gates of hell replaced the gates of heaven.
“The drug you took was sold openly and freely at pharmacies in the United States for more than fifteen years, and you know that there they’re strict about these things. It even made the cover of Time magazine for its benefits in treating psychiatric patients and alcoholism. Then it was made illegal because every now and then it had unexpected side effects.”
“Such as…”
“We’ll talk about those later. Now, try to move away from the gates of hell in front of you and open the door to heaven. Enjoy it. Don’t be afraid, I’m right here and I know what I’m talking about. You should only feel like this for about another two hours at the most.”
“I will close the gates of hell, I will open the gates of heaven,” Marie said. “But I know that, even if I can control my fear, you can’t control yours. I can see your aura. I can read your thoughts.”
“You’re right. But then you must also have read that you don’t run the least risk of dying from this, unless you decide to climb some building and see if, finally, you’re able to fly.”
“I understand. Besides, I think it’s begun to wear off.”
And, knowing she wouldn’t die and that the girl at her side would never take her to the top of some building, Marie’s speeding heart slowed a bit, and she decided to enjoy the two hours she had left.
All of her senses—touch, sight, hearing smell, taste—became one, as if she were capable of experiencing everything at the same time. The lights outside began to lose their intensity, but even so she could still see the auras of other people. She knew who was suffering, who had found happiness, who would die shortly.
Everything was new. Not only because she was in Istanbul, but because she was in the presence of a Marie she did not know, much more intense and much older than the Marie she had become accustomed to living with for all those years.
The clouds in the sky were growing heavier, warning of a possible storm, and little by little their shapes began to lose the meaning that earlier had been so clear. But she knew that clouds have their own code for speaking with humans, and if she kept an eye on the heavens in the coming days, she would end up learning what they were trying to tell her.
She wondered whether or not to tell her father why she’d chosen to go to Nepal, but it would be silly not to continue on after they’d made it this far. They would discover things that later, with the limitations that came with age, would be more difficult.
How did she know so little about herself? Some unpleasant childhood experiences came back to her, and they now no longer seemed so unpleasant, merely experiences. She had given so much importance to them for so long—why?
But ultimately she didn’t need an answer, she could feel these things were resolving themselves. Every now and then, as she looked at what appeared to be spirits circling around her, the gateway to hell passed before her, but she was intent on not opening it.
At that moment, she basked in a world without questions or answers. Without doubts or convictions. She basked in a world that was one with her. She basked in a world without time, where past and future were merely the present, nothing more. At times, her spirit showed itself to be very old; at other times it seemed like a child, making the most of all that was new, looking at her fingers and noticing how they were separate and the way they moved. She watched the girl at her side, happy that she was now much calmer, her light had returned, she really was in love. The question she’d asked earlier made absolutely no sense, we always know when we’re in love.
When they came to the door of their hotel, after nearly two hours walking, she knew the Dutch girl had decided they would wander the city so the effects of the drug could pass before they met up with the others. Marie heard the first peal of thunder. She knew that God was talking to her, telling her to come back to the world now, there was much work to be done. She ought to help her father, who dreamed of being a writer but had never committed a single word to paper that wasn’t part of a presentation, or a study, or an article.
She needed to help her father as he’d helped her—that was his request. He had many years ahead of him. And one day she would marry, something that had never crossed her mind, and that now she considered the final step in a life without rules or limits.
One day she would marry and her father would need to be content with his own life, doing something he liked to do. She loved her mother very much and didn’t blame her for the divorce, but she sincerely wanted her father to find someone with whom to share the steps we all take on this sacred earth.
At that moment, she understood why the drug had been outlawed; the world could only work without it. If it were legal, people would only retreat deeper into themselves, as though they were billions of monks meditating all at the same time in their interior caves, indifferent to the agony and glory of others. Cars would stop working. Planes would never again take off. There would be no seed or harvest—only awe and ecstasy. In no time, humanity would be swept from the earth by that which in principle could be a purifying breeze but had instead become a gale of collective annihilation.
She was in the world, she belonged to it, and she ought to follow the order God had given her with his thunderous voice—work, help her father, fight against the wrongs she witnessed, engage with others in the daily battles they were fighting.
This was her mission. And she would see it through. She had had her first and last LSD trip, and she was glad it was over.