Free Adultery by Paulo Coelho Page A

It’s a quarter to six and people are celebrating. Contrary to my fevered imaginings, none of the elected candidates will be holding a reception, and so I still won’t get a chance to go to the house of Jacob and Marianne König.
    When I arrive, the first results are just coming in. More than forty-five percent of the electorate voted, which is a record. A female candidate came out on top, and Jacob came in an honorable third, which will give him the right to enter government if his party chooses him.
    The main hall is decorated with yellow and green balloons. People have already started to drink, and some make the victory sign, perhaps hoping that tomorrow their picture will appear in the newspaper. But the photographers haven’t yet arrived; after all, it’s Sunday, and the weather is lovely.
    Jacob spots me at once and immediately looks the other way, searching for someone with whom he can talk about matters that must, I imagine, be extraordinarily dull.
    I need to work, or at least pretend to. I take out my digital recorder, a notebook, and a felt-tip pen. I walk back and forth, collecting statements such as “Now we can get that law on immigration through” or “The voters realize that they made the wrong choice last time and now they’ve voted me back in.”
    The winner says: “It was the female vote that really counted for me.”
    Léman Bleu, the local television station, has set up a studio in the main room, and its female political presenter—a vague object of desire for nine out of ten men there—is asking intelligent questions but receiving only the sound bites approved by the political aides.
    At one point, Jacob König is called for an interview, and I try to get closer to hear what he’s saying. Someone blocks my path.
    “Hello, I’m Madame König. Jacob has told me a lot about you.”
    What a woman! Blond, blue-eyed, and wearing an elegant black cardigan with a red Hermès scarf, although that’s the only famous brand name I can spot. Her other clothes must have been made exclusively by the best couturier in Paris, whose name must be kept secret in order to avoid copycat designs.
    I try not to look surprised.
    Jacob told you about me? I did interview him, and, a few days later, we had lunch together. I know journalists aren’t supposed to have an opinion about their interviewees, but I think your husband is a brave man to have gone public about that blackmail attempt.
    Marianne—or Mme König, as she introduced herself—pretends to be interested in what I’m saying. She must know more than she is letting on. Would Jacob have told her what happened during our meeting in the Parc des Eaux-Vives? Should I mention it?
    The interview with Léman Bleu has just begun, but she doesn’t seem to be interested in listening to what her husband says. She probably knows it all by heart, anyway. She doubtless chose his pale blue shirt and gray tie, his beautifullycut flannel jacket, and the watch he’s wearing—not too expensive, to avoid appearing ostentatious, but not too cheap, either, to show a proper respect for one of the country’s main industries.
    I ask if she has anything to say. She replies that as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Geneva, she would be delighted to comment, but as the wife of a reelected politician, that would be absurd.
    It seems to me that she’s provoking me, and so I decide to pay her back in kind.
    I say I admire her dignity. She knew her husband had had an affair with the wife of a friend and yet she didn’t create a scandal. Not even when it appeared in the newspapers just before the elections.
    “Of course not. When it’s a matter of consensual sex without love, I’m in favor of open relationships.”
    Is she insinuating something? I can’t quite look into the blue beacons that are her eyes. I notice only that she doesn’t wear much makeup. She doesn’t need to.
    “In fact,” she says, “it was my idea to get an anonymous informer to