Aleph

Aleph Paulo Coelho Another stunning novel by the author of The Alchemist. Aleph marks a return to Paulo Coelho’s beginnings. In a frank and surprising personal story, one of the world’s most beloved authors embarks on a remarkable and transformative journey of self-discovery. Facing a grave crisis of faith, and seeking a path of spiritual renewal and growth, Paulo decides to start over: to travel, to experiment, to reconnect with people and the world. On this journey through Europe, Africa, and Asia, he will again meet Hilalthe woman he loved 500 years beforean encounter that will initiate a mystical voyage through time and space, through past and present, in search of himself. Aleph is an encounter with our fears and our sins; a search for love and forgiveness, and the courage to confront the inevitable challenges of life. Paulo Coelho Aleph Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa Dedication For J. who keeps me walking, S. J. who continues to protect me, Hilal, for her words of forgiveness in the church in Novosibirsk. O Mary, conceived without sin, pray for those who turn to you. Amen. A certain nobleman went into a far country to receive for himself a kingdom, and to return. Luke 19:12 Epigraph The Aleph was about two to three centimetres in diameter, but all of cosmic space was there, with no diminution in size. Each thing was infinite, because I could clearly see it from every point on the universe. Jorge Luis Borges, ‘The Aleph’ Thou knowest all – I cannot see. I trust I shall not live in vain, I know that we shall meet again In some divine eternity. Oscar Wilde, ‘The True Knowledge’ Contents Cover (#uc187f2cf-e703-537e-ab88-f70c4eeb1196) Title Page (#u51a3a933-b2d9-59fc-a1cb-05e3ca83366b) Dedication Epigraph King of My Kingdom Chinese Bamboo The Stranger’s Lantern If a Cold Wind Blows Sharing Souls 9,288 Hilal’s Eyes The Ipatiev House The Aleph Dreamers Can Never Be Tamed Like Tears in the Rain The Chicago of Siberia The Path to Peace The Ring of Fire Believe Even When No One Else Believes in You Tea Leaves The Fifth Woman Ad extirpanda Neutralising Energy without Moving a Muscle The Golden Rose The Eagle of Baikal Fear of Fear The City The Telephone Call The Soul of Turkey Moscow, 1 June 2006 Author’s note Copyright About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo) King of My Kingdom Oh no, not another ritual! Not another invocation intended to make the invisible forces manifest in the visible world! What has that got to do with the world we live in today? Graduates leave university and can’t find a job. Old people reach retirement and have almost nothing to live on. Grown-ups have no time to dream, struggling from nine to five to support their family and pay for their children’s education, always bumping up against the thing we all know as ‘harsh reality’. The world has never been as divided as it is now, what with religious wars, genocides, a lack of respect for the planet, economic crises, depression, poverty, with everyone wanting instant solutions to at least some of the world’s problems or their own. And things only look bleaker as we head into the future. What am I doing here, trying to make my way in a spiritual tradition whose roots are in the remote past, far from all the challenges of the present moment? Along with J., whom I call my Master, although I’m beginning to have doubts about that, I am walking towards the sacred oak tree, which, for more than five hundred years, has stood there impassively contemplating humanity’s woes, its one concern being to surrender its leaves in winter and recover them in spring. I can’t stand to write any more about my relationship with J., my guide in the Tradition. I have dozens of diaries full of notes of our conversations, which I never bother to re-read. Since our first meeting in Amsterdam, in 1982, I have learned and unlearned how to live hundreds of times. Whenever J. teaches me something new, I think that perhaps this will be the last step required to reach the top of the mountain, the note that justifies a whole symphony, the word that sums up an entire book. I go through a period of euphoria, which gradually dissipates. Some things stay for ever, but most of the exercises, practices and teachings end up disappearing down a black hole. Or so it seems. The ground is wet. It occurs to me that my trainers, meticulously washed two days before, will soon be covered in mud again, however carefully I tread. My search for wisdom, peace of mind and an awareness of realities visible and invisible has become routine and pointless. I began my apprenticeship in magic when I was twenty-two. I followed various paths, walked along the very edge of the abyss for many years, slipped and fell, gave up and started all over again. I imagined that, by the time I reached the age of fifty-nine, I would be close to paradise and to the absolute peace I thought I could see in the smiles of Buddhist monks. In fact, I seem to be further from achieving that than ever. I’m not at peace; now and then I go through periods of inner conflict that can persist for months; and the times when I immerse myself in some magical reality last only seconds, just long enough to know that another world exists and long enough to leave me frustrated because I can’t absorb everything I learn. We arrive. When the ritual is over, I’ll have a serious talk with him. We both place our hands on the trunk of the sacred oak. J. says a Sufi prayer: ‘O God, when I listen to the voices of animals, the sounds of trees, the murmurings of water, the singing of birds, the whistling of the wind or the boom of thunder, I see in them evidence of Your unity; I feel that You are supreme power, omniscience, supreme knowledge and supreme justice. ‘I recognise You, O God, in the trials I am going through. May Your pleasure be my pleasure too. May I be Your joy, the joy that a Father feels for a son. And may I think of You calmly and with determination, even when I find it hard to say I love You.’ Usually, at this point, I would feel – for only a fraction of a second, but that’s always enough – the One Presence that moves the Sun and the Earth and ensures that the stars remain in their places. But I don’t feel like talking to the Universe today, I just want the man at my side to give me the answers I need. He removes his hands from the tree trunk, and I do the same. He smiles at me, and I return his smile. We make our way, in silence, unhurriedly, back to my house, where we sit on the verandah and drink coffee, still without talking. I look at the huge tree in the middle of my garden, with a ribbon tied round its trunk, placed there after a dream I had. I am in the hamlet of Saint Martin, in the French Pyrenees, in a house I now regret having bought, because it has ended up owning me, demanding my presence whenever possible, because it needs someone to look after it, to keep its energy alive. ‘I can’t evolve any further,’ I say, falling, as always, into the trap of being the first to speak. ‘I think I’ve reached my limit.’ ‘That’s funny. I’ve been trying all my life to find out what my limits are and have never reached them yet. But then my universe doesn’t really help, it keeps expanding and won’t allow me to know it entirely,’ says J. provocatively. He’s being ironic, but I keep talking. ‘Why did you come here today? To try and convince me that I’m wrong, as usual? You can say what you like, but words won’t change anything. I’m not happy.’ ‘That’s exactly why I came. I’ve been aware of what’s been going on for some time now, but there is always a right moment to act,’ says J., picking up a pear from the table and turning it over in his hands. ‘If we had spoken before, you would not have been ripe. If we were to talk later, you would have rotted.’ He bites into the pear, savouring the taste. ‘Perfect. The right moment.’ ‘I’m filled with doubt, especially about my faith,’ I say. ‘Good. It’s doubt that drives a man onward.’ The usual apt responses and images, but they’re not working today. ‘I’m going to tell you what you feel,’ J. says. ‘You feel that nothing you have learned has put down roots, that while you’re capable of entering the magical universe, you cannot remain submerged in it, you feel that all of this may be nothing but a fantasy dreamed up by people to fend off their fear of death.’ My questions go deeper than that; they are doubts about my faith. I have only one certainty: there exists a parallel spiritual universe that impinges on the world in which we live. Apart from that, everything else seems absurd to me – sacred books, revelations, guides, manuals, ceremonies … And, what is worse, they appear to have no lasting effects. ‘I’m going to tell you what I once felt,’ J. adds. ‘When I was young, I was dazzled by all the things life could offer me. I thought I was capable of achieving all of them. When I got married, I had to choose just one path, because I needed to support the woman I love and my children. When I was forty-five and a highly successful executive, I saw my children grow up and leave home, and I thought that, from then on, everything would be a mere repetition of what I had already experienced. That was when my spiritual search began. I’m a disciplined man and I put all my energies into that. I went through periods of enthusiasm and unbelief, until I reached the stage you are at now.’ ‘Look, J., despite all my efforts, I still can’t honestly say that I feel closer to God and to myself,’ I tell him, with barely concealed exasperation. ‘That’s because, like everyone else on the planet, you believed that time would teach you to grow closer to God. But time doesn’t teach; it merely brings us a sense of weariness and of growing older.’ The oak tree in my garden appears to be looking at me now. It must be more than four hundred years old, and the only thing it has learned is to stay in one place. ‘Why did we go and perform that ritual around that other oak tree? How does that help us become better human beings?’ ‘Precisely because most people don’t perform rituals around oak trees any more, and because by performing apparently absurd rituals, you get in touch with something deep in your soul, in the oldest part of yourself, the part closest to the origin of everything.’ That’s true. I had asked a question to which I already knew the answer and received the answer I was expecting. I should make better use of his company. ‘It’s time to leave,’ says J. abruptly. I look at the clock. I tell him that the airport is nearby and that we can continue talking for a while longer. ‘That isn’t what I mean. When I went through what you’re experiencing now, I found the answer in something that had happened before I was born. That’s what I’m suggesting you do now.’ Reincarnation? But he had always discouraged me from visiting past lives. ‘I’ve been back into the past already. I learned how to do that before I met you. We’ve talked before about how I saw two incarnations, one as a French writer in the nineteenth century and one—’ ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘I made mistakes then that I can’t put right now. And you told me never to go back again, because it would only increase my sense of guilt. Travelling to past lives is like making a hole in the floor and letting the flames of the fire in the apartment below scorch and burn the present.’ J. throws what remains of his pear to the birds in the garden and looks at me with some irritation. ‘If you don’t stop spouting such nonsense, I might start believing that you’re right and that you really haven’t learned anything during the twenty-four years we’ve been together.’ I know what he means. In magic – and in life – there is only the present moment, the NOW. You can’t measure time the way you measure the distance between two points. ‘Time’ doesn’t pass. We human beings have enormous difficulty in focusing on the present; we’re always thinking about what we did, about how we could have done it better, about the consequences of our actions, and why we didn’t act as we should have. Or else we think about the future, about what we’re going to do tomorrow, what precautions we should take, what dangers await us around the next corner, how to avoid what we don’t want and how to get what we have always dreamed of. J. takes up the conversation again. ‘Right here and now, you are beginning to wonder: is there really something wrong? Yes, there is. But at this precise moment, you also realise that you can change your future by bringing the past into the present. Past and future only exist in our mind. The present moment, though, is outside of time, it’s Eternity. In India they use the word “karma” for lack of any better term. But it’s a concept that’s rarely given a proper explanation. It isn’t what you did in the past that will affect the present. It’s what you do in the present that will redeem the past and thereby change the future.’ ‘So …’ He pauses, becoming increasingly irritated at my inability to grasp what he’s trying to explain to me. ‘There’s no point sitting here, using words that mean nothing. Go and experiment. It’s time you got out of here. Go and re-conquer your kingdom, which has grown corrupted by routine. Stop repeating the same lesson, because you won’t learn anything new that way.’ ‘It’s not routine that’s the problem. I’m simply not happy.’ ‘That’s what I mean by routine. You think that you exist because you’re unhappy. Other people exist merely as a function of their problems and spend all their time talking compulsively about their children, their husband, school, work, friends. They never stop to think: I’m here. I am the result of everything that happened and will happen, but I’m here. If I did something wrong, I can put it right or at least ask forgiveness. If I did something right, that leaves me happier and more connected with the now.’ J. takes a deep breath, then concludes: ‘You’re not here any more. You’ve got to leave in order to return to the present.’ It was as I had feared. For a while now, he has been dropping hints that it was time I set off on the third sacred road. My life has changed a lot since the far-off year of 1986, when my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela brought me face to face with my destiny, or ‘God’s plan’. Three years later, I followed the so-called Road to Rome, in the area where we were now; it was a painful, tedious process lasting seventy days, and which involved me enacting, each morning, all the absurd things I had dreamed about the night before (I remember standing at a bus stop for four whole hours, during which nothing of any importance happened). Since then, I have done everything that my work demanded of me. After all, it was my choice and my blessing. I started travelling like a mad thing. The great lessons I learned had been precisely those that my journeys had taught me. Well, the truth is, I’ve always travelled like a mad thing, ever since I was young. Recently, though, I seem to be spending my life in airports and hotels, and any sense of adventure has rapidly given way to profound tedium. When I complained that I never stayed in one place for very long, people were horrified: ‘But it’s great to travel. I wish I had the money to do what you’re doing!’ Travel is never a matter of money, but of courage. I spent a large part of my youth travelling the world as a hippie, and what money did I have then? None. I barely had enough to pay for my fare, but I still consider those to have been the best years of my youth: eating badly, sleeping in train stations, unable to communicate because I didn’t know the language, being forced to depend on others just for somewhere to spend the night. After weeks on the road, listening to a language you don’t understand, using a currency whose value you don’t comprehend, walking down streets you’ve never walked down before, you discover that your old ‘I’, along with everything you ever learned, is absolutely no use at all in the face of those new challenges, and you begin to realise that, buried deep in your unconscious mind, there is someone much more interesting and adventurous and more open to the world and to new experiences. Then there comes a day when you say: ‘Enough!’ ‘Enough! Travelling, for me, has become just a monotonous routine.’ ‘No, it’s not enough, it never will be,’ says J. ‘Our life is a constant journey, from birth to death. The landscape changes, the people change, our needs change, but the train keeps moving. Life is the train, not the station. And what you’re doing now isn’t travelling, it’s just changing countries, which is completely different.’ I shake my head. ‘It won’t help. If I need to put right a mistake in another life and I’m deeply aware of that mistake, I can do that here. In that prison cell, I was just obeying the orders of someone who seemed to know God’s will: you. Besides, I’ve already asked forgiveness of at least four people.’ ‘But you’ve never found the nature of the curse placed on you.’ ‘You were cursed too at the time. Did you find out what it was?’ ‘Yes, I did. And I can guarantee that it was far harsher than yours. You committed just one cowardly deed, while I acted unfairly many times. But that discovery freed me.’ ‘If I need to travel in time, why do I have to travel in space as well?’ J. laughs. ‘Because we all have the possibility of redemption, but for that to happen, we have to seek out the people we harmed and ask their forgiveness.’ ‘So where should I go? To Jerusalem?’ ‘I don’t know. Wherever you are committed to going. Find out what you have left unfinished and complete the task. God will guide you, because everything you ever experienced or will experience is in the here and now. The world is being created and destroyed in this very moment. Whoever you met will reappear, whoever you lost will return. Don’t betray the grace that was bestowed on you. Understand what is going on inside you and you will understand what is going on inside everyone else. Don’t imagine that I came to bring peace. I came with a sword.’ I’m standing in the rain shivering, and my first thought is, I’m going to catch the flu. I console myself by thinking that every doctor I’ve ever met has assured me that flu is caused by a virus, not by drops of water. I can’t stay in the here and now, my head is whirling. Where should I aim for? Where should I go? And what if I don’t recognise the people on my path? That must have happened before and is bound to happen again; if it hadn’t, my soul would be at peace. After fifty-nine years of living with myself, I can predict at least some of my reactions. When I first met J., his words seemed filled with a light much brighter than he himself. I accepted everything without question; I walked fearlessly ahead and never once regretted it. But time passed, we got to know each other and with familiarity came habit. He had never let me down in any way, but I couldn’t see him now with quite the same eyes. Even though, out of duty, I had to obey his words – which I would have done gladly in September of 1992, ten years after I met him – I no longer did so with the same conviction. I am wrong. It was my choice to follow this magical Tradition, so why question it now. I’m free to abandon it whenever I wish, but something drives me on. He’s probably right, but I’ve got used to the life I lead and I don’t need any more challenges. I need peace. I should be a happy man: I’m successful in my chosen, highly competitive profession; I’ve been married for twenty-seven years to the woman I love; I enjoy good health; I live surrounded by people I can trust; I’m always greeted with affection by my readers when I meet them in the street. There was a time when that was enough, but these last two years, nothing seems to satisfy me. Is it just a passing anxiety? Won’t it be enough just to say the usual prayers, respect nature as if it were the voice of God and contemplate the beauty around me? Why go forward, if I’m convinced that I’ve reached my limit? WHY CAN’T I BE LIKE MY FRIENDS? The rain is falling ever harder and all I can hear is the sound of the water. I’m drenched, but I can’t move. I don’t want to leave because I don’t know where to go. J. is right. I’m lost. If I really had reached my limit, this feeling of guilt and frustration would have passed, but it’s still there. Fear and trembling. When a sense of dissatisfaction persists, that means it was placed there by God for one reason only: you need to change everything and move forward. I’ve been through this before. Whenever I refused to follow my fate, something very hard to bear would happen in my life. And that is my great fear at the moment, that some tragedy will occur. Tragedy always brings about radical change in our lives, a change that is associated with the same principle: loss. When faced by any loss, there’s no point in trying to recover what has been, it’s best to take advantage of the large space that opens up before us and fill it with something new. In theory, every loss is for our good; in practice, though, that is when we question the existence of God and ask ourselves, ‘What did I do to deserve this?’ Lord, preserve me from tragedy and I will follow Your desires. The moment I think this, there is a great crack of thunder and the sky is lit up by a flash of lightning. Again, fear and trembling. A sign. Here I am trying to persuade myself that I always give the best of myself and nature is telling me exactly the opposite: anyone truly committed to life never stops walking. Heaven and earth are meeting in a storm which, when it’s over, will leave the air purer and the fields fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries-old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded. A yellow shape approaches. I surrender myself to the rain. There’s more lightning, but my feeling of helplessness is being replaced by something positive, as if my soul were gradually being washed clean by the water of forgiveness. Bless and you will be blessed. The words emerge naturally from me – a wisdom I didn’t know I had, which I know does not belong to me, but which appears sometimes and stops me doubting everything I have learned over the years. My great problem is this: despite such moments, I continue to doubt. The yellow shape is there before me. It’s my wife, wearing one of the garish capes we use when we go walking in remote parts of the mountains. If we get lost, we’ll be easy to find. ‘Have you forgotten that we’re going out to supper tonight?’ No, I haven’t forgotten. I abandon universal metaphysics, in which thunder claps are the voices of the gods, and return to the reality of a provincial town and a supper of good wine, roast lamb and the cheerful conversation of friends, who will tell us about their recent adventures on their Harley-Davidson. I go back home to change my clothes and give my wife a brief summary of my conversation with J. that afternoon. ‘Did he tell you where you should go?’ she asks. ‘He told me to make a commitment.’ ‘And is that so very hard? Stop being so difficult. You’re acting like an old man.’ Herv? and V?ronique have invited two other guests, a middle-aged French couple. One of them is introduced as a ‘clairvoyant’, whom they met in Morocco. The man seems neither pleasant nor unpleasant, merely absent. Then, in the middle of supper, as if he had entered a kind of trance, he says to V?ronique: ‘Be careful when driving. You’re going to have an accident.’ I find this remark in the worst possible taste, because if V?ronique takes it seriously, her fear will end up attracting negative energy and then things really might turn out as predicted. ‘How interesting,’ I say, before anyone else can react. ‘You are presumably capable of travelling in time, back into the past and forward into the future. I was speaking about just that with a friend this afternoon.’ ‘When God allows me to, I can see. I know who each of the people around this table was, is and will be. I don’t understand my gift, but I long ago learned to accept it.’ The conversation should be about the trip to Sicily with friends who share a passion for classic Harley-Davidsons, but suddenly it seems to have taken a dangerous turn into areas I don’t want to enter right now. A case of synchronicity. It’s my turn to speak: ‘You also know, then, that God only allows us to see such things when he wants something to change.’ I turn to V?ronique and say, ‘Just take care. When something on the astral plane is placed on the earthly plane, it loses a lot of its force. In other words, I’m almost sure there will be no accident.’ V?ronique offers everyone more wine. She thinks that the Moroccan clairvoyant and I are on a collision course. This isn’t the case; the man really can ‘see’ and that frightens me. I’ll talk to Herv? about it afterwards. The man barely looks at me; he still has the absent air of someone who has unwittingly entered another dimension and now has a duty to communicate what he is experiencing. He wants to tell me something, but chooses, instead, to turn to my wife. ‘The soul of Turkey will give your husband all the love she possesses, but she will spill his blood before she reveals what it is she is seeking.’ Another sign confirming that I should not travel now, I think, knowing full well that we always try to interpret things in accordance with what we want and not as they are. Chinese Bamboo Sitting in this train travelling from Paris to London, on my way to the Book Fair, is a blessing to me. Whenever I visit England, I remember 1977, when I left my job with a Brazilian recording company determined, from then on, to make my living as a writer. I rented a flat in Bassett Road, made various friends, studied vampirology, discovered the city on foot, fell in love, saw every film being shown and, before a year had passed, I was back in Rio, incapable of writing a single line. This time I will only be staying in London for three days. There will be a signing session, meals in Indian and Lebanese restaurants, and conversations in the hotel lobby about books, bookshops and authors. I have no plans to return to my house in Saint Martin until the end of the year. From London I will get a flight back to Rio, where I can again hear my mother tongue spoken in the streets, drink acai juice every night and gaze tirelessly out of my window at the most beautiful view in the world: Copacabana beach. Shortly before we arrive, a young man enters the carriage carrying a bunch of roses and starts looking around him. How odd, I think, I’ve never seen flower-sellers on Eurostar before. ‘I need twelve volunteers,’ he says. ‘Each person will carry a single rose and present it to the woman who is the love of my life and whom I’m going to ask to marry me.’ Several people volunteer, including me, although, in the end, I’m not one of the chosen twelve. Nevertheless, when the train pulls into the station, I decide to follow the other volunteers. The young man points to a girl on the platform. One by one, the passengers hand her their red roses. Finally, he declares his love for her, everyone applauds, and the young woman turns scarlet with embarrassment. Then the couple kiss and go off, their arms around each other. One of the stewards says: ‘That’s the most romantic thing I’ve seen in all the time I’ve been working here.’ The scheduled book-signing lasts nearly five hours, but it fills me with positive energy and makes me wonder why I’ve been in such a state all these months. If my spiritual progress seems to have met an insurmountable barrier, perhaps I just need to be patient. I have seen and felt things that very few of the people around me will have seen and felt. Before setting out to London, I visited the little chapel in Barbazan-Debat. There I asked Our Lady to guide me with her love and help me identify the signs that will lead me back to myself. I know that I am in all the people surrounding me, and that they are in me. Together we write the Book of Life, our every encounter determined by fate and our hands joined in the belief that we can make a difference in this world. Everyone contributes a word, a sentence, an image, but in the end, it all makes sense: the happiness of one becomes the joy of all. We will always ask ourselves the same questions. We will always need to be humble enough to accept that our heart knows why we are here. Yes, it’s difficult to talk to your heart, and perhaps it isn’t even necessary. We simply have to trust and follow the signs and live our Personal Legend; sooner or later, we will realise that we are all part of something, even if we can’t understand rationally what that something is. They say that in the second before our death, each of us understands the real reason for our existence and out of that moment Heaven or Hell is born. Hell is when we look back during that fraction of a second and know that we wasted an opportunity to dignify the miracle of life. Paradise is being able to say at that moment: ‘I made some mistakes, but I wasn’t a coward. I lived my life and did what I had to do.’ However, there’s no need to anticipate my particular hell and keep going over and over the fact that I can make no further progress in what I understand to be my ‘Spiritual Quest’. It’s enough that I keep trying. Even those who didn’t do all they could have done have already been forgiven; they had their punishment while they were alive by being unhappy when they could have been living in peace and harmony. We are all redeemed and free to follow the path that has no beginning and will have no end. I haven’t brought anything with me to read. While I’m waiting to join my Russian publishers for supper, I leaf through one of those magazines that are always to be found in hotel rooms. I skim-read an article about Chinese bamboo. Apparently, once the seed has been sown, you see nothing for about five years apart from a tiny shoot. All the growth takes place underground, where a complex root system reaching upwards and outwards is being established. Then, at the end of the fifth year, the bamboo suddenly shoots up to a height of 25 metres. What a tedious subject! I decide to go downstairs and watch the comings and goings in the lobby. I have a cup of coffee while I wait. M?nica, my agent and my best friend, joins me at my table. We talk about things of no importance. She’s clearly tired after a day spent dealing with people from the book world and monitoring the book-signing over the phone with my British publisher. We started working together when she was only twenty. She was a fan of my work and convinced that a Brazilian writer could be successfully translated and published outside Brazil. She abandoned her studies in chemical engineering in Rio, moved to Spain with her boyfriend and went round knocking on publishers’ doors and writing letters, telling them that they really needed to read my work. When this brought no results at all, I went to the small town in Catalonia where she was living, bought her a coffee and advised her to give the whole thing up and think about her own life and future. She refused and said that she couldn’t go back to Brazil a failure. I tried to persuade her that she hadn’t failed; after all, she had shown herself capable of surviving (by delivering leaflets and working as a waitress) as well as having had the unique experience of living abroad. M?nica would still not give up. I left that caf? in the firm belief that she was throwing her life away, but that I would never be able to make her change her mind because she was too stubborn. Six months later, the situation had changed completely, and six months after that, she had earned enough money to buy an apartment. She believed in the impossible and, for that reason, won a battle that everyone, including myself, considered to be lost. That is what marks out the warrior: the knowledge that willpower and courage are not the same thing. Courage can attract fear and adulation, but will-power requires patience and commitment. Men and women with immense willpower are generally solitary types and give off a kind of coolness. Many people mistakenly think that M?nica is rather a cold person, when nothing could be further from the truth. In her heart there burns a secret fire, as intense as it was when we met in that Catalonian caf?. Despite all she has achieved, she’s as enthusiastic as ever. Just as I’m about to recount my recent conversation with J., my two publishers from Bulgaria come into the lobby. A lot of people involved in the Book Fair are staying in the same hotel. We talk about this and that, then M?nica turns the conversation to the subject of my books. Eventually, one of the publishers looks at me and asks the standard question: ‘So when are you going to visit our country?’ ‘Next week if you can organise it. All I ask is a party after the afternoon signing session.’ They both look at me aghast. CHINESE BAMBOO! M?nica is staring at me in horror as she says: ‘We’d better look at the diary …’ ‘… but I’m sure I can be in Sofia next week,’ I burst in, adding in Portuguese: ‘I’ll explain later.’ M?nica sees that I’m serious, but the publishers are still unsure. They ask if I wouldn’t prefer to wait a little, so that they can mount a proper promotion campaign. ‘Next week,’ I say again. ‘Otherwise we’ll have to leave it for another occasion.’ Only then do they realise that I’m serious. They turn to M?nica for more details. And at that precise moment my Spanish publisher arrives. The conversation at the table breaks off, introductions are made, and the usual question is asked: ‘So, when are you coming back to Spain?’ ‘Straight after my visit to Bulgaria.’ ‘When will that be?’ ‘In two weeks’ time. We can arrange a book-signing in Santiago de Compostela and another in the Basque Country, followed by a party to which some of my readers could be invited.’ The Bulgarian publishers start to look uneasy again, and M?nica gives a strained smile. ‘Make a commitment!’ J. had said. The lobby is starting to fill up. At all such fairs, whether they’re promoting books or heavy machinery, the professionals tend to stay in the same two or three hotels, and most deals are sealed in hotel lobbies or at suppers like the one due to take place tonight. I greet all the publishers and accept any invitations that begin with the question ‘When are you going to visit our country?’ I try to keep them talking for as long as possible to avoid M?nica asking me what on earth is going on. All she can do is note down in her diary the various visits I’m committing myself to. At one point, I break off my discussion with an Arab publisher to find out how many visits I’ve arranged. ‘Look, you’re putting me in a very awkward position,’ she replies in Portuguese, sounding very irritated. ‘How many?’ ‘Six countries in five weeks. These fairs are for publishing professionals, you know, not writers. You don’t have to accept any invitations, I take care of—’ Just then my Portuguese publisher arrives, so we can’t continue this private conversation. When he doesn’t say anything beyond the usual small talk, I ask the question myself: ‘Aren’t you going to invite me to Portugal?’ He admits that he overheard my conversation with M?nica. ‘I’m not joking,’ I say. ‘I’d really love to do a book-signing in Guimar?es and another in F?tima.’ ‘As long as you don’t cancel at the last moment.’ ‘I won’t cancel, I promise.’ He agrees, and M?nica adds Portugal to the diary: another five days. Finally, my Russian publishers – a man and a woman – come over and we say hello. M?nica gives a sigh of relief. Now she can drag me off to the restaurant. While we’re waiting for the taxi, she draws me to one side. ‘Have you gone mad?’ ‘Oh, I went mad years ago. Do you know anything about Chinese bamboo? It apparently spends five years as a little shoot, using that time to develop its root system. And then, from one moment to the next, it puts on a spurt and grows up to twenty-five metres high.’ ‘And what has that got to do with the act of insanity I’ve just witnessed?’ ‘Later on, I’ll tell you about the conversation I had a month ago with J. What matters now, though, is that this is precisely what has been happening to me: I’ve invested work, time and effort; I tried to encourage my personal growth with love and dedication, but nothing happened. Nothing happened for years.’ ‘What do you mean “nothing happened”? Have you forgotten who you are?’ The taxi arrives. The Russian publisher opens the door for M?nica. ‘I’m talking about the spiritual side of my life. I think I’m like that Chinese bamboo plant and that my fifth year has just arrived. It’s time for me to start growing again. You asked me if I’d gone mad and I answered with a joke. But the fact is, I have been going mad. I was beginning to believe that nothing I had learned had put down any roots.’ For a fraction of a second, immediately after the arrival of my Bulgarian publishers, I had felt J.’s presence at my side and only then did I understand his words, although the insight itself had come to me during a moment of boredom, after leafing through a magazine on gardening. My self-imposed exile, which, on the one hand, had helped me discover important truths about myself, had another serious side-effect: the vice of solitude. My universe had become limited to a few friends locally, to answering letters and emails and to the illusion that the rest of my time was mine alone. I was, in short, leading a life without any of the inevitable problems that arise from living with other people, from human contact. Is that what I’m looking for? A life without challenges? But where is the pleasure in looking for God outside people? I know many who have done just that. I once had a serious and at the same time comical talk with a Buddhist nun, who had spent twenty years alone in a cave in Nepal. I asked her what she had achieved. ‘Spiritual orgasm,’ she replied, to which I replied that there were far easier ways to achieve orgasm. I could never follow that path; it’s simply not on my horizon. I cannot and could not spend the rest of my life in search of spiritual orgasms or contemplating the oak tree in my garden, waiting for wisdom to descend. J. knows this and encouraged me to make this journey so that I would understand that my path is reflected in the eyes of others and that, if I want to find myself, I need that map. I apologise to the Russian publishers and say that I need to finish a conversation with M?nica in Portuguese. I start by telling her a story: ‘A man stumbles and falls into a deep hole. He asks a passing priest to help him out. The priest blesses him and walks on. Hours later, a doctor comes by. The man asks for help, but the doctor merely studies his injuries from afar, writes him a prescription and tells him to buy the medicine from the nearest pharmacy. Finally, a complete stranger appears. Again, the man asks for help, and the stranger jumps into the hole. “Now what are we going to do?” says the man. “Now both of us are trapped down here.” To which the stranger replies: “No we’re not. I’m from around here and I know how to get out.”’ ‘Meaning?’ asks M?nica. ‘That I need strangers like that,’ I explain. ‘My roots are ready, but I’ll only manage to grow with the help of others. Not just you or J. or my wife, but people I’ve never met. I’m sure of that. That’s why I asked for a party to be held after the book-signings.’ ‘You’re never satisfied, are you?’ M?nica says in a tone of complaint. ‘That’s why you love me so much,’ I say with a smile. In the restaurant, we speak about all kinds of things; we celebrate a few successes and try to refine certain details. I have to stop myself from interfering, because M?nica is in charge of everything to do with publishing. At one point, though, the same question is asked: ‘And when will Paulo be visiting Russia?’ M?nica starts explaining that my diary has suddenly got very crowded and that I have a series of commitments starting next week. I break in: ‘You know, I have long cherished a dream, which I’ve tried to realise twice before and failed. If you can help me achieve my dream, I’ll come to Russia.’ ‘What dream is that?’ ‘To cross the whole of Russia by train and end up at the Pacific Ocean. We could stop at various places along the way for signings. That way we would be showing our respect for all those readers who could never make it to Moscow.’ My publisher’s eyes light up with joy. He had just been talking about the increasing difficulties of distribution in a country so vast that it has nine different time zones. ‘A very romantic, very Chinese bamboo idea,’ laughs M?nica, ‘but not very practical. As you well know, I wouldn’t be able to go with you because I have my son to look after now.’ The publisher, however, is enthusiastic. He orders his fifth coffee of the night, says that he’ll take care of everything, that M?nica’s assistant can stand in for her, and that she needn’t worry about a thing, it will all be fine. I thus fill up my diary with two whole months of travelling, leaving along the way a lot of very happy, but very stressed-out people who are going to have to organise everything at lightning speed; a friend and agent who is now looking at me with affection and respect; and a teacher who isn’t here, but who knows that I’ve now made a commitment, even though I didn’t understand what he meant at the time. It’s a cold night and I choose to walk back alone to the hotel, feeling rather frightened at what I’ve done, but happy too, because there’s no turning back. That is what I wanted. If I believe I will win, then victory will believe in me. No life is complete without a touch of madness, or to use J.’s words, what I need to do is to re-conquer my kingdom. If I can understand what’s going on in the world, I can understand what’s going on inside myself. At the hotel, there is a message from my wife, saying that she’s been trying to contact me and asking me to phone her as soon as possible. My heart starts pounding, because she rarely phones me when I’m travelling. I return her call at once. The seconds between each ring seem like an eternity. Finally, she picks up the phone. ‘V?ronique has had a serious car accident, but, don’t worry, she’s not in any danger,’ she says nervously. I ask if I can phone V?ronique now, but she says not. She’s still in hospital. ‘Do you remember that clairvoyant?’ she asks. Of course I do! He made a prediction about me as well. We hang up and I immediately phone M?nica’s room. I ask if, by any chance, I’ve arranged a visit to Turkey. ‘Can’t you even remember which invitations you accepted?’ No, I say. I was in a strange state of euphoria when I started saying ‘Yes’ to all those publishers. ‘But you do remember the commitments you’ve taken on, don’t you? There’s still time to cancel, if you want to.’ I tell her that I’m perfectly happy with the commitments, that’s not the problem. It’s too late to start explaining about the clairvoyant, the predictions, and V?ronique’s accident. I ask M?nica again if I have arranged a visit to Turkey. ‘No,’ she says. ‘The Turkish publishers are staying in a different hotel. Otherwise …’ We both laugh. I can sleep easy. The Stranger’s Lantern Almost two months of travelling, of pilgrimage. My joy in life has returned, but I lie awake all night wondering if that sense of joy will stay with me when I return home. Am I doing what I need to do to make the Chinese bamboo grow? I’ve been to seven countries, met my readers, had fun and temporarily driven away the depression that was threatening to engulf me, but something tells me that I still haven’t re-conquered my kingdom. The trip so far hasn’t really been any different from other similar journeys made in previous years. All that remains now is Russia. And then what will I do? Continue making commitments in order to keep moving or stop and see what the results have been? I still haven’t reached a decision. I only know that a life without cause is a life without effect. And I can’t allow that to happen to me. If necessary, I’ll spend the rest of the year travelling. I’m in the African city of Tunis, in Tunisia. The talk is about to begin and – thank heavens – the room is packed. I’m going to be introduced by two local intellectuals. In the short meeting we held beforehand, one of them showed me a text that would take just two minutes to deliver and the other a veritable thesis on my work that would take at least half an hour. The coordinator very tactfully explains to the latter that since the event is only supposed to last, at most, fifty minutes, there won’t be time for him to read his piece. I imagine how hard he must have worked on that essay, but the coordinator is right. The purpose of my visit to Tunis is to meet my readers. There is a brief discussion, after which the author of the essay says that he no longer wishes to take part and he leaves. The talk begins. The introductions and acknowledgements take only five minutes; the rest of the time is free for open dialogue. I tell the audience that I haven’t come here to explain anything, and that, ideally, the event should be more of a conversation than a presentation. A young woman asks about the signs I speak of in my books. What form do they take? I explain that signs are an extremely personal language that we develop throughout our lives, by trial and error, until we begin to understand that God is guiding us. Someone else asks if a sign had brought me all the way to Tunisia. Without going into any detail, I say that it had. The conversation continues, time passes quickly and I need to wrap things up. For the last question, I choose, at random, out of the six hundred people there, a middle-aged man with a bushy moustache. ‘I don’t want to ask a question,’ he says. ‘I just want to say a name.’ The name he pronounces is that of Barbazan-Debat, a chapel in the middle of nowhere, thousands of kilometres from here, the same chapel where, one day, I placed a plaque in gratitude for a miracle and which I had visited, before setting out on this pilgrimage, in order to pray for Our Lady’s protection. I don’t know how to respond. The following words were written by one of the other people on stage with me. In the room, the Universe seemed suddenly to have stopped moving. So many things happened: I saw your tears and the tears of your dear wife, when that anonymous reader pronounced the name of that distant chapel. You could no longer speak. Your smiling face grew serious. Your eyes filled with shy tears that trembled on your lashes, as if wishing to apologise for appearing there uninvited. Even I had a lump in my throat, although I didn’t know why. I looked for my wife and daughter in the audience, because I always look to them whenever I feel myself to be on the brink of something unknown. They were there, but they were sitting as silently as everyone else, their eyes fixed on you, trying to support you with their gaze, as if a gaze could ever support anyone. Then I looked to Christina for help, trying to understand what was going on, how to bring to an end that seemingly interminable silence. And I saw that she was silently crying too, as if you were both notes from the same symphony and as if your tears were touching, even though you were sitting far apart. For several long seconds, nothing existed, there was no room, no audience, nothing. You and your wife had set off for a place where we could not follow; all that remained was the joy of living, expressed in silence and emotion. Words are tears that have been written down. Tears are words that need to be shed. Without them, joy loses all its brilliance and sadness has no end. Thank you, then, for your tears. I should have said to the young woman who asked the first question about signs that this was a sign, confirming that I was where I should be, in the right place, at the right time, even though I didn’t understand what had brought me there. I suspect there was no need though. She would probably have understood anyway. (#litres_trial_promo) My wife and I are walking along, hand-in-hand, through the bazaar in Tunis, 15 kilometres from the ruins of Carthage, which, centuries before, had defied the might of Rome. We are discussing the great Carthaginian warrior, Hannibal. Since Carthage and Rome were separated by only a few hundred kilometres of sea, the Romans were expecting a sea battle. Instead, Hannibal took his vast army and crossed first the desert and then the Straits of Gibraltar, marched through Spain and France, climbed the Alps with soldiers and elephants, and attacked the Romans from the north, scoring one of the most resounding military victories ever recorded. He overcame all the enemies in his path and yet – for reasons we still do not understand – he stopped short of conquering Rome and failed to attack at the right moment. As a result of his indecision, Carthage was wiped from the map by the Roman legions. ‘Hannibal stopped and was defeated,’ I say, thinking out loud. ‘I’m glad that I’m able to go on, even though the beginning was difficult. I’m starting to get used to the journey now.’ My wife pretends not to have heard, because she realises that I’m trying to convince myself of something. We’re on our way to a caf? to meet one of my readers, Samil, chosen at random at the post-talk party. I ask him to avoid all the usual monuments and tourist sights and show us where the real life of the city goes on. He takes us to a beautiful building where, in 1754, a man killed his own brother. The brothers’ father resolved to build this palace as a school, as a way of keeping alive the memory of his murdered son. I say that surely the son who had committed the murder would also be remembered. ‘It’s not quite like that,’ says Samil. ‘In our culture, the criminal shares his guilt with everyone who allowed him to commit the crime. When a man is murdered, the person who sold him the weapon is also responsible before God. The only way in which the father could correct what he perceived as his own mistake was to transform the tragedy into something useful to others.’ Suddenly everything vanishes – the palace, the street, the city, Africa. I take a gigantic leap into the dark and enter a tunnel that emerges into a damp dungeon. I’m standing before J. in one of my many previous lives, two hundred years before the crime committed in that house. He fixes me with stern, admonitory eyes. I return just as quickly to the present. It all happened in a fraction of a second. I’m back at the palace, with Samil, my wife and the hubbub of the street in Tunis. But why that dip into the past? Why do the roots of the Chinese bamboo insist on poisoning the plant? That life was lived and the price paid. ‘You were cowardly only once, while I acted unfairly many times. But that discovery freed me,’ J. had said in Saint Martin, he, who had never encouraged me to go back into the past, who was vehemently opposed to the books, manuals and exercises that taught such things. ‘Instead of resorting to vengeance, which would be merely a one-off punishment, he created a school in which wisdom and learning was passed on for more than two centuries,’ Samil says. I haven’t missed a single word he has said and yet I also made that gigantic leap back in time. ‘That’s it.’ ‘What is?’ asks my wife. ‘I’m walking. I’m beginning to understand. It’s all making sense.’ I feel euphoric. Samil is confused. ‘What does Islam have to say about reincarnation?’ I ask. Samil looks at me, surprised. ‘I’ve no idea, I’m not a scholar,’ he says. I ask him to find out. He takes his mobile phone and starts ringing various people. Christina and I go to a bar and order two strong black coffees. We’re both tired, but we’ll be having a seafood supper later on and have to resist the temptation to have a snack now. ‘I just had a d?j? vu moment,’ I tell her. ‘Everyone has them from time to time. You don’t have to be a magus to have one,’ jokes Christina. Of course not, but d?j? vu is more than just that fleeting moment of surprise, instantly forgotten because we never bother with things that make no sense. It shows that time doesn’t pass. It’s a leap into something we have already experienced and that is being repeated. Samil has vanished. ‘While he was telling us about the palace, I was drawn back into the past for a millisecond. I’m sure this happened when he was talking about how any crime was not only the responsibility of the murderer, but of all those who created the conditions in which the crime could occur. The first time I met J., in 1982, he talked about my connection with his father. He never mentioned the subject again, and I forgot about it too. But a few moments ago, I saw his father. And I understand now what he meant.’ ‘In the life you told me about …?’ ‘Yes, during the Spanish Inquisition.’ ‘That’s all over. Why torment yourself over something that’s ancient history now?’ ‘I’m not tormenting myself. I learned long ago that in order to heal my wounds, I must have the courage to face up to them. I also learned to forgive myself and correct my mistakes. However, ever since I started out on this journey, I’ve had a sense of being confronted by a vast jigsaw puzzle, the pieces of which are only just beginning to be revealed, pieces of love, hate, sacrifice, forgiveness, joy and grief. That’s why I’m here with you. I feel much better now, as if I really were going in search of my soul, of my kingdom, rather than sitting around complaining that I can’t assimilate everything I’ve learned. I can’t do that because I don’t understand it all properly, but when I do, the truth will set me free.’ Samil is back, carrying a book. He sits down with us, consults his notes and respectfully turns the pages of the book, murmuring words in Arabic. ‘I spoke to three scholars,’ he says at last. ‘Two of them said that, after death, the just go to Paradise. The third one, though, told me to consult some verses from the Koran.’ I can see that he’s excited. ‘Here’s the first one, 2:28: “Allah will cause you to die, and then he will bring you back to life again, and you will return to Him once more.” My translation isn’t perfect, but that’s what it means.’ He leafs feverishly through the sacred book. He translates the second verse, 2:154: ‘“Do not say of those who died in the name of Allah: They are dead. For they are alive, even though you cannot see them.”’ ‘Exactly!’ ‘There are other verses, but, to be honest, I don’t feel very comfortable talking about this right now. I’d rather tell you about Tunis.’ ‘You’ve told us quite enough. People never leave, we are always here in our past and future lives. It appears in the Bible too, you know. I remember a passage in which Jesus refers to John the Baptist as the incarnation of Elias: “And if you will receive it, he [John] is the Elias who was to come.” And there are other verses on the same subject,’ I say. He starts telling us some of the legends that surround the founding of the city, and I understand that it’s time to get up and continue our walk. Above one of the gates in the ancient city wall is a lantern, and Samil explains its significance to us: ‘This is the origin of one of the most famous Arabic proverbs: “The light falls only on the stranger”.’ The proverb, he says, is very apt for the situation we’re in now. Samil wants to be a writer and is fighting to gain recognition in his own country, whereas I, a Brazilian author, am already known here. I tell him that we have a similar saying: ‘No one is a prophet in his own land.’ We always tend to value what comes from afar, never recognising the beauty around us. ‘Although sometimes,’ I go on, ‘we need to be strangers to ourselves. Then the hidden light in our soul will illuminate what we need to see.’ My wife appears not to be following the conversation, but at one point, she turns to me and says: ‘There’s something about that lantern, I can’t quite explain what it is, but it’s something to do with your situation now. As soon as I work out what it is, I’ll tell you.’ We sleep for a while, have supper with friends and go for another walk round the city. Only then does my wife manage to explain what she had felt during the afternoon: ‘You’re travelling, but, at the same time, you haven’t left home. As long as we’re together, that will continue to be the case, because you have someone by your side who knows you, and this gives you a false sense of familiarity. It’s time you continued on alone. You may find solitude oppressive, too much to bear, but that feeling will gradually disappear as you come more into contact with other people.’ After a pause, she adds: ‘I once read that in a forest of a hundred thousand trees, no two leaves are alike. And no two journeys along the same Path are alike. If we continue to travel together, trying to make things fit our world-view, neither of us will benefit. So I give you my blessing and say: I’ll see you in Germany for the first match in the World Cup!’ If a Cold Wind Blows When I arrive at the Moscow hotel with my publisher and my editor, a young woman is waiting outside for me. She comes over and grasps my hands in hers. ‘I need to talk to you. I’ve come all the way from Ekaterinburg to do just that.’ I’m tired. I woke up earlier than usual and had to change planes in Paris because there was no direct flight. I tried to sleep on the journey, but every time I managed to drop off, I would fall into the same unpleasant, recurring dream. My publisher tells her that there will be a signing session tomorrow and that, in three days’ time, we’ll be in Ekaterinburg, the first stop on my train journey. I hold out my hand to say goodbye and notice that hers is very cold. ‘Why didn’t you wait for me inside?’ What I would really like to ask is how she found out which hotel I’m staying at, but that probably wouldn’t be so very hard, and it isn’t the first time this kind of thing has happened. ‘I read your blog the other day and realised that you were talking directly to me.’ I was beginning to post my thoughts about the journey on a blog. It was still in the experimental stage, and since I wrote the pieces ahead of time, I didn’t know which article she was referring to. Even so, there could certainly have been no reference in it to her, given that I had only met her a few seconds before. She takes out a piece of paper containing the article. I know it by heart, although I can’t remember who told me the story. A man called Ali is in need of money and asks his boss to help him out. His boss sets him a challenge: if he can spend all night on the top of a mountain, he will receive a great reward; if he fails, he will have to work for free. The story continues: When he left the shop, Ali noticed that an icy wind was blowing. He felt afraid and decided to ask his best friend, Aydi, if he thought he was mad to accept the wager. After considering the matter for a moment, Aydi answered, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll help you. Tomorrow night, when you’re sitting on top of the mountain, look straight ahead. I’ll be on the top of the mountain opposite, where I’ll keep a fire burning all night for you. Look at the fire and think of our friendship; and that will keep you warm. You’ll make it through the night, and afterwards, I’ll ask you for something in return.’ Ali won the wager, got the money, and went to his friend’s house. ‘You said you wanted some sort of payment in return.’ Aydi said, ‘Yes, but it isn’t money. Promise that if ever a cold wind blows through my life, you will light the fire of friendship for me.’ I thank the young woman for her kindness and tell her that I’m very busy, but that if she wants to go to the one signing session I’ll be giving in Moscow, I’ll be happy to sign one of her books. ‘That isn’t why I came. I know about your journey across Russia by train, and I’m going with you. When I read your first book, I heard a voice saying that you once lit a sacred fire for me and that one day I would have to repay the favour. I dreamed about that fire night after night and even thought I would have to go to Brazil to find you. I know you need help, which is why I’m here.’ The people with me laugh. I try to be polite, saying that I’m sure we’ll see each other the next day. My publisher explains to her that someone is waiting for me, and I seize on that as an excuse to say goodbye. ‘My name is Hilal,’ she says before she leaves. Ten minutes later, I’m in my hotel room and have already forgotten about the girl who approached me outside the hotel. I can’t even remember her name, and if I were to meet her again now, I wouldn’t recognise her. However, something has left me feeling vaguely uneasy: in her eyes I saw both love and death. I take off all my clothes, turn on the shower and stand beneath the water – one of my favourite rituals. I position my head so that all I can hear is the sound of the water in my ears, which cuts me off from everything else, transporting me into a different world. Like a conductor aware of every instrument in the orchestra, I begin to distinguish every sound, each one of which becomes a word. I can’t understand those words, but I know they exist. The tiredness, anxiety and feeling of disorientation that come from visiting so many different countries vanish. With each day that passes, I can see that the long journey is having the desired effect. J. was right. I had been allowing myself to be slowly poisoned by routine: showers were merely a matter of washing my skin clean, meals were for feeding my body, and the sole purpose of walks was to avoid heart problems in the future. Now things are changing, imperceptibly, but they are changing. Meals are times when I can venerate the presence and the teachings of friends; walks are once again meditations on the present moment; and the sound of water in my ears silences my thoughts, calms me and makes me relearn that it is these small daily gestures that bring us closer to God, as long as I am able to give each gesture the value it deserves. When J. said to me, ‘Leave your comfortable life and go in search of your kingdom,’ I felt betrayed, confused, abandoned. I was hoping for a solution or an answer to my doubts, something that would console me and help me feel at peace with my soul again. Those who set off in search of their kingdom know that they are going to find, instead, only challenges, long periods of waiting, unexpected changes, or, even worse, nothing. I’m exaggerating. If we seek something, that same thing is seeking us. Nevertheless, you have to be prepared for everything. At this point, I make the decision I’ve been needing to make: even if I find nothing on this train journey, I will carry on, because I’ve known since that moment of realisation in the hotel in London that, although my roots are ready, my soul has been slowly dying from something very hard to detect and even harder to cure. Routine. Routine has nothing to do with repetition. To become really good at anything, you have to practise and repeat, practise and repeat, until the technique becomes intuitive. I learned this when I was a child, in a small town in the interior of Brazil, where my family used to spend the summer holidays. I was fascinated by the work of a blacksmith who lived nearby. I would sit, for what seemed like an eternity, watching his hammer rise and fall on the red-hot steel, scattering sparks all around, like fireworks. Once he said to me: ‘You probably think I’m doing the same thing over and over, don’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, you’re wrong. Each time I bring the hammer down, the intensity of the blow is different. Sometimes it’s harder, sometimes it’s softer. But I only learned that after I’d been repeating the same gesture for many years, until the moment came when I didn’t have to think, I simply let my hand guide my work.’ I’ve never forgotten those words. Sharing Souls Ilook at each of my readers. I hold out my hand and thank them for being there. My body may be travelling, but when my soul flies from city to city, I am never alone: I am all the many people I meet and who have understood my soul through my books. I’m not a stranger here in Moscow, or in London, Sofia, Tunis, Kiev, Santiago de Compostela, Guimar?es or any of the other cities I’ve visited in the last month and a half. I can hear an argument going on behind me, but I try to concentrate on what I’m doing. The argument, however, shows no sign of abating. Finally, I turn round and ask my publisher what the problem is. ‘It’s that girl from yesterday. She says she wants to be near you.’ I can’t even recall the girl from yesterday, but I ask them at least to stop arguing. I carry on signing books. Someone sits down close to me only to be removed by one of the uniformed security guards, and the argument starts again. I stop what I’m doing. Beside me is the girl whose eyes speak of love and death. For the first time, I take a proper look at her: dark hair, between twenty-two and twenty-nine years old (I’m useless at judging people’s ages), a beat-up leather jacket, jeans and trainers. ‘We’ve checked the backpack,’ says the security man, ‘and there’s nothing to worry about. But she can’t stay here.’ The girl simply smiles. A reader is waiting for this conversation to end so that I can sign his books. I realise that the girl is not going to leave. ‘My name’s Hilal, don’t you remember? I came to light the sacred fire.’ I lie and say that yes, of course I remember. The people in the queue are beginning to grow impatient. The reader at the head of the queue says something in Russian to her, and judging from his tone of voice, I sense that it was nothing very pleasant. There is a proverb in Portuguese which says: ‘What can’t be cured must be endured.’ Since I don’t have time for arguments now and need to make a quick decision, I simply ask her to move slightly further off, so that I can have a little privacy with the people waiting. She does as asked, and goes and stands at a discreet distance from me. Seconds later, I have once again forgotten her existence and I’m concentrating on the task in hand. Everyone thanks me and I thank them in return, and the four hours pass as if I were in paradise. I take a cigarette-break every hour, but I’m not in the least tired. I leave each book-signing session with my batteries recharged and with more energy than ever. Afterwards, I call for a round of applause for the organisers. It’s time to move on to my next engagement. The girl whose existence I had forgotten comes over to me. ‘I have something important to show you,’ she says. ‘That’s not going to be possible,’ I say. ‘I have a supper to go to.’ ‘It’s perfectly possible,’ she replies. ‘My name is Hilal. I was waiting for you yesterday outside your hotel. And I can show you what I want to show you here and now, while you’re waiting to leave.’ Before I can respond, she takes a violin out of her backpack and starts to play. The readers, who had begun to drift away, return for this impromptu concert. Hilal plays with her eyes closed, as if she were in a trance. I watch the bow moving back and forth, lightly touching the strings and producing this music, which, even though I’ve never heard it before, is saying something that I and everyone else present need to hear. Sometimes she pauses; sometimes she seems to be in a state of ecstasy; sometimes her whole being dances with the instrument; but mostly only her upper body and her hands move. Every note leaves in each of us a memory, but it is the melody as a whole that tells a story, the story of someone wanting to get closer to another person and who keeps on trying despite repeated rejections. While Hilal is playing, I remember the many occasions on which help has come from precisely those people whom I thought had nothing to add to my life. When she stops playing, there is no applause, nothing, only an almost palpable silence. ‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I’ve shared a little of my soul, but there is still a lot to do before I can fulfil my mission. May I come with you?’ Generally speaking, pushy people provoke one of two reactions in me: either I turn and walk away or I allow myself to be beguiled. I can’t tell someone that their dreams are impossible. Not everyone has the strength of mind that M?nica showed in that bar in Catalonia, and if I were to persuade just one person to stop fighting for something they were convinced was worthwhile, I would end up persuading myself, and my whole life would be diminished. It has been a very satisfying day. I phone the Brazilian ambassador and ask if he could include another guest at supper. Very kindly, he agrees, saying that my readers are my representatives. Despite the formal atmosphere, the ambassador manages to put everyone at their ease. Hilal arrives wearing an outfit that I consider to be tasteless in the extreme, full of gaudy colours, in sharp contrast with the sober dress of the other guests. Not knowing quite where to put this last-minute arrival, the organisers end up seating her in the place of honour, next to our host. Before we sit down to supper, my best friend in Russia, an industrialist, explains that we’re going to have problems with the sub-agent, who spent the whole of the cocktail party prior to supper arguing with her husband over the phone. ‘About what exactly?’ ‘It seems that you agreed to go to the club where he’s the manager, but cancelled at the last minute.’ There was something in my diary along the lines of ‘discuss the menu for the journey through Siberia’, which was the least and most irrelevant of my concerns on an afternoon during which I had received only positive energy. I cancelled the meeting because it seemed so absurd; I’ve never discussed menus in my entire life. I preferred to go back to the hotel, take a shower and let the sound of the water carry me off to places I can’t even explain to myself. Supper is served, parallel conversations spring up around the table and, at one point, the ambassador’s wife kindly asks Hilal about herself. ‘I was born in Turkey and came to study violin in Ekaterinburg when I was twelve. I assume you know how musicians are selected?’ No, the ambassador’s wife doesn’t. Suddenly, there seem to be fewer parallel conversations going on. Perhaps everyone is interested in that awkward young woman in the garish clothes. ‘Any child who starts playing an instrument has to practise for a set number of hours per week. At that stage, they’re all deemed capable of performing in an orchestra one day. As they grow older, some start practising more than others. In the end, there is just a small group of outstanding students, who practise for nearly forty hours a week. Scouts from big orchestras visit the music schools in search of new talent, who are then invited to turn professional. That’s what happened to me.’ ‘It would seem that you found your vocation,’ says the ambassador. ‘We’re not all so lucky.’ ‘It wasn’t exactly my vocation. I started practising a lot because I was sexually abused when I was ten.’ All conversation around the table stops. The ambassador tries to change the subject and makes some comment about Brazil negotiating with Russia on the export and import of heavy machinery, but no one, absolutely no one, is interested in my country’s trade balance. It falls to me to pick up the thread of the story. ‘Hilal, if you wouldn’t mind, I think everyone here would be interested to know what relation there is between being a young sex abuse victim and becoming a violin virtuoso.’ ‘What does your name mean?’ asks the ambassador’s wife, in a last desperate attempt to take the conversation off in another direction. ‘In Turkish it means new moon. It’s the symbol on our national flag. My father was an ardent nationalist. Actually, it’s a name more common among boys than girls. It has another meaning in Arabic apparently, but I don’t quite know what.’ I refuse to be sidetracked. ‘To go back to what we were talking about, would you mind explaining? We’re among family.’ Family?! Most of the people here met for the first time over supper. Everyone seems suddenly very preoccupied with their plates, cutlery and glasses, pretending to be concentrating on the food, but longing to know the rest of her story. Hilal speaks as if what she was talking about were the most natural thing in the world. ‘It was a neighbour, whom everyone thought of as gentle and helpful, a good man to have around in an emergency. He was married and had two daughters my age. Whenever I went to his house to play with them, he would sit me on his knee and tell me nice stories. While he was doing this, however, his hand would be wandering all over my body, and at first I took this as a sign of affection. As time passed, though, he began touching me between my legs and asking me to touch his penis, things like that.’ She looks at the other five women around the table and says: ‘It’s not at all uncommon, unfortunately. Wouldn’t you agree?’ No one answers, but my instinct tells me that at least one or two would have experienced something similar. ‘Anyway, that wasn’t the only problem. The worst thing was that I started to enjoy it, even though I knew it was wrong. Then, one day, I decided not to go back there, despite my parents telling me that I ought to play with our neighbour’s daughters more. At the time I was learning the violin and so I told them that I wasn’t getting on well in my classes and needed to practise more. I started playing compulsively, desperately.’ No one moves. No one knows quite what to say. ‘And because I carried all that guilt around inside me, because victims always end up considering themselves to be the culprits, I decided to keep punishing myself. So, in my relationships with men, I’ve always sought suffering, conflict and despair.’ She looks straight at me, and the whole table notices. ‘But that’s going to change now, isn’t that right?’ Having been in charge of the situation up to that point, I suddenly lose control. All I can do is mutter ‘Yes, well, I hope so’ and quickly steer the conversation round to the beautiful building that houses the Brazilian embassy in Russia. When we leave, I ask where Hilal is staying and check with my industrialist friend if he would mind taking her home before dropping me off at my hotel. He agrees. ‘Thank you for the violin music, and thank you for sharing your story with a group of perfect strangers. Now, each morning, when your mind is still empty, devote a little time to the Divine. The air contains a cosmic force for which every culture has a different name, but that doesn’t matter. The important thing is to do what I’m telling you now. Inhale deeply and ask for all the blessings in the air to enter your body and fill every cell. Then exhale slowly, projecting happiness and peace around you. Repeat this ten times. You’ll be helping to heal yourself and contributing to healing the world as well.’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Nothing. Just do the exercise. You’ll gradually eradicate your negative feelings about love. Don’t let yourself be destroyed by a force that was placed in our hearts in order to make everything better. Breathe in, inhaling whatever exists in the heavens and on earth. Breathe out beauty and fecundity. Believe me, it will work.’ ‘I didn’t come here to learn an exercise I could find in any book on yoga,’ says Hilal angrily. Outside, Moscow is parading past us. What I would really like is to wander the streets and have a coffee somewhere, but it’s been a long day and I have to get up early tomorrow for a series of engagements. ‘So I can come with you, then?’ Can she talk of nothing else? I met her less than 24 hours ago – if you can call such a strange encounter a meeting. My friend laughs. I try to remain serious. ‘Look, I took you to the ambassador’s supper. Isn’t that enough? I’m not making this journey to promote my books,’ I hesitate. ‘I’m doing it for personal reasons.’ ‘Yes, I know.’ Something about the way she says this makes me feel that she really does know, but I choose not to trust my instincts. ‘I’ve made many men suffer and I’ve suffered greatly too,’ Hilal goes on. ‘The light of love flows out of my soul, but it can go nowhere because it’s blocked by pain. I could inhale and exhale every morning for the rest of my life, but that wouldn’t solve anything. I’ve tried to express my love through the violin, but that’s not enough either. I know that you can heal me and that I can heal what you’re feeling. I’ve lit a fire on the mountain opposite yours, you can count on me.’ Why was she saying this? ‘What hurts us is what heals us,’ she said. ‘Life has been very hard on me, but, at the same time, it has taught me a great deal. You can’t see it, but my body is covered in open wounds that are constantly bleeding. I wake each morning wanting to die before the day is out, but I continue to live, suffering and fighting, fighting and suffering, clinging on to the certainty that it will all end one day. Please, don’t leave me alone here. This journey is my salvation.’ My friend stops the car, puts his hand in his pocket and hands Hilal a wad of notes. ‘He doesn’t own the train,’ he says. ‘Take this; it should be more than enough for a second-class ticket and three meals a day.’ Then turning to me, he says: ‘You know the pain I’m going through at the moment. The woman I love has died, and I, too, could inhale and exhale for the rest of my life, but I’m never going to be truly happy again. My wounds are open and bleeding too. I understand exactly what this young woman is saying. I know you’re making this journey for entirely personal reasons, but don’t leave her alone like this. If you believe in the words you write, allow the people around you to grow with you.’ ‘OK, fine,’ I say to her. ‘He’s right, I don’t own the train, but I just want you to know that I’m going to be surrounded by people most of the time, so there won’t be many opportunities to talk.’ My friend starts the engine again and drives for another fifteen minutes in silence. We reach a leafy square. She tells him where to park, jumps out and says goodbye. I get out of the car and accompany her to the door of the house where she’s staying with friends. She kisses me briefly on the lips. ‘Your friend is mistaken, but if I were to look too happy, he might take his money back,’ she says, smiling. ‘My suffering is nothing compared to his. Besides, I’ve never been as happy as I am now, because I followed the signs, I was patient, and I know that this is going to change everything.’ She turns and goes into the building. Only then, as I walk back to the car, looking at my friend who has got out to smoke a cigarette and is smiling because he saw that quick kiss, only then, as I listen to the wind in the trees restored to life by the force of the Spring, am I aware that I’m in a city I don’t know very well, but which I love, only then, as I feel for the pack of cigarettes in my pocket, thinking that tomorrow I’ll be setting off on a long-dreamed-of adventure, only then … … only then do I remember the warning given by the clairvoyant I met at V?ronique’s house. He’d said something about Turkey, but quite what I can’t remember. 9,288 The Trans-Siberian railway is one of the longest railways in the world. You can start your journey at any station in Europe, but the Russian section is 9,288 kilometres long, connecting hundreds of small and large cities, traversing 76 per cent of the country and passing through seven different time zones. When I enter the train station in Moscow, at eleven o’clock at night, day has already dawned in Vladivostok, our final destination. Until the end of the nineteenth century, few travellers ventured into Siberia, which holds the record for the lowest temperature ever registered in a permanently inhabited place: –72.2°C in the town of Oymyakon. The rivers that linked the region to the rest of the world used to be the main means of transport, but they were frozen for eight months of the year. The population of Central Asia lived in almost complete isolation, although it was the source of most of the then Russian Empire’s natural wealth. For strategic and political reasons, Alexander II approved the construction of the railway, the cost of which was exceeded only by Imperial Russia’s military budget during the whole of the First World War. During the civil war that erupted immediately after the Communist Revolution of 1917, the railway became the focus of fighting. Forces loyal to the deposed emperor, notably the Czech Legion, used armoured carriages, which acted as tanks on rails, and were thus able to repel attacks by the Red Army with relative ease, as long as they were kept supplied with munitions and provisions from the East. That was when the saboteurs were sent into action, blowing up bridges and cutting communications. The pro-Imperial forces were driven to the outer reaches of the Russian continent and many crossed Alaska and into Canada, from where they dispersed to other countries. When I entered the station at Moscow, the price of a ticket from Europe to the Pacific Ocean in a compartment shared with three other people could cost anything between 30 and 60 euros. My first photo was of the departures board showing our train due to leave at 23.15! My heart was beating fast, as if I were a child again, watching my toy train chugging round the room and letting my mind travel to distant places, as distant as the one in which I found myself now. My conversation with J. in Saint Martin just over three months before felt as if it had happened in a previous incarnation. What idiotic questions I had asked! What was the meaning of life? Why can I make no progress? Why is the spiritual world moving further and further away? The answer couldn’t have been simpler: because I wasn’t really living! How good it was to go back to being a child, feeling my blood flowing in my veins and my eyes shining, thrilling to the sight of the crowded platform, the smell of oil and food, the squeal of brakes as a train came into the station, the shrill sounds of luggage vans and whistles. To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life. Obviously, not everyone needs to cross Asia or follow the Road to Santiago. I knew an abbot in Austria, who rarely left his monastery in Melk, and yet he understood the world far better than many travellers I have met. I have a friend who experienced great spiritual revelations just from watching his children sleeping. When my wife starts work on a new painting, she enters a kind of trance and speaks to her guardian angel. But I am a born pilgrim. Even when I’m feeling really lazy or I’m missing home, I need take only one step to be carried away by the excitement of the journey. In Yaroslavl station, making my way over to platform 5, I realise that I will never reach my goal by staying in the same place all the time. I can only speak to my soul when the two of us are off exploring deserts or cities or mountains or roads. We are in the last carriage, which will be coupled and decoupled at various stations along the way. I can’t see the engine from where I am, only the giant steel snake of the train and various other passengers – Mongols, Tatars, Russians, Chinese – some sitting on huge trunks, and all waiting for the doors to open. People come over to talk to me, but I move away. I don’t want to think about anything else, apart from the fact that I’m here, now, ready for yet another departure, a new challenge. This moment of childish ecstasy must have lasted at most five minutes, but I took in every detail, every sound, every smell. I won’t be able to remember anything afterwards, but that doesn’t matter: time is not a cassette tape that can be wound and rewound. Don’t think about what you’ll tell people afterwards. The time is here and now. Make the most of it. I approach the rest of the group and realise that they’re all as excited as I am. I’m introduced to the translator who will be travelling with me. His name is Yao. He was born in China, but went to Brazil as a refugee during the civil war in his country. He then studied in Japan and is now a retired language teacher from the University of Moscow. He must be about seventy. He is tall and the only one in the group who is impeccably dressed in suit and tie. ‘My name means “very distant”,’ he says to break the ice. ‘My name means “little rock”,’ I tell him, smiling. In fact I have had the same smile on my face since last night, when I could barely sleep for thinking about today’s adventure. I couldn’t be in a better mood. The omnipresent Hilal is standing near the carriage I’ll be travelling in, even though her compartment must be far from mine. I wasn’t surprised to see her there. I assumed she would be. I blow her a kiss and she responds with a smile. At some point on the journey, I’m sure we’ll enjoy an interesting conversation or two. I stand very still, intent on every detail around me, like a navigator about to set sail in search of the Mare Ignotum. My translator respects my silence, but I realise that something is wrong, because my publisher seems preoccupied. I ask Yao what’s going on. He explains that the person representing me in Russia has not arrived. I remember the conversation with my friend the night before, but what does it matter? If she hasn’t turned up, that’s her problem. I notice Hilal say something to my editor. She receives a brusque reply, but doesn’t lose her cool, just as she didn’t when I told her we couldn’t meet. I am getting to like the fact that she is here more and more; I like her determination, her poise. The two women are arguing now. I again ask the translator to explain what’s going on, and he says that my editor has asked Hilal to go back to her own carriage. Fat chance, I think to myself; that young woman will do exactly what she wants. I amuse myself by observing the only things I can understand: intonation and body language. When I think the moment is right, I go over to them, still smiling. ‘Come on, let’s not start off on a negative vibe. We’re all happy and excited, setting off on a journey none of us has ever made before.’ ‘But she wants—’ ‘Just leave her alone. She can go to her own compartment later on.’ My editor does not insist. The doors open with a noise that echoes down the platform, and people start to move. Who are these people climbing into the carriages? What does this journey mean to each passenger? A reunion with their loved one, a family visit, a quest for wealth, a triumphant or shamefaced return home, a discovery, an adventure, a need to flee or to find? The train is filling up with all these possibilities. Hilal picks up her luggage – which consists of her backpack and a brightly coloured bag – and prepares to climb into the carriage with us. The editor is smiling as if she were pleased with the way the argument had ended, but I know that she will seize the first opportunity to take her revenge. There’s no point explaining that all we achieve by exacting revenge is to make ourselves the equals of our enemies, whereas by forgiving we show wisdom and intelligence. Apart from monks in the Himalayas and saints in the deserts, I think we all have these vengeful feelings, because they’re an essential part of the human condition. We shouldn’t judge ourselves too harshly. Our carriage comprises four compartments, bathrooms, a small lounge area, where I assume we will spend most of the time, and a kitchen. I go to my compartment, which consists of a double bed, wardrobe, a table and chair facing the window, and a door that opens onto one of the bathrooms. At the end is another door. I go over and open it and see that it leads into an empty room. It would seem that the two compartments share the same bathroom. Конец ознакомительного фрагмента. Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес». Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/paulo-koelo/aleph/?lfrom=688855901) на ЛитРес. Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.