Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life

by Fernando Morais

  It was at this point that Vera stopped the car in a lay-by and asked Kakiko to get out to see whether there was a problem with one of the tyres, because the car seemed to be skidding. As there was no sign of anything wrong, they decided that it must be the thick mist covering the area that was making the road slippery. Kakiko suggested that Vera should sit in the back and rest while he drove the rest of the way to Cascavel. After travelling for a further hour, he stopped at a petrol station to fill up. All their expenses were to be shared among the four, but when Vera looked for her purse, she realized that she had lost her bag with her money and all her documents, including her driving licence and car registration papers. She concluded that she must have dropped it when she had handed over the driving to Kakiko. They had no alternative but to go back to the place where they had stopped, 100 kilometres back, to try to find the bag. It took three hours to get there and back, without success. They looked everywhere, with the help of the car headlights, but there was no sign of the bag and no one in the local bars and petrol stations had seen it either. Convinced that this was a bad omen, a sign, Paulo suggested that they turn back, but the other three disagreed. They continued the journey and didn’t reach Cascavel until early on the Saturday morning, by which time the car had a problem–the clutch wasn’t working, and so it was impossible to carry on.

  Because of the Brazil game, on the following day, almost everything in Cascavel was closed, including all the garages. They decided that they would continue on to Asunción by bus. They bought tickets to Foz do Iguaçu and, as Vera had no documents, they had to mingle with the crowds of tourists and supporters in order to cross the bridge separating Brazil from Paraguay. Once in Paraguay, they took another bus to the capital.

  Immediately after settling into the home of Kakiko’s father’s girlfriend, they discovered that all tickets for the match had been sold, but they didn’t mind. They spent the weekend visiting tribes of Guarani Indians on the outskirts of the city and taking tedious boat trips on the river Paraguay. On the Monday morning they began to think about getting the car repaired in Cascavel. With the disappearance of Vera’s bag, they would have to take special care on the return journey: without the car documents they mustn’t get caught breaking any laws and, without Vera’s money, their expenses would have to be divided by three, which meant eating less and spending the night in cheaper places. They rejigged Tuca’s route map and decided to go to Curitiba, where they would sleep and try to get a duplicate copy of the car documents and of Vera’s driving licence.

  At about ten at night–none of them remembers quite what time it was–hunger forced them to stop before reaching Curitiba. They parked the car by a steak house, just outside Ponta Grossa, having driven about 400 kilometres. To save money they used a ruse they had been practising since Vera had lost her bag: she and Paulo would sit alone at the table and ask for a meal for two. When the food arrived, Kakiko and Arnold would appear and share the meal with them.

  Duly fed and watered, they were just about to resume their journey when a group of soldiers belonging to the Military Police entered the restaurant, armed with machine guns.

  The man who appeared to be the head of the group went over to their table and asked: ‘Is the white VW with Guanabara number plates parked outside yours?’

  Kakiko, who was the only one officially allowed to drive, replied: ‘Yes, it’s ours.’

  When the soldier asked to see the certificate of ownership, Kakiko explained in detail, watched by his terrified friends, how Vera had left her bag next to the car door and lost her purse and everything in it, and how the plan was to stay in Curitiba and see whether they could get a duplicate of the lost documents.

  The man listened, incredulous, then said: ‘You’re going to have to explain all this to the police chief. Come with us.’

  They were taken to a police station, where they spent the night in the freezing cold, sitting on a wooden bench until six in the morning, when the police chief arrived to give them the news himself: ‘You are accused of terrorist activities and carrying out a bank raid. It’s nothing to do with me now–it’s up to the army.’

  Although none of them had been taking much interest in the matter, the political situation had been getting worse in Brazil in the previous few months. Since the publication of the new law, AI-5, in December 1968, more than two hundred university professors and researchers had been compulsorily suspended, arrested or exiled. In the National Congress, 110 Members of Parliament and four senators had been stripped of their mandate and, elsewhere, about five hundred people had been removed from public office, either directly or indirectly accused of subversion. With the removal of three ministers from the Supreme Federal Tribunal, violence in the country had reached its height. In January, Captain Carlos Lamarca had deserted an army barracks in Quitaúna, a district of Osasco, taking with him a vehicle containing sixty-three automatic guns, three sub-machine guns and other munitions for the urban guerrilla movement. In São Paulo, the recently nominated governor Abreu Sodré had created Operação Bandeirantes (Oban), a unit that combined police and members of the armed forces, which was intended to crush any opposition. It immediately became a centre for the torture of enemies of the regime.

  Two days before Paulo and his friends had been arrested, four guerrillas armed with machine guns–three men and a blonde woman–and driving a white Volkswagen with Guanabara number plates had attacked a bank and a supermarket in Jandaia do Sul, a town 100 kilometres north of Ponta Grossa. The police were now assuming that Paulo and his friends must be those people. Shivering with cold and fear, the four were taken in a prison van guarded by heavily armed soldiers to the headquarters of the 13th Battalion of the Armed Infantry (BIB), in the district of Uvaranas, on the other side of the city. Scruffy, dirty and cold, they climbed out of the van and found themselves in an enormous courtyard where hundreds of recruits were doing military exercises.

  Half an hour after being placed in separate cells, made to undress and then dress again, interrogation began. The first to be called was Kakiko, who was taken to a cell furnished only with a table and two chairs, one of which was occupied by a tall, dark, well-built man in boots and combat gear with his name embroidered on his chest: ‘Maj. Índio’. Major Índio ordered Kakiko to take a chair and then sat down in front of him. Then he spoke the words that Kakiko would remember for the rest of his life: ‘So far no one has laid a finger on you, but pay very close attention to what I’m going to say. If you give just one bit of false information–just one–I’m going to stick these two fingers in your left eye, and rip out your eyeball and eat it. Your right eye will be preserved so that you can witness the scene. Understood?’

  The first of the crimes of which Paulo and his friends were accused–an armed raid on a supermarket in Jandaia do Sul–had left no victims. But during the attempted raid on a bank in the same city, the guerrillas had shot the manager. The similarities between the four travellers and the guerrillas appeared to justify the suspicions of the military in Ponta Grossa. Although the raiders used nylon stockings to cover their faces, there was no doubt that they were three white men, one of them with long hair, like Paulo, and a blonde woman, like Vera, and that, like Paulo and his friends, they were driving a white Volkswagen with Guanabara number plates. Paulo’s map also seemed to the authorities to be too careful and professional to have been produced by a grandfather eager to help his hippie grandson. Besides this, the chosen route could not have been more compromising: information from military intelligence had reported that the group led by Captain Carlos Lamarca might be preparing to establish a guerrilla nucleus in Vale do Ribeira–which was on the very route the friends had taken on their journey to Asunción. A dossier containing files on all four plus information on the car had been sent to the security agencies in Brasilia, Rio and São Paulo.

  Besides their illegal arrest and the ever more terrifying threats, none of the four had as yet experienced physical violence. Major Índio had repeated his promise to eat one o
f their eyeballs to each of the others, insisting that this was not a mere empty threat: ‘Up to now no one has laid a finger on you. We’re giving you food and blankets on the assumption that you are innocent. But don’t forget: if there’s a word of a lie in your statements, I’ll carry out my promise. I’ve done it before to other terrorists and I’ll have no problems doing the same to you.’

  The situation worsened on the Tuesday morning, when some of the supermarket employees were taken to the barracks to identify the suspects. With Paulo and Vera, the identification was made through a small opening in the cell doors, without their knowing that they were being observed. In the case of Arnold and Kakiko, the doors were simply opened, allowing the people–who were as terrified as the prisoners–a quick look inside. Although the assailants had had their faces covered when committing the crimes, and despite the very cursory identification procedure, in unlit cells, the witnesses were unanimous: those were the four who had committed the crime. The interrogations became more intense and more intimidating, and the same questions were repeated four, five, six, ten times. Vera and Arnold had to explain over and over to the succession of civil and military authorities who entered the cells to ask questions just what a Yugoslav woman and a naval officer suspended for subversion were doing in the area. Coelho cannot recall how often he had to answer the same questions: after such a long journey, how come they hadn’t even bothered to see the match? How had Vera managed to cross the frontier with Paraguay in both directions without documents? Why did the map suggest so many alternative places to stay and fill up the car with petrol? Paulo commented to Arnold, in one of the rare moments they were alone in the same cell, that this was a Kafkaesque nightmare: even the presence of his nebulizer to relieve his asthma attacks had to be explained in detail several times.

  The nightmare continued for five days. On the Saturday morning, armed soldiers entered the cells and gave orders for the prisoners to collect their things because they were being ‘moved’. Squashed in the back of the same olive-green van, the four were sure that they were going to be executed. When the vehicle stopped minutes later, much to their surprise, they got out in front of a bungalow surrounded by a garden of carefully tended roses. At the top of the stairs, a smiling soldier with grey hair and a bouquet of flowers in his hands was waiting for them. This was Colonel Lobo Mazza, who explained to the dazed travellers that everything had been cleared up and that they were indeed innocent. The flowers, which the officer had picked himself, were given to Vera by way of an apology. The colonel explained the reasons for their imprisonment–the growth of the armed struggle, their similarity to the assailants in Jandaia do Sul, the drive through Vale do Ribeira–and he made a point of asking each whether they had suffered any physical violence. Seeing their dirty, ragged appearance, he suggested they use the bathroom in the house and then offered them canapés accompanied by some good Scotch whisky. So that they would have no problems getting back to Rio, they were given a safe-conduct pass signed by Colonel Mazza himself. The journey was over.

  CHAPTER 11

  The marijuana years

  ONCE HE WAS BACK IN RIO, Paulo entered the 1970s propelled by a new fuel: cannabis. This would be followed by other drugs, but initially he only used cannabis. Once they had tried the drug together for the first time, he and Vera became regular consumers. Being new to the experience, they had little knowledge of its effects, and before starting to smoke they would lock away any knives or other sharp household objects in a drawer ‘to prevent any accidents’, as she said. They smoked every day and on any pretext: in the afternoon so that they could better enjoy the sunsets, at night to get over the fact that they felt as if they were sleeping on the runway of Santos Dumont airport, with the deafening noise of aeroplanes taking off and landing only a few metres away. And, if there was no other reason, they smoked to allay boredom. Paulo recalled later having spent days in a row under the effect of cannabis, without so much as half an hour’s interval.

  Completely free of parental control, he had become a true hippie: someone who not only dressed and behaved like a hippie but thought like one too. He had stopped being a communist–before he had ever become one–when he was lectured in public by a militant member of the Brazilian Communist Party for saying that he had really loved the film Les Parapluies de Cherbourg–a French musical starring Catherine Deneuve. With the same ease with which he had crossed from the Christianity of the Jesuits to Marxism, he was now a devout follower of the hippie insurrection that was spreading throughout the world. ‘This will be humanity’s final revolution,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘Communism is over, a new brotherhood is born, mysticism is invading art, drugs are an essential food. When Christ consecrated the wine, he was consecrating drugs. Drugs are a wine of the most superior vintage.’

  After spending a few months at the Solar Santa Terezinha, he and Vera rented, together with a friend, a two-bedroom apartment in Santa Teresa, a bohemian district at the top of a hill near the Lapa, in the centre of the city, which had a romantic little tramway running through it that clanked as it went up the hill. In between moves, they had to live for some weeks in the Leblon apartment, along with Vera’s husband, who had not yet moved out.

  Cannabis usually causes prolonged periods of lethargy and exhaustion in heavy users, but the drug seemed to have the opposite effect on Paulo. He became positively hyperactive and in the first months of 1970, he adapted for the stage and produced The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, took part in theatre workshops with the playwright Amir Haddad and entered both the Paraná Short Story Competition and the Esso Prize for Literature. He even found time to write three plays: Os Caminhos do Misticismo [The Paths of Mysticism], about Father Cícero Romão Batista, a miracle worker from the northeast of Brazil; A Revolta da Chibata: História à Beira de um Caís [The Chibata Revolt: History on the Dockside], about the sailors’ revolt in Rio de Janeiro in 1910; and Os Limites da Resistência [The Limits of Resistance], which was a dramatized compilation of various texts. He sent the latter off to the National Book Institute, an organ of the federal government, but it failed to get beyond the first obstacle, the Reading Commission. His book fell into the hands of the critic and novelist Octavio de Faria who, while emphasizing its good points, sent the originals straight to the archives with the words:

  I won’t deny that this strange book, The Limits of Resistance, left me completely perplexed. Even after reading it, I cannot decide which literary genre it belongs to. It claims to comprise ‘Eleven Fundamental Differences’, bears an epigraph by Henry Miller, and sets out to ‘explain’ life. It contains digressions, surrealist constructions, descriptions of psychedelic experiences, and all kinds of games and jokes. It is a hotchpotch of ‘fundamental differences’, which, while undeniably well written and intelligent, does not seem to me the kind of book that fits our criteria. Whatever Sr. Paulo Coelho de Souza’s literary future may be, it’s the kind of work that ‘avant-garde’ publishers like, in the hope of stumbling across a ‘genius’, but not the publishers of the National Book Institute.

  At least he had the consolation of being in good company. The same Reading Commission also rejected at least two books that would become classics of Brazilian literature: Sargento Getúlio, which was to launch the writer João Ubaldo Ribeiro in Brazil and the United States, and Objeto Gritante, by Clarice Lispector, which was later to be published as Água Viva.

  As if some force were trying to deflect him from his idée fixe of becoming a writer, drama continued to offer Paulo more recognition than prose. Although he had high hopes for his play about Father Cícero, foreseeing a brilliant future for it, only A Revolta da Chibata went on to achieve any success. He entered it in the prestigious Concurso Teatro Opinião, more because he felt that he should than with any hope of winning. The prize offered was better than any amount of money: the winning play would be performed by the members of the Teatro Opinião, which was the most famous of the avant-garde theatre groups in Brazil. When Vera called to tell him that A R
evolta had come second, Paulo reacted angrily: ‘Second? Shit! I always come second.’ First prize had gone to Os Dentes do Tigre [Tiger’s Teeth] by Maria Helena Kühner, who was also starting out on her career.

  However, if his objective was fame, he had nothing to complain about. Besides being quoted in all the newspapers and praised by such critics as João das Neves and José Arrabal, that despised second prize brought A Revolta a place in the Teatro Opinião’s much-prized series of readings, which were open to the public and took place every week. Paulo may have been upset about not winning first prize, but he was very anxious during the days that preceded the reading. He could think of nothing else all week and was immensely proud when he watched the actress Maria Pompeu reading his play before a packed house.

  Months later, his acquaintance with Teatro Opinião meant that he met–very briefly–one of the international giants of counterculture, the revolutionary American drama group the Living Theatre, which was touring Brazil at the time. When Paulo learned that he had managed to get tickets to see a production by the group, he was so excited that he felt ‘quite intimidated, as though I had just taken a big decision’. Fearing that he might be asked to give his opinion on something during the interval or after the play, he read a little Nietzsche before going to the theatre ‘so as to have something to say’. In the end, he and Vera were so affected by what they saw that they wangled an invitation to the house where the group–headed by Julian Beck and Judith Malina–were staying, and from there went on to visit the shantytown in Vidigal. Judging by the notes in his diary, however, the meeting did not go well: ‘Close contact with the Living Theatre. We went to the house where Julian Beck and Judith Malina are staying and no one talked to us. A bitter feeling of humiliation. We went with them to the favela. It was the first time in my life that I’d been to a favela. It’s a world apart.’