Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life

by Fernando Morais

  Lord, I believe! Help thou my unbelief…

  Lord, I believe! Help thou my unbelief…

  Lord, I believe! Help thou my unbelief…

  They repeated these words out loud hundreds, possibly thousands of times. Paulo renounced and forswore, again out loud, any connection with OTO, with Crowley and with the demons who appeared to have been unleashed that Saturday. When peace returned, it was dark outside. Paulo felt physically and emotionally drained.

  Terrified by what they had experienced, the couple did not dare to sleep in the apartment that night. The furniture, books and household objects were all in their usual places, as if that emotional earthquake had never taken place, but it seemed best not to take any chances and they went to spend the weekend with Lygia and Pedro in Gávea. Since she had been with Paulo, Gisa had become a regular visitor to the Coelho household and was always made welcome, particularly by Lygia. Gisa’s one defect–in the eyes of Paulo’s parents–was her political radicalism. During the long Sunday lunches in Gávea when Paulo’s parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents would meet, Gisa would always defend her ideas, even though she knew she was among supporters of Salazar, Franco and the Brazilian military dictatorship. Although everything indicates that she had gradually distanced herself from the political militancy of her student days, her views had not changed. When the couple left on Monday morning, Lygia invited them to a small dinner she was going to hold that evening for her sister Heloísa, ‘Aunt Helói’. The two took a taxi back to their apartment–for Paulo had still not learnt to drive. There were no smells, no mists, no shards of glass, nothing to indicate that two days earlier the place had been the scene of what both were sure had been a battle between Good and Evil. When he chose the clothes he was going to wear after his shower, Paulo decided that he would no longer be a slave to superstition. He took from his wardrobe a pale blue linen shirt with short sleeves and pockets trimmed with embroidery, which was a present his mother had given him three years earlier and which he had never worn. This was because the shirt had been bought on a trip his parents had made to Asunción, the capital of the neighbouring country whose name, since his imprisonment in Ponta Grossa, he had never again pronounced. In wearing that shirt from Paraguay he wanted, above all, to prove to himself that he was free of his esoteric tics. He had lunch with Gisa and, at two in the afternoon, went over to Raul’s apartment to accompany him to the Dops.

  It took more than half an hour to travel the traffic-ridden 15 kilometres that separated Jardim de Alah, where Raul lived, and the Dops building in the centre of the city, and the two men spent the time discussing plans for the launch of their LP Gita. A year earlier, when the Krig-Ha, Bandolo! album had been released, the two, at Paulo’s suggestion, had led a ‘musical march’ through the streets of the commercial area in old Rio, and this had been a great success. This ‘happening’ had garnered them valuable minutes on the TV news as well as articles in newspapers and magazines. For Gita they wanted to do something even more extravagant.

  Calmly going to an interview with the political police when Brazil still had a military dictatorship, without taking with them a lawyer or a representative of the recording company, was not an irresponsible act. Besides being reasonably well known–at least Raul was–neither had any skeletons in the cupboard. Despite Paulo’s arrest in Ponta Grossa in 1969 and their skirmishes with the censors, they could not be accused of any act that might be deemed to show opposition to the dictatorship. Besides, the regime had eradicated all the armed combat groups operating in the country. Six months earlier, at the end of 1973, army troops had destroyed the last centres of guerrilla resistance in Araguaia in the south of Pará, leaving a total of sixty-nine dead. Having annihilated all armed opposition, the repressive machinery was slowly being wound down. The regime was still committing many crimes and atrocities–and would continue to do so–but on that May Monday morning in 1974, it would not have been considered utter madness to keep an appointment with the political police, especially since any allegations of torture and the killing of prisoners were mostly made against the intelligence agencies and other sectors of the army, navy and air force.

  When the taxi left them at the door of the three-storey building in Rua da Relação, two blocks away from the Philips headquarters, it was three on the dot on 27 May. While Paulo sat on a bench, reading a newspaper, Raul showed the summons to the man at a window and then disappeared off down a corridor. Half an hour later, the musician returned. Instead of going over to Paulo, who was getting up ready to leave, he went over to a public telephone opposite, pretended to dial a number, and began to sing in English: ‘My dear partner, the men want to talk to you, not to me…’

  When Paulo failed to understand that Raul was trying to alert him to the fact that he might be in danger, Raul continued tapping his fingers on the telephone and repeating, as though it were a refrain: ‘They want to talk to you, not to me…They want to talk to you, not to me…’

  Paulo still didn’t understand. He stood up and asked, smiling: ‘Stop messing around, Raul. What are you singing?’

  When he made to leave, a policeman placed a hand on his shoulder and said: ‘You’re not going anywhere. You’ve got some explaining to do.’

  Paulo only had time to murmur a rapid ‘Tell my father’ to Raul before being led away. He was taken through a labyrinth of poorly lit corridors and across a courtyard until they reached a corridor with cells on either side, most of which appeared to be empty and from which emanated a strong smell of urine combined with disinfectant. The man with him stopped in front of one of them, occupied by two young men, shoved him inside and then turned the key in the lock. Without saying a word to the others, Paulo sat down on the floor, lit a cigarette and, panic-stricken, tried to work out what could possibly lie behind this imprisonment.

  He was still immersed in these thoughts when one of the men, who was younger than he, asked: ‘Aren’t you Paulo Coelho?’

  Startled, he replied: ‘Yes, I am. Why?’

  ‘We’re Children of God. I’m married to Talita. You met her in Amsterdam.’

  This was true. He recalled that during his trip to Holland, a young Brazilian girl had come up to him on seeing the Brazilian flag sewn on to the shoulder of his denim jacket. Like Paulo, the two young men had no idea why they were there. The Children of God sect, which had been started in California some years earlier, had managed to attract hundreds of followers in Brazil and now faced serious allegations, among which was that they encouraged sex with children, even between parents and their own children. The presence of the three in the Dops cells was like a snapshot of the state of political repression in Brazil. The much-feared, violent machine created by the dictatorship to confront guerrillas was now concerned with hippies, cannabis users and followers of eccentric sects.

  It wasn’t until about six in the evening that a plainclothes policeman with a pistol in his belt and holding a cardboard folder in his hand opened the door of the cell and asked: ‘Which one of you is Paulo Coelho de Souza?’

  Paulo identified himself and was taken to a room on the second floor of the building, where there was only a table and two chairs.

  The policeman sat on one of them and ordered Paulo to sit in the other. He took from the folder the four-page comic strip that accompanied Krig-Ha, Bandolo! and threw it down on the table. Then he began a surrealist dialogue with the prisoner.

  ‘What kind of shit is this?’

  ‘It’s the insert that accompanies the album recorded by me and Raul Seixas.’

  ‘What does Krig-Ha, Bandolo! mean?’

  ‘It means “Watch out for the enemy!”’ ‘Enemy? What enemy? The government? What language is it written in?’ ‘No! No, it’s not against the government. The enemy are African lions and it’s written in the language spoken in the kingdom of Pal-U-Don.’

  Convinced that this skinny, long-haired man was making a fool of him, the policeman looked as if he was about to turn nasty, thus obliging Paulo to explain caref
ully that it was all a work of fiction inspired by the places, people and language of the Tarzan cartoons which were set in an imaginary place in Africa called Pal-U-Don.

  The man was still not satisfied. ‘And who wrote this stuff?’

  ‘I did, and my partner, who’s an architect, illustrated it.’

  ‘What’s your partner’s name? I want to interview her too. Where is she now?’

  Paulo panicked at the thought of involving Gisa in this nightmare, but he knew that there was no point in lying; nor was there any reason to lie, since they were both innocent. He looked at his watch.

  ‘Her name is Adalgisa Rios. We were invited to supper this evening at my parents’ house. She should be there by now.’

  The policeman gathered up the papers, cigarettes and lighter he had scattered on the table, got up and ordered the terrified prisoner to follow him, saying: ‘Right, let’s go. Let’s go and find your old lady.’

  As he was being bundled into a black-and-white van bearing the symbol of the Rio de Janeiro Security Police, Paulo felt momentary relief. This meant that he had been officially arrested and, in theory at least, was under state protection. Hell meant being picked up in unmarked cars with false number plates by plainclothes policemen, men with no orders and no official mandate, and who had been linked with many cases of torture and with the disappearance, so far, of 117 political prisoners.

  His parents could hardly believe it when they saw their son get out of the car, surrounded by four armed men. They said that Gisa had not yet arrived and wanted to know what was going on. Paulo tried to calm them down, saying that it was just a minor problem with Krig-Ha, Bandolo! It would soon be resolved, and he and Gisa should even be back in time for dinner.

  Photographic Insert

  Lygia Araripe Coelho de Souza holding her baby Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, 1947.

  Paulo as a baby and playing with his cousins (in sandals and shorts), Rio de Janeiro, 1950s.

  Paulo, aged ten (second from left, first row), at Our Lady Victorious School, Rio de Janeiro, 1957.

  Paulo, aged fifteen (fourth from left, second row from top), at St Ignatius College, a respected boys’ schools in Rio de Janeiro, in 1962.

  The forged school document Paulo used to get into the left-leaning ‘Paissandu set’ in 1965. Adding two years to his age gained him admittance to this group of intellectual film-lovers.

  Paulo used to classify and rank the books he read. In this list, Martin Luther King wins his highest rating.

  Fabíola Fracarolli in 1967, one of Paulo’s many girlfriends during the late 1960s.

  Paulo and Fabíola.

  Paulo with fellow actors in an adaptation of Jorge Amado’s Capitães da Areia at the Teatro Serrador in Rio de Janeiro, 1966.

  Paulo (fifth from the left, front row) with cast and crew on the opening night of Capitães da Areia.

  Paulo as Captain Hook (far right) and the other actors in his production of Peter Pan, 1969. Fabíola, who subsidised the production, played Peter Pan and Paulo’s friend Kakiko (centre, front row) wrote the score.

  Kakiko, Paulo, Vera and Arnold (left to right) make their first stop in Registro on their ill-fated trip to Asunción, Paraguay, 1969.

  Paulo during his trip across the United States, 1971.

  Paulo during his 24-hour marijuana experiment at Kakiko’s house in Friburgo, 1971.

  Paulo and his girlfriend Gisa. Following the termination of her pregnancy, she took an overdose of barbiturates and nearly drowned.

  Paulo used black magic techniques and rituals in the drama courses he ran in 1973 at schools in Mato Grosso, Brazil.

  Paulo breaks his hour-long pact with the Devil, 11 November 1971.

  Paulo’s registration card as prisoner no. 13720. He and Gisa were imprisoned on account of the Krig-Ha, Bandolo! comic strip, 1974.

  A leaflet advertising a presentation by the Crowleyites and the launch of Paulo’s Arquivos do Inferno.

  The psychedelic comic strip accompanying the Krig-Ha, Bandolo! LP, written by Paulo and Raul Seixas and illustrated by Gisa, that so intrigued the Brazilian police, 1974.

  Paulo and Cissa leave the altar of St Joseph’s Church, Rio de Janeiro, as man and wife, 2 July 1976.

  Paulo on his visit to London in 1976.

  Paulo and Christina in January 1980.

  Paulo and Christina bought this Mercedes-Benz from the Indian embassy in Budapest for their European trip in 1982 after having struggled in their previous car, a Citröen 2CV.

  Paulo’s visit to Dachau concentration camp in 1982 saw his birth as an author.

  Nandor Glid’s bronze memorial at the camp.

  The cover of Arquivos do Inferno featured Paulo with Christina and his old Crowleyite colleague Stella, 1982. The preface was by ‘Andy Wharol’, who never read the book.

  Béla Lugosi on the cover of Manual Prático do Vampirismo, 1985. Though credited as the main author, Paulo didn’t write a single word and persuaded a friend to produce his chapters.

  Paulo asked the I Ching in 1988 how to ensure 100,000 sales of The Alchemist. The oracle replied, ‘The great man brings good luck.’

  Paulo in Egypt in 1987. The trip would provide inspiration for The Alchemist.

  Paulo and Christina in the Mojave desert in 1988, where they practised the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius Loyola.

  Paulo cemented an image of Our Lady of Aparecida in a grotto in Glorieta Canyon, New Mexico, writing a message in the wet mortar beneath it. The image was subsequently stolen.

  The cartoon that appeared in Jornal do Brasil, 1993. According to the accompanying article, putting books by Paulo on the school curriculum would make students more stupid.

  Jacques Chirac congratulates Paulo at the Paris Expo convention centre in 1998, after he had been ignored by the official Brazilian delegation. Brazilian First Lady Ruth Cardoso looks on.

  Paulo takes a photo of himself in the hotel bathroom, wearing the Légion d’Honneur with which he has just been decorated by the French president in 1999.

  Paulo is received by Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, 1998.

  Mônica Antunes, Paulo’s literary agent, with Paulo and friends in Dubai.

  Paulo and Christina in Prague in 2005 with their gift to the Infant Jesus of a gold-embroidered cloak, fulfilling a promise Paulo made three decades earlier.

  Paulo signing books in Cairo, 2005. Egypt is the world’s leading producer of pirate editions of his books.

  In 2002 Paulo was chosen as one of the forty lifetime members of the Brazilian Academy of Letters. He is pictured here with four of his fellow ‘immortals’.

  Paulo, Marisa Letícia (First Lady of Brazil), Christina and President Lula (left to right) at a state banquet in the president’s honour at Buckingham Palace, 2006.

  Paulo meeting Vladimir Putin.

  Fulfilling an old dream: Paulo pauses during his journey on the Trans-Siberian Railway, 2007.

  The Sunday Times journalist Christina Lamb, the inspiration for the character of Esther in The Zahir.

  The pamphlet commemorating 100 million books sold.

  One of the policemen backed him up, assuring Lygia and Pedro: ‘Yes, they’ll be back before you know it.’

  As on the outward journey, he sat in the back of the van with an armed policeman on either side and the other two in the front. Halfway there, Paulo asked if they could stop at a public telephone, saying that he needed to tell the recording company that there were some problems with the record. One of the policemen said ‘No’, but calmed him by saying that in a few hours he and Gisa would be free. His plan had not worked: in fact, Paulo had been hoping to call home to ask Gisa to get rid of a jar full of cannabis that was on the bookcase in the sitting room. He sat frozen and silent until they reached the door of the building where he lived. A policeman stayed with the van while the other three went upstairs with him, crowding into the small, slow lift which on that occasion seemed to take about an hour to arrive at the fourth floor. Inside, wearing an Indian sari, Gisa
was just turning out the lights, ready to leave, when Paulo came in with the policemen.

  ‘Sweetheart, these men are from the Dops and they need some information about the record I made with Raul and about the comic strip you and I did for Philips.’

  Gisa was a bit frightened, but she seemed to take the matter calmly enough: ‘Fine. Tell me what you want. What do you want to know?’

  A policeman said that it didn’t work that way: ‘We can only take statements at the Dops headquarters, so we’ll have to go back there.’

  She didn’t understand. ‘Do you mean we’re being arrested?’