by Paulo Coelho
The shaman laughs again.
“When his wife passed onto another plane, he killed God, and he will keep coming back once, twice, ten times, to try again and again to talk to her. He doesn’t ask for help in order to understand life better. He wants things to conform to his way of seeing life and death.”
He pauses and looks around him. It is now completely dark, apart from the light from the flames.
“I cannot cure despair when people find comfort in it.”
“Who am I talking to?”
“You are a believer.”
I repeat the question, and he answers: “Valentina.”
A woman.
“The man at my side may be slightly foolish when it comes to things spiritual,” I say, “but he is an excellent human being, prepared for anything except what he calls the ‘death’ of his wife. The man at my side is a good man.”
The shaman nods. “So are you. You came with a friend who has been by your side for a long time, long before you met in this life. As have I.” Another laugh. “It was in a different place, and we met the same fate in battle, what your friend here calls ‘death.’ I don’t know in which country it was, but the wounds were caused by bullets. Warriors meet again. It is part of the divine law.”
He throws some herbs onto the flames, explaining that we have done this, too, in another life, sitting around a fire and talking about our adventures.
“Your spirit converses with the eagle of Baikal, which watches over and guards everything, attacking enemies and protecting and defending friends.”
As if to confirm his words, we hear a bird far off. The feeling of cold has been replaced by one of well-being. He again holds out the bottle to us.
“Fermented drinks are alive; they pass from youth to old age. When they reach maturity, they can destroy the Spirit of Inhibition, the Spirit of Loneliness, the Spirit of Fear, the Spirit of Anxiety. But if you drink too much of them, they rebel and usher in the Spirit of Defeat and Aggression. It’s all a matter of knowing when to stop.”
We drink and celebrate.
“At this moment, your body is on the earth, but your spirit is with me up here in the heights, and that is all I can offer you: a stroll through the skies above Baikal. You did not come here to ask for anything, and so I will give you only that. I hope it will inspire you to continue doing what you do.
“Be blessed. And just as you are transforming your own life, may you transform the lives of those around you. When they ask, do not forget to give. When they knock at your door, be sure to open it. When they lose something and come to you, do whatever you can to help them find what they have lost. First, though, ask; knock at the door and find out what is missing from your life. A hunter always knows what to expect—eat or be eaten.”
I nod.
“You have experienced this before and will do so many times,” the shaman goes on. “Someone who is your friend is also a friend of the eagle of Baikal. Nothing special will happen tonight; you will have no visions, no magical experiences or trances that bring you into contact with the living or the dead. You will receive no special power. You will merely feel joy when the eagle of Baikal shows the lake to your soul. You will see nothing, but up above, your spirit will be filled with delight.”
My spirit is indeed filled with delight, even though I can see nothing. I don’t have to. I know he is telling the truth. When my spirit returns to my body, it will be wiser and calmer.
Time stops, because I can no longer keep track of it. The flames flicker, casting strange shadows on the shaman’s face, but I am barely here. I allow my spirit to go strolling; it needs to, after so much work and effort by my side. I don’t feel cold anymore. I don’t feel anything. I am free and will remain so for as long as the eagle of Baikal is flying over the lake and the snowy mountains. It’s a shame that my spirit cannot tell me what it sees, but then again, I don’t need to know everything that happens to me.
The wind is getting up again. The shaman makes a low bow to the earth and to the sky. The fire, in the shelter of its hole, suddenly goes out. I look at the moon, which is high in the sky now, and I can see the shapes of birds flying around us. The shaman is once again an old man. He seems tired as he puts his drum back into a large embroidered bag.
Yao sticks his hand in his left pocket and pulls out a handful of coins and notes. I do the same. Yao says, “We went begging for the eagle of Baikal. Here is what we received.”
The shaman bows and thanks us for the money, and we all walk unhurriedly back to the boat. The sacred island of the shamans has its own spirit; it is dark, and we can never be sure that we are putting our feet in the right place.
When we reach the shore, we look for Hilal, but the two women explain that she has gone back to the hotel. Only then do I realize that the shaman did not mention her once.
Fear of Fear
THE HEAT IN MY ROOM is still on maximum. Before even bothering to reach for the light switch, I take off my anorak, hat, and scarf, and go over to the window, intending to open it and let in a little fresh air. The hotel is on a small hill, and I can see the lights of the village below going out one by one. I stand there for a while, imagining the marvels that my spirit must have seen. Then, just as I’m about to turn around, I hear a voice saying, “Don’t turn around.”
Hilal is there, and the tone in which she says these words frightens me. She sounds deadly serious.
“I’m armed.”
No, that’s impossible. Unless those women…
“Take a few steps back.”
I do as ordered.
“A little more. That’s it. Now take a step to the right. Okay, stop there.”
I’m not thinking anymore. The survival instinct has taken charge of all my reactions. In a matter of seconds my mind has processed my options: I could throw myself on the floor or try to strike up a conversation or simply wait and see what she does next. If she really is determined to kill me, she’ll do so soon, but if she doesn’t shoot in the next few minutes, she’ll start talking, and that will improve my chances.
There is a deafening noise, an explosion, and I find myself covered in shards of glass. The bulb above my head has burst.
“In my right hand I have my bow, and in my left my violin. No, don’t turn around.”
I stay where I am and breathe a sigh of relief. There’s nothing magical or special about what has just happened; opera singers can shatter a champagne glass, for example, by singing a particular note that makes the air vibrate at a frequency that can cause very fragile objects to break.
The bow touches the strings again, producing the same piercing sound.
“I know what happened. I saw it. The women took me there with no need for a ring of light.”
She’s seen it.
An immense weight is lifted off my glass-strewn shoulders. Yao doesn’t know it, but our journey to this place is also part of my journey back to my kingdom. I didn’t need to tell her anything. She had seen it.
“You abandoned me when I most needed you. I died because of you and have returned now to haunt you.”
“You’re not haunting me or frightening me. I was forgiven.”
“You forced me to forgive you. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
Another shrill, unpleasant chord.
“If you like, you can withdraw your forgiveness.”
“No, I don’t want to. You are forgiven. And if you needed me to forgive you a hundred times over, I would. But the images were very confused in my mind. I need you to tell me exactly what happened. I remember only that I was naked. You were looking at me, and I was telling everyone there that I loved you and that was why I was condemned to death. My love condemned me.”
“Can I turn around now?”
“Not yet. First, tell me what happened. All I know is that in a past life I died because of you. It could have been here, it could have been somewhere else in the world, but I sacrificed myself in the name of love to save you.”
My eyes ha
ve grown accustomed to the darkness now, but the heat in the room is unbearable.
“What did those women do, exactly?”
“We sat down together on the lakeshore; they lit a fire, beat on a drum, went into a trance, and gave me something to drink. When I drank, I started getting these confusing images in my head. They didn’t last long. All I remember is what I’ve just told you. I thought it was some kind of nightmare, but they assured me that you and I had been together in a past life. You told me so yourself.”
“No, it happened in the present; it’s happening now. At this moment, I’m in a hotel room in some nameless Siberian village, but I’m also in a dungeon near Córdoba in Spain. I’m with my wife in Brazil, as well as with the many other women I’ve known, and in some of those lives I myself am a woman. Play something.”
I take off my sweater. She starts to play a sonata not originally written for the violin. My mother used to play it on the piano when I was a child.
“There was a time when the world, too, was a woman, and her energy was very beautiful. People believed in miracles; the present moment was all there was, and so time did not exist. The Greeks have two words for time, the first of which is kairos, meaning God’s time, eternity. Then a change occurred. The battle for survival, the need to know when to plant crops so that they could be harvested. That was when time as we know it now became part of our history. The Greeks call it Chronos; the Romans called it Saturn, a god whose first act was to devour his own children. We became the slaves of memory. Keep playing, and I’ll explain more clearly.”
She continues to play. I start to cry but manage to keep talking.
“At this moment, I am in a garden in a town, sitting on a bench at the back of my house, looking up at the sky and trying to work out what people mean when they use the expression ‘building castles in the air,’ an expression I first heard an hour ago. I am seven years old. I am trying to build a golden castle but finding it hard to concentrate. My friends are having supper in their houses, and my mother is playing the same music I’m hearing now, only on the piano. If I didn’t feel the need to describe what I’m feeling, I would be entirely there. The smell of summer, cicadas singing in the trees, and me thinking about the little girl I’m in love with.”
I’m not in the past, I’m in the present. I am the little boy I was then. I will always be that little boy; we will all be the children, grown-ups, and old people we were and will become. I am not remembering, I am reliving that time.
I can’t go on. I cover my face with my hands and weep while she plays ever more intensely, ever more exquisitely, transporting me back to the many people I am and was. I am not crying for my dead mother, because she is here now, playing for me. I am not crying for the child who, puzzled by a strange turn of phrase, is trying to build a golden castle that keeps disappearing. That child is here as well, listening to Chopin; having listened to it often, he knows how lovely the music is and would happily hear it again and again. I am crying because there is no other way to show what I feel: I am alive. I am alive in every pore and every cell of my body. I am alive. I was never born and never died.
I may have my moments of sadness or confusion, but above me is the great I who understands everything and laughs at my suffering. I am crying for what is ephemeral and eternal, because I know that words are much poorer than music, and so I will never be able to describe this moment. I let Chopin, Beethoven, and Wagner lead me into that past that is also the present, for their music is far more powerful than any golden ring.
I cry while Hilal plays, and she plays until I grow tired of crying.
SHE WALKS OVER TO THE LIGHT SWITCH. The shattered bulb short-circuits. The room remains in darkness. She goes to the bedside table and switches on the lamp.
“Now you can turn around.”
When my eyes get used to the brightness, I see that she is completely naked, her arms spread wide, her bow and violin in her hands.
“Today you said that you loved me like a river. I want to tell you now that I love you like the music of Chopin. Simple and profound, as blue as the lake, capable of—”
“The music speaks for itself. There’s no need to say anything.”
“I’m afraid, very afraid. What was it I saw, exactly?”
I describe in detail everything that happened in the dungeon, my own cowardice and the girl who looked then exactly as she does now, except that her hands were bound with lengths of rope, a far cry from the strings on her bow or violin. She listens in silence, her arms still spread wide, absorbing my every word. We are both standing in the middle of the room. Her body is as white as that of the fifteen-year-old girl now being led to a pyre built near the city of Córdoba. I will not be able to save her, and I know that she will vanish into the flames along with her friends. This happened once and is happening over and over again, and will continue to happen as long as the world exists. I mention to her that the girl had pubic hair, whereas she has shaved hers off, something I hate, as if all men were looking for a child to have sex with. I ask her not to do that again, and she promises she won’t.
I show her the patches of eczema on my skin, which seem angrier and more visible than usual. I explain that they are the marks from that same place and past. I ask if she remembers what she said, or what the other girls said, while they were being led to the pyre.
She shakes her head and asks, “Do you desire me?”
“Yes, I do. We’re here alone in this unique place on the planet. You are standing naked before me. I desire you very much.”
“I’m afraid of my fear. I’m asking myself for forgiveness not for being here but because I have always been selfish in my pain. Instead of forgiving, I sought vengeance. Not because I was the stronger party but because I always felt myself to be the weaker one. Whenever I hurt other people, I was only hurting myself even more. I humiliated others in order to feel humiliated; I attacked others in order to feel that my own feelings were being violated.
“I know I’m not the only person to have been through what I described that night at the embassy, being abused by a neighbor and friend of the family. I said then that it wasn’t a rare experience, and I’m sure that at least one of the women there had been sexually abused as a child. But not everyone behaves as I have. I’m simply not at peace with myself.”
She takes a deep breath, trying to find the right words, then goes on.
“I can’t get over what everyone else seems perfectly able to get over. You are in search of your treasure, and I am part of it. Nevertheless, I feel like a stranger in my own skin. The only reason I don’t throw myself into your arms, kiss you, and make love with you now is that I lack the courage and am afraid of losing you. While you were setting out in search of your kingdom, I was beginning to find myself, until at a certain point on the journey I couldn’t go any further. That was when I started to get more aggressive. I feel rejected, useless, and there’s nothing you can say that will make me change my mind.”
I sit down on the one chair in the room and ask her to sit on my lap. Her body is damp with sweat because of the excessive heat. She keeps ahold of her violin and bow.
“I’m afraid of lots of things,” I say, “and always will be. I’m not going to try and explain anything, but there is something you could do right now.”
“I don’t want to go on telling myself that one day it will pass. It won’t. I have to learn to live with my demons.”
“Wait. I didn’t make this journey in order to save the world, far less to save you, but according to the magical Tradition, it’s possible to transfer pain. It won’t disappear instantly, but it will gradually disappear as you transfer it to another place. You’ve been doing this unconsciously all your life. Now I suggest you do it consciously.”
“Don’t you want to make love with me?”
“Very much. At this moment, even though the room is boiling hot, I’m generating even more heat at the spot where your body is in contact with my legs. I’m no Superman. That’s why I’m
asking you to transfer both your pain and my desire. I want you to get up, go to your room, and play your violin until you’re exhausted. We’re the only guests in the hotel, so no one is going to complain about the noise. Pour all your feelings into your music, and do the same again tomorrow. Whenever you play, tell yourself that the thing that hurt you so much has become a gift. You’re wrong when you say that other people have recovered from the trauma; they’ve simply hidden it away in a place they never go to. In your case, though, God has shown you the way. The power of regeneration is in your hands.”
“I love you as I love Chopin. I always wanted to be a pianist, but the violin was all my parents could afford at the time.”
“And I love you like a river.”
She gets up and starts to play. The heavens hear the music, and the angels come down to join me in listening to the naked woman who sometimes stands still and sometimes sways her body in time to the music. I desired her and made love with her without ever touching her or having an orgasm. Not because I’m the most faithful man in the world but because that was the way in which our bodies met—with the angels watching over us.
For the third time that night—the first was when my spirit flew with the eagle of Baikal, the second when I heard that childhood tune—time had stopped. I was entirely there, with no past or future, experiencing the music with her, that unexpected prayer, and feeling grateful that I had set off in search of my kingdom. I lay down on the bed, and she continued to play. I fell asleep to the sound of her violin.
I WOKE AT FIRST LIGHT, went to her room, and saw her face. For the first time, she looked like an ordinary twenty-one-year-old woman. I woke her gently and asked her to get dressed because Yao was waiting for us to have breakfast. We had to get back to Irkutsk. The train would be leaving in a few hours.
We go downstairs, eat some marinated fish for breakfast (the only thing on the menu at that hour), then hear the sound of the car that has come to fetch us drawing up outside. The driver greets us, takes our bags, and puts them in the trunk.