by Paulo Coelho
We emerge from the hotel into brilliant sunshine, clear skies, and no wind. The snowy mountains in the distance are clearly visible. I pause to say good-bye to the lake, knowing that I will probably never be back. Yao and Hilal get into the car, and the driver starts the engine.
But I can’t move.
“We’d better go,” he says. “I’ve allowed an extra hour, just in case there’s some accident en route, but I don’t want to risk missing the train.”
The lake is calling to me.
Yao gets out of the car and comes over. “You were perhaps expecting more from that meeting last night with the shaman, but it was very important to me.”
I had, in fact, expected less. Later, I will tell him what happened with Hilal. Now I am looking at the lake, which is dawning along with the sun, its waters reflecting every ray. My spirit had visited it with the eagle of Baikal, but I need to know it better.
“Things aren’t always the way we expect them to be,” he goes on. “But I’m really grateful to you for coming.”
“Is it possible to deviate from the path God has made? Yes, but it’s always a mistake. Is it possible to avoid pain? Yes, but you’ll never learn anything. Is it possible to know something without ever having experienced it? Yes, but it will never truly be part of you.”
And with those words, I walk toward the waters that continue to call to me. I do so slowly at first, hesitantly, unsure as to whether I will reach them. When I feel reason trying to hold me back, I start to walk more quickly, then break into a run, pulling off my winter clothes as I do. By the time I reach the edge of the lake, I am wearing only my underpants. For a moment, for a fraction of a second, I hesitate, but my doubts are not strong enough to prevent me from going forward. The icy water touches first my feet, then my ankles. The bottom of the lake is covered with stones, and I have difficulty maintaining my balance, but I keep going, until the water is deep enough to—dive in!
My body enters the freezing water, I feel thousands of needles pricking my skin, I stay under for as long as I can—a few seconds, perhaps, perhaps an eternity—then I return to the surface.
Summer! Heat!
Later, I realize that anyone moving from a very cold place to a warmer place experiences the same sensation. There I was, with no shirt on, knee-deep in the waters of Lake Baikal, as happy as a child, because I had been enfolded in an energy that was now part of me.
Yao and Hilal had followed me and were watching incredulously from the shore.
“Come on! Come on in!”
They both start getting undressed. Hilal has nothing on underneath and is once again completely naked. But what does that matter? Some people gather on the pier and watch us. But, again, who cares? The lake is ours. The world is ours.
Yao is first in. He doesn’t realize how uneven the bottom of the lake is and falls. He gets up, wades in a little farther, then takes the plunge. Hilal must have levitated over the pebbles, because she enters at a run, going farther out than either of us before plunging in; then she opens her arms to the skies and laughs like a loon.
No more than five minutes could have passed from the moment when I started running toward the lake until the moment we emerged. The driver, beside himself with worry, comes running toward us, bearing towels hastily borrowed from the hotel. We are leaping gleefully up and down, hugging one another, singing, shouting, and saying, “It’s so hot out here!”—like the children we will never, ever cease to be.
The City
FOR THE LAST TIME ON THIS JOURNEY, I adjust my watch. It’s five o’clock in the morning on May 30, 2006. In Moscow, which is seven hours behind, people are still having supper on the night of the 29th.
Everyone in the carriage woke early and found it impossible to get back to sleep, not because of the motion of the train, to which we have become accustomed, but because we will shortly be arriving in Vladivostok, our final stop. We have spent the last two days in the carriage, mostly sitting around the table that has been the center of our universe during this seemingly unending journey. We ate and told stories, and I described what it felt like to plunge into Lake Baikal, although the others were more interested in our meeting with the shaman.
My publishers had a brilliant idea: they would forewarn the stations en route of our arrival time. That way, whether it was day or night, I would get out of the carriage to find people waiting on the platform with books to sign. They thanked me, and I thanked them. Sometimes we stayed for only five minutes, sometimes for twenty. They blessed me, and I gratefully received their blessings, which came from all kinds of people, from elderly ladies in long coats, boots, and head scarves to young men who had just left work or were heading home, usually wearing only a jacket, as if to say, “I’m too tough for the cold to get to me.”
The previous day, I had decided to walk the whole length of the train. This was something I had thought of doing several times but always put off for another day, given that we had such a long journey ahead of us. Then I realized that we were nearly at our final destination.
I asked Yao to go with me. We opened and closed numerous doors, too many to count. Only then did I understand that I wasn’t on a train but in a city, a country, a whole universe. I should have done this before. The journey would have been so much richer; I might have met fascinating people and heard stories I could later turn into books.
I spent the whole afternoon investigating that city on wheels, pausing only to get off whenever we pulled into a station to meet any waiting readers. I walked through that great city as I have through many others and saw all the usual scenes: a man talking on his cell phone, a boy hurrying back to fetch something he had left behind in the dining car, a mother with a baby on her lap, two young people kissing in the narrow corridor outside the compartments, oblivious to the landscape speeding past outside, radios at full blast, signs I couldn’t understand, people offering and asking for things, a man with a gold tooth laughing with friends, a woman in a head scarf weeping and gazing into space. I smoked a few cigarettes with a group of people waiting by the narrow door into the next carriage while discreetly studying those thoughtful, well-dressed men who seemed to have the weight of the world on their shoulders.
I walked through that city, which stretched out like an ever-flowing river of steel, a city where I don’t speak the local language, but what does that matter? I heard all kinds of languages and sounds, and noticed that, as happens in all large cities, most people weren’t talking to anyone, each passenger absorbed in his or her own problems and dreams, forced to share the same compartment with three perfect strangers, people they will never meet again and who have their own problems and dreams to contend with. However miserable or lonely they might feel, however much they would like to share their joy at some triumph or their grief at some overwhelming sadness, it’s always best and safest to keep silent.
I decided to strike up a conversation with someone, a woman of about my own age. I asked if she knew what part of the country we were passing through. Yao began to translate my words, but I stopped him. I wanted to imagine what it would be like to make this journey alone. Would I have made it to the end? I wondered. The woman made a gesture indicating that she couldn’t hear what I was saying above the deafening noise of the wheels on the tracks. I repeated my question, and this time she did hear but didn’t understand. She clearly thought I was slightly touched and hurriedly moved away.
I tried a second and a third person. I asked a different question: why were they traveling, and what were they doing on that train? No one understood what I was asking, and I was glad in a way, because it was a pretty stupid question. They all knew what they were doing and where they were going—even I knew that, although I hadn’t perhaps reached precisely the place I wanted to reach. Someone squeezing past us down the narrow corridor heard me speaking English, stopped, and said very calmly, “May I help you? Are you lost?”
“No, I’m not lost, but where exactly are we?”
“We’re on the Chinese
frontier and will soon be going south, down to Vladivostok.”
I thanked him and walked on. I had at least managed to have a brief conversation, which meant that it would have been possible to travel on that train alone. I would never be lost as long as there were people willing to help.
I walked through that apparently endless city and returned to the point where I had started, carrying with me the smiles, looks, kisses, music, and babble of words, as well as the forest passing by outside that I would probably never see again, although it would stay with me forever, in my mind’s eye and in my heart.
I returned to the table that had been the center of our universe, wrote a few lines on a piece of paper, and stuck it on the mirror, where Yao always put his daily thoughts.
I’M READING WHAT I WROTE YESTERDAY after my walk through the train.
I am not a foreigner, because I haven’t been praying to return safely home. I haven’t wasted my time imagining my house, my desk, my side of the bed. I am not a foreigner, because we are all traveling, we are all full of the same questions, the same tiredness, the same fears, the same selfishness, and the same generosity. I am not a foreigner, because, when I asked, I received. When I knocked, the door opened. When I looked, I found.
These, I remember, were the words of the shaman. Soon this carriage will go back where it came from. This piece of paper will disappear as soon as the cleaners arrive. But I will never forget what I wrote, because I am not and never will be a foreigner.
HILAL MOSTLY STAYED IN HER COMPARTMENT, frantically playing her violin. Sometimes it seemed to me that she was once again talking to the angels, but at others that she was merely practicing in order to maintain her technique. On the drive back to Irkutsk, I had felt sure that I was not alone on my flight with the eagle of Baikal. Our spirits—hers and mine—had seen the same marvels.
The previous night, I had again asked if we could sleep in the same bed together. I had tried doing the ring-of-light exercise alone but had never gotten anywhere apart from making another unintended visit to the writer I had been in nineteenth-century France. He (or I) was just finishing a paragraph:
The moments that precede sleep are very similar to death. We are filled by a torpor, and it is impossible to know when the “I” takes on a different form. Our dreams are our second life. I am incapable of going through the doors that lead us to that invisible world without a shiver.
That night as she lay by my side, I rested my head on her breast and we remained like that in silence, as if our souls had known each other for a long time and there was no need for words, only that physical contact. I finally managed to get the golden ring to take me to the very place I wanted to be: a small town outside Córdoba.
THE SENTENCE IS PRONOUNCED IN PUBLIC, in the middle of the square, as if this were a day of celebration. The eight girls, wearing white dresses down to their ankles, are shivering with cold, but soon they will experience the fires of Hell lit by men who believe they are acting in the name of Heaven. I asked my Superior to excuse me from being there with the other members of the Church. He did not take much persuading. I think he is still furious with me for my cowardice and glad to see the back of me. I am mingling with the crowd, feeling deeply ashamed, my head still covered by the hood of my Dominican habit.
All day, curious onlookers have been arriving from the nearby towns, and by the time dusk falls, the square is packed. The nobles sitting in the special seats reserved for them in the front row are wearing their most colorful outfits. The women have had time to arrange their hair and put on makeup so that the crowd can appreciate what they deem to be their great beauty. There is something more than just curiosity in the eyes of the people present; the most common emotion appears to be a desire for vengeance. It isn’t just relief to see the guilty being punished but also glee because the guilty also happen to be the young, pretty, sensual daughters of very rich families. They deserve to be punished for having everything that most of the people there either left behind in their youth or never had at all. Let us, then, have our revenge on beauty. Let us avenge ourselves on joy, laughter, and hope. There is no room in such a world for feelings that show us up only for what we are—wretched, frustrated, and impotent.
The Inquisitor is saying a Mass in Latin. His sermon, in which he speaks of the terrible punishments awaiting all those found guilty of heresy, is interrupted by shouts. They come from the parents of the young women about to be burned. They had been kept out of the square until then but have managed to get through.
The Inquisitor stops his sermon, the crowd boos, and the guards go over to the interlopers and drag them away.
An ox-drawn cart arrives. The girls put their arms behind them so that their hands can be bound, and the Dominican monks then help them into the cart. The guards form a security cordon around the vehicle, the crowd moves back to let them through, and the oxen with their macabre cargo are driven toward the pyre that will be lit in a nearby field.
The girls have their heads bowed, and from where I am, I cannot know what is in their eyes, whether tears or terror. One of them was tortured so barbarously that she can stand only with the help of the others. The soldiers are having difficulty controlling the crowd, which is laughing, hurling insults, and throwing things. I see that the cart will pass close by where I am standing. I try to leave, but it’s too late. The dense mass of men, women, and children behind me won’t allow me to move.
The cart approaches. The girls’ white dresses are now stained with eggs, beer, wine, and potato peels. God have mercy on them. I hope that when the fire is lit, they ask pardon again for their sins, sins that will one day be transformed into virtues, unimaginable though that is for any of us there now. If they ask for absolution, a monk will hear their confessions once again and commend their souls to God. They will then be garroted, and only their corpses will be burned.
If they refuse to admit their guilt, they will be burned alive.
I have witnessed other executions and sincerely hope that the girls’ parents have bribed the executioner. If they have, he will pour a little oil over the wood, so that the fire burns more quickly, and the smoke will suffocate them before the flames begin to consume first their hair, then their feet, hands, faces, legs, and, finally, their bodies. If they have given no bribe, their daughters will burn slowly and endure indescribable pain.
The cart is now immediately in front of me. I bow my head, but one of the girls sees me. They all turn, and I prepare to be insulted and attacked as I deserve to be, for I am the guiltiest of all, the one who washed his hands of them when just one word could have changed everything.
They call my name. The people nearby turn to look at me in surprise. Do I know these witches? Were it not for my Dominican habit, they might well attack me. A fraction of a second later, the people around me realize that I must be one of those who condemned the girls. Someone gives me a congratulatory slap on the back, and a woman says, “Well done, you are a man of good faith.”
The girls continue calling to me. And weary of being a coward, I finally decide to raise my head and look at them.
At that point, everything freezes and I can see nothing more.
I CONSIDER TAKING HILAL to where the Aleph is, so close by, but is that what this journey is all about? Using someone who loves me just to get an answer to a tormenting question? Will that really make me once again the king of my kingdom? If I don’t find the answer now, I will find it later. There are doubtless another three women waiting for me along my path—if I have the courage to follow it to the end. Surely I will not leave this incarnation without knowing the answer.
IT’S LIGHT NOW, and we can see the big city through the windows of the train. People get up from their seats with no show of enthusiasm, no sign that they are pleased to be arriving. Perhaps this is where our journey really begins.
The train, this city of steel, slows to a halt, this time for good. I turn to Hilal and say, “Let’s get out together.”
People are waiting on t
he platform. A girl with large eyes is holding up a poster bearing the Brazilian flag and some words in Portuguese. Journalists come over to me, and I thank the Russian people for their kindness as I crossed their vast continent. I receive bunches of flowers, and the photographers ask me to pose in front of a large bronze column topped by a two-headed eagle. There’s a number engraved at the base of the column: 9,288.
There is no need to add the word “kilometers.” Everyone who arrives here knows what that number means.
The Telephone Call
THE SHIP IS SAILING CALMLY over the Pacific Ocean while the sun sets slowly behind the hills where the city of Vladivostok lies. The sadness I thought I saw in my traveling companions when we arrived at the station has given way to wild euphoria. We all behave as if this were the first time we had ever seen the sea. No one wants to think that we’ll be saying good-bye shortly and promising to meet up again soon, knowing that the purpose of this promise is simply to make parting easier.
The journey is coming to a close, the adventure is about to end, and in three days’ time, we will all be going back to our respective houses, where we will embrace our families, see our children, read through the correspondence that has accumulated in our absence, show off the hundreds of photos we’ve taken, and tell our stories about the train, the cities we passed through, and the people we met along the way.
And all to convince ourselves that the journey really did happen. In another three days’ time, once we’re back in our daily routine, it will feel as if we had never left and never made that long journey. We have the photos, the tickets, the souvenirs, but time—the only absolute, eternal master of our lives—will be telling us: You never left this house, this room, this computer.