by Paulo Coelho
The entire group was filled with disappointment, above all because, like Paulo, they were convinced that there truly did exist something between their eyes, called a pineal gland, though its usefulness had not yet been discovered by scientists. And so, the third eye did exist—though not in the way Lobsang Cyril Rampa Hoskin had described it.
On the third morning, Paulo’s girlfriend decided to return home, and she also decided—without leaving any room for doubt—that Paulo ought to accompany her. Without saying goodbye to anyone or looking back, they left before sunrise and spent two days descending the eastern face of the mountain range in a bus full of people, domestic animals, food, and folk crafts. Paulo took the opportunity to buy a colorful bag, which he was able to fold and stash inside his backpack. He also decided that he would never again embark on a bus trip that lasted longer than a day.
From Lima they hitchhiked to Santiago de Chile—the world was a safe place, cars stopped, though the drivers were a bit fearful of the couple on account of their clothing. In Santiago, after a good night’s sleep, they asked somebody to draw a map showing them how to go back across the Andes through a tunnel that connected the country to Argentina. They continued on toward Brazil—again hitching a ride because Paulo’s girlfriend kept repeating that the money they still had might be necessary in case of some medical emergency—she was always prudent, always the elder, always a product of a practical Communist upbringing that never allowed her to relax entirely.
In Brazil, having reached a part of the country where the majority of those with passports were blond and blue-eyed, they decided to stop again, at his girlfriend’s suggestion.
“Let’s go see Vila Velha. They say the place is incredible.”
They didn’t foresee the nightmare.
They had no sense of the hell to come.
They weren’t prepared for what awaited them.
They had been to several incredible, unique places with something about them that suggested that in the future they would be destroyed by hordes of tourists who thought only of acquiring and amassing amenities for their own homes. But the way Paulo’s girlfriend spoke left no room for doubt, there was no question mark at the end of her sentence, she was merely notifying him of what they would do.
Yes, of course, let’s go to Vila Velha. An incredible place. A geological site with remarkable natural sculptures shaped by the wind—which the nearest city tried to promote at all costs, spending a fortune in the process. Everyone knew of Vila Velha’s existence, but the less informed would drive on past to a beach in a state bordering Rio de Janeiro. Others were curious but thought it too much work to make the journey.
Paulo and his girlfriend were the only visitors there, and they marveled at the way nature manages to create floral calyxes, turtles, camels—or rather, the way we manage to give names to everything, even if the camel in question really looked like a pomegranate to the woman and an orange to him. At any rate, unlike everything they’d seen at Tiahuanaco, these sandstone sculptures were open to all sorts of interpretations.
From there, they grabbed a ride to the closest city. Paulo’s girlfriend, knowing it wouldn’t be long before they arrived home, decided—it was she, in fact, who decided everything—that they would, that night, for the first time in many weeks, sleep in a nice hotel and have meat for dinner! Meat, one of the things they did best in that region of Brazil, something they hadn’t tasted since they’d left La Paz—the price always seemed exorbitant.
They registered at a genuine hotel, took a bath, made love, and walked down to the lobby, thinking they would ask for a recommendation of a rodizio restaurant, where they could eat as much as they wanted, buffet-style.
While they waited for the concierge to appear, two men approached and, dispensing with pleasantries, ordered Paulo and his girlfriend to follow them outside. Both had their hands in their pockets, as though they held guns, and wished to make this quite clear.
“Don’t be crazy,” Paulo’s girlfriend said, convinced they were being held up. “I have a diamond ring up in the room.”
But the two men had already taken them by the arm and pushed them outside—immediately separating them from one another. On the deserted street were two cars without any sort of identification, and two other men—one of them pointing a gun at the couple.
“Don’t move, and don’t do anything suspicious. We’re going to search you.”
The brutes began to pat them down. Paulo’s girlfriend still tried to protest, but he had already entered a sort of trance, completely dazed. The only thing he managed to do was look around to see if some witness would end up calling the police.
“Shut your mouth, you stupid slut,” one of the men said. They took the couple’s belts containing their passports and money, and each of the two was forced into the backseat of one of the parked cars. Paulo didn’t so much as have time to see what was happening to his girlfriend—nor did she know what was happening to him.
Inside the car was another man.
“Put this on,” he said, handing Paulo a hood. “And lie down on the floor.”
Paulo did exactly as he was told. His brain was no longer processing anything. The car sped away. He would have liked to tell these men that his family had money, that he would pay any ransom, but the words would not leave his mouth.
The train’s pace began to slow, a likely sign they were approaching the Dutch border.
“Is everything all right with you, dude?” the Argentinean asked.
Paulo nodded, searching for something to talk about, to exorcise his negative thoughts. It had been over a year since the incident at Vila Velha, and most of the time he managed to control the demons inside his head. But whenever the word POLICE entered his line of sight, even if it were just a customs official, his terror returned. Only this time when the terror returned so did the entire story, which he’d already told a few friends, though always maintaining a certain distance, as though observing himself from afar. However, this time—and for the very first time—he was repeating the story to himself alone.
“If they bar us at the border, no problem. We can go to Belgium and cross somewhere else,” the Argentinean suggested.
Paulo wasn’t in much of a mood to talk to this character—his paranoia had returned. What if the man really was trafficking hard drugs? What if they decided Paulo was an accomplice and threw him in prison until he could prove his innocence?
The train came to a stop. It wasn’t customs but a tiny station in the middle of nowhere where two people got on and five got off. The Argentinean, seeing that Paulo wasn’t in much of a talking mood, decided to leave him alone with his thoughts, but he was worried—Paulo’s expression had changed entirely. He asked one last time:
“So, everything really is all right with you, right?”
“I’m performing an exorcism.”
The Argentinean got the message and said nothing more.
Paulo knew that there, in Europe, the things he’d been through did not happen. Or, rather, they had happened but in the past. He always asked himself how those walking to the gas chambers in the concentration camps or lined up for death at a mass grave, watching the firing squad execute the front line, never had the slightest reaction, never tried to run, never attacked their executioners.
The answer was simple: their panic was so great that they were no longer present. The brain blocks out everything, there’s neither terror nor fear, just a strange submission to what’s about to occur. Emotions vanish to make way for a sort of limbo, where everything happens in a zone that scientists have been unable to explain to this day. Doctors have a label for this, “temporary stress-induced schizophrenia,” and have never bothered looking into the exact consequences of the flat affect, as they call it.
And, perhaps to expel the ghosts of his past once and for all, Paulo relived the entire ordeal through to the very end.
; The man in the backseat with him seemed a bit more humane than the others who had approached them at the hotel.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to kill you. Lie down on the floor.”
Paulo wasn’t worried—his head was no longer processing anything. It was like he had entered an alternate reality; his brain refused to accept what was happening to him. The only thing he did was ask:
“Can I hold on to your leg?”
“Of course,” the man responded.
Paulo clutched the man’s leg, perhaps his grip was stronger than he thought, perhaps he was hurting the man, but the other man didn’t move. He allowed Paulo to continue—he knew what Paulo was going through, and he likely took no pleasure in watching such a young man, full of life, endure that experience. But he also followed orders.
* * *
—
Paulo couldn’t say exactly how long the drive lasted, and the longer they drove, the more he became convinced he was about to be executed. He had already managed to make some sense of what was going on—he had been captured by paramilitary officers and was officially disappeared. But what did that matter now?
The car came to a stop. They tore him from the backseat and lugged him down what seemed like a hallway. Suddenly his foot hit something on the floor, a sort of metal strip.
“Please, could we go slower?” he asked.
That’s when he received the first blow across his head.
“Shut your mouth, terrorist!”
He fell to the ground. They ordered him to stand up and remove all his clothing—carefully, to ensure the hood stayed in place. He did what he was told. They immediately began to beat him, and because he didn’t know where each blow was coming from, his body could no longer prepare itself and his muscles were unable to contract, resulting in pain far worse than anything he’d ever experienced in his childhood scuffles. He fell again, and now each punch was replaced by a kick. The beating lasted ten or fifteen minutes, until a voice ordered the men to stop.
He was still conscious, but he wasn’t sure if he had broken something; he couldn’t move he was in so much pain. Despite this, the voice that had ordered an end to that first torture session ordered him back to his feet. The voice began to ask a series of questions about the guerrilla movement, about comrades, about what he’d been doing in Bolivia, whether he was in touch with Che Guevara and his gang, where the weapons were hidden. He threatened to gouge Paulo’s eye out as soon as he could confirm his involvement. Another voice, this one from the “good cop,” took a different tack. It was better to confess to the robbery they’d committed at a nearby bank—that way, everything would be cleared up; Paulo would be put in prison for his crimes but they wouldn’t touch him again.
That was the moment, as he struggled to his feet, that he began to emerge from the lethargic state he found himself in and regained something he had always considered one of man’s greatest attributes: the survival instinct. He needed a way out of that situation. He needed to tell them he was innocent.
They ordered him to tell them everything he’d done in the previous week. Paulo recounted everything in detail, though he knew they’d never heard of Machu Picchu.
“Don’t waste your time trying to fool us,” the “bad cop” said. “We found the map in your hotel room. You and Blondie were spotted at the scene of the crime.”
Map?
The man showed him a piece of paper through the opening in his hood, a drawing someone in Chile had given them showing the way to the tunnel that crossed the Andes.
“The Communists think they’re going to win the next elections. That Allende will use Moscow’s gold to corrupt all of Latin America. But you’d be wrong. What’s your role in the alliance they’re forming? Who are your contacts in Brazil?”
Paulo begged them, he swore none of that was true, he was just some guy who wanted to travel and see the world—at the same time he asked them what they were doing with his girlfriend.
“The one sent from that Communist country, Yugoslavia, to put an end to democracy in Brazil? She’s getting what she deserves” came the bad cop’s response.
His paralyzing fear threatened to return, but Paulo needed to keep himself under control. He needed to discover how to escape this nightmare. He needed to wake up.
* * *
—
Someone placed a box with some wires and a crank between his feet. Another person told him they called it a telephone—they only needed to tape the metal clamps to his body and crank the handle and Paulo would get “a shock no man could handle.”
Suddenly, seeing the machine before him, he hit upon his only way out of there. He abandoned his submissive posture and raised his voice:
“You think I’m afraid of a little shock? You think I’m afraid of a little pain? Well, don’t you worry—I’ll torture myself. I’ve already been to the nuthouse not one, not two, but three times; I’ve had all sorts of electric shocks, I can do the job for you. But this isn’t news to you, I’ll bet you know everything about my life.”
When he’d finished, he began to dig his nails into his flesh and draw blood, tear skin, screaming the entire time that they knew everything, that they could kill him, he didn’t care, he believed in reincarnation, he would come back for them. Them and their families, as soon as he made it to the other world.
Someone came and restrained him. Everyone seemed horrified at what he was doing, though no one said anything.
“Stop this, Paulo,” the “good cop” said. “Can you explain the map to me?”
Paulo spoke in the voice of someone who was having a psychotic episode. He screamed as he explained what had happened in Santiago—they needed directions to the tunnel that connected Chile and Argentina.
“My girlfriend, where’s my girlfriend?”
His screams grew louder and louder, in the hope that she could hear him. The “good cop” tried to calm him down—by the looks of it, at that time, the very beginning of the so-called Years of Lead, the agents of repression hadn’t yet reached their peak brutality.
The man asked him to stop shaking. If he was innocent there was no reason to worry, but first they needed to verify everything he’d told them—he would have to remain there a little while longer. The man didn’t say how long, but he offered Paulo a cigarette. Paulo noticed that the others had begun leaving the room, they weren’t interested in him anymore.
“Wait for me to leave. When you hear the sound of the door closing, you can take off your hood. Every time someone comes and knocks on the door, put it back on. As soon as we have all the information we need, you can leave.”
“What about my girlfriend?” Paulo screamed again.
He didn’t deserve this. No matter how bad a son he had been, no matter how many headaches he’d given his parents, he didn’t deserve this. He was innocent—but, if he’d had a gun, he was capable of shooting all of them then and there. There’s nothing worse than the feeling of being punished for something you haven’t done.
“Don’t worry. We’re not some monster rapists. We only want to put an end to those who want to put an end to our country.”
The man left, the door clicked shut, and Paulo removed his hood. He was in a soundproof room, one outfitted with a metal doorsill. That’s what he’d tripped over on his way in. There was an enormous one-way mirror to his right—it must have served to monitor whoever was being held there. There were two or three bullet holes in the ceiling, and one of them looked to have a strand of hair coming out of it. But he needed to pretend none of this interested him. He looked at his body, at the scabs forming from the blood that he had shed; he ran his hands over his entire body and saw that nothing was broken—they were masters at leaving no permanent traces, and perhaps that was why his reaction had alarmed them.
He imagined that the next step would be to call Rio de Janeiro and confirm his stories abou
t the mental institution, the electric shock therapy, each step he and his girlfriend had taken—her foreign passport might either protect her or spell her demise, seeing as how she came from a Communist country.
If he were lying, he would be tortured nonstop for days on end. If he were speaking the truth, perhaps they would reach the conclusion that he really was just some drugged-up hippie from a rich family and let him go.
He wasn’t lying, and he hoped they wouldn’t take long to discover this.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there—there were no windows, the light never went out, and the only face he’d been able to catch a glimpse of was that of the torture site’s photographer. Were those barracks? A police station? The photographer ordered him to remove his hood, placed the camera in front of his face in such a way to conceal that he was nude, ordered him to stand profile, took another photo, and left without exchanging a single word.
Even the knocks on his door defied any schedule that might allow him to ascertain a routine—at times, lunch was served only a short time after breakfast, and the hours often dragged until dinner arrived. When he needed to go to the bathroom, he’d knock on the door, replacing the hood, until, mostly likely through the one-way mirror, they figured out what he wanted. At times he would try to speak with the figure who led him to the bathroom, but he received no response. Only silence.
He spent most of his time sleeping. One day (or night?) he tried to make use of the experience to meditate or concentrate on some higher being—he recalled that San Juan de la Cruz had spoken of the dark night of the soul, that monks spent years in desert caves or high up in the Himalayas. He could follow their example, use what was happening to try to transform himself into a better person. He had worked out that it had been the hotel doorman—he and his girlfriend had been the only guests—who had reported the couple. At times, he felt like going back and killing the man as soon as he was free, and at others, he felt that the best way to serve God would be to forgive the man from the bottom of his heart because he knew not what he was doing.