by Paulo Coelho
And—his revenge—the jealousy they all felt when he got his first girlfriend—beautiful and rich—and began to travel the world.
But why was he thinking only about himself in such a decrepit environment? Because he needed to talk to someone there. He sat next to the oldish young man. He watched him pull out a spoon with its handle bent and a syringe that looked like it had been used many times.
“I wanted to…”
The oldish young man got up to go sit in another corner, but Paulo took the equivalent of three or four dollars from his pocket and set them on the floor next to the spoon. He was met with a look of surprise.
“Are you police?”
“No, I’m not police, I’m not even Dutch. I would just like to…”
“You a journalist?”
“No. I’m a writer. That’s why I’m here.”
“What books did you write?”
“None yet. First I need to do some research.”
The other man looked at the money on the floor and then again at Paulo, doubting that a person so young could be writing something—unless it was for the newspapers that were part of the “Invisible Post.” He reached for the money, but Paulo stopped him.
“Just five minutes. Not more than five minutes.”
The oldish young man agreed—no one had ever paid a cent for his time ever since he threw away a promising career as an executive at a multinational bank, ever since he tried the “kiss of the needle” for the first time.
The kiss of the needle?
“That’s right. We prick ourselves a few times before injecting the heroin because what everyone else calls pain is our prelude to finding something all of you will never understand.”
They were whispering so as not to draw the attention of others, but Paulo knew that even if an atomic bomb dropped on the place none of the people there would go to the trouble of fleeing.
“You can’t use my name.”
The other man had begun to open up, and five minutes passed quickly. Paulo could sense the devil’s presence in that house.
“And then what? What’s it feel like?”
“And then I can’t describe it—you only know by trying it. Or believing what Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground said about it.”
Cause it makes me feel like I’m a man
When I put a spike into my vein
Paulo had listened to Lou Reed before. That wasn’t gonna cut it.
“Please, try to describe it. Our five minutes are going fast.”
The man before him took a deep breath. He kept one eye on Paulo and the other on his syringe. He should respond quickly and get rid of the impertinent “writer” before he got kicked out of the house, taking the money with him.
“I’m guessing you have some experience with drugs. I’m familiar with the effects of hashish and marijuana: peace and euphoria, self-confidence, an urge to eat and make love. I don’t care about any of these, they’re things from a kind of life we’ve been taught to live. You smoke hash and think: ‘The world is a beautiful place, I’m finally paying attention,’ but depending on the dose, you end up on a trip that takes you straight to hell. You take LSD and think: Good god, how didn’t I notice that before, the earth breathes and its colors are constantly changing? Is that what you want to know?”
That’s what he wanted to know. But he waited for the oldish young man to continue his story.
“With heroin, it’s completely different: you’re in control of everything—your body, your mind, your art. An immense, indescribable happiness washes over the entire universe. Christ on earth. Krishna in your veins. Buddha smiling down on you from heaven. No hallucinations, this is reality, true reality. Do you believe me?”
Paulo didn’t. But he didn’t say anything, merely nodded.
“The next day, there’s no hangover, just the feeling that you’ve been to paradise and come back to this crappy world. Then you go to work and it hits you that everything is a lie, people trying to justify their lives, look important, creating obstacles because it gives them a sense of authority, of power. You can’t stand all the hypocrisy anymore and decide to go back to paradise, but paradise is expensive, the gate is narrow. Whoever visits discovers that life is beautiful, that the sun can in fact be divided into rays, it’s no longer that boring, round ball you can’t even look at. The next day, you go back to work on a train full of people with empty looks, emptier than the looks of the people here. Everybody thinking about getting home, making dinner, turning on the television, escaping reality—man, reality is this white powder, not the television!”
The longer the oldish young man spoke, the more Paulo felt like trying it at least one time, just this once. The figure before him knew this.
“With hashish, I know there’s a world there that I don’t belong to. The same with LSD. But heroin, man, heroin’s my thing. It’s what makes life worth living, no matter what the people outside say. There’s just one problem…”
Finally—a problem. Paulo needed to hear about this problem right away, because he was a few inches from the tip of a needle and his first experience with heroin.
“The problem is your body builds up a tolerance. At first, I was spending five dollars a day; today it takes twenty dollars to get to paradise. I already sold everything I had—my next step is to beg on the streets; after begging I’ll have to steal, because the devil doesn’t like people who’ve been to paradise. I know what’s going to happen, because it’s happened to everyone you see here today. But I don’t care.”
How strange. Everyone had a different idea about which side the gate to paradise was to be found on.
“I think the five minutes are up.”
“Yep, you explained things pretty well, and I’m grateful.”
“When you write about this, don’t be like the others, who live their lives judging what they don’t understand. Be true. Use your imagination to fill in the gaps.”
The conversation had come to a close, but Paulo stayed where he was. The oldish young man didn’t seem to mind—he stuffed the money in his pocket and thought that if Paulo had paid, he had the right to watch.
He put some white powder on the bent spoon and positioned his lighter beneath it. Little by little, the powder began to turn to liquid and boil. The man asked Paulo to help him put the strap around his arm until his vein protruded beneath the skin.
“Some don’t have anywhere else to put it, they inject themselves in the foot, in the back of the hand, but—thank God—I still have a long road ahead of me.”
He filled the syringe with the liquid from the spoon and, exactly like he’d said at the beginning of his story, stuck the needle in several times, anticipating the moment when he would open the so-called gate. Finally, he injected the liquid, and his eyes lost their anxious look, they turned angelic, and then five or ten minutes later they lost their glimmer and honed in on some spot off in space where, if he was to be believed, Buddha, Krishna, and Jesus must have been floating around.
Paulo got up, and skipping over bodies sprawled across dirty mattresses, making as little noise as possible, he headed for the exit, but the security guard with the shaved head blocked his exit.
“You just got here. Leaving so soon?”
“Yeah, I don’t have the money for this.”
“Liar. Someone saw you giving a few bucks to Ted [that must have been the name of the oldish young man he’d spoken with]. You come here searching for clients?”
“Not at all. I just spoke with one person, later you can ask him what we talked about.”
Paulo made to leave again, but the giant’s body blocked his way. He was starting to worry, though he knew that nothing bad could happen; Karla had told him that outside, through the windows, the police kept an eye on the place.
“A friend of mine would like to talk to you,” the giant said,
pointing to a door in the back of the large room, making it clear with his tone of voice that it was best that Paulo obey. Perhaps Karla had made up the story about the police to keep him from worrying.
Seeing he didn’t have much choice, he walked toward the door. Before he had arrived, the door opened, revealing a man with Elvis Presley–style hair and sideburns, in understated dress. In a friendly voice, the man asked Paulo to come in and offered him a chair.
The office looked nothing like what Paulo was used to seeing in the movies: scantily clad women, champagne, men with dark sunglasses carrying high-caliber weapons. On the contrary, the office was nondescript—painted white, with some cheap reproductions on the wall and nothing atop the desk except for a telephone. Right behind the desk—an old but carefully preserved piece of furniture—was a huge photo.
“The Belém Tower,” Paulo said in Portuguese, without realizing he’d just spoken in his native language.
“Exatamente,” the man responded, also in Portuguese. “From that point, we set off to conquer the world. Can I offer you a drink?”
No thanks. His heart still hadn’t returned to normal.
“Okay, well, I imagine you’re a busy person,” the man continued, using an expression which was entirely out of context but which suggested a certain kindness. “We noticed that you came in, left, spoke only with a single one of our clients, and you don’t look like an undercover cop, but a person who, after quite the effort, has managed to make it to this city and enjoy everything it has to offer.”
Paulo said nothing.
“Nor did you show any interest in the excellent product we offer here. Would you mind showing me your passport?”
Of course he minded, but he wasn’t about to refuse. He stuck his hand into the elastic belt around his waist, removed the passport, and held it out in front of the man. He immediately regretted this—what if the man took it?
But the mysterious figure merely flipped through its pages, smiled, and gave it back.
“Ah, only a few countries—terrific. Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Italy. Not to mention Holland, of course. I imagine you must have passed border security without any trouble.”
None at all.
“Where are you headed now?”
“England.”
It was the only thing that had occurred to him, though he had no intention of giving that man his complete itinerary.
“I’d like to make you an offer. I need to move some product—I imagine you might guess what it is—to Düsseldorf, Germany. It’s only five pounds, which you could easily fit underneath your shirt. We’d buy you a larger sweater, of course; everyone uses a sweater and jacket in the winter. By the way, pretty soon this jacket of yours isn’t going to do you much good against the weather—fall is coming.”
Paulo simply waited to hear the man’s proposal.
“We’ll pay you five thousand dollars—half in Amsterdam and the other half when you deliver the product to our supplier in Germany. You only need to cross one border, nothing more. Without a doubt, this will make for a much more comfortable trip to England. Border officials there tend to be rather strict; they generally ask to see how much money a ‘tourist’ is carrying.”
Paulo couldn’t possibly have heard the man right. It was much too tempting, that kind of money would allow him to spend two years traveling.
“The only thing we need is that you give us an answer as quickly as possible. Tomorrow, ideally. Please, call this public telephone at four in the afternoon.”
Paulo grabbed the card extended before him; it had a number printed on it, perhaps because they had entered a period of large-scale distribution of goods, perhaps for fear someone might analyze the handwriting.
“I ask that you excuse me, but I need to get back to work. Many thanks for visiting my modest little office. All that I do is allow people to find happiness.”
And with that, the man stood up, opened the door, and Paulo stepped out once again into the room where people lined the walls or lay across dirty mattresses scattered across the floor. He passed by the security guard, who this time gave him a knowing smile.
He walked out into the drizzle, asking God for help, to light the way, to not forsake him at that moment.
He was in a part of the city that was unfamiliar to him, he wasn’t sure how to get back to the city center, he had no map, he had nothing. Of course a taxi would get the job done in an emergency, but he felt the need to walk through the drizzle, which soon transformed into a serious rain that didn’t seem to wash much of anything clean—not the air around him, or his mind barraged with thoughts of those five thousand dollars.
He asked how he could get to Dam Square, but people walked right past him—one more crazy hippie who’d landed here and couldn’t find his people. Finally, a Good Samaritan, a man at a newsstand laying out the next day’s newspapers, sold him a map and showed him where to go.
He arrived back at the hostel, the night watchman lit his special lamp used for seeing if he had that day’s stamp—the guests always received a stamp before leaving, made of some sort of invisible ink. No, he had the previous day’s stamp, he’d just been through twenty-four hours that seemed never to end. He needed to pay for another night, but begged, “Please, don’t stamp me now, I need to take a shower, I need to clean up, I’m dirty in every possible way.”
The doorman consented and asked him to return in no more than a half hour because his shift was ending. Paulo walked into the mixed bathroom, everyone talking loudly, and then returned to his room, grabbed the paper with the telephone number that he’d carried all the way there, went back to the bathroom, already undressed, paper in hand. The first thing he did was to tear it into pieces, soak it so that he could never put it all back together, and then throw it on the floor. Someone complained—that was no place to be throwing things on the floor, he should use a trash can beneath one of the sinks. Others stopped to look at this animal who didn’t know how to take care of the space around him, but he didn’t meet their gaze or explain a thing—he simply obeyed as he hadn’t obeyed anyone in a very long time.
After he did this he got back into the shower and felt reassured; now he was free. Of course, he could always return to the place he’d just come from and get the number again but he knew he would be barred, he’d had his chance and hadn’t taken it.
Which left him feeling very happy.
He lay down on the bed—his demons had gone away, he was certain of it. The demons that expected him to accept their offer and bring them more subjects for their realm. He thought it was ridiculous to think that way—after all, drugs had already been demonized enough—but in this case people were right. It was truly ridiculous—he, who had always defended drugs as a sort of expansion of the consciousness, was now there hoping that Dutch police would put an end to their tolerance of these houses of the rising sun, arrest everybody, and send them far away from those who wanted only peace and love for the world.
He spoke to God, or an angel, because he could not sleep. He walked over to the closet where he’d put his stuff, took the key from his neck, grabbed a notebook where he often scribbled some thoughts and experiences. But he had no intention of reporting everything that Ted had told him—it was unlikely he would write about that in the future. He merely recorded the words that, so he imagined, God had spoken to him:
There is no difference between the sea and the waves
When a wave swells, it is made of water
When it breaks against the sand, it is also made of the same water.
Tell me, Lord: Why are the two things the same? Where do the mystery and the end lie?
The Lord responds: Everything and everybody is the same; this is the mystery and the end.
When Karla arrived, the Brazilian was already there—enormous bags under his eyes, as though he’d spent the entire night without sleeping, or as t
hough…She preferred not to think about the second possibility, as this would imply he was someone she could never trust again, and she’d already grown used to his presence and his scent.
“So, let’s go see a windmill, one of those Dutch icons?”
He slowly got up and began to follow her. They took a bus and eventually left Amsterdam behind them. Karla told him that it was necessary to buy a ticket—there was a machine inside the vehicle—but he preferred to ignore her warning; he’d slept poorly, was tired of everything, and needed to get his energy back. He felt his strength beginning to return.
The landscape was unchanging: immense plains, interrupted by dikes and drawbridges, where barges passed, carrying something somewhere. He couldn’t see windmills in any direction, but it was day and the sun was shining again, provoking Karla to comment on just how rare that was—it was always raining in the Netherlands.
“I wrote something yesterday,” Paulo said, taking a notebook from his pocket and reading aloud. She said neither that she liked it nor that she disliked it.
“Where is the sea?”
“The sea was here. There’s an old proverb: God created the world but the Dutch created the Netherlands. But it’s far from here—we can’t see a windmill and the sea in a single day.”
“No, I don’t want to see the sea. Or even a windmill—something that, I imagine, must captivate tourists. That’s not the kind of trip I’m on, as you must have realized by now.”
“So why didn’t you say anything back there? I’m tired of following the same old route to show my foreign friends something that doesn’t even serve its original purpose anymore. We could have stayed in the city.”
…And gone directly to the spot where they sell bus tickets, she thought. But she left that part out; she had to wait for the right moment to pounce.
* * *
—
“I didn’t say anything back there because…”
…The story escaped from his mouth, it was beyond his control.
Karla stood listening, relieved and apprehensive at the same time. Was his reaction not a bit extreme? Was Paulo the type that swung between euphoria and depression and vice versa?