Witch of Portobello

by Paulo Coelho

  “That’s just the way it is. Keep watching.”

  Images of the small provincial town continue to appear, showing nothing of interest apart from these scenes from ordinary everyday life.

  “It’s possible that some people may know that there’s been an accident two kilometers from there,” says my boss. “It’s possible that they know there have been thirty deaths—a large number, but not enough to change the routine of the town’s inhabitants.”

  Now the film shows school buses parking. They will stay there for many days. The images are getting worse and worse.

  “It isn’t the tracking, it’s radiation. The video was made by the KGB. On the night of April 26, at twenty-three minutes past one in the morning, the worst ever man-made disaster occurred at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. When a nuclear reactor exploded, the people in the area were exposed to ninety times more radiation than that given out by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The whole region should have been evacuated at once, but no one said anything—after all, the government doesn’t make mistakes. Only a week later, on page thirty-two of the local newspaper, a five-line article appeared, mentioning the deaths of workers, but giving no further explanation. Meanwhile, Workers Day was celebrated throughout the former Soviet Union, and in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, people paraded down the street unaware of the invisible death in the air.”

  And he concludes, “I want you to go and see what Chernobyl is like now. You’ve just been promoted to special correspondent. You’ll get a twenty percent increase in your salary and be able to suggest the kind of article you think we should be publishing.”

  I should be jumping for joy, but instead I’m gripped by a feeling of intense sadness, which I have to hide. It’s impossible to argue with him, to say that there are two women in my life at the moment, that I don’t want to leave London, that my life and my mental equilibrium are at stake. I ask when I should leave. As soon as possible, he says, because there are rumors that other countries are significantly increasing their production of nuclear energy.

  I manage to negotiate an honorable way out, saying that, first, I need to talk to experts and really get a grip on the subject, and that I’ll set off once I’ve collected the necessary material.

  He agrees, shakes my hand, and congratulates me. I don’t have time to talk to Andrea, because when I get home, she’s still at the theater. I fall asleep at once and again wake up to find a note saying that she’s gone to work and that coffee is on the table.

  I go to the office, try to ingratiate myself with the boss who has “improved my life,” and phone various experts on radiation and energy. I discover that, in total, nine million people worldwide were directly affected by the disaster, including three to four million children. The initial thirty deaths became, according to the expert John Gofmans, 475,000 cases of fatal cancers and an equal number of nonfatal cancers.

  A total of two thousand towns and villages were simply wiped off the map. According to the Health Ministry in Belarus, the incidence of cancer of the thyroid will increase considerably between 2005 and 2010, as a consequence of continuing high levels of radioactivity. Another specialist explains that in addition to the nine million people directly exposed to radiation, more than sixty-five million in many countries around the world were indirectly affected by consuming contaminated foodstuffs.

  It’s a serious matter, which deserves to be treated with respect. At the end of the day, I go back to the deputy editor and suggest that I travel to Chernobyl for the actual anniversary of the accident, and meanwhile do more research, talk to more experts, and find out how the British government responded to the tragedy. He agrees.

  I phone Athena. After all, she claims to be going out with someone from Scotland Yard and now is the time to ask her a favor, given that Chernobyl is no longer classified as secret and the Soviet Union no longer exists. She promises that she’ll talk to her “boyfriend” but says she can’t guarantee she’ll get the answers I want.

  She also says that she’s leaving for Scotland the following day and will only be back in time for the next group meeting.

  “What group?”

  The group, she says. So that’s become a regular thing, has it? What I want to know is when we can meet to talk and clear up various loose ends.

  But she’s already hung up. I go home, watch the news, have supper alone, and later go out again to pick Andrea up from the theater. I get there in time to see the end of the play, and to my surprise, the person onstage seems totally unlike the person I’ve been living with for nearly two years; there’s something magical about her every gesture; monologues and dialogues are spoken with an unaccustomed intensity. I am seeing a stranger, a woman I would like to have by my side, then I realize that she is by my side and is in no way a stranger to me.

  “How did your chat with Athena go?” I ask on the way home.

  “Fine. How was work?”

  She was the one to change the subject. I tell her about my promotion and about Chernobyl, but she doesn’t seem interested. I start to think that I’m losing the love I have without having yet won the love I hope to win. However, as soon as we reach our apartment, she suggests we take a bath together, and before I know it, we’re in bed. First, she puts on that percussion music at full volume (she explains that she managed to get hold of a copy) and tells me not to worry about the neighbors—people worry too much about them, she says, and never live their own lives.

  What happens from then on is something that goes beyond my understanding. Has this woman making positively savage love with me finally discovered her sexuality, and was this taught to her or provoked in her by that other woman? While she was clinging to me with a violence I’ve never known before, she kept saying, “Today I’m your man, and you’re my woman.”

  We carried on like this for almost an hour, and I experienced things I’d never dared experience before. At certain moments, I felt ashamed, wanted to ask her to stop, but she seemed to be in complete control of the situation, and so I surrendered, because I had no choice. In fact, I felt really curious.

  I was exhausted afterward, but Andrea seemed reenergized.

  “Before you go to sleep, I want you to know something,” she said. “If you go forward, sex will offer you the chance to make love with gods and goddesses. That’s what you experienced today. I want you to go to sleep knowing that I awoke the Mother that was in you.”

  I wanted to ask if she’d learned this from Athena, but my courage failed.

  “Tell me that you liked being a woman for a night.”

  “I did. I don’t know if I would always like it, but it was something that simultaneously frightened me and gave me great joy.”

  “Tell me that you’ve always wanted to experience what you’ve just experienced.”

  It’s one thing to allow oneself to be carried away by the situation, but quite another to comment coolly on the matter. I said nothing, although I was sure that she knew my answer.

  “Well,” Andrea went on, “all of this was inside me and I had no idea. As was the person behind the mask that fell away while I was onstage today. Did you notice anything different?”

  “Of course. You were radiating a special light.”

  “Charisma—the divine force that manifests itself in men and women. The supernatural power we don’t need to show to anyone because everyone can see it, even usually insensitive people. But it only happens when we’re naked, when we die to the world and are reborn to ourselves. Last night, I died. Tonight, when I walked onstage and saw that I was doing exactly what I had chosen to do, I was reborn from my ashes. I was always trying to be who I am but could never manage it. I was always trying to impress other people, have intelligent conversations, please my parents, and at the same time, I used every available means to do the things I would really like to do. I’ve always forged my path with blood, tears, and willpower, but last night, I realized that I was going about it the wrong way. My dream doesn’t require that of me. I have only to surrender mys
elf to it, and if I find I’m suffering, grit my teeth, because the suffering will pass.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Let me finish. In that journey where suffering seemed to be the only rule, I struggled for things for which there was no point struggling. Like love, for example. People either feel it or they don’t, and there isn’t a force in the world that can make them feel it. We can pretend that we love each other. We can get used to each other. We can live a whole lifetime of friendship and complicity, we can bring up children, have sex every night, reach orgasm, and still feel that there’s a terrible emptiness about it all, that something important is missing. In the name of all I’ve learned about relationships between men and women, I’ve been trying to fight against things that weren’t really worth the struggle. And that includes you.

  “Today, while we were making love, while I was giving all I have, and I could see that you too were giving of your best, I realized that your best no longer interests me. I will sleep beside you tonight, but tomorrow I’ll leave. The theater is my ritual, and there I can express and develop whatever I want to express and develop.”

  I started to regret everything—going to Transylvania and meeting a woman who might be destroying my life, arranging that first meeting of the “group,” confessing my love in that restaurant. At that moment, I hated Athena.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” said Andrea. “That your friend Athena has brainwashed me, but that isn’t true.”

  “I’m a man, even though tonight in bed I behaved like a woman. I’m a species in danger of extinction because I don’t see many men around. Few people would risk what I have risked.”

  “I’m sure you’re right, and that’s why I admire you, but aren’t you going to ask me who I am, what I want, and what I desire?”

  I asked.

  “I want everything. I want savagery and tenderness. I want to upset the neighbors and placate them too. I don’t want a woman in my bed, I want men, real men, like you, for example. Whether they love me or are merely using me, it doesn’t matter. My love is greater than that. I want to love freely, and I want to allow the people around me to do the same.

  “What I talked about to Athena were the simple ways of awakening repressed energy, like making love, for example, or walking down the street saying: ‘I’m here and now.’ Nothing very special, no secret ritual. The only thing that made our meeting slightly different was that we were both naked. From now on, she and I will meet every Monday, and if I have any comments to make, I will do so after that session. I have no desire to be her friend. Just as, when she feels the need to share something, she goes up to Scotland to talk with that Edda woman, who, it seems, you know as well, although you’ve never mentioned her.”

  “I can’t even remember meeting her!”

  I sensed that Andrea was gradually calming down. I prepared two cups of coffee, and we drank them together. She recovered her smile and asked about my promotion. She said she was worried about those Monday meetings, because she’d learned only that morning that friends of friends were inviting other people, and Athena’s apartment was a very small place. I made an enormous effort to pretend that everything that had happened that evening was just a fit of nerves or premenstrual tension or jealousy on her part.

  I put my arms around her, and she snuggled into my shoulder. And despite my own exhaustion, I waited until she fell asleep. That night, I dreamed of nothing. I had no feelings of foreboding.

  And the following morning, when I woke up, I saw that her clothes were gone, the key was on the table, and there was no letter of farewell.

  DEIDRE O’NEILL, KNOWN AS EDDA

  People read a lot of stories about witches, fairies, paranormals, and children possessed by evil spirits. They go to films showing rituals featuring pentagrams, swords, and invocations. That’s fine, people need to give free rein to their imagination and to go through certain stages. Anyone who gets through those stages without being deceived will eventually get in touch with the Tradition.

  The real Tradition is this: the teacher never tells the disciple what he or she should do. They are merely traveling companions, sharing the same uncomfortable feeling of “estrangement” when confronted by ever-changing perceptions, broadening horizons, closing doors, rivers that sometimes seem to block their path and which, in fact, should never be crossed, but followed.

  There is only one difference between teacher and disciple: the former is slightly less afraid than the latter. Then, when they sit down at a table or in front of a fire to talk, the more experienced person might say: “Why don’t you do that?” But he or she never says: “Go there and you’ll arrive where I did,” because every path and every destination are unique to the individual.

  The true teacher gives the disciple the courage to throw his or her world off balance, even though the disciple is afraid of things already encountered and more afraid still of what might be around the next corner.

  I was a young, enthusiastic doctor who, filled by a desire to help my fellow human beings, traveled to the interior of Romania on an exchange program run by the British government. I set off with my luggage full of medicines and my head full of preconceptions. I had clear ideas about how people should behave, about what we need to be happy, about the dreams we should keep alive inside us, about how human relations should evolve. I arrived in Bucharest during that crazed, bloody dictatorship and went to Transylvania to assist with a mass vaccination program for the local population.

  I didn’t realize that I was merely one more piece on a very complicated chessboard, where invisible hands were manipulating my idealism, and that ulterior motives lay behind everything I believed was being done for humanitarian purposes: stabilizing the government run by the dictator’s son, allowing Britain to sell arms in a market dominated by the Soviets.

  All my good intentions collapsed when I saw that there was barely enough vaccine to go round; that there were other diseases sweeping the region; that however often I wrote asking for more resources, they never came. I was told not to concern myself with anything beyond what I’d been asked to do.

  I felt powerless and angry. I’d seen poverty from close up and would have been able to do something about it if only someone would give me some money, but they weren’t interested in results. Our government just wanted a few articles in the press so that they could say to their political parties or to their electorate that they’d dispatched groups to various places in the world on a humanitarian mission. Their intentions were good—apart from selling arms, of course.

  I was in despair. What kind of world was this? One night, I set off into the icy forest, cursing God, who was unfair to everything and everyone. I was sitting beneath an oak tree when my protector approached me. He said I could die of cold, and I replied that I was a doctor and knew the body’s limits, and that as soon as I felt I was getting near those limits, I would go back to the camp. I asked him what he was doing there.

  “I’m speaking to a woman who can hear me, in a world in which all the men have gone deaf.”

  I thought he meant me, but the woman he was referring to was the forest itself. When I saw this man wandering about among the trees, making gestures and saying things I couldn’t understand, a kind of peace settled on my heart. I was not, after all, the only person in the world left talking to myself. When I got up to return to the camp, he came over to me again.

  “I know who you are,” he said. “People in the village say that you’re a very decent person, always good-humored and prepared to help others, but I see something else: rage and frustration.”

  He might have been a government spy, but I decided to tell him everything I was feeling, even though I ran the risk of being arrested. We walked together to the field hospital where I was working; I took him to the dormitory, which was empty at the time (my colleagues were all having fun at the annual festival being held in the town), and I asked if he’d like a drink. He produced a bottle from his pocket.

  “Pa
linka,” he said, meaning the traditional drink of Romania, with an incredibly high alcohol content. “On me.”

  We drank together, and I didn’t even notice that I was getting steadily drunk. I only realized the state I was in when I tried to go to the toilet, tripped over something, and fell flat.

  “Don’t move,” said the man. “Look at what is there before your eyes.”

  A line of ants.

  “They all think they’re very wise. They have memory, intelligence, organizational powers, a spirit of sacrifice. They look for food in summer, store it away for the winter, and now they are setting forth again, in this icy spring, to work. If the world was destroyed by an atomic bomb tomorrow, the ants would survive.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  “I studied biology.”

  “Why the hell don’t you work to improve the living conditions of your own people? What are you doing in the middle of the forest, talking to the trees?”

  “In the first place, I wasn’t alone; apart from the trees, you were listening to me too. But to answer your question, I left biology to work as a blacksmith.”

  I struggled to my feet. My head was still spinning, but I was thinking clearly enough to understand the poor man’s situation. Despite a university education, he had been unable to find work. I told him that the same thing happened in my country too.

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I left biology because I wanted to work as a blacksmith. Even as a child, I was fascinated by those men hammering steel, making a strange kind of music, sending out sparks all around, plunging the red-hot metal into water, and creating clouds of steam. I was unhappy as a biologist, because my dream was to make rigid metal take on soft shapes. Then, one day, a protector appeared.”

  “A protector?”

  “Let’s say that, on seeing those ants doing exactly what they’re programmed to do, you were to exclaim: ‘How fantastic!’ The guards are genetically prepared to sacrifice themselves for the queen, the workers carry leaves ten times their own weight, the engineers make tunnels that can resist storms and floods. They enter into mortal combat with their enemies, they suffer for the community, and they never ask: ‘Why are we doing this?’ People try to imitate the perfect society of the ants, and as a biologist, I was playing my part until someone came along with this question: ‘Are you happy doing what you’re doing?’ ‘Of course I am,’ I said. ‘I’m being useful to my own people.’ ‘And that’s enough?’