by Paulo Coelho
“FIFTEEN MINUTES,” GENE SAID. “THAT’S ALL IT TAKES, and without even realizing what’s happening, you die.”
They were back at the old trailer. It was the afternoon of the next day, and the entire scene was bathed in pink. Nothing like the desert of the previous day—golden, peaceful, nausea, vomiting.
They hadn’t been able to eat or sleep for twenty-four hours—they threw up everything they tried to eat. But now that strange sensation was passing.
“It’s good that your horizon had been expanded. And that you were thinking about angels. An angel appeared.”
Paulo thought it would be better to have said “Your soul had grown.” Besides, the guy who had appeared wasn’t an angel—he had an old truck, and he spoke English.
“Let’s get going,” said Gene, asking Paulo to start the car. He took the passenger seat, with no show of ceremony. And Chris, grumbling in Portuguese, climbed into the back.
Gene began to give instructions—take that road there, go for a few miles, drive fast so that the car gets cool inside, turn off the air-conditioning so the motor doesn’t overheat. Several times they drove off the narrow dirt road into the desert. But Gene knew what he was doing. He wasn’t going to make the same mistakes they had.
“What happened yesterday?” Chris asked for the hundredth time. She knew that Gene wanted her to ask. He might already have seen his guardian angel, but he acted like any other young man his age.
“Sunstroke,” he finally explained. “Haven’t either of you ever seen a film about the desert?”
Of course they had. Thirsty men, dragging themselves across the sand in search of a drop of water.
“We didn’t feel thirsty at all. The two canteens were filled with water.”
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” the American interrupted. “I mean your clothing.”
The clothing! The Arabs with their long robes, and several hoods—one on top of the other. Of course, how stupid we were! Paulo had already heard about that, and he’d already walked across three other deserts…and he had never felt the desire to take his clothes off. But here, that morning, after the frustration of the lake that they seemed never to reach…. How could I have had such a stupid idea? he thought.
“When you took off your clothes, the water in your bodies began to evaporate immediately. You can’t even perspire, because the climate is so dry. In fifteen minutes, you were both already dehydrated. No thirst or anything—just a slight feeling of disorientation.”
“And the exhaustion?”
“That exhaustion is death arriving.”
I sure didn’t know it was death arriving, Chris said to herself. If someday she had to choose an easy way to leave the world behind, she would come back and take off her clothing in the middle of the desert.
“Most people who die in the desert die with water in their canteen. The dehydration is so rapid that we feel as if we’ve drunk an entire bottle of whiskey, or taken an overdose of some tranquilizer.” He suggested that, starting now, they drink water periodically—even if they weren’t thirsty—because their bodies needed the water.
“But an angel did appear,” Gene said.
Before Paulo could say what he was thinking, Gene ordered him to stop at the foot of a cliff.
“Let’s get out here and go the rest of the way on foot.”
They began to walk along a narrow path that led to the top of the cliff. Before they had gone far, Gene realized he had forgotten the flashlight from the car. He went back, picked it up, and sat on the hood of the car for some time, staring out at the desert.
Chris is right; solitude does strange things to people. He’s behaving strangely, Paulo thought as he watched the youth down below.
But, a few seconds later, Gene had climbed the narrow path again, and they pushed on.
In forty minutes, with no great difficulty, they had reached the top. There was some sparse vegetation there, and Gene asked that they sit down facing north. His attitude, usually expansive, had changed—he seemed more distant, and looked as if he were concentrating hard.
“You’ve both come here in search of angels,” he said, sitting down at their side.
“That’s what I came for,” Paulo said. “And I know that you have spoken with one.”
“Forget about my angel. Many people in this desert have already seen or conversed with their angel. So have a lot of people in cities, or at sea, or in the mountains.”
There was a tone of impatience in his voice.
“Think about your guardian angels,” he continued. “Because my angel is here, and I can see him. This is my holy place.”
Both Paulo and Chris thought back to their first night in the desert. And they imagined their angels once again, with their raiment and their wings.
“You must always have a holy place. Mine once was a small apartment, and at another time, a square in the middle of Los Angeles. Now it’s here. A sacred hymn opens a gate to heaven, and heaven appears.”
They both looked around at Gene’s holy place: the rocks, the hard ground, the desert plants. Perhaps snakes and coyotes passed through here at night, too.
Gene appeared to be in a trance.
“It was here that I was first able to see my angel, although I knew that the angel was everywhere, and that the angel’s face is the face of the desert I live in, or of the city where I lived for eighteen years.
“I was able to talk with my angel because I had faith that the angel existed. And because I loved my angel.”
Neither Chris nor Paulo dared ask what they had talked about.
Gene went on, “Everyone can make contact with four different kinds of entities in the invisible world: the elementals, the disembodied spirits, the saints, and the angels.
“The elementals are the vibrations of things in nature—fire, earth, water, and air—and we make contact with them using rituals. These are pure forces—like earthquakes, lightning, or volcanoes. Because we need to understand them as ‘beings,’ they traditionally appear in the form of dwarfs, fairies, or salamanders. But all one can do is use the power of the elementals—we never learn anything from them.”
Why is he saying all this? Paulo thought. Has he forgotten that I’m a master of magic, too?
Gene continued his explanation, “The disembodied spirits are those that wander between one life and another, and we make contact with them by means of a medium. Some are great masters—but all that they teach us we can learn on earth, because that’s where they learned what they know. Better, then, to let them wander in the direction of their next step, to look out at the horizon, and to take from here the same wisdom as they did.”
Paulo must know all about this, Chris thought. He’s probably talking to me.
YES, GENE WAS SPEAKING TO CHRIS—IT WAS BECAUSE she was here that he was here. There was nothing he could teach Paulo, twenty years older than he and more experienced, and who, on his own, would surely find the way to talk with his angel. Paulo was one of J.’s disciples—and the things Gene had heard about J.! At their first meeting, Gene had tried in various ways to get the Brazilian to talk, but the woman had made it impossible. He was unable to learn anything about the techniques, the processes, or the rituals used by J.
That first meeting had been deeply disappointing for him. He thought that the Brazilian might be using J.’s name without the master’s knowledge. Or—who knows?—perhaps J. had made a mistake for the first time in his selection of a disciple. And if that were the case, the entire Tradition would soon know about it. But that night of their meeting, he had dreamed of his guardian angel.
And his angel had asked that he initiate the woman into the path of magic. Just initiate her: Her husband would do the rest.
In the dream, he argued that he had already taught her about the second mind, and had asked that she look out at the horizon. The angel said that Gene should pay attention to the man, but that he should take care of the woman. And then the angel disappeared.
Gene was
trained to be disciplined. So he was now doing what the angel had commanded—and he hoped that it was being observed up above.
“After the disembodied spirits,” he continued, “the saints appear. These are the true masters. They lived among us at one time, and are now closer to the light. The great teachings of the saints are their lives here on earth. Contained in them are all we need to know, and all we have to do is imitate them.”
“How do we invoke the saints?” Chris asked.
“Through prayer,” Paulo answered, cutting Gene off.
He wasn’t jealous—although it was clear to him that the American wanted to impress Chris. He respects the Tradition. He’s going to use my wife as a means of reaching me. But why is he being so basic, talking about things that I already know so well? he thought.
“We invoke the saints through constant prayer,” Paulo continued. “And when they are near, everything changes. Miracles happen.”
Gene couldn’t help but notice the Brazilian’s hostile, almost aggressive tone of voice. But he wasn’t going to say anything about his dream of the angel, because he didn’t owe this man anything.
“Finally,” Gene said, “there are the angels.”
Perhaps Paulo didn’t know about this part, even though he seemed to know many other things. Gene paused for a few moments. He sat there silently praying, and remembered his angel, and hoped that he was hearing every word. And he asked that his angel help him to be clear, because—my God!—it was so difficult to explain.
“Angels are love in motion. They never rest, they struggle to grow, and they are beyond good and evil. Love that consumes all, that destroys all, that forgives all. Angels are made of that love, and are at the same time its messengers.
“The love of the exterminating angel, who one day will take away our soul, and of the guardian angel, who brings our soul back. Love in motion.”
“Love at war,” Chris said.
“There is no love in peace. Whoever seeks peace is lost.”
What does a boy like this know about love? He lives alone in the desert, and has never been in love, Chris thought. Meanwhile, no matter how hard she tried, she could think of not one moment when love had ever brought her peace. It was always accompanied by agony, intense joy, and deep sadness.
Gene turned to them. “Let’s be silent for a while, so that our angels can hear the love that exists beyond our silence.”
Chris was still thinking about love. Yes, the boy seemed to be right, although she could swear that all of his knowledge was theoretical. Love comes to rest only when we are close to death. How strange. How strange was everything that she was experiencing, especially the sensation that her soul had grown.
She had never asked Paulo to teach her anything—she believed in God, and that was sufficient. She respected her husband’s search, but—perhaps because she was so close to him, or because she knew that he had the same defects as other men—she had never taken an interest in it.
But she didn’t know Gene. He had said: “Try to look at the horizon. Pay attention to your second mind.” And she had done so. Now, with her soul that had grown, she was discovering how good it was, and how much time she had wasted before.
“Why do we need to speak with our angels?” Chris asked, breaking the silence.
“To discover through them,” replied Gene.
Gene wasn’t bothered by the comment. If she had asked the question of Paulo, he would have been angry.
They said an Our Father and a Hail Mary. Then the American said that they could go back down.
“That’s it?” Paulo asked, disappointed.
“I wanted to bring you here so my angel could see that I had done as my angel asked,” Gene answered. “I have nothing else to teach you. If you want to learn more, seek out the Valkyries.”
THEY MADE THE RETURN TRIP IN AWKWARD SILENCE, interrupted only when Gene had to indicate which turn should be taken. No one was interested in conversation—Paulo, because he thought that Gene had tricked him; Chris, because Paulo might be irritated at her comments, feeling that she was spoiling everything; and Gene, because he knew that the Brazilians were disappointed, and because of this, would not talk about J. and his techniques.
“You are wrong about one thing,” Paulo said when they arrived at the trailer. “It was not an angel that we met up with yesterday. It was a guy driving a truck.”
For a fraction of a second, Chris thought there would be no response—the hostility between the two men was growing stronger and stronger. The American turned and began to walk in the direction of his home, but suddenly he stopped.
“I want to tell you a story my father told me,” he said. “A master and his disciple were walking together in the desert. The master was teaching his charge that he could always trust in God, since he was aware of everything.
“Night fell, and they decided to pitch camp. The master raised the tent, and the disciple was given the assignment of tethering the horses to a rock. But, as he stood by the rock, he thought to himself: The master is testing me. He said that God is aware of everything, and then asked me to tie up the horses. He wants to see whether or not I believe in God.
“Instead of tethering the animals, he said a long prayer, and left the fate of the horses in God’s hands.
“Next day, when they awoke, the horses were gone. Disappointed, the disciple complained to the master, saying that he no longer believed in him, since God had not taken care of everything, and had forgotten to watch over the horses.
“‘You are wrong,’ the master answered. ‘God wanted to take care of the horses. But in order to do so, he needed to make use of your hands to tether them to the stone.’”
THE YOUNG MAN LIT A SMALL GAS LANTERN THAT WAS hanging outside the trailer. The light dimmed the brilliance of the stars somewhat.
“When we begin to think about our angels, they begin to manifest themselves. Their presence becomes closer and closer, more real. But, at the beginning, angels show themselves as they have done throughout our life: through others.
“Your angel used that man. He must have been caused to leave his home early—something must have changed in his routine, altering everything so that he could be there just at the moment that you needed him. That is a miracle. Do not try to regard it as a common event.”
Paulo said nothing.
“Look,” Gene explained. “When we were climbing the mountain, I forgot the flashlight,” Gene went on. “You probably noticed that I was back at the car for quite a while. Whenever I forget something on leaving the house, I feel that my guardian angel is in action, causing me to lose a few seconds—and this short time interval may signify important things. It may allow me to avoid an accident, or cause me to run into someone I need to see.
“So, after I get what I’ve forgotten, I always sit down and count to twenty. That way, the angel has time to take action. An angel uses many instruments.”
Gene asked Paulo to wait where he was for a few moments. He entered the trailer, and returned with a map. “The last time I saw the Valkyries, it was here.”
He pointed to a place on the map. Chris realized that the animosity between the two seemed to have lessened.
“Take care of her,” Gene said. “It’s a good thing that she came with you.”
“I think so,” Paulo said. “Thank you for everything.”
And they said good-bye.
“WHAT A FOOL I’VE BEEN,” PAULO SAID, PUNCHING THE steering wheel as they drove away.
“What do you mean, a fool? I thought you were jealous!”
But Paulo was laughing, in a good mood.
“Four processes! And he only said three! It’s through the fourth process that you converse with your angel!”
He looked at Chris, and his eyes were gleaming with the joy of discovery.
“The fourth process: channeling!”
ALMOST TEN DAYS IN THE DESERT. THEY STOPPED AT ONE place where the ground had opened in a series of wounds, as if prehistoric rivers had
run through there, dozens of them, leaving long, deep arroyos that were becoming larger through the action of the sun.
In those parts, not even the scorpions could survive, much less snakes, coyotes, or the ever-present tumbleweed. The desert was full of such places, known as badlands.
The two entered into one of the immense wounds. The earthen walls were high, and all that could be seen was a tortuous path, with no beginning or end.
They were no longer irresponsible adventurers, feeling that nothing could harm them. The desert had its laws, and killed those who did not respect them. They had learned what the laws were—the sound of the rattlesnake, the hours that it was safe to be out there, the precautions. Before entering the badlands, they had left a note in the car saying where they were going. Even if it were only for half an hour, and it appeared to be unnecessary, ridiculous, a car might stop, and someone would see the note and know what direction they had taken. They had to facilitate the instruments of their guardian angels.
They were looking for the Valkyries. Not there, at the end of the world—because nothing living could survive for long in those badlands. There—well, this was just training. For Chris.
But they knew that the Valkyries were nearby, because they saw the signs. They lived in the desert, never staying for long in one place—but they left signs.
Paulo and Chris had found some clues. At the beginning, they had stopped at one small town after another, asking about the Valkyries, and no one had ever heard of them. The directions Gene had given them were of no use—they had probably long ago passed by the spot on the map he had shown them. But one day, in a bar, they met a boy who remembered having read something about them. He described the way the Valkyries dressed, and the signs they left.
They began to ask others about women who were dressed that way. Some responded with obvious disapproval, saying the Valkyries had passed by a month ago, a week ago, three days ago.
Finally, they had reached a place that seemed to be just a day’s travel from where the Valkyries should be.
THE SUN WAS ALREADY NEAR THE HORIZON—OR THEY would not have risked being out in the desert. The earthen walls cast shadows. It was the perfect place.