Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life (43 page)

On 25 April 1986, Toninho Buda was recovering after being run over some weeks earlier. He was shocked to read in a column in the
Jornal do Brasil
that Paulo Coelho would be signing his new book,
Manual Prático do Vampirismo
, that evening in the Hotel Glória. He thought it rude that he hadn’t been invited to the launch, but preferred to believe that the invitation had not arrived on time. Still walking with the aid of a stick, he decided to go to the launch of a book that was, after all, also his. He went to the bus station, took the bus and, after two hours on the road, arrived in Rio de Janeiro as night was falling. He crossed the city by taxi and hobbled up the four white marble steps at the main entrance of the Hotel Glória. It was only then that he realized that he was the first to arrive: apart from the employees of the publishing house, who were stacking books on a stand, there was no one else there, not even the author.

He decided to buy a copy–as well as receiving no invitation he hadn’t even been sent a complimentary copy–and sat in an armchair at one end of the room to enjoy his creation in peace. He admired the cover, ran his eyes over the first pages, the frontispiece, the two flaps, but his name did not appear anywhere in the book, of which half had been entirely written by him. He was about to take a taxi back to the bus station when he saw Paulo enter, smiling, with Chris, Liano and Mandarino.

At that moment, he decided that he wasn’t going to waste the journey and so he gave vent to his feelings: ‘Dammit, Paulo! You didn’t even put my name on the book, man, and that was the only thing I asked for! The only thing I asked for, man!’

Paulo pretended not to understand, asked to see a copy of the
Manual
, flipped quickly through it and said regretfully: ‘It’s true, Toninho. They didn’t add your name. But I promise you: I’ll ask for a special stamp to be made and we’ll stamp the whole of the first edition. I’ll correct it in the next edition, but with this one, we’ll stamp every book. Forgive me.’

Although deeply upset, Toninho Buda didn’t want to ruin Paulo’s evening and felt it best to end the conversation there: ‘Paulo, I’m not an idiot. Don’t talk to me about a stamp, man. Go off to your launch, where there are loads of people wanting your autograph. Go on and I’ll just leave.’

Toninho swallowed the insult in the name of a higher ambition: to get Paulo interested in reinstituting the Sociedade Alternativa. His strategy was a simple one: to use public debates and popular demonstrations to gain the attention of the media and public opinion. Some months earlier, he had written a long letter to Paulo from Juiz de Fora suggesting ‘public actions’ by the group, among which he suggested rushing on to the stage of the first international rock concert in Rio on the night when stars such as Whitesnake, Ozzy Osbourne, the Scorpions and AC/DC were performing. Toninho’s plan was to seize the microphone and start talking about the Sociedade Alternativa: ‘This will depend almost entirely on you and your contacts in Rio. I’m prepared to go there myself. If you agree, you can start to work on things, but please don’t forget to keep me informed as to how it’s going.’

In January 1986, some months after the book signing, the threesome had taken part in an event in Rio. They decided to use a protest by inhabitants of the South Zone against the decision of the Prefecture to close a public park in order to announce the launch of a newspaper,
Sociedade Alternativa
, the first draft of which had been designed entirely by Toninho. It was he who enrolled with the organizers of the demonstration in order to get his message heard. As soon as his name was called, he went up to the improvised rostrum in suit and tie and in front of the television cameras began to read what he had entitled ‘Manifesto Number 11’. It was an entire page of statements such as ‘Free space, everyone should occupy their space’ ‘Time is free, everyone has to live in their time’ and ‘The artistic class no longer exists: we are all writers, housewives, bosses
and employees, radicals and conservatives, wise and mad’. It wasn’t the content that mattered though, but the manner of his performance. As Toninho Buda read out each sentence, paragraph or thought, Chris carefully and silently cut off a piece of his clothing: first his tie, then a sleeve of his suit, then a leg of his trousers, then another sleeve, a collar, another sleeve…When he pronounced the final sentence (something like ‘The great miracle will no longer be being able to walk on water, but being able to walk on the earth’) he was completely naked, without a square centimetre of cloth on his body.

That night, when they were all celebrating the repercussions of their ‘public action’ in the park, Paulo was still muttering about the need to do something even more scandalous, with greater impact. However, Chris and Paulo were flabbergasted when Toninho told them that what he hoped to do would, in his words, ‘leave the Sociedade Alternativa engraved for ever in the memory of millions of Brazilians’: neither more nor less than blowing the head off the statue of Christ the Redeemer. He explained the plan to explode the monument’s 3.75-metre-high, 30-ton head, a monument which, in 2007, would be named one of the seven new wonders of the modern world. Any normal person would have thrown such a madman out of the house, but Paulo didn’t do that. On the contrary, he simply said: ‘Go ahead.’

This was what Toninho wanted to hear. ‘Just imagine the population of Rio de Janeiro waking up one morning and seeing Christ there, without his head and with that great mound of twisted iron struts sticking out of his neck towards the indigo sky! Think of the Pope’s edict for making amends, the crowds climbing up Corcovado looking for pieces to keep as a relic. Imagine that! The Church collecting tithes for the miracle of its reconstruction! That’s when we would go in singing “Viva, Viva, Viva a Sociedade Alternativa!” and distributing the first edition of our newspaper with the hot news on the dreadful episode…’

This was a heresy too far, particularly for someone who was in the process of reconciliation with the Church, and Paulo preferred to bring the conversation to a close and never return to the subject. As Toninho would only find out months later, Paulo was very close to being admitted as a Master of RAM, the religious order to which Jean had introduced
him. His first failed attempt to acquire this rank in the secret organization had occurred in January that year. Taking advantage of a business trip to Brazil, Jean had appointed 2 January 1986 as the date for a secret ceremony during which Paulo would receive a sword, the symbol of his ordination as a Master. The site for this was to be the summit of one of the mountains in Mantiqueira, on the frontier between Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, next to one of the highest points in Brazil, the peak of Agulhas Negras. As well as Jean and Paulo, Chris, a hired guide and another man who was to be initiated into the order were also to be there. The sole instruction Paulo had received was to take with him the old sword that he had been using for years in his esoteric exercises.

As Paulo himself describes in the prologue to
The Pilgrimage
, they all met around a bonfire and the ceremony began when Jean pointed a brand-new sword, which he had not yet removed from its sheath, towards the sky, saying: ‘And now before the sacred countenance of RAM, you must touch with your hands the Word of Life and acquire such power as you need to become witness to that Word throughout the world!’ After digging a long, shallow hole with his bare hands, Paulo received from Chris his old sword, which was to be buried there, and in a tremulous voice, he pronounced the words of the ritual. As he finished, he saw that Jean was placing the new sword on top of the hole.

He then goes on to say that they were all standing with their arms outstretched when something happened. ‘The Master, invoking his power, created a strange light that surrounded us; it didn’t illuminate, but it was clearly visible, and it caused the figures of those who were there to take on a colour that was different from the yellowish tinge cast by the fire.’ The high point, not just of the ceremony but of the whole long day, was approaching. Still not believing what he was experiencing, he heard the words Jean was saying while he made a slight cut on his forehead with the point of the blade of the new sword: ‘By the power and the love of RAM, I anoint you Master and Knight of the Order, now and for all the days of your life. R for Rigour, A for Adoration, and M for Mercy; R for
regnum
, A for
agnus
, and M for
mundi
. Let not your sword remain long in its scabbard, lest it rust. And when you draw your sword, it must never be replaced without having performed an act of goodness, opened a path
or tasted the blood of an enemy.’ Paulo was not shaking quite so much and, for the first time since he had arrived, he felt relief. When his hand touched the sword that Jean had laid down on the ground, he would finally be a magus.

At that moment, someone stepped roughly on the fingers of his right hand, which he had just reached out to touch the sword. He looked up and saw that the foot that had almost maimed him was Jean’s. Furious, the Frenchman snatched up the sword, replaced it in its scabbard and gave it to Chris. Paulo realized then that the strange light had disappeared and that Jean was looking at him coldly, saying: ‘You should have refused the sword. If you had done so, it would have been given to you, because you would have shown that your heart was pure. But just as I feared, at the supreme moment, you stumbled and fell. Because of your avidity you will now have to seek again for your sword. And because of your pride you will have to seek it among simple people. Because of your fascination with miracles, you will have to struggle to recapture what was about to be given to you so generously.’

The ceremony ended miserably. Alone in the car on the return to Rio de Janeiro, Paulo and Chris remained silent for a long time, until Paulo was unable to restrain his curiosity and asked her what the Master had said to her. Chris tried to reassure him, saying that she was sure he would get the sword back. She had received precise instructions from Jean as to where she was to hide the sword so that Paulo could try to regain it.

Still more troubled, he wanted to know what place had been chosen as the hiding place, but she was unable to reply precisely: ‘He didn’t explain very well. He just said that you should look on the map of Spain for a medieval route known as the Road to Santiago.’

W
HEN HE ENQUIRED AT TRAVEL AGENCIES,
Paulo discovered that in 1986, there was hardly any interest in the so-called Road to Santiago. Each year, fewer than 400 pilgrims ventured along the 700 inhospitable kilometres of the mystical route between St-Jean-Pied-de-Port, in the south of France, and the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, the capital of Galicia, in the northwest of Spain. From the first millennium of Christianity onwards, this road had been taken by pilgrims seeking the supposed tomb of the Apostle James. All Paulo needed to do was to pluck up the courage and leave. Instead, he handed over the day-to-day management of Shogun to Chris, while he spent his days at home filling pages and pages of diaries with a constant lament: ‘I haven’t felt this angry for a long time. I’m not angry at Jesus, but at myself for not having sufficient willpower to realize my dreams.’

He felt that he lacked the strength he needed and frequently said that he felt like becoming an atheist. However, he never lost sight of the commitment he had made to Jean. Since, though, he seemed determined to put off the trip for ever, it fell to Chris to take the initiative. Without telling him, at the end of July she went to a travel agency, bought two tickets and came home to announce: ‘We’re going to Madrid.’

He tried to put off their departure yet again, saying that the publishing house couldn’t function on its own and that the business about him finding the sword, which Chris was to hide somewhere on a 700-kilometre-long road, seemed utter madness: ‘Has my Master set me an impossible task, do you think?’

Chris, however, was determined: ‘You’ve done nothing for the last seven months. It’s time to fulfil your commitment.’

So at the beginning of August 1986, they landed in Barajas international airport in Madrid, where skinny Antônio Walter Sena Júnior, the same Toninho Buda who had dreamed of blowing off the head of Christ the Redeemer, was waiting for them.

Once Paulo had made the decision to follow the Road to Santiago, he had taken on Toninho as his assistant and, since then, had started to refer to him as ‘slave’. Toninho had barely recovered from his frustration over the
Manual Prático do Vampirismo
and was setting up a macrobiotic restaurant in Juiz de Fora when he received Paulo’s proposal, in which Paulo made it clear that this wasn’t an invitation to travel together but an employment contract.

When he learned the details of the proposal over the telephone, Toninho had a surreal conversation with his friend–surreal because this was to be paid slavery.

‘But what you’re suggesting is slavery!’

‘Exactly. I want to know if you’ll agree to be my slave for the two months I’ll be in Spain.’

‘But what am I going to do there? I haven’t got a penny to my name, I’ve never been outside Brazil, I’ve never been on a plane.’

‘Don’t worry about money. I’ll pay your fare and give you a monthly salary of 27,000 pesetas.’

‘How much is that in dollars?’

‘It must be about US$200, which is a fortune if you take into account that Spain is the cheapest country in Europe. Do you accept?’

Aged thirty-six, single and with no responsibilities, Toninho saw no reason to refuse: after all, it wasn’t every day that someone invited him to go to Europe, regardless of what he would have to do when he got there. And if things didn’t work out, all he had to do was take the plane back. But
it was only when he arrived in Rio, with his bags packed, and read the contract drawn up by Paulo that he discovered that things were not quite like that. In the first place, while Paulo and Chris were taking an Iberia flight that included a free night in a hotel, Paulo had bought him a much cheaper flight on the ill-fated Linhas Aéreas Paraguaias. Apart from the risks involved in flying with a company that was hardly a world champion in safety, he had to go to Asunción, in Paraguay, in order to get the plane to Madrid. In addition, the ticket could not be exchanged and could be used only on the specified dates, which meant that, whatever happened, he could not return to Brazil until the beginning of October, two months later. The contract, grown yellow over time and lost at the bottom of a trunk in Rio de Janeiro, shows how draconian were the conditions Paulo imposed on his slave, who is referred to here as ‘Tony’:

On reading these monstrous requirements, Toninho Buda considered returning to Minas Gerais, but the desire to know Europe won out and so he had no alternative but to sign the agreement. Since their respective flight times did not coincide, he took a flight the day before Paulo and Chris on a journey that started badly. On arriving in Madrid, without knowing a word of Spanish, he spent three hours trying to explain to the authorities how he was planning to stay sixty days in Spain with the four 10-dollar notes in his wallet. He found himself in the humiliating position of being undressed and interrogated before, finally, being allowed to go. On the following day, Tuesday, 5 August, he was once again at Barajas airport, awaiting the arrival of his boss. Toninho had found somewhere to stay with an old blind woman who hated Brazil (a ‘country full of shameless hussies’, she would mutter) and who would lock the front door at eleven at night, after which whoever was still out in the street slept in the street. The only advantage of Doña Cristina Belerano’s boarding house was the price–a paltry 600 pesetas (US$7 in today’s terms) a day, which included a modest breakfast. Chris and Paulo spent only the first night together in Madrid: the following day Chris rented a car and went off to hide Paulo’s sword in the place indicated by Jean.

It was suffocatingly hot in the Spanish capital on 7 August 1986, when Paulo left the city in a hired car. He drove about 450 kilometres north, crossed the frontier with France and left the car at a branch of the hire firm in Pau, where he spent two nights. On the Sunday morning, 10 August, he took a train to the Pyrenees and there wrote what was to be the final note in his diary before returning from his pilgrimage:

Immediately below, on the same page, was a stamp on which one can read an inscription in Latin–‘St. Joannes Pedis Portus’–beside which
there is a handwritten note in French signed by someone called ‘J.’, whose surname looks something like ‘Relul’ or ‘Ellul’:

Could this initial J be for Jean? As is usually the case whenever someone tries to cross the frontier of his mystical world by asking too many questions, Paulo Coelho neither confirms nor denies this. Everything indicates that Jean was the person in St-Jean-Pied-de-Port (presumably, as the official representative of the religious order RAM) to ensure that his disciple really was beginning the ordeal imposed on him.

Paulo’s pilgrimage would end in the Spanish city of Cebrero, where he found the sword and broke off his journey. An episode in which a taxi driver claimed that Paulo had in fact made the journey in the back of his comfortable, air-conditioned Citroën, and was proved by a Japanese television company to have been lying, led Paulo to include in the preface to the subsequent editions of
The Pilgrimage
a short piece in which he invites the reader to believe whichever version he prefers, thus only increasing the mystery surrounding the journey:

The most important and mysterious moment of the whole journey, which is not revealed until the end of the book, occurred when Paulo was nearing Cebrero, some 150 kilometres from Santiago. At the side of the road, he came across a solitary lamb, still unsteady on its feet. He began to follow the animal, which plunged off into the undergrowth until it reached a little old church built beside a small cemetery at the entrance to the town, as he describes in the book:

Paulo tells how at the exact moment when Jean finished speaking, a heavy summer shower began to fall. ‘I looked about for the lamb, but he had disappeared,’ he wrote, ‘but that did not matter: the Water of Life fell from the sky and caused the blade of my sword to glisten.’ Like a child celebrating some form of rebirth, Paulo returned to Madrid, moved into a pleasant furnished flat in the elegant Alonso Martínez district, and gave himself over body and soul to the city’s vibrant lifestyle. Until October, he could count on the assistance of Toninho Buda–whom he referred to in his diary as ‘the slave’, or simply ‘the sl.’–but he soon realized that he had chosen the wrong man to be his servant. While Paulo had become a
sybarite eager to drain Madrid’s night-life to the last drop, Toninho turned out to be a radical vegetarian who would eat only minute portions of macrobiotic food and drink no alcohol. Nor could he spend his evenings with his boss, since he had to be back at Doña Cristina’s boarding house by eleven, when the night in Madrid had barely begun. He also complained with increasing frequency that his salary was not enough to live on. On one such occasion, they had a bitter argument.

‘Paulo, the money isn’t enough even for me to buy food.’

‘I think you’d better read our contract again. It’s says there that if the pay isn’t enough, then you have to earn some extra money yourself.’

‘But Paulo, the contract also says that it’s forbidden for foreigners to work here in Spain!’

‘Don’t be so stupid, slave. Other people manage to get by. It’s not as if you were crippled or anything, so do something!’

Toninho had no option. When he was down to his last penny, he took his guitar, which he had brought with him from Brazil, chose a busy underground station, sat on the floor and began to sing Brazilian songs. Beside him was a cap waiting for the coins and, more rarely, notes thrown in by passers-by. He could never stay long in the same place before being moved on, but an hour’s singing would usually bring in 800–1,000 pesetas (US$9–11), which was enough to buy a plate of food and pay for his board and lodging. Another way of earning money was by using his rudimentary knowledge of Asian massage, in particular shiatsu, which wouldn’t require him to speak Spanish or any other language. The cost of putting an advertisement in one of the Madrid newspapers was prohibitive, but with the help of a friend, he managed to find a kind soul willing to print a number of cards on which he offered to perform therapeutic massage for ‘back, muscular pain, insomnia, tiredness, stress, etc’. On the day when the cards were ready, he stuck a copy in his diary and wrote above it:

Given Paulo’s indifference to the sufferings of his ‘slave’, Toninho returned to Brazil at the beginning of October without saying goodbye.

All Paulo wanted to do was enjoy himself. He would lunch and dine in good restaurants, he would go to cinemas and museums, and he found himself giving way to two new passions: bullfights and pinball machines. With the latter, he would usually stop playing only once he had broken the record set by the previous player. He gradually became such an aficionado of bullfights that he would travel for hours by train to see a particular fighter in action. If there were no bullfights, he would spend his afternoons standing in bars full of adolescents, eyes glued to the illuminated screen of the pinball machine. He even joined a course to learn how to play the castanets.