The Witch of Portobello

by Paulo Coelho

  "Who was the father?" asked one of my friends.

  "No one. There's a technical term, parthenogenesis, which is a process of reproduction that does not require fertilization of the egg by a male. There's a mystical term too, one to which we're more accustomed: Immaculate Conception.

  "From Gaia sprang all the gods who would later people the Elysian Fields of Greece, including our own dear Dionysus, your idol. But as man became established as the principal political power in the cities, Gaia was forgotten, and was replaced by Zeus, Ares, Apollo and company, all of whom were competent enough, but didn't have the same allure as the Mother who originated everything."

  Then she questioned us about our work. The director asked if she'd like to give us some lessons.

  "On what?"

  "On what you know."

  "To be perfectly honest, I learned all about the origins of theater this week. I learn everything as I need to learn it, that's what Edda told me to do."

  So I was right!

  "But I can share other things that life has taught me."

  They all agreed. And no one asked who Edda was.

  DEIDRE O'NEILL, KNOWN AS EDDA

  I said to Athena: You don't have to keep coming here all the time just to ask silly questions. If a group has decided to take you on as a teacher, why not use that opportunity to turn yourself into a teacher?

  Do what I always did.

  Try to feel good about yourself even when you feel like the least worthy of creatures. Reject all those negative thoughts and let the Mother take possession of your body and soul; surrender yourself to dance or to silence or to ordinary, everyday activities--like taking your son to school, preparing supper, making sure the house is tidy. Everything is worship if your mind is focused on the present moment.

  Don't try to convince anyone of anything. When you don't know something, ask or go away and find out. But when you do act, be like the silent, flowing river and open yourself to a greater energy. Believe--that's what I said at our first meeting--simply believe that you can.

  At first, you'll be confused and insecure. Then you'll start to believe that everyone thinks they're being conned. It's not true. You have the knowledge, it's simply a matter of being aware. All the minds on the planet are so easily cast down--they fear illness, invasion, attack, death. Try to restore their lost joy to them.

  Be clear.

  Reprogram yourself every minute of each day with thoughts that make you grow. When you're feeling irritated or confused, try to laugh at yourself. Laugh out loud at this woman tormented by doubts and anxieties, convinced that her problems are the most important thing in the world. Laugh at the sheer absurdity of the situation, at the fact that despite being a manifestation of the Mother, you still believe God is a man who lays down the rules. Most of our problems stem from just that--from following rules.

  Concentrate.

  If you can find nothing on which to focus your mind, concentrate on your breathing. The Mother's river of light is flowing in through your nose. Listen to your heart beating, follow the thoughts you can't control, control your desire to get up at once and to do something "useful." Sit for a few minutes each day doing nothing, getting as much as you can out of that time.

  When you're washing up, pray. Be thankful that there are plates to be washed; that means there was food, that you fed someone, that you've lavished care on one or more people, that you cooked and laid the table. Imagine the millions of people at this moment who have absolutely nothing to wash up and no one for whom to lay the table.

  There are women who say: I'm not going to do the washing up, let the men do it. Fine, let the men do it if they want to, but that has nothing to do with equality. There's nothing wrong with doing simple things, although if I were to publish an article tomorrow saying everything I think, I'd be accused of working against the feminist cause. Nonsense! As if washing up or wearing a bra or having someone open or close a door could be humiliating to me as a woman. The fact is, I love it when a man opens the door for me. According to etiquette this means, "She needs me to do this because she's fragile," but in my soul is written: "I'm being treated like a goddess. I'm a queen." I'm not here to work for the feminist cause, because both men and women are a manifestation of the Mother, the Divine Unity. No one can be greater than that.

  I'd love to see you giving classes on what you're learning. That's the main aim of life--revelation! You make yourself into a channel, you listen to yourself and are surprised at how capable you are. Remember your job at the bank? Perhaps you never properly understood that what happened there was a result of the energy flowing out of your body, your eyes, your hands.

  You'll say: "No, it was the dance."

  The dance was simply a ritual. What is a ritual? It means transforming something monotonous into something different, rhythmic, capable of channeling the Unity. That's why I say again: be different even when you're washing up. Move your hands so that they never repeat the same gesture twice, even though they maintain the rhythm.

  If you find it helpful, try to visualize images--flowers, birds, trees in a forest. Don't imagine single objects, like the candle you focused on when you came here for the first time. Try to think of something collective. And do you know what you'll find? That you didn't choose your thought.

  I'll give you an example: imagine a flock of birds flying. How many birds did you see? Eleven, nineteen, five? You have a vague idea, but you don't know the exact number. So where did that thought come from? Someone put it there. Someone who knows the exact number of birds, trees, stones, flowers. Someone who, in that fraction of a second, took charge of you and showed you her power.

  You are what you believe yourself to be.

  Don't be like those people who believe in "positive thinking" and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that, because you know it already. And when you doubt it--which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution--do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it.

  Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything, it's merely a question of believing.

  Believe.

  As I said to you in Bucharest, the very first time we met, groups are very important because they force us to progress. If you're alone, all you can do is laugh at yourself, but if you're with others, you'll laugh and then immediately act. Groups challenge us. Groups allow us to choose our affinities. Groups create a collective energy, and ecstasy comes more easily because everyone infects everyone else.

  Groups can also destroy us, of course, but that's part of life and the human condition--living with other people. And anyone who's failed to develop an instinct for survival has understood nothing of what the Mother is saying.

  You're lucky. A group has just asked you to teach them something, and that will make you a teacher.

  HERON RYAN, JOURNALIST

  Before the first meeting with the actors, Athena came to my house. Ever since I published the article on St. Sarah, she'd been convinced that I understood her world, which wasn't true at all. I simply wanted to attract her attention. I was trying to come round to the idea that there might be an invisible reality capable of interfering in our lives, but the only reason I did so was because of a love I didn't want to believe I felt but which was continuing to grow in a subtle, devastating way.

  I was content with my universe and didn't want to change it at all, even though I was being propelled in that direction.

  "I'm afraid," she said as soon as she arrived. "But I must go ahead and do what they're asking of me. I need to believe."

  "You've had a lot of experiences in life. You learned from the gypsies, from the dervishes in the desert, from--"

  "Well, that's not quite true. Besides, what does learning mea
n: accumulating knowledge or transforming your life?"

  I suggested we go out that night for supper and to dance a little. She agreed to supper but rejected the dancing.

  "Answer me," she said, looking around my apartment. "Is learning just putting things on a shelf or is it discarding whatever is no longer useful and then continuing on your way feeling lighter?"

  On the shelves were all the books I'd invested so much money and time in buying, reading, and annotating. There were my personality, my education, my true teachers.

  "How many books have you got? Over a thousand, I'd say. But most of them you'll probably never open again. You hang on to them because you don't believe."

  "I don't believe?"

  "No, you don't believe, full stop. Anyone who believes will go and read up about theater as I did when Andrea asked me about it, but after that, it's a question of letting the Mother speak through you and making discoveries as she speaks. And as you make those discoveries, you'll manage to fill in the blank spaces that all those writers left there on purpose to provoke the reader's imagination. And when you fill in the spaces, you'll start to believe in your own abilities.

  "How many people would love to read those books but don't have the money to buy them? Meanwhile, you sit here surrounded by all this stagnant energy, purely to impress the friends who visit you. Or is it that you don't feel you've learned anything from them and need to consult them again?"

  I thought she was being rather hard on me, and that intrigued me.

  "So you don't think I need this library?"

  "I think you need to read, but why hang on to all these books? Would it be asking too much if we were to leave here right now, and before going to the restaurant, distribute most of them to whomever we happened to pass in the street?"

  "They wouldn't all fit in my car."

  "We could hire a truck."

  "But then we wouldn't get to the restaurant in time for supper. Besides, you came here because you were feeling insecure, not in order to tell me what I should do with my books. Without them I'd feel naked."

  "Ignorant, you mean."

  "Uncultivated would be the right word."

  "So your culture isn't in your heart, it's on your bookshelves."

  Enough was enough. I picked up the phone to reserve a table and told the restaurant that we'd be there in fifteen minutes. Athena was trying to avoid the problem that had brought her here. Her deep insecurity was making her go on the attack, rather than looking at herself. She needed a man by her side and, who knows, was perhaps sounding me out to see how far I'd go, using her feminine wiles to discover just what I'd be prepared to do for her.

  Simply being in her presence seemed to justify my very existence. Was that what she wanted to hear? Fine, I'd tell her over supper. I'd be capable of doing almost anything, even leaving the woman I was living with, but I drew the line, of course, at giving away my books.

  In the taxi, we returned to the subject of the theater group, although I was, at that moment, prepared to discuss something I never normally spoke about--love, a subject I found far more complicated than Marx, Jung, the British Labour Party, or the day-to-day problems at a newspaper office.

  "You don't need to worry," I said, feeling a desire to hold her hand. "It'll be all right. Talk about calligraphy. Talk about dancing. Talk about the things you know."

  "If I did that, I'd never discover what it is I don't know. When I'm there, I'll have to allow my mind to go still and let my heart begin to speak. But it's the first time I've done that, and I'm frightened."

  "Would you like me to come with you?"

  She accepted at once. We arrived at the restaurant, ordered some wine, and started to drink. I was drinking in order to get up the courage to say what I thought I was feeling, although it seemed absurd to me to be declaring my love to someone I hardly knew. And she was drinking because she was afraid of talking about what she didn't know.

  After the second glass of wine, I realized how on edge she was. I tried to hold her hand, but she gently pulled away.

  "I can't be afraid."

  "Of course you can, Athena. I often feel afraid, and yet, when I need to, I go ahead and face up to whatever it is I'm afraid of."

  I was on edge too. I refilled our glasses. The waiter kept coming over to ask what we'd like to eat, and I kept telling him that we'd order later.

  I was talking about whatever came into my head. Athena was listening politely, but she seemed far away, in some dark universe full of ghosts. At one point, she told me again about the woman in Scotland and what she'd said. I asked if it made sense to teach what you didn't know.

  "Did anyone ever teach you how to love?" she replied.

  Could she be reading my thoughts?

  "And yet," she went on, "you're as capable of love as any other human being. How did you learn? You didn't, you simply believe. You believe, therefore you love."

  "Athena..."

  I hesitated, then managed to finish my sentence, although not at all as I had intended.

  "...perhaps we should order some food."

  I realized that I wasn't yet prepared to mention the things that were troubling my world. I called the waiter over and ordered some starters, then some more starters, a main dish, a pudding, and another bottle of wine. The more time I had, the better.

  "You're acting strangely. Was it my comment about your books? You do what you like. It's not my job to change your world. I was obviously sticking my nose in where it wasn't wanted."

  I had been thinking about that business of "changing the world" only a few seconds before.

  "Athena, you're always telling me about...no, I need to talk about something that happened in that bar in Sibiu, with the gypsy music."

  "In the restaurant, you mean?"

  "Yes, in the restaurant. Today we were discussing books, the things that we accumulate and that take up space. Perhaps you're right. There's something I've been wanting to do ever since I saw you dancing that night. It weighs more and more heavily on my heart."

  "I don't know what you mean."

  "Of course you do. I'm talking about the love I'm discovering now and doing my best to destroy before it reveals itself. I'd like you to accept it. It's the little I have of myself, but it's not my own. It's not exclusively yours, because there's someone else in my life, but I would be happy if you could accept it anyway. An Arab poet from your country, Khalil Gibran, says: 'It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked.' If I don't say everything I need to say tonight, I'll merely be a spectator watching events unfold rather than the person actually experiencing them."

  I took a deep breath. The wine had helped me to free myself.

  She drained her glass, and I did the same. The waiter appeared with the food, making a few comments about the various dishes, explaining the ingredients and the way in which they had been cooked. Athena and I kept our eyes fixed on each other. Andrea had told me that this is what Athena had done when they met for the first time, and she was convinced it was simply a way of intimidating others.

  The silence was terrifying. I imagined her getting up from the table and citing her famous, invisible boyfriend from Scotland Yard, or saying that she was very flattered, but she had to think about the class she was to give the next day.

  "And is there anything you would withhold? Some day, all that you have shall be given. The trees give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish."

  She was speaking quietly and carefully because of the wine she'd drunk, but her voice nevertheless silenced everything around us.

  "And what greater merit shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving? You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give."

  She said all this without smiling. I felt as if I were conversing with a sphinx.

  "Words written by the same poet you were quoting. I learned them at school, but I don't need the book where he w
rote those words. I've kept his words in my heart."

  She drank a little more wine. I did the same. I couldn't bring myself to ask if she accepted my love or not, but I felt lighter.

  "You may be right. I'll donate my books to a public library and only keep those I really will reread one day."

  "Is that what you want to talk about now?"

  "No. I just don't know how to continue the conversation."

  "Shall we eat, then, and enjoy the food. Does that seem a good idea?"

  No, it didn't seem like a good idea. I wanted to hear something different, but I was afraid to ask, and so I babbled on about libraries, books, and poets, regretting having ordered so many dishes. I was the one who wanted to escape now, because I didn't know how to continue.

  In the end, she made me promise that I would be at the theater for her first class, and for me that was a signal. She needed me; she had accepted what I had unconsciously dreamed of offering her ever since I saw her dancing in a restaurant in Transylvania, but which I had only been capable of understanding that night.

  Or, as Athena would have said, of believing.

  ANDREA MCCAIN, ACTRESS

  Of course I'm to blame. If it hadn't been for me, Athena would never have come to the theater that morning, gathered us all together, asked us to lie down on the stage and begin a relaxation exercise involving breathing and bringing our awareness to each part of the body.

  "Relax your thighs..."

  We all obeyed, as if we were before a goddess, someone who knew more than all of us, even though we'd done this kind of exercise hundreds of times before. We were all curious to know what would come after "...now relax your face and breathe deeply."

  Did she really think she was teaching us anything new? We were expecting a lecture, a talk! But I must control myself. Let's get back to what happened then. We relaxed, and then came a silence that left us completely disoriented. When I discussed it with my colleagues afterward, we all agreed that we felt the exercise was over, that it was time to sit up and look around, except that no one did. We remained lying down, in a kind of enforced meditation, for fifteen interminable minutes.