Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life

by Fernando Morais

  When he arrived at the newspaper office after lunch, he learned that his head was on the block. The Marians were furious about the article and had gone straight to the owner of the newspaper to complain. They accused him of having invented facts and attributing them to the organization’s leaders. The cub reporter was indignant when he heard this, and although his colleagues told him to lie low until the whole thing had blown over, he decided that it would be best to clear up the matter straight away. He sat outside the owner’s glass-walled office, the so-called fishbowl, and waited two hours for her to arrive.

  On entering the fishbowl, he remained standing in front of her desk. ‘Dona Ondina, I’m the person who wrote the article on the Marians and I’ve come to explain—’

  She didn’t even let him finish the sentence: ‘You’re sacked,’ she said.

  Surprised, he countered with: ‘But Dona Ondina, I’m about to be taken on by the newspaper.’

  Without even looking up, she said again: ‘You’re sacked. Please leave.’

  Paulo left, regretting his naivety. If he had waited a few days, as he had been advised, she would probably have forgotten about the matter. Now there was no way of saving the situation. He returned home with his tail between his legs. Although shaken by the incident, his ability to fantasize seemed limitless. Recording in his diary his regret at having taken the initiative, he described his dismissal as if it were a case of political persecution:

  I could have done all kinds of things to avoid being fired! I could have given in and gone over to the right simply in order to keep my job on the newspaper. But no. I wanted to be a martyr, crucified for his ideas, and they put me on the cross before I could give any kind of message to humanity. I couldn’t even say that I was innocent, that I was fighting for the good of all. But no! Die now, you filthy dog. I’m a worm. A C-O-W-A-R-D! I was sacked from the ‘DN’ for being a subversive. Now I’ve got nothing but night school and lots of time doing nothing.

  The Diário de Notícias was not a right-wing newspaper; nor had he been dismissed for political reasons.

  Paulo appeared prepared to take advantage of his time in the clinic. He had been labelled ‘a madman’, and he intended to enjoy the impunity that protects the mentally ill and do whatever he wanted. To hell with school and his parents: he wanted to follow his dream. In his own words, he had become a ‘delinquent’ who went around with gangs, but since he lacked the physical strength of other boys, he thought that he could become an ‘intellectual delinquent’–someone who read things that none of his friends had read and knew things that no one else knew. He belonged to three different groups–Paissandu, the Conservatory and what remained of Rota 15–but whenever there was any sign of violence, he felt ashamed that he didn’t have the courage even to break up a fistfight.

  He knew, however, that displays of physical strength were not the way forward. Whereas before he had felt himself to be ‘an existentialist on the road to communism’, now he saw himself as ‘a street communist’. He had read Henry Miller’s famous trilogy Sexus, Plexus and Nexus, and glanced over the works of Marx and Engels, and he felt confident enough to talk on such topics as ‘true socialism’, ‘the Cold War’ and ‘the exploitation of the worker’. In a text entitled ‘Art in Brazil’, he quotes Lenin as having spoken of the need to take two steps back when it was clear that this was the only way of taking one step forward. ‘Art cannot flee from this premise. It must first adapt to man and then, having gained his confidence, respect and love, it can lead him along the road to reality.’ His basis for taking a route he had earlier rejected was simple: ‘I am an intellectual, and since all intellectuals are communists, I am a communist.’ The mother of a girl he was friendly with accused him of ‘putting ideas’ in the heads of the poor people in the street. ‘From Henry Miller to communism is only a step,’ he wrote; ‘therefore, I’m a communist.’ What he would only confess to his diary was that he loathed Bergman and considered Godard ‘a bore’ and Antonioni ‘annoying’. In fact what he really liked was to listen to The Beatles, but it wasn’t quite right for a communist to say this in public.

  As he had predicted, his studies were relegated firmly to the background. In August, fearing that he would fail the year, the school summoned Lygia and Pedro to deal with three issues: low grades, too many absences and ‘the student’s personal problems’. Since the start of classes after the July holidays he had not achieved marks above 2.5 in any subject and during that time he had not been to a single maths lesson, which explained why he had never got more than 3 in the subject since moving to the college. He would leave home every morning and go to school, but once there, involved as he was with the drama group, he would spend whole days without entering the classroom. The verdict presented to his parents was worrying: either their son paid more attention to his studies or he would be expelled. Although the college did not adopt the same strategy as that used at St Ignatius, the director of studies subtly suggested to his parents that ‘to avoid the worst’, it might be best to move him before the end of the year to a ‘less demanding’ educational establishment. Put bluntly: if they didn’t want to have the shame of seeing their son fail again, the best thing would be to enrol him in a college where the pupil only had to pay his monthly fees promptly in order to guarantee success. Lygia and Pedro were indignant at this suggestion. Neither of them had lost hope of Paulo returning to the straight and narrow, and to accept such an idea meant a humiliating surrender. There was no way they would let him end up in a fifth-rate school.

  Paulo, meanwhile, seemed to be living on another planet. His life within the world of theatre, which was a hotbed of opposition to the military regime, brought him close to young people who were becoming politically militant. Now all the films and plays he watched were political, and he had incorporated into his vocabulary left-wing slogans such as ‘More bread, fewer guns’ and ‘United, the people will never be defeated’.

  One night, when he went with a group of his friends to see Liberdade, Liberdade [Freedom, Freedom], which was being put on by Oduvaldo Viana Filho and Paulo Autran at the Teatro Opinião, the play was interrupted halfway through. A dishevelled young man got up on the stage and spoke out against the military dictatorship. He was Vladimir Palmeira, the student leader who went on to become a Member of Parliament and who was urging the audience to join yet another student march against the regime. On the few occasions when Paulo decided to take part in such marches, his real objective was to be seen by his father, whose office was in the centre of the city, where all the protest marches ended up. In fact, the world of politics that he was being drawn into had never much mattered to him. Apart from one or two notes, such as the results of the presidential elections in 1960 won by Jânio Quadros, his diary reflects his indifference to both politics and politicians. When the army had taken power in the April of the previous year, Paulo was speculating loftily in his diary on the existence of heaven and hell. Two weeks before the coup, when the whole country was in uproar, he filled several pages in his diary describing the misfortunes of a ‘sixteen-year-old girl’ he had met in the street: ‘To think that this girl ran away from home and that in order to survive, she has been subjected to the most humiliating of things, although she has still managed to keep her virginity. But now she’ll have to lose that just so she can eat.’ And he ended: ‘It’s at times like this that I doubt the existence of God.’

  However, that was the past. Now he felt himself to be a member of the resistance, although his criticisms of the dictatorship never went beyond the limits of his diary and even then were very timid. It was in his diary that he recorded his dissatisfaction with the existing situation, for example, in a satirical article entitled ‘J’accuse’, in which he placed The Beatles, Franco, Salazar and Lyndon Johnson on one side and on the other de Gaulle, Glauber Rocha and Luís Carlos Prestes:

  I accuse the rich, who have bought the consciences of the politicians. I accuse the military, who use guns to control the feelings of the people. I acc
use the Beatles, Carnival and football of diverting the minds of a generation that had enough blood to drown the tyrants. I accuse Franco and Salazar, who live by oppressing their compatriots. I accuse Lyndon Johnson, who oppresses countries too poor to resist the flow of dollars. I accuse Pope Paul VI, who has defiled the words of Christ.

  But is there anything good in the world around me? Yes, it’s not all disappointment. There’s de Gaulle, who revived France and wants to spread freedom throughout the world. There’s Yevtushenko, who raised his voice against a regime, knowing that he could be crushed without anyone knowing, but who saw that humanity was prepared to accept his thoughts, free as doves. There’s Khrushchev, who allowed the poet to express himself as he wished. There’s Francisco Julião and Miguel Arraes, two true leaders who knew how to fight to the end. There’s Ruy Guerra and Glauber Rocha, who brought to popular art a message of revolt. There’s Luís Carlos Prestes, who sacrificed everything for an ideal. There’s the life beating inside me so that one day I can speak out too. There’s the world in the hands of the young. Perhaps, before it’s too late, they will realize what this means. And fight to the death.

  The first job opportunity to arise, meanwhile, was light-years away from the battle against the military dictatorship and the exploitation of underdeveloped countries by American imperialism. An actors’ cooperative called Grupo Destaque was rehearsing a dramatized version of the children’s classic Pinocchio, which was to be performed at the end of 1965, and the directors had a problem. The show required seven scene-changes, and the directors were worried that each time the curtain fell, the audience, mostly children, would start wandering around the theatre and delay the start of the next scene. The producer, the Frenchman Jean Arlin, came up with a simple solution: they would get another actor to appear on the stage during each interval and distract the children until the curtain rose again. He recalled an ugly, awkward, but witty young man, Paulo Coelho, who had been introduced to him by Joel Macedo. He would be perfect for the role. This was hardly resistance theatre, and the role didn’t even have a script, which meant he would simply have to improvise, and it was unlikely he would get paid very much. As a cooperative venture, after each show, the takings would be shared out, most of them going to pay first for the hire of the theatre, and then the technicians, lighting assistants and scene-shifters. If anything was left over, then it would be divided equally among the actors, each of whom would get only enough to pay for a snack. All the same, Paulo accepted the invitation on the spot.

  During his first rehearsal, he chose to wear a ragged pair of dungarees and an old hat and waited in the wings to make his entrance. The only instruction he had received from the director, the Argentine Luís Maria Olmedo, who was known as Cachorro, was to improvise. When the curtain fell for the first scene-change, he went on stage, pulling funny faces, and said whatever came into his head: ‘When Little Potato starts to grow, he spreads across the ground. When Little Mama falls to sleep she puts her hand upon her heart.’

  From then on, to his friends in the theatre he was known as Batatinha, or Little Potato. Although he considered himself to be a useless actor, during the following weeks he worked so hard at his role that when Pinocchio was about to open, his appearances had become so much part of the show that his name appeared in the programme and on the posters. At each rehearsal, he elaborated a little more on his performance–although always sticking to the time allowed for the scene-change–inventing strange names, making faces, jumping around and shouting. Deep down, he thought the whole thing ridiculous, but if that was the door that would allow him to enter the world of the theatre, he would go through it. In Grupo Destaque he worked with professionals who made their living from the theatre. After the rehearsals, the cheerful, lively group would leave the Miguel Lemos theatre, walk along the beach to Rua Sá Ferreira, four blocks away, and make an obligatory stop at the Gôndola bar, where the actors, technicians and directors who packed the stages of Copacabana’s twenty theatres would meet every night.

  Paulo felt he was in heaven. He was eighteen now, which meant he could drink when he wanted, go to any film or play and stay out all night without having to answer to anyone. Except, of course, to his father, Pedro Coelho, who took a dim view of his son’s burgeoning theatrical vocation. This was not only because he hardly ever went to school and was on the verge of being expelled again. For his parents, the world of the theatre was a ‘den of homosexuals, communists, drug addicts and idlers’ with whom they would prefer their son not to mix. At the end of December, though, they gave in and accepted his invitation to the preview of Pinocchio. After all, this was a children’s classic, not the indecent, subversive theatre that was enjoying such success in the country.

  Paulo had reserved seats for his parents, his sister and his grandparents and, to his surprise, they all turned up. On the first night, the cultural section of the Jornal do Brasil published an article and his name appeared in print for the first time. He was last on the list, but for someone who was just beginning it was the right place. He recorded the feeling of being on stage in a short but emotional note in his diary: ‘Yesterday was my début. Excitement. Real excitement. It was just unbelievable when I found myself there in front of the audience, with the spotlights blinding me, and with me making the audience laugh. Sublime, truly sublime. It was my first performance this year.’ The family’s attendance at the first night did not mean an armistice, however. When they learned that Paulo had failed at Andrews, his parents forced him to attend group therapy three times a week, still convinced that he had mental problems.

  Indifferent to the hostility on the domestic front, he was having a wonderful time. In a matter of weeks, he had practically created a new character in the play. When the curtain fell on one scene, he would sit on the edge of the stage, unwrap a delicious toffee or sweet and start to eat it.

  The children would watch greedily and when he asked one of the children in the front row: ‘Would you like one?’ the whole audience would yell: ‘I want one! I want one!’

  To which he would reply heartlessly: ‘Well, too bad. I’m not going to give you one!’

  Batatinha would take another bite or lick and turn to the audience again: ‘Would you like one?’

  More shouting, and again he would refuse. This would be repeated until the curtain rose for the next act.

  A month and a half after the first night, Pinocchio moved to the Teatro Carioca, which was on the ground floor of an apartment block in Flamengo, a few metres from the Paissandu cinema. One afternoon when he was rehearsing, Paulo noticed that a very beautiful girl with blue eyes and very long hair had sat down in one of the rear stalls seats and seemed to be watching him closely. It was Fabíola Fracarolli, who lived on the eighth floor of the building, had noticed the open door and, out of curiosity, gone in to take a look. The following day, Fabíola returned and, on the third day, Paulo decided to approach her. She was sixteen and she lived in a small rented apartment with her widowed mother, who was a dressmaker, and her maternal grandmother, a nutty old woman who sat all day clutching a bag full of old papers, which she said were ‘her fortune’.

  Up to the age of fifteen, Fabíola had been afflicted with an enormous, grotesque nose à la Cyrano de Bergerac. When she learned that the only boy she had managed to attract had been paid to take her out by her cousins, she didn’t think twice. She climbed on to the window ledge and said to her mother: ‘Either you pay for plastic surgery or I’ll jump!’ Weeks later, when she had recovered from the surgery, she was parading a neat, sculptured nose. It was this new Fabíola who fell madly in love with Paulo.

  Things were going well for Paulo when it came to women. While continuing his relationship with Renata Sorrah, he had decided to forgive Márcia and take her back as a girlfriend. This didn’t stop him beginning a steady relationship with Fabíola. Her mother seemed to take pity on the puny young man with breathing problems and welcomed him into the family. He would have lunch and dinner with them almost every day, whic
h made his life as Batatinha all the more comfortable. As if such kindness were not enough, soon Fabíola’s mother, Beth, moved her bed into her sick mother’s bedroom, thus freeing up a small room, which Paulo began to use as a studio, office and meeting room. To make the place seem less domestic, he covered the walls, ceiling and even the floor with pages from newspapers. When Beth was not around, his workspace became the bedroom where Fabíola had her first sexual experience. However, Paulo still could not understand why such a beautiful girl like her would be attracted to the rather sickly person he thought himself to be.

  Riddled with insecurity and driven by what was certainly a mad streak, he gave her an ultimatum: ‘I can’t believe that a woman as beautiful as you, with your charm, your beautiful clothes, can be in love with me. I need to know that you really love me.’

  When Fabíola replied confidently ‘I’ll do whatever you want me to do’, he said: ‘If you really love me, let me stub this cigarette out on your thigh. And you’re not to cry.’

  The girl lifted the edge of her long Indian wrapover skirt, like someone waiting to have an injection. Then she smiled at him without saying a word. Paulo took a long drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out on her smooth, tanned leg. With her eyes closed, Fabíola heard the hiss and smelled the repellent stench of the hot ash burning her skin–she would bear the scar for the rest of her life–but she didn’t utter a sound or shed a tear. Paulo said nothing, but thought: She really does love me.

  Although he made constant declarations of love, his feelings for Fabíola were ambiguous. While, on the one hand, he was proud to be seen in the fashionable places of Rio hand-in-hand with such a beautiful girl, on the other, he was embarrassed by her silliness and her extraordinary ignorance about almost everything. Fabíola was what, in those days, was known as a cocota or bimbo. When she announced over a few beers that Mao Tse Tung was ‘the French couturier who created the Mao suits’, Paulo wished the ground would open up and swallow him. But it was such a comfortable relationship, which made no demands on him, and she was so pretty that it was worth putting up with her stupid remarks with good grace.