Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life

by Fernando Morais

  The day she was invited to his house, she was astonished. Judging by her boyfriend’s ragged appearance and his lack of money (she often gave him some of her allowance so that he could buy cigarettes and take the bus), Fabíola had always imagined that he was poor and homeless. Imagine her surprise, then, when she was received by a butler wearing white gloves and a jacket with gold buttons. For a moment, she assumed Paulo must be the son of one of the employees, but no, he was the son of the master of the house–‘an enormous pink house with a grand piano and vast courtyard gardens’, she said later, recalling that day. ‘Just think–in the middle of the drawing room there was a staircase that was identical to the one in Gone With the Wind…’

  Although he was eighteen and enjoying relative independence, Paulo still sometimes behaved like a child. One night, he stayed late at Márcia’s house, listening to recordings of poetry (her family had given in and decided to accept him), and on returning home, which was only a few metres away, he came across what he called ‘a group of nasty-looking individuals’. In fact, they were simply some boys with whom he’d had words a few days earlier when he complained about the noise they were making playing football. However, when he saw them armed with sticks and bottles, he was terrified, went back to Márcia’s apartment and called home, waking his irascible father. Dramatic and theatrical as ever, he begged: ‘Papa, come and collect me from Márcia’s house. But come with a revolver because twelve criminals are threatening to kill me.’ He would not leave until he looked out of the apartment window and saw his father in pyjamas, with a catapult in his hand, thus guaranteeing him a safe return home.

  This paternal zeal did not mean that the situation at home had improved. Things were still as tense as ever, but his parents’ control over his life had slackened. His performance during the second term at Andrews had been so dreadful that he wasn’t actually allowed to take the end-of-year exams and was thrown out. The only solution was to take the route Pedro had sworn never to accept: to look for a college that was ‘less demanding’. The choice was Guanabara, in Flamengo, where Paulo hoped to finish his schooling and then apply for a university course, although not in engineering, as his father so wanted. By opting to take the evening course at the college, he forced his parents to relax their vigilance on his timekeeping and give him a key to the house, but this freedom was won at a price: if he wanted independence and to choose a college for himself, to do drama and get home whenever he wanted, then he would have to find work. Pedro found his son a job where he could earn money selling advertising space in the programmes for the Jockey Club races, but after weeks and weeks of trying, the new entrant into the world of work hadn’t managed to sell a single square centimetre of advertising space.

  His lack of success did not dismay his father, who suggested another option, this time with Souza Alves Acessórios, a company specializing in the sale of industrial equipment. Although he hated doing anything he was forced to do, Paulo decided to agree for the sake of financial independence, because this was a job with a fixed salary and he wouldn’t have to sell anything to anyone. On the first day, he turned up in a suit and tie with his unruly hair slicked down. He wanted to know where his desk would be and was surprised when the manager led him to an enormous shed, pointed to a broom and told him: ‘You can start here. First you can sweep out this storeroom. When you’ve finished, let me know.’

  Sweep out a storeroom? But he was an actor, a writer. Had his father fixed him up with a job as a cleaner? No, this must be some kind of joke, a prank they played on all the new employees on their first day at work. He decided to play the game, rolled up his sleeves and swept the floor until lunchtime, by which time his arms were beginning to ache. When the job was finished, he put on his jacket and, smiling, told his boss that he was ready. Without even looking at the new employee, the man handed him a sales slip and pointed to the door: ‘Get twenty boxes of hydrometers from that room and take them to dispatch, on the ground floor, with this sales slip.’

  This could only have been done deliberately to humiliate him: his father had found him work as a mere factory hand. Despondently, he did what he had been ordered to do and, after a few days, discovered that the routine was always the same: carrying boxes, packing water and electricity meters, sweeping the floor of the storeroom and the warehouse. Just as when he had worked on the dredger, he again felt like Sisyphus. As soon as he finished one thing, he was given something else to do. Weeks later, he wrote in his diary: ‘This is like a slow suicide. I’m just not going to cope with waking up at six every morning, starting work at seven thirty to sweep the floor and cart stuff around all day without even stopping for lunch, and then having to go to rehearsals until midnight.’

  He survived only a month and a half in the job and had no need to ask if he could leave. The manager decided to call Pedro and tell him that the boy was no good ‘for this type of work’. When he left the building for the last time, Paulo had 30 cruzeiros in his pocket–the wages to which he was entitled. It was understandable that he couldn’t do the work. Apart from performing in Pinocchio, which was on six days a week, he had begun rehearsing another children’s play, A Guerra dos Lanches [The War of the Snacks], which was also directed by Luís Olmedo. ‘I’ve got a role in this new play,’ he wrote proudly, ‘thanks to my spectacular performance as Batatinha in Pinocchio.’ Now he was going to work as a real actor, sharing the stage with his friend Joel Macedo and a pretty brunette called Nancy, the sister of Roberto Mangabeira Unger, the perfect student who had come first in almost every subject at St Ignatius. After the tiring routine of rehearsals, the play had its first night in the middle of April 1966. Seeing how nervous Paulo was, Luís Olmedo kissed him on the forehead and said: ‘You can do it, Batatinha!’

  Paulo got off to a good start. Dressed as a cowboy, all he had to do was to step on to the stage to provoke roars of laughter from the audience, and so it continued. When the show ended, he was fêted as the best actor of the night. As the compliments came flooding in, Luís Olmedo hugged and kissed him (much to the embarrassment of Paulo’s parents, who had attended the first night), saying: ‘Batatinha, there are no words to describe your performance tonight. You were the hit of the evening, you had the audience eating out of your hand. It was wonderful.’

  On the final night of Pinocchio, he repeated his success. Batatinha was the only actor–even though he wasn’t really an actor–who merited an extra round of applause. If it weren’t for the total absence of money, he would have been leading the kind of life he had always dreamed of. He had several girlfriends, he was reasonably successful as an actor, and he had also learned to play the classical guitar and now went everywhere with the instrument on his shoulder, just like his bossa nova idols. However, as had been happening for some time now, his waves of happiness were always cut short by bouts of deep depression. For example, this diary entry, written after reading a biography of Toulouse-Lautrec, dates from that apparently happy and exciting period of his life:

  I’ve just this minute finished one of the most moving real-life stories I’ve ever read. It’s the biography of a wealthy, talented artist, from an aristocratic family, who had achieved fame in his youth, but who, despite this, was the unhappiest man in the world, because his grotesque body and his incredible ugliness meant that he was never loved. He died of drink in the prime of life, his body worn down by his excesses. He was a man who, in the dark, noisy cafés of Montmartre, spent time with Van Gogh, Zola, Oscar Wilde, Degas, Debussy, and from the age of eighteen lived the kind of life all intellectuals aspire to. A man who never used his wealth and social position to humiliate others, but, on the other hand, his wealth and social position never brought a crumb of sincere love to a heart hungry for affection. In some ways, this man is very like me. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, whose life is brilliantly described by Pierre La Mure, in the 450 pages of Moulin Rouge. I’ll never forget this book.

  He continued reading a lot, but now, as well as making a note in his diary of each book he r
ead, as he had always done, he would give each book a classification, like that given by professional critics. One star, bad; two, good; three, very good; four, brilliant. On one page in June, he wrote of his surprise at his own voracious literary appetite: ‘I’ve beaten my record: I’m reading five books at the same time. This really can’t go on.’ And he wasn’t reading lightweight stuff either. That day, he had on his bedside table Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky; Fear and Trembling by Kierkegaard; For People Under Pressure: A Medical Guide by David Harold Fink; Masterpieces of World Poetry, edited by Sérgio Milliet; and A Panorama of Brazilian Theatre by Sábato Magaldi.

  In that same month in 1966, Paulo finally got up the courage to show Jean Arlin the first play he had written as an adult: a three-act play, Juventude sem Tempo [Ageless Youth]. This was, in fact, a miscellany of poetry, speeches and texts by various authors: Bertolt Brecht, Carlos Lacerda, Morris West, Manuel Bandeira, Vinicius de Moraes, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Jean-Paul Sartre and, of course, Paulo Coelho. Arlin found it interesting, fiddled with it here and there and decided to try it out. And there was more–since it was a simple play with hardly any scenery or props, he decided to put it on at the first Festival de Juventude, which was going to be held during the holidays in Teresópolis, 100 kilometres from Rio.

  Since, besides being an author, he was also an actor, in the second week of July, Paulo went to Teresópolis with Grupo Destaque, against his parents’ orders, naturally. He was excited by the festival and even entered a poem in the festival competition, which was to be judged by the poet Lêdo Ivo and the critic Walmir Ayala. The play was a disaster and the result of the poetry competition wouldn’t be announced until a month later, but what mattered was that he’d had the courage to try.

  The atmosphere at home hadn’t changed at all. Besides continuing to nag him about getting home early–he rarely returned before one in the morning–his parents were now insisting that he have his hair cut, something he hadn’t done for six months. When he arrived back late at night, he could rely on having to listen to a half-hour lecture before he could go to bed.

  On one such night, Pedro was waiting for him at his bedroom door, looking very threatening: ‘Once again you’ve overstepped the mark. As from tomorrow, we’re going back to the old regime: the doors of this house will be locked at eleven at night; anyone left outside then can sleep in the street.’

  Paulo spent the following day going from his ‘studio’ in Fabíola’s home to rehearsals of A Guerra dos Lanches, for which the audiences were becoming smaller and smaller. In the evening, he went to the Paissandu to see Godard’s latest film, La Chinoise; although he didn’t much like the director, he was interested in attending the debate on the film that was to be held afterwards. There he met Renata and at the end of the evening the two went out to supper together. There was hardly anyone else in the restaurant when they finally asked for the bill and set off towards Leblon. Hand in hand, they walked almost 3 kilometres along the beach to Rua Rita Ludolf, where Renata lived. Exhausted, Paulo hoped desperately that a bus on the Lapa–Leblon route would come by, and it must have been almost four in the morning when he put his key in the front door, except that the key wouldn’t go in. It was only then that he realized that his father must have had the lock changed.

  At that hour in the morning, he couldn’t possibly go to Joel’s or Fabíola’s. Furious, he grabbed a handful of stones and began to break all the glass in windows and doors at the front of the house. Woken by the noise, his parents at first decided to ignore him, but fearing that the neighbours would call the police, Pedro went downstairs and opened the door to his son. Making no secret of the fact that he had drunk too much, Paulo stalked across the glass-strewn drawing room and went upstairs without listening to a word his father was saying.

  That night he went straight to sleep, but he had a dreadful nightmare. He dreamed that there was a doctor sitting on the edge of his bed taking his blood pressure and two male nurses standing at the door of the room holding a straitjacket. It was only then that he realized with horror that this was no dream. His father had called the emergency services of the mental asylum to admit him again. This time by force.

  CHAPTER 7

  Ballad of the Clinic Gaol

  Wednesday, 20 July

  08:00 I was woken up to have my blood pressure taken. Still groggy with sleep, I thought it was a dream, but gradually, the reality of the situation began to sink in. It was the end. They told me to get dressed quickly. Outside the house stood a car from the Emergency Psychiatric Service. I had never imagined how depressing it would be to get into such a car.

  A few neighbours watched from a distance as the thin youth with long hair bowed his head to get into the car. Yes, bowed his head. He was defeated.

  09:30 All the necessary bureaucratic documents have been filled out. And here I am again on the ninth floor. How fast things happened! Yesterday, I was happily walking with my girlfriend, a little worried, but certainly not expecting this. And here I am again. If I’d stayed out all night rather than gone home, I wouldn’t have had that scene with my parents. I think of my girlfriend sometimes. I miss her.

  Here everyone is sad. There are no smiles. Eyes stare into emptiness, seeking something, perhaps an encounter with the self. My room-mate is obsessed with death. To tease him, I play the Funeral March on the guitar. It’s good to have my guitar here. It brings a little joy into this atmosphere laden with sadness–the profound sadness of those who aspire to nothing in life and want nothing. The only thing that consoles me is that they still know how to sing.

  15:00 I was talking to a young man who has been in here for two years now. I told him I couldn’t bear it and wanted to get out. And he said in all sincerity: ‘Why? It’s great here. You don’t have to worry about anything. Why struggle? Deep down, nobody cares about anything anyway.’ I felt afraid, afraid that I might start thinking like him. I now feel real anguish, the anguish of not knowing when I will stop seeing the world through bars. It’s indescribable. The anguish of the man sentenced to life imprisonment, knowing that one day he’ll be given parole. But when will that day come? In a month? Three months? A year? Never?

  17:00 Never?

  19:20 I can’t leave this floor, I can’t phone anyone or write letters. A little while ago, I tried (in secret) to phone my girlfriend. She couldn’t come to the phone, she was having supper. But what if she hadn’t been having supper? What would I have said to her? Would I have complained about my lot, got angry? What would I have said? Who would I have been saying it to? Can I still speak?

  I’m shocked at how calmly people accept being shut up in here. I’m afraid I might come to accept it too. If every man is an incendiary at 20 and a fireman at 40, then I reckon I must be 39 years and eleven months old. I’m on the brink of defeat. I felt this when my mother was here this afternoon. She looks down on me. This is only the first day, and yet I already feel half-beaten. But I must not let myself be beaten.

  Thursday, 21 July

  08:00 Yesterday they gave me a really powerful drug to make me sleep and I’m only just coming to. During the night, for no apparent reason, my room-mate woke me to ask if I was in favour of masturbation. I said I was and turned over. I really don’t understand why he would ask me that. Or perhaps I dreamed it, but it was certainly strange. Flávio, my room-mate, normally spends long periods in complete silence. When he does speak, he always asks the same question: How are things outside? He still wants to maintain contact with the outside world. Poor thing. He’s proud of his bohemian lifestyle, but now he’s in here and admits that he’s ill.

  I wil never do that. I’m fine.

  11:30 I’ve just realized that they’ve emptied my wallet. I can’t buy anything. Rennie, my girlfriend, promised to visit me today. I know it’s forbidden, but I need to talk to her. I spoke to her on the phone, but I kept the tone light, to disguise my depression.

  The people here like to show me new things. I’m fond of them really. Roberto is always
showing me things–a way of calculating someone’s age, a voltmeter, etc. Flávio is obsessed with knowing important people. There are endless interesting cases here. One man is always sniffing his food, another doesn’t eat anything for fear of getting fat, a third talks only about sex and sexual aberrations. My room-mate is lying down, staring into space, looking fed up. They’re playing a love song on the radio. I wonder what he’s thinking about. Is he desperately searching for himself or is he just drifting aimlessly, lost and defeated?

  I talk to some of the other patients. Some have been here for three months, others nine; still others have been here for years. I won’t be able to bear this.

  ‘Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying: My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’

  Music, the sun beyond the barred windows, dreams, all of this brings with it a terrible melancholy. I remember the theatre at Teresópolis, where we put on my play Timeless Youth. It flopped, but it was still a great experience. Those were happy days, when I was free to see the sun come up, go horseback riding, to kiss my girlfriend and to smile.

  Not any more. Not any more. Sleep dulls the ability to reason, and I’ll end up like everyone else in here.