Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life

by Fernando Morais

  His partnership with Raul continued to produce impressive results, but the ship of the Sociedade Alternativa was beginning to let in water. Even before the ‘dark night’ and Paulo’s imprisonment, disagreements between them and Philips as to the meaning of the Sociedade Alternativa had begun to arise. Everything indicates that Raul had been serious about creating a new community–a sect, religion or movement–that would practise and spread the commandments of Aleister Crowley, Parzival XI and Frater Zaratustra. For the executives of the recording company, however, the Sociedade Alternativa was nothing more than a brand name they could use to boost the sales of records. The president of Philips in Brazil, André Midani, a Syrian who had become a Brazilian national, had created an informal working group to help the company market its artists better. This dream team, which was coordinated by Midani and the composer Roberto Menescal, consisted of the market researcher Homero Icaza Sánchez, the writer Rubem Fonseca and the journalists Artur da Távola, Dorrit Harazim, Nelson Motta, Luis Carlos Maciel, João Luís de Albuquerque and Zuenir Ventura. The group would meet once a week in a suite in some luxury hotel in Rio and spend a whole day there discussing the profile and work of a particular Philips artist. At the first meeting, they would simply talk among themselves, and then the following week, they would repeat the exercise with the artist present. Those taking part were paid well–Zuenir Ventura describes how for each meeting he would receive ‘four thousand or four million, I can’t remember which, but I know that it was the equivalent of my monthly salary as a director of the Rio branch of the magazine Visão’.

  When it was time for Paulo and Raul to face the group, it was Raul who was in the grip of paranoia. He was sure he was being followed by plainclothes policemen and had taken on a bodyguard, the investigator Millen Yunes, from the Leblon police department, who, in his spare time, was to accompany the musician wherever he went. When Paulo told him that Menescal had invited them to be questioned by the select group of intellectuals, Raul declared: ‘It’s a trick on the part of the police! I bet you the police have infiltrated the group in order to record what we say. Tell Menescal we’re not going.’

  Paulo assured his partner that there was no danger, that he knew most of the participants and that some were even people who were opposed to the dictatorship; finally he promised that neither Midani nor Menescal would play such a trick. Since Raul refused to budge, Paulo went alone to the meeting, but because of Raul’s concerns, he placed a tape recorder on the table so that he could give the tapes to his partner afterwards. Before the discussion began, someone asked Paulo to explain, in his own words, what exactly the Sociedade Alternativa was. From what he can remember more than three decades later, he hadn’t taken any drugs or been smoking cannabis; however, to judge by what he said, which was all captured on tape, you would think he must have taken something:

  The Sociedade Alternativa reaches the political level, the social level, the social stratum of a people, you see? Shit, it also reaches the intellectuals in a country whose people are coming down from a trip, who are being more demanding…So much so that there was a discussion in São Paulo about the magazine Planeta. I reckon Planeta is going to go bust in a year from now because everyone who reads Planeta is bound to think that Planeta is a stupid magazine, well, it failed in France, and so they invented Le Nouveau Planète, then Le Nouveau Nouveau Planète, do you see what I mean? They ended up closing down the magazine. That’s what’s going to happen with all these people who are into macumba. No, no, no! I don’t mean the proletariat, but what people call the middle classes. The bourgeoisie who suddenly decided to take an interest, you know. Intellectually, like. Obviously there’s another aspect to the question which is the aspect of faith, of you going there and making a promise, and getting some advantage, you know, things like that. Right, but in cultural terms there’s going to be a change, right? And the change is going to come from abroad, just like it always does, do you see what I’m saying? And it’s never going to be filtered through a Brazilian product called spiritualism. That’s on the spiritual level, of course, because I think on the political level I’ve been clear enough.

  Clarity was obviously not his strong point, but the working group seemed to be used to people like him. Paulo paused a second for breath, and then went on:

  So…there’s going to be this filtering. In my opinion, it’s not filtering, but no one’s ever going to stop getting a buzz out of Satan, because it’s a really fascinating subject. It’s a taboo like…like virginity, do you understand? So, when everyone starts talking about Satan, even if you’re afraid of the Devil and hate him, you really want to get into it, do you understand? Because it’s aggression, State agression turned against itself, the aggression of repression, right? A series of things turn up inside this scheme and you start to get into it…It’s not a trip that’s going to last very long, it hasn’t even happened yet, the Satan trip. But it’s a phenomenon. It’s the result of aggression, of the same thing as free love, of the sexual taboo that the hippies opened up.

  […] I haven’t given, like, an overview of the Sociedade Alternativa. I’ve just noted a few things, but I wanted to give an overview of everything that we created, a general vision of the thing, right? Anyway, where does Raul Seixas fit in with all this? The Sociedade Alternativa serves Raul Seixas and he’s not going to change his mind because we’ve spent two days talking about the Sociedade Alternativa and nothing but, right? The Sociedade Alternativa serves Raul Seixas in the sense that Raul Seixas is a catalyst for this type of movement, all right? It’s been judged to be a myth. No one can explain what the Sociedade Alternativa is.

  Do you see what I mean?

  ‘More or less,’ the journalist Artur da Távola replied. Since most of those present had understood none of this nonsense, the problem the group put to Paulo was a simple one: if this was the explanation he and Raul were going to give to the press, then they should prepare themselves to see the idea made mincemeat of by the media. Dorrit Harazim, who, at the time, was editor of the international section of the magazine Veja, thought that if they wanted to convince the public that the Sociedade Alternativa was not merely a marketing strategy but some kind of mystical or political movement, then they would need far more objective arguments: ‘First of all, you need to decide whether the Sociedade Alternativa is political or metaphysical. With the arguments you put to us, it will be very hard for you to explain to anyone what the Sociedade Alternativa actually is.’

  This was the first time the working group had reached a unanimous decision about anything, and it fell to Artur da Távola to remind them that they risked losing a gold mine: ‘We need to be very careful because we’re pointing out defects in a duo who sell hundreds of thousands of records. We mustn’t forget that Raul and Paulo are already a runaway success.’

  However, there was another matter bothering the group: Raul and Paulo’s insistence on telling the press that they had seen flying saucers. They all believed that this was something that could affect the commercial standing of the duo, and they suggested that Paulo tell Raul to stop it. They had good reason to be concerned. Some months earlier, Raul had given a long interview to Pasquim and, inevitably, he was pressed by the journalists to explain the Sociedade Alternativa and his sightings of flying saucers, giving him the chance to ramble on at will. He explained that it was a society that wasn’t governed by any truth or any leader, but had arisen ‘like a realization of a new tactic, of a new method’. As his reply was somewhat unclear, he made another attempt to explain what he meant: ‘The Sociedade Alternativa is the fruit of the actual mechanism of the thing,’ he went on, adding that it had already crossed frontiers. ‘We’re in constant correspondence with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who are also part of the Society.’ With no one there to keep a check on him, Raul even made up facts about things that were public knowledge, such as his first meeting with Paulo. ‘I met Paulo in Barra da Tijuca,’ he told Pasquim. ‘At five in the afternoon, I was there meditating and he was too, but
I didn’t know him then–it was then that we saw the flying saucer.’ One of the interviewers asked whether he could describe the supposed UFO and he said: ‘It was sort of…silver, but with an orange aura round it. It just stood there, enormous it was. Paulo came running over to me, I didn’t know him, but he said, “Can you see what I see?” We just sat there and the saucer zigzagged off and vanished.’ It was statements like these that made the Philips work group fear that the duo risked exposing themselves to public ridicule.

  When the session ended, Paulo took the recorded tapes to his partner. Since the working group’s comments had not been exactly flattering, instead of telling Raul to his face what had happened, Paulo preferred to record another tape on arriving home, in which he gave Raul his version of the meeting:

  The working group’s great fear is that the Sociedade Alternativa might work out and that you, Raul–listening to this tape–won’t be up to the challenge. They’re afraid that the Sociedade Alternativa will grow and that when you go to give an interview on what the Sociedade Alternativa is…as Artur da Távola said, you’ll talk a lot but won’t explain things. And the press will fall about laughing, will say it’s a farce and your career will go up in smoke. What I mean is, Philips’ main concern is that you’re not up to it. The meeting was extremely tense. There’s one point I really feel they won’t budge on: your inability, Raul, to hold out. You’ll hear that on the tape and I’m talking about it now because that’s the impression I got.

  Another thing that came up was the problem of the flying saucer, with everyone saying that it’s stupid. They said, for example, that every time you repeat the story about the flying saucer, the press will just laugh at you. I decided to stay quiet and not say whether it was true or false. But the working group reckon that the flying saucer story should gradually be abandoned. I didn’t say as much, but I left it open at least to the working group that we might deny the story about the flying saucer.

  Although the idea of the Sociedade Alternativa proved alluring enough to attract hundreds of thousands of record buyers and an unknown number of Devil-worshippers from all over Brazil, time would prove the working group right. As time went on, the expression ‘Sociedade Alternativa’ would be remembered only as the chorus of a song from the 1970s.

  Now, not long after his return from New York with his hand strapped up, and at the height of the success of Gita (which had been released in their absence), Paulo was invited by Menescal to join the working group as a consultant, with the same pay as the other members, which meant an additional US$11,600 per month. Money was flooding in from all sides. When he received the first set of accounts from the recording company for initial sales of Gita, he wondered whether to invest the money in shares or to buy a summer house in Araruama, but finally decided upon an apartment in the busy Rua Barata Ribeiro, in Copacabana. At this time, Paulo also wrote three sets of lyrics–‘Cartão Postal’, ‘Esse Tal de Roque Enrow’ and ‘O Toque’–for the LP Fruto Proibido, that the singer Rita Lee released at the beginning of 1975, and he also produced film scripts for Maria do Rosário. In between, he acted in the porn movie Tangarela, a Tanga de Cristal. In December 1974, the recording company abandoned the working group, but then, at Menescal’s suggestion, André Midani contracted Paulo Coelho to work as a company executive, managing the creative department.

  His new financial and professional security did not, however, have the effect of comforting his tortured soul. Until May 1974, he had just about managed to live with his feelings of persecution and rejection, but following his imprisonment, these appeared to reach an unbearable level. Of the 600 pages of his diary written during the twelve months following his release, more than 400 deal with the fears resulting from that black week. In one notebook of 60 pages chosen at random, the word ‘fear’ is repeated 142 times, ‘problem’ 118 times, and there are dozens of instances of words such as ‘solitude’, ‘despair’, ‘paranoia’ and ‘alienation’. He wrote at the bottom of one page, quoting Guimarães Rosa: ‘It is not fear, no. It’s just that I’ve lost the will to have courage.’ In May 1975, on the first anniversary of his release from the DOI-Codi, he paid for a mass of thanksgiving to be celebrated at the church of St Joseph, his protector.

  Since leaving prison, the person who gave him the greatest sense of security–more even than Dr Benjamim and even perhaps his father–was the lawyer Antônio Cláudio Vieira, whom Paulo considered responsible for his release. As soon as he returned from the United States, he asked his father to make an appointment for him to thank Vieira for his help. When he arrived at the lawyer’s luxurious apartment with its spectacular view of Flamengo, Paulo was completely bowled over by the lawyer’s dark, pretty daughter, Eneida, who was a lawyer like her father and worked in his office. During that first meeting, the two merely flirted, but exactly forty-seven days later, Paulo proposed to Eneida, and she immediately accepted. According to the social values of the time, not only was he in a position to marry, but he was also a good prospect–someone with enough money to maintain a wife and children. The new album he had made with Raul, Novo Aeon, had been released at the end of 1975. The two had written four of the thirteen tracks (‘Rock do Diabo’, ‘Caminhos I’, ‘Tú És o MDC da Minha Vida’ and ‘A Verdade sobre a Nostalgia’). The record also revealed Raul’s continued involvement with the satanists of the OTO: the ill-mannered Marcelo Motta had written the lyrics of no fewer than five of the tracks (‘Tente Outra Vez’, ‘A Maçã’, ‘Eu Sou Egoísta’, ‘Peixuxa–O Amiguinho dos Peixes’ and ‘Novo Aeon’). Although Raul and his followers considered the record a masterpiece, Novo Aeon was not a patch on the previous albums, and sold only a little over forty thousand copies.

  Paulo clearly had enough money to start a family, but asking for the girl’s hand so quickly could only be explained by a burning passion, which, however, was not the case. As far as Paulo was concerned, he had not only found a woman he could finally marry and ‘settle down’ with–as he had been promising himself he would do since leaving prison–but he would also have the guarantor of his emotional security, Antônio Cláudio Vieira, as his father-in-law. On the evening of 16 June 1975, after smoking a joint, Paulo decided that it was time to resolve the matter. He called Eneida, asking her to tell her parents that he was going to formalize his offer of marriage: ‘I just need time to go home and pick up my parents. Then we’ll come straight over.’

  His parents were fast asleep, but were hauled out of their beds by their crazy son who had suddenly decided to become engaged. Whether it was the effects of the cannabis, or whether it was because he had never before played such a role, the fact is that when it came to speaking to his future father-in-law, Paulo’s mouth went dry, and he choked and stammered and was unable to say a single word.

  Vieira saved the situation by saying: ‘We all know what you want to say. You’re asking for Eneida’s hand in marriage, aren’t you? If so, the answer is “Yes”.’

  As they all toasted the engagement with champagne, Paulo produced a beautiful diamond ring that he had bought for his future wife. The following day, Eneida reciprocated Paulo’s present by sending to his house an Olivetti electric typewriter, which the author continued to use until 1992, when he changed to working on a computer.

  Not even three weeks had passed before his diary began to reveal that the engagement had perhaps been over-hasty: ‘I have serious problems with my relationship with Eneida. I chose her for the security and emotional stability that she would give me. I chose her because I was looking for a counter-balance to my naturally unbalanced temperament. Now I understand the price I have to pay for this: castration. Castration in my behaviour, castration in my conversation, castration in my madness. I can’t take it.’

  To go back on his word and break off the engagement did not even enter his head, because it would mean not only losing the lawyer but gaining an enemy–the mere thought of which made his blood run cold. But Paulo realized that Eneida was also getting fed up with his strange habits. She didn’t
mind if he continued to smoke cannabis, but she didn’t want to use it herself, and Paulo was constantly at her to do just that. As for his ‘sexual propositions’, she made it quite clear: he could forget any ideas of having a ménage à trois. Eneida was not prepared to allow his girlfriends to share their bed. A split was, therefore, inevitable. When the engagement was only forty days old Paulo recorded in his diary that it had all come to an end:

  Eneida simply left me. It’s been very difficult, really very difficult. I chose her as a wife and companion, but she couldn’t hack it and suddenly disappeared from my life. I’ve tried desperately to get in touch with her mother, but both her parents have disappeared as well. I’m afraid that she has told her parents about my Castaneda-like ideas and my sexual propositions. I know that she told them about those. The break-up was really hard for me, much harder than I had imagined. My mother and father are going to be very shocked when they hear. And it’s going to be difficult for them to accept another woman in the way they accepted my ex-fiancée. I know that, but what can I do? Go off again and immediately start looking for another companion.