Aleph

by Paulo Coelho

  Two weeks? What’s that in a whole lifetime? Nothing has changed in the street. The neighbors are still gossiping about the same old things; the newspaper you bought this morning carries exactly the same news: the World Cup about to start in Germany, the debate over whether Iran should be allowed to have nuclear weapons, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the latest celebrity scandal, the constant complaints about things the government promised to do but hasn’t.

  No, nothing has changed. But we—who went off in search of our kingdom and discovered lands we had never seen before—know we are different. However, the more we try to explain, the more we will persuade ourselves that this journey, like all the others, exists only in our memory. Perhaps we will tell our grandchildren about it or even write a book on the subject, but what exactly will we say?

  Nothing, or perhaps only what happened outside, not what changed inside.

  We may never see one another again. And the only person with her eyes fixed on the horizon now is Hilal. She must be thinking about how to resolve this problem. No, for her the Trans-Siberian Railway doesn’t end here. Yet she doesn’t show her feelings, and when someone talks to her, she replies kindly and politely, something she has never done for as long as we’ve known each other.

  …

  YAO TRIES TO STRIKE UP a conversation with her. He has already made a couple attempts, but she always moves away after exchanging only a few words. In the end, he gives up and comes to join me.

  “What can I do?”

  “Just respect her silence.”

  “Yes, I agree, but—”

  “I know. Meanwhile, try thinking about yourself for a change. Remember what the shaman said: you killed God. If you don’t take this opportunity to bring Him back to life, this journey will have been a waste of time. I know a lot of people who help others simply as a way of avoiding their own problems.”

  Yao pats me on the back as if to say “I understand,” then leaves me alone to gaze out to sea.

  Now that I’ve reached the farthest point in my journey, my wife is once more by my side. That afternoon, I met some more readers, had the usual party, visited the local prefect, and, for the first time in my life, held in my hands a real Kalashnikov, the one the prefect keeps in his office. As we were leaving, I noticed the newspaper lying on his desk. I don’t understand a word of Russian, but the photos spoke for themselves: football.

  The World Cup is due to start in a few days’ time! She’s waiting for me in Munich, where we will meet very shortly. I’ll tell her how much I’ve missed her and describe in detail what happened between me and Hilal.

  She’ll say, “Please, I’ve heard this story four times already,” and we’ll go out for a drink at some German Bierkeller.

  I didn’t make this journey in order to find the words missing from my life but to be the king of my own world again. And it’s here that I’m back in touch with myself and with the magical universe all around me.

  Yes, I could have reached the same conclusions without ever leaving Brazil, but just like Santiago, the shepherd boy in one of my books, sometimes you have to travel a long way to find what is near. When the rain returns to earth, it brings with it the things of the air. The magical and the extraordinary are with me and with everyone in the Universe all the time, but sometimes we forget and need to be reminded, even if we have to cross the largest continent in the world from one side to the other. We return laden with treasures that might end up getting buried again, and then we will have to set off once more in search of them. That’s what makes life interesting—believing in treasures and in miracles.

  “Let’s celebrate. Is there any vodka on the boat?”

  No, there isn’t, and Hilal fixes me with angry eyes.

  “Celebrate what? The fact that I’m going to be stuck here alone until I get the train all the way back and spend endless days and nights thinking about everything we’ve been through together?”

  “No, I need to celebrate what I’ve just experienced, to raise a glass to myself. And you need to toast your courage. You set off in search of adventure, and you found it. You might be sad for a while, but someone is sure to light a fire on a nearby mountain. You’ll see the light, go toward it, and find the man you’ve been looking for all your life. You’re young, and, you know, I sensed last night that it wasn’t your hands playing the violin but the hands of God. Let God use your hands. You will be happy, even if right now you feel only despair.”

  “You have absolutely no idea what I’m feeling. You’re just an egotist who thinks the world owes you something. I gave myself to you entirely, and yet here I am again, being left high and dry.”

  There’s no point in arguing, but I know she’s right. That’s how it will be. I’m fifty-nine and she’s twenty-one.

  WE GO BACK TO THE PLACE where we’re staying. Not a hotel this time but a vast house built in 1974 for a summit on disarmament between Leonid Brezhnev, then general-secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the American president at the time, Gerald Ford. It is made all of white marble, with a vast hall in the middle and a series of rooms leading off it. These must once have been intended for political delegations but are now used for occasional guests.

  We intend to take a shower, change our clothes, and go straight out to supper in the city, far from that chilly atmosphere. However, a man is standing right in the middle of the hall. My publishers go over to him. Yao and I keep a prudent distance.

  The man takes out his cell phone and dials a number. Now my publisher is speaking respectfully into the phone, his eyes bright with happiness. My editor is smiling, too. My publisher’s voice echoes around the marble walls.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “You’ll find out in a minute,” answers Yao.

  My publisher turns off the phone and comes toward me, beaming.

  “We’re going back to Moscow tomorrow,” he says. “We have to be there by five in the afternoon.”

  “Weren’t we going to stay here for a couple of days? I haven’t even had time for a wander around the city. Besides, it’s a nine-hour flight to Moscow. How could we possibly be there by five o’clock?”

  “There’s a seven-hour time difference. If we leave here at midday, we’ll be there by two. That’s plenty of time. I’m going to cancel the restaurant booking this evening and ask them to serve supper here. I’ve got a lot of arranging to do.”

  “But why the urgency? My plane for Germany leaves on—”

  He interrupts me, saying, “It seems that President Vladimir Putin has read all about your journey and would like to meet you.”

  The Soul of Turkey

  “AND WHAT ABOUT ME?”

  My publisher turns to Hilal.

  “It was your decision to come with us, and you can go back how and when you want. It’s nothing to do with us.”

  The man with the cell phone has vanished. My publishers leave, and Yao goes with them. Hilal and I are alone in the middle of that vast, oppressive marble hallway.

  Everything happened so fast that we still haven’t recovered from the shock. I had no idea President Putin even knew about my journey. Hilal cannot believe that things are going to end so abruptly, so suddenly, without her having another opportunity to talk to me of love, to explain how important everything we’ve experienced is for our lives and that we should carry on, even if I am married. That, at least, is what I imagine is going through her mind.

  You can’t do this to me! You can’t just leave me here! You killed me once because you didn’t have the guts to say “no,” and now you’re going to kill me again!

  She runs to her room, and I fear the worst. If she’s serious, anything is possible. I want to phone my publisher and ask him to buy a ticket for her; otherwise, we could be faced by a terrible tragedy, and then there will be no meeting with Putin, no kingdom, no redemption, no conquest, and my big adventure will end in suicide and death. I run to her room, which is on the second floor, but she has already opened the windows.


  “Stop! You won’t kill yourself if you jump from this height—you’ll just be crippled for the rest of your life.”

  She isn’t listening. I have to stay calm and in control of the situation. I have to be as authoritative as she was in Baikal when she ordered me not to turn around and see her naked. A thousand thoughts go through my mind, and I take the easiest route.

  “Look, I love you. I would never leave you here alone.”

  She knows this isn’t true, but my words of love have an instantaneous effect.

  “You love me like a river, you said, but I love you the way a woman loves a man.”

  Hilal doesn’t want to die. If she did, she would have said nothing. But quite apart from the words she used, her voice is saying, “You’re part of me, the most important part, and it’s being left behind. I will never be the person I was.” She’s quite wrong, but this is not the moment to explain something she won’t understand.

  “And I love you the way a man loves a woman, as I did before and always will for as long as the world exists. I explained to you once: time doesn’t pass. Do I have to say it again?”

  She turns around.

  “That’s a lie. Life is a dream from which we wake only when we meet death. Time passes while we live. I’m a musician, and I have to deal with the time of musical notation every day. If time didn’t exist, there would be no music.”

  She’s speaking coherently now. And I do love her. Not as a woman, but I do love her.

  “Music isn’t a succession of notes. It’s the constant movement of a note between sound and silence,” I say.

  “What do you know about music? Even if you were right, what does it matter now? You’re a prisoner of your past, and so am I. If I loved you in one life, I will continue to love you forever! I have no heart, no body, no soul, nothing! All I have is love. You think I exist, but that’s just an optical illusion. What you’re seeing is Love in its purest state, yearning to reveal itself, but there is no time or space where it can do that.”

  She moves away from the window and starts pacing up and down the room. She has no intention of throwing herself out the window now. Apart from her footsteps on the wooden floor, all I can hear is the infernal tick-tock of a clock, proving me wrong about time. Time does exist, and, at that very moment, it is busily consuming us. I need Yao, that poor man through whose soul the black wind of loneliness still blows but who always feels good whenever he can help someone else; he could have calmed her down.

  “Go back to your wife! Go back to the woman who has always been by your side through thick and thin! She’s generous, loving, tolerant, and I’m everything you hate: complicated, aggressive, obsessive, capable of anything!”

  “What right have you to talk about my wife?”

  I am once again losing control of the situation.

  “I’ll say what I like. You never could control me, and you never will!”

  Keep calm. Keep talking, and she’ll quiet down. But I’ve never seen anyone in such a state before. I try another tack.

  “Then be glad that no one can control you. Celebrate the fact that you were brave enough to risk your career and set off in search of adventure, and find it, too. Remember what I said on the boat: someone, one day, will light the sacred fire for you. And from now on, it won’t be your fingers playing the violin but the angels’. Let God use your hands. Your feelings of bitterness will eventually disappear, and the person fate has placed in your path will arrive bearing a bouquet of happiness in his hands, and then everything will be fine. Right now, you feel desperate and think I’m lying, but that’s how it will be.”

  Too late.

  I have said precisely the wrong thing, which could be summarized in just two words: “Grow up.” No woman I’ve ever known would have accepted that piece of advice.

  Hilal picks up a heavy metal lamp, rips the plug out of the wall, and hurls the lamp in my direction. I manage to catch it before it hits my face, but now she’s slapping me as hard as she can. I drop the lamp and try to grab her arms but fail. A fist hits my nose, and blood spurts in all directions.

  She and I are covered in my blood.

  “The soul of Turkey will give your husband all the love she possesses, but she will spill his blood before she reveals what it is she is seeking.”

  “Right, come with me!”

  …

  MY TONE OF VOICE has changed completely. She stops hitting me. I take her by the arm and drag her out of the room.

  “Come with me!”

  There’s no time for explanations. I run down the stairs, taking with me a Hilal who is now more frightened than angry. My heart is pounding. We hurry out of the building. The car that was supposed to be taking me to supper is still waiting.

  “To the train station!”

  The driver looks at me uncomprehendingly. I open the door, shove Hilal inside, then get in after her.

  “Tell him to go straight to the train station!”

  She repeats my words in Russian, and the driver obeys.

  “Tell him to ignore any speed limits. I’ll make it all right with him afterward. We need to get there fast!”

  The man seems to like what he hears. He races off, tires squealing on every bend, and other cars brake when they spot the car’s official insignia. To my surprise, he has a siren, which he places on the roof. My fingers are digging into Hilal’s arm.

  “You’re hurting me!” she says.

  I relax the pressure. I’m praying, asking God to help me, to make sure I arrive in time and that everything is where it should be.

  Hilal is talking to me, begging me to calm down, apologizing for acting the way she did, saying that she hadn’t really intended to kill herself, that it was all an act. No one who truly loves someone would destroy them or themselves, and she would never let me spend another incarnation suffering and blaming myself for what had happened—once was enough. I would like to be able to respond, but I’m not really following what she’s saying.

  Ten minutes later, the car screeches to a halt outside the train station.

  I open the door and drag Hilal out of the car and into the station, where we find the barrier to the platform closed. I try to push my way through, only to see two massive guards hove into view. Hilal leaves me alone for a moment, and for the first time during that whole journey I feel lost, unsure of how to proceed. I need her by my side. Without her, nothing, absolutely nothing, will be possible. I sit down on the ground. The men look at my blood-spattered face and clothes. They come over and gesture to me to get up, then start asking questions. I try to explain that I don’t speak Russian, but they become increasingly aggressive. Other people begin to gather to see what’s going on.

  Hilal reappears with the driver. He doesn’t raise his voice, but what he says to the guards brings about a complete change of attitude. I have no time to lose. There’s something I must do. The guards push the onlookers aside. The way ahead is now free. I take Hilal’s hand. We walk onto the platform and run down to the end, where everything is in darkness. In the gloom, I can just make out the last carriage.

  Yes, it’s still there!

  I put my arms around Hilal while I recover my breath. My heart is beating furiously from the physical effort and from the adrenaline coursing through my veins. I feel slightly dizzy. I didn’t have much to eat at lunch, but I mustn’t faint now. The soul of Turkey will show me what I need to see. Hilal is stroking me as if I were her child, telling me to calm down, she’s there by my side, and no harm will come to me.

  I breathe deeply, and my pulse gradually returns to normal.

  “Come with me.”

  The door is open. No one would dare get on a train in Russia in order to steal anything. We enter the carriage. I make her stand with her back against the wall in the vestibule, as I had at the very beginning of that endless journey. Our faces are very close, as if the next step will be a kiss. A distant light, perhaps from a lamp on another platform, is reflected in her eyes.

 
; And even though we’re in complete darkness, she and I will be able to see. This is where the Aleph is. Time suddenly changes frequency, and we’re propelled at speed down a dark tunnel. She knows what’s happening now, and so won’t be frightened.

  “Take my hand, and let’s go together into the other world, Now!”

  Camels and deserts appear, rains and winds, the fountain in a village in the Pyrenees, the waterfall at the Monasterio de Piedra, the Irish coast, a corner of a street in what looks like London, women on motorbikes, a prophet standing at the foot of the sacred mountain, the cathedral in Santiago de Compostela, prostitutes waiting for clients in Geneva, witches dancing naked around a fire, a man preparing to shoot his wife and her lover, the steppes of some country in Asia where a woman is weaving beautiful tapestries while she waits for her man to return, mad people in a hospital, the seas with all their fish, and the Universe with each and every star. The sound of babies being born, old men dying, cars braking, women singing, men cursing, and doors, doors, and more doors.

  I go through all the lives I have lived, will live, and am living. I’m a man in a train with a woman, a writer in late-nineteenth-century France; I am the many people I was and will be. We go through the door I want to go through. The hand I am holding disappears.

  Around me, a crowd smelling of beer and wine is guffawing, shouting, and hurling insults.

  FEMALE VOICES ARE CALLING TO ME. I feel ashamed and try to ignore them, but the voices insist. Other people in the crowd compliment me: So I was the person responsible, was I? Saving the town from heresy and sin! The girls’ voices continue to call my name.

  I have been cowardly enough to last me for the rest of my life. I slowly raise my head.

  The cart has almost passed by; another second and I would hear nothing more. But now I am looking at them. Despite the humiliations they have been through, they seem quite serene, as if they had matured, grown up, married, and had children, and were now calmly heading for death, the fate of all human beings. They struggled while they could, but at some point they must have understood that this was their fate, set down long before they were born. Only two things can reveal life’s great secrets: suffering and love. They have experienced both.