by Paulo Coelho
“I did,” said one of the members of the group that had just arrived.
The Indian man started to get up, but someone pushed him back down into the chair.
“Before you leave, Adolf wants you to promise never to come back. We hate freeloaders. Our people like law and order. Order and law. Foreigners aren’t welcome here. Go back to wherever you came from with your drugs and your free love.”
Foreigners? Drugs? Free love?
“We’ll leave when we’ve finished eating.”
Paulo was annoyed at Karla’s comment—why provoke them further? He knew they were surrounded by people who truly hated everything they represented. The chains hanging from their pants, the motorcycle gloves with their metal appliqués of a much different variety from those he’d bought in Amsterdam. Tiny spikes designed to intimidate, to wound, to inflict serious harm when they decided to throw a punch.
Rayan turned around to face the one who appeared to be the boss—an older man, with wrinkles on his face, who’d looked on silently.
“We’re from different tribes, but we’re tribes that fight against the same thing. We’ll finish and leave. We’re not your enemies.”
The boss, it appeared, had difficulty talking, since he stuck an amplifier to his neck before responding.
“We don’t belong to any tribe” came the voice of the metallic instrument. “Get out of here now.”
It seemed as if the next moment would never end, as the women looked the strangers in the eyes, the men weighed their options, and those who had just arrived waited in silence, except for one person who turned to the restaurant owner and screamed.
“Disinfect these chairs once they’ve left. They must have brought the plague with them, venereal disease, who knows what else.”
The rest of the people there seemed not to pay any attention to what was happening. Perhaps one of them had summoned the group, someone who took the simple fact that there are free people in the world as a personal affront.
“Get out of here, you cowards,” said someone else who had just arrived, a man with a skull stitched into his leather jacket. “Head straight and in less than a mile you’ll find a Communist country where you’ll no doubt be welcome. Don’t come around here with your bad influence on our sisters and our families. We’re Christians, our government doesn’t allow trouble, and we respect others. Stick your tails between your legs and get out of here.”
Rayan flushed red. The Indian man seemed indifferent, perhaps because he’d watched scenes like this before, perhaps because Krishna taught that no one should flee when he finds himself before the battlefield. Karla shot a look at the men with their shaved heads, especially the one to whom she’d remarked that they weren’t done eating. She must have been bloodthirsty now that she’d discovered the bus trip was less interesting than she’d imagined.
It was Mirthe who grabbed her purse, took out what she owed, and calmly placed it on the table. Then, she walked to the door. One of the men barred her; once again there was a confrontation that no one wanted to see turn into a fight, but she pushed him—without politeness and without fear—and continued on her way.
The others got up, paid their portions of the bill, and left—which, in theory, meant they truly were cowards, capable of facing a long journey to Nepal but only too eager to run at the first sign of any real threat. The only one who seemed ready to take the group on was Rayan, but Rahul grabbed him by the shoulders and dragged him out, while one of the men with the shaved heads stood by opening and closing his penknife.
The two French travelers, father and daughter, also got up, paid their bill, and left with the others.
“You can stay, sir,” the boss told him in the amplifier’s metallic voice.
“I can’t, actually. I’m with them, and it’s a disgrace what’s going on here, in a free country, with beautiful landscapes. The ultimate impression we’re going to have of Austria is still the river splitting the rocks, the Alps, the beauty of Vienna, the magnificent Melk Abbey. A group of no-good…”
His daughter grabbed him by the arm as he continued talking.
“…who don’t represent this country will be promptly forgotten. We didn’t come all the way from France for this.”
Another man came from behind and punched the Frenchman in the back. The British bus driver stood between the two with eyes like steel—he stared at the boss without saying a word; there was no need, because his presence at that moment seemed to fill everyone with fear. The Frenchman’s daughter began to scream. Those who were at the door began to turn back, but Rahul stopped them. The battle had been lost.
He walked back in, grabbed father and daughter by the arms, and pushed them all out the door. They walked toward the bus. The driver was the last to leave. He didn’t take his eyes off the leader of that gang of thugs, he showed no fear.
“Let’s get out of here, go back a few miles, and sleep in some other town.”
“And run away from them? Is that what we’ve come all the way here for, to run at the first sign of a fight?”
The older man had spoken up. The young girls looked petrified.
“That’s right. Let’s run,” said the driver as the bus pulled forward. “I’ve already run from all sorts of things the few times I’ve taken this journey. I don’t see any cause for shame in that. Worse would be if we woke up tomorrow with the tires slashed, unable to continue our journey because I only have two spares.”
They made it to the town. They parked on a tranquil-looking street. Everyone was tense and shook up from the episode back at the restaurant; but now they were a group, capable of fending off any act of aggression. Still, they decided to sleep inside the bus.
They tried, making a great effort, to fall asleep, but two hours later bright lights began to illuminate the interior of the vehicle.
POLIZEI.
One of the policemen opened the door and said something. Karla spoke German and explained to everyone that they were to leave their stuff behind and step off the bus, wearing only the clothing on their body. At that time of night the air was freezing, but the police—men and women—refused to let them grab anything. They stood trembling with cold and fear, but no one seemed to care.
The police entered the vehicle, opened bags, backpacks—emptied everything onto the floor. They discovered a water pipe, generally used for smoking hashish.
The object was confiscated.
They asked everyone for their passports. They examined them carefully with their flashlights, saw the entry stamps, studied each page for a sign they were falsified—they would first shine their flashlights on a person’s passport photo and then on his face. When they came to the “adult” girls, one of the policemen went to his car and radioed somewhere. He waited awhile, nodded, and then walked back to the two girls.
Karla translated.
“We have to take you to the office of child services, and your parents will be coming soon. Soon, well, perhaps two days or perhaps a week, depending on whether they can find plane or bus tickets—or rent a car.”
The girls were in shock. One of them began to cry, but the policewoman carried on in her monotone voice:
“I don’t know what you’re trying to do and I don’t care. But you’re not going any further. I’m amazed you’ve made it across so many borders without anyone noticing you’d run away from home.”
She turned to the driver.
“Your bus could be impounded for parking illegally. The only reason I’m not going to do that is because I want to see you gone as soon as possible, as far away as possible. Didn’t you notice right away they were underage?”
“I noticed their passports said something else, different from what you’re suggesting now, ma’am.”
The policewoman was about to continue, explaining how the girls had forged documents, that you could see they were underage, that they
’d run away from home because one of them claimed that in Nepal they could find much better hashish than what they had in Scotland—at least that’s what was written in the file that had been read back through the radio. Their parents were desperate. But she decided to leave the conversation there, the only people she needed to explain herself to were her superiors.
The police confiscated the girls’ passports and asked the girls to follow them. The girls started to protest, but the policewoman in charge didn’t pay them any mind—neither of them spoke German, and the other police, though they likely knew English, refused to speak any other language.
The policewoman boarded the bus with the two girls and asked them to gather their stuff from the mess, which took some time while everyone else stood freezing outside. Finally, the two girls came out and were taken to a police car.
“Get a move on,” said a lieutenant who had been keeping an eye on the group.
“If you haven’t found anything, why should we go anywhere?” the driver asked. “Is there a place we can find to park without fear of having the vehicle impounded?”
“There’s a field close by, just before you enter the city; you can sleep there. But you’d best be out of here when the sun comes up. We don’t want to be disturbed with the sight of people like you.”
The travelers lined up to grab their passports and then filed back onto the bus. The driver and his backup, Rahul, didn’t move.
“And what was our crime? Why can’t we spend the night here?”
“I’ve no obligation to answer your question. But if you prefer, I can take all of you in to the station, where we’ll need to get in contact with your home countries while you wait in a cell without any heat. We have no trouble doing so. You, sir, could be accused of kidnapping minors.”
One of the police cars pulled away with the girls inside, and no one on the bus ever discovered what they’d been doing there.
The lieutenant stared at the driver, the driver stared at the lieutenant, Rahul stared at them both. Finally, the driver gave in, climbed onto the bus, and started off again.
* * *
—
The lieutenant waved goodbye with a smirk on his face. These people didn’t even deserve to be free, traveling from one side of the world to the other, spreading the seed of rebellion. It was enough that the events of May 1968 had happened in France—that had to be contained at all costs.
Sure, May 1968 had nothing to do with the hippies and those like them, but people were capable of confusing things and then trying to put an end to it all no matter where.
Would he like to join them? Absolutely not. He had a family, a house, kids, food, friends on the police force. As if it weren’t enough to be so close to the border of a Communist country—someone had written once in the newspaper that the Soviets had changed tactics and were now using people to corrupt traditional values and turn them against their own governments. He thought that was a bit crazy, it made no sense, but he preferred not to run risks.
Everyone was talking about the insanity they’d just been through, except for Paulo, who seemed to have lost his ability to speak and had changed color. Karla asked whether he was all right—there was no way she was going to travel with someone who cowered at the first sign of the police—and he responded he was perfectly fine, he’d just had too much to drink and was feeling sick. When the bus stopped at the field the guard had mentioned, Paulo was the first to get off and vomit on the side of the road, hidden from sight, without anyone noticing. Only he knew about the things he had been through, his past in Ponta Grossa, the terror that seized him each time he reached a border crossing. And what was worse, the terror of knowing that his fate, his body, his soul, would forever be tied to the word “police.” He would never feel safe. He’d been innocent when they locked him up and tortured him. He had never committed any crime except, perhaps, engaging in the sporadic use of drugs, which, by the way, he never carried on his person, even in Amsterdam, where there would be absolutely no consequences for doing so.
In the end, his imprisonment and torture were behind him in the physical sense but continued as present as ever in some parallel reality, in one of the many lives he lived all at once.
* * *
—
He sat far away from everyone and wanted nothing more than silence and solitude, but Rahul walked up to him with what looked like some sort of cold white tea. Paulo drank it—it tasted like expired yogurt.
“It won’t be long before you feel better. Just don’t lie down or try to sleep right now. And don’t worry about explanations—some bodies are more sensitive than others.”
They sat there for a while without moving. The substance began to take effect after fifteen minutes. Paulo stood up to join the group, which had lit a bonfire and was dancing around to the sound of the bus radio. They danced to exorcise their demons, they danced to show that, whether they wanted to be or not, they were stronger now.
“Stay a little longer,” Rahul said. “Perhaps we ought to pray together.”
“I must have got food poisoning,” Paulo ventured.
But he could tell by the look on Rahul’s face that he wasn’t buying it. Paulo sat down again, and the man sat down in front of him.
“Let’s say you’re a warrior on the front line and suddenly the Enlightened Lord comes to observe the battle. Let’s say your name is Arjuna, and he asks you not to back down, to soldier on and fulfill your destiny, because no one can kill or die, time is eternal. It just so happens that you, who are human, already went through a similar situation in one of your previous trips through the wheel of time and see the situation repeating itself—even though it’s different, the emotions are the same. Remind me your name again?”
“Paulo.”
“Okay, Paulo, you’re not Arjuna, the all-powerful general who feared wounding his enemies because he was a good man, and Krishna didn’t like what he was hearing because Arjuna was granting himself power that wasn’t his to take. You are Paulo, you come from a distant country, you have moments of bravery and moments of cowardice, as we all do. In moments of cowardice you’re gripped by fear.
“And fear, contrary to what most people say, has its roots in the past. There are gurus in my country who claim: ‘Each time you take a step forward, you will feel fear at what you’ll find.’ But how can I fear what I’ll find if I haven’t already experienced pain, separation, internal and external torture?
“Do you remember your first love? It came in through a door full of light and you let it take over everything, to bring light to your life, fill your dreams, until, as always happens with our first love, one day it went away. You must have been seven or eight, she was a pretty girl your age, she found herself an older boyfriend, and there you were, suffering, telling yourself you would never love again—because loving is losing.
“But you loved again—it’s impossible to conceive of a life without this feeling. And you continued to love and lose until you found someone…”
Paulo couldn’t help but think that the next day they would enter the country of one of the many people to whom he had opened his heart, with whom he had fallen in love, and—once again—whom he had lost. She who had taught him so many things, including how to put on a brave face in moments of desperation. It truly was the wheel of fortune spinning in circular space, taking away good things and doling out pain, taking away pain and bringing other good things.
* * *
—
Karla kept one eye on the two men talking and another on Mirthe so that she wouldn’t come close. The men were taking quite some time. Why hadn’t Paulo come back and danced a bit around the bonfire, leaving behind the awful vibe that had taken root in the restaurant and followed them to the tiny city where they’d parked the bus?
She decided to dance a little more, while the sparks from the fire filled the starless sky with light.
&n
bsp; * * *
—
The music was the domain of the bus driver, who was also recovering from that night’s events—though this wasn’t the first time he’d been through something like that. The louder the music and the more it was suited to dancing, the better. He considered the possibility that the police might show up again and ask him to leave, but he decided to relax. He wasn’t about to live in fear because a group of people who considered themselves the ultimate authority, and, as a result, authorities over others, had tried to ruin a day in his life. It was all right, it was just one day, but one day was the most precious good he had on this earth. Just one day—his mother had begged on her deathbed. Just one day was worth more than all the kingdoms in the world.
Michael—this was the driver’s name—had done something unthinkable three years earlier; after earning his medical degree, he’d received a used Volkswagen from his parents and, instead of parading it in front of the girls or flashing it before his friends in Edinburgh, he set off one week later on a trip to South Africa. He had saved enough to spend two or three years traveling—working in private clinics as a paid internist. His dream was to see the world, because he had become all too familiar with the human body; he had seen its fragility.
After countless days—spent crossing several former French and English colonies, treating the sick and consoling the afflicted—he got used to the idea that death was always near and promised himself that never, at any moment, would he allow the poor to suffer or the forgotten to live in discomfort. He discovered that charity had an effect that was both redemptive and sheltering—never, not even for an instant, had he faced adversity or gone hungry. The Volkswagen, which was already twelve years old, hadn’t been built for this; but it held up, apart from a blown tire as he crossed one of those many countries in a constant state of war. Without his realizing it, the good that Michael did now preceded him wherever he went, and in each village, he was hailed as a man who saved lives.
