by Paulo Coelho
By mere chance, he found a Red Cross outpost in a beautiful village near a lake in the Congo. There, his fame also preceded him—they supplied him with vaccines for yellow fever, bandages, this or that for performing surgeries, and they gave strict orders that he not get involved in the conflict but merely care for the wounded from both sides. “This is our goal,” explained a young man from the Red Cross. “Not to interfere, merely to heal.”
The trip Michael had intended to last two months stretched to nearly a year. Traveling miles, he was almost never alone and often transported women who could no longer walk after so many days on the road seeking refuge from the violence and tribal wars on every side. As he crossed through the countless checkpoints, he felt that a mysterious force was helping him. Soon after asking for his passport, they let him continue, perhaps for having healed a brother, a son, a friend of a friend.
That had impressed him a great deal. He’d made a vow to God—he asked to live each day as a servant, one day, a single day, in the image of Christ, to whom he was entirely devoted. He thought about becoming a priest as soon as he got to the other end of the African continent.
When he arrived in Cape Town, he decided to rest before seeking out a religious order and putting himself forward as an apprentice. His idol was Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who had followed a course much like his own, traveling part of the world and founding the Jesuit order after going to study in Paris.
Michael found a simple, cheap hotel and decided to rest for a week, to allow all the adrenaline to leave his body and peace to overtake him once again. He tried not to think about what he had seen—revisiting the past is no use, it serves only to place figurative shackles on our feet and remove any sign of hope in humanity.
He turned his attention to the future, thought about how to sell his Volkswagen, and spent morning to night admiring the view of the sea from his window. He watched as the colors of the sun and water changed according to the hour, and below, the white men wearing explorers’ hats strolled along the beach, smoking pipes, their wives dressed as though they were at the royal court in London. Not a single black person, only whites there below, on the sidewalk that ran along the shore. This filled him with more sadness than you can imagine; racial segregation was the law in the country but at the moment he could do nothing, only pray.
He prayed morning to night, asking for inspiration, preparing himself to undertake Saint Ignatius’s spiritual exercises for the tenth time. He wanted to be ready when the moment arrived.
On his third morning there, as he ate breakfast, two men in light suits approached his table.
“So, you’re the man who has brought such honor to the name of the British Empire,” one of them said to him.
The British Empire had ceased to exist, it had been replaced by the Commonwealth, but he had been caught off guard by the man’s words.
“I’ve honored only one day at a time,” he responded, knowing they wouldn’t understand.
And, in fact, they didn’t understand, because their conversation took the most dangerous direction he could have imagined.
“You’re well liked and respected wherever you go. The British government needs people like you.”
Had the man not mentioned the “British government,” Michael would have thought he was being invited to work in the mines, plantations, mineral-processing plants, as a foreman or even as a doctor. But “British government” meant something else. Michael was a good man, but he wasn’t naïve.
“No, thank you. I have other plans.”
“Such as?”
“Becoming a priest. Serving God.”
“And don’t you think you would be serving God by serving your country?”
Michael understood he could no longer stay in the place he’d struggled so long to reach. He ought to return to Scotland on the next flight—he had the money.
He got up from his table without allowing the man a chance to continue the conversation. He knew what they were so kindly “inviting” him to do: become a spy.
He had good relations with the local tribal armies, he’d met many people, and the last—the very last—thing he was going to do was betray the confidence of those who trusted him.
He grabbed his things, spoke with the manager about selling his car, and gave the address of a friend to whom the money could be sent. He went to the airport and, eleven hours later, stepped off a plane in London. Reading the board of classified ads as he waited on the train that would take him into the city, he found one in particular among the postings for cleaning ladies, roommates, waitresses, and girls interested in working the cabaret bars. “Wanted: Drivers Willing to Go to Asia.” Before heading into the city, he tore the announcement from the wall and went directly to the address listed, a tiny office with a sign on the door: BUDGET BUS.
“The position has been filled,” he was told by a young man with long hair, who opened the window to allow the smell of hashish to filter out. “But I heard they’re looking for qualified candidates in Amsterdam. Do you have experience?”
“Quite a bit.”
“So go there. Tell them Theo sent you. They know me.”
He handed Michael a piece of paper, with a more spirited name than Budget Bus: Magic Bus.
See countries you never thought you’d set foot in. Price: seventy dollars per person—travel only. The rest you bring with you—except drugs, or you’ll have your throat slit before making it to Syria.
There was a photo of a bus painted in wild colors, a line of people standing before it, flashing the peace sign, the symbol of Churchill and of the hippies. He went to Amsterdam, and they hired him on the spot—it seemed demand was greater than the supply.
This was his third trip, and he never tired of crossing the gorges of Asia. He changed the music, putting on a cassette tape with a song list he had compiled himself. The first song was by Dalida, an Egyptian singer living in France who was a hit across all of Europe. The passengers’ mood lifted—the nightmare was over.
* * *
—
Rahul noticed that his Brazilian friend had made a full recovery.
“I saw how you faced down that group of thugs in black without much fear. You were ready to fight, but that would have presented a problem for us—we’re pilgrims, not the owners of this earth. We rely upon the hospitality of others.”
Paulo nodded.
“And yet, when the police showed up you froze. Are you running from something? Did you kill someone?”
“Never, but, if I’d been able a few years ago, I would have done it for sure. The problem is I could never see the faces of my potential victims.”
In broad strokes, to keep Rahul from thinking he was lying, he told the story of what had happened in Ponta Grossa. The Indian man didn’t show any particular interest.
“Ah, so you have a fear that’s much more common than you think: the police. Everyone’s afraid of the police, even those who spent their whole lives obeying the law.”
This remark helped Paulo relax. He caught sight of Karla approaching.
“Why aren’t you two with the rest of us? Now that the girls aren’t with us, you’ve decided to take their place?”
“We’re getting ready to pray, that’s all.”
“Can I pray with you?”
“Your dancing is already a form of praising God. Go back to the others and continue what you’re doing.”
But Karla, the second most beautiful woman on the bus, wasn’t about to give up. She wanted to pray as Brazilians prayed. As far as Indians were concerned, she’d already seen them pray several times in Amsterdam, with their unusual postures, the dots between their eyes, that aura as though they were peering into infinity.
Paulo suggested they all join hands. As she was preparing to recite the first verse of a prayer, Rahul interrupted.
“Let’s lea
ve this spoken prayer for another time. Today, it’s better we pray with the body—let’s dance.”
He walked back to the bonfire, and the other two followed him—everyone there saw dance and music as means to free themselves from their bodies. Of saying to themselves: “Tonight, we’re together and happy, despite the efforts of the forces of evil to keep us apart. We’re here, together, and we will continue on together along the road before us, though the forces of darkness seek to block our passage.
“Today, we gather here together, and one day, sooner or later, we must say goodbye. Despite not knowing one another properly, despite not having traded words we might have traded, we’re here together for some mysterious motive we don’t understand. This is the first time that the group has danced around a bonfire as the ancients did at a time when they were closer to the universe and watched the clouds and the storms, the fire and the wind move in harmony across the starry sky and decided to dance—to celebrate life.
“Dancing transforms everything, demands everything, and judges no one. Those who are free dance, even if they find themselves in a cell or a wheelchair, because dancing is not the mere repetition of certain movements, it’s a conversation with a Being greater and more powerful than everyone and everything. To dance is to use a language beyond selfishness and fear.”
And, that night, in September 1970, after being expelled from a bar and humiliated by the police, the people there danced and gave thanks to God for a life that was so captivating, so full of unfamiliar things, so challenging.
They crossed all the republics that formed a country called Yugoslavia (where two more young men—a painter and a musician—got on) without many problems. As they drove through Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, Paulo thought back with affection—but without any regrets—to his old girlfriend, who had taken him on his first trip out of the country. She had taught him how to drive, to speak English, to make love. He gave in to his imagination, and he pictured her, together with her sister, running through those streets and seeking shelter during the bombings of the Second World War.
“As soon as the sirens sounded, we’d run to the basement. My mother would lay us both down across her lap, tell us to open our mouths, and cover us with her own body.”
“Open your mouths? Why?”
“To keep the thunderous sound of the bombs from destroying our eardrums and leaving us deaf for the rest of our lives.”
* * *
—
In Bulgaria, they were continually followed by a car carrying four menacing types—as part of a mutual understanding between the authorities and the bus driver. After a burst of collective joy back at the Austrian border town, the trip was getting a bit monotonous. The plan was to stop for a week in Istanbul, but they still had a ways to go before getting there—in exact figures, a hundred and twenty miles, which was absolutely nothing considering they’d already traveled almost two thousand.
* * *
—
Two hours later, they could see the minarets of two grand mosques.
Istanbul! They’d made it!
Paulo had worked out a detailed plan of how to spend his time here. He’d once watched the dervishes perform with their skirts twirling around them. He’d been fascinated and decided that he was going to learn how to dance like that until he finally understood it wasn’t merely a dance but a way of speaking with God. They called themselves Sufis, and everything he’d read about them left him even more excited. He’d had plans to go to Turkey one day to train with the dervishes or the Sufis, but he’d always thought this was something he’d do in the distant future.
But now he was actually here! The towers getting closer, the road filled with an ever-increasing number of cars, traffic jams—more patience, more waiting—however, before the sun rose again, he would be among them.
“Set your watches: we’ll be there in an hour,” the driver said. “We’re going to spend a week here, not because this is some touristic stop, as you’ve probably already guessed, but before we left Amsterdam—”
Amsterdam! It seemed like centuries ago!
“—we received a warning that, earlier in the month, an assassination attempt on the King of Jordan transformed part of our route into a minefield. I tried to get a sense of how things are developing, and it looks as if the situation has calmed down a bit, but we decided before leaving Amsterdam that we wouldn’t risk it.
“We’ll continue our plan a little further on—also because both Rahul and I are tired of the same thing over and over and we need to eat, drink, have a little fun. The city is cheap, in fact, it’s dirt cheap, the Turks are incredible, and the country, despite everything you’ll see on the streets, is not Muslim but secular. All the same, I’d advise our beauties to avoid wearing more provocative clothing and our beloved young men that they not provoke any fights just because someone’s made some sort of joke about their long hair.”
He’d given them fair warning.
“One more thing: back in Belgrade, when I called in to say that everything was all right, I learned that someone called looking to do an interview about what it means to be a hippie. The agency said it was important because it would get word out about its services—and I didn’t have the presence of mind to argue.
“The journalist in question knew where we were going to stop to fill up our tank and our stomachs, and was waiting for me there. He peppered me with questions, but I wasn’t sure how to respond to any of them—all I said was that your bodies and souls are free like the wind. This journalist—he’s from a major French news agency—wanted to know if he could send somebody from his Istanbul bureau to speak directly with one of you, and I told him I didn’t know but that we would all be staying in the same hotel—the cheapest we could manage to find, each room with space for four…”
“I’ll pay extra, but I’m not sharing a room. My daughter and I will take a room for two.”
“Same here,” said Rayan. “Room for two.”
Paulo gave Karla a searching look, and she finally responded.
“Room for two here, too.”
The bus’s other muse liked to show she had the skinny Brazilian under her thumb. They’d spent much less money than they’d imagined up until then—mostly because they lived off sandwiches and slept on the bus more times than not. Days earlier, Paulo had counted his fortune—eight hundred and twenty-one dollars, after endless weeks of traveling. The monotony of recent days had softened Karla’s mood a bit, and their bodies were already coming into more frequent contact—they’d sleep resting their heads on one another’s shoulders, and now and then they held hands. It was an extremely comfortable, caring feeling, though they’d never ventured more than a kiss—no other form of intimacy.
“Anyway, there ought to be a journalist waiting. If any of you don’t want to talk, you’re not required to say anything. I’m only telling you what I was told.”
The traffic began to move faster.
“I forgot to say something very important,” said the driver, after whispering an exchange with Rahul. “It’s easy to find drugs on the street—from hashish to heroin. As easy as in Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, or Stuttgart, for example. Except that, if they catch you, no one—absolutely no one—will manage to get you out of the slammer in time to leave with us. You’ve been warned. I hope I’ve made myself very, very clear.”
* * *
—
They’d been warned, but Michael had his doubts that anyone would heed this warning, especially because they’d spent almost three weeks without touching any sort of drug. Though he kept careful watch on every one of his passengers without their knowing it, during the three weeks they’d been together, he hadn’t noticed anyone show interest in the things they consumed every day in Amsterdam and other European cities.
Which, once again, gave him doubts: Why was it everyone loved to say drugs were addictive? As a doctor,
someone who, while in Africa, had experimented with several hallucinogenic plants to see if he could use them on his patients, he knew that only those derived from opium caused any dependency.
Ah yes, and cocaine, which rarely made its way to Europe since the United States consumed nearly everything that was produced in the Andes.
Still, governments everywhere spent fortunes on antidrug campaigns while cigarettes and alcohol were sold in every corner bar. Perhaps that explained why everyone loved to say drugs were addictive: political agendas, advertising budgets, that sort of thing.
He knew that the Dutch girl who’d just asked for a room with the Brazilian had doused one of the pages of her book in an LSD solution—she’d mentioned it to others. Everyone knew everything on the bus, an “Invisible Post” was in effect. When the time was right, she would cut a piece, chew it, swallow, and wait for the resulting hallucinations.
But that wasn’t a problem. Lysergic acid, discovered in Switzerland by Albert Hofmann and popularized throughout the world by Timothy Leary, a Harvard professor, had been declared illegal but remained indetectable.
Paulo awoke with Karla’s arm across his chest—she was still in a deep sleep—and lay there thinking about how to adjust his position without waking her.
They’d arrived at the hotel relatively early, the entire group had eaten dinner at the same restaurant—the driver was right, Turkey was dirt cheap—and when they went up to their rooms he found a double bed in his. Without saying anything, he and Karla took a shower, washed their clothes, hung them in the bathroom to dry, and—exhausted—collapsed on the bed. By the look of it, the two of them were thinking only about sleeping in a decent bed for the first time in days, but their naked bodies, touching for the first time, had different plans. Before they knew it, they were kissing.
