by Paulo Coelho
Paulo had trouble getting an erection, and Karla didn’t help; she made it clear that she was interested only if he was. It was the first time they’d gone beyond kissing and handholding; just because he had a beautiful woman at his side, was he required to pleasure her? Would she feel less beautiful, less desired if he didn’t?
And Karla thought: let him suffer a bit, thinking I’ll be upset if he decides to sleep instead. If I see things aren’t progressing as I’d like, I’ll do what I have to do, but let’s wait and see.
An erection finally came, and then penetration, and Paulo reached orgasm quicker than either of them thought possible, no matter how much he’d tried to hold back. After all, it had been a long time since he’d had a woman at his side.
Karla, who hadn’t reached any sort of orgasm, and Paulo knew it, gave him an affectionate tap on the head, like a mother to her child, turned to the other side of the bed, and realized right at that moment just how exhausted she was. She slept without thinking about any of the things that usually helped her to fall asleep. Paulo did the same.
* * *
—
Now that he was awake, he thought back to the previous night and decided to step out before he was forced to have a conversation about it. He carefully removed her arm, put on an extra pair of pants that was in his backpack, threw on some shoes and his jacket, and just as he was about to open the door, he heard:
“Where are you going? Aren’t you at least going to say good morning?”
“Good morning.” Istanbul must be a pretty interesting place and I’m sure you’re going to like it.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Because I think sleeping is a way of talking to God through our dreams. That’s what I learned when I began to study the occult.
“Because you could have been having a beautiful dream or maybe because you must be exhausted. I don’t know.”
Words. More words. Words only served to complicate matters.
“Do you remember last night?”
We made love. Without thinking about it much, for no other reason than we were both naked in the same bed.
“I remember. And I wanted to say sorry. I know it wasn’t what you were expecting.”
“I wasn’t expecting anything. Are you going to meet Rayan?”
He knew she was really asking, “Are you going to meet Rayan and Mirthe?”
“No.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“I know what I’m looking for. I just don’t know where it is—I need to ask at reception, I hope they can tell me.”
He hoped her questioning would end there, that she wouldn’t force him to tell her what he was looking for: somewhere he could find the dancing dervishes. But she did ask him.
“I’m going to a religious ceremony. Something to do with dancing.”
“You’re going to spend your first day in such a different city, such a special country, doing exactly what you already did in Amsterdam? Weren’t the Hare Krishna enough? Or the night around the bonfire?”
It had been enough. And, with a mixture of annoyance and a desire to provoke her, he told her about the dancing Turkish dervishes that he’d seen in Brazil. The men wearing tiny red caps on their heads, immaculately white skirts, begin by slowly turning around themselves—as though they were Earth or some other planet. That movement, after a certain time, ends up driving the dervishes into a sort of trance. They’re part of a special order, at turns recognized and abominated by Islam, the order’s principal source of inspiration. The dervishes belonged to an order called Sufism, founded by a thirteenth-century poet who was born in Persia and died in Turkey.
Sufism recognizes a single truth: nothing is divisible, the visible and the invisible are one, each of us is merely an illusion in flesh and bone. That was why he had little interest in the bus conversation about parallel realities. We are everyone and everything at the same time—time that, by the way, does not exist. We forget this because we are bombarded daily with information from the newspaper, the radio, the TV. If we accept the Unity of Existence, we have need of nothing else. We will understand the meaning of life for a brief moment, but this brief moment will grant us the strength to make it until what they call death, which in reality is our passage into circular time.
“Understand?”
“Perfectly. For my part, I’m going to the bazaar—I imagine Istanbul must have a bazaar—where there are people working day and night to show the few tourists who make it here the purest expression of their souls: art. Of course, I don’t plan on buying anything—and it’s not a question of frugality, but lack of space in my backpack—but I’ll make an effort, a real effort, to see if people understand me, understand my admiration and respect for what they’re doing. Because for me, despite the whole philosophical speech you’ve just given me, the only language that matters is called Beauty.”
She walked to the window, and he watched her naked silhouette against the sun outside. No matter how annoying she tried to be, he felt a deep respect for her. He left wondering whether it wouldn’t be better to go to a bazaar—it would be difficult to access the reclusive world of the Sufis, no matter how much he’d read about them.
And Karla stood in the window thinking: Why hadn’t he invited her to go with him? After all, they had six more days there, the bazaar wasn’t about to close, and coming into contact with a tradition like Sufism must be an unforgettable experience.
They were, yet again, traveling in opposite directions, no matter how hard they tried to reach one another.
Karla found most of the bus group downstairs, and everyone invited her to join them on a special excursion—to the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and the archaeological museums. There was no lack of unique tourist attractions—for example, a gigantic cistern, with twelve rows of columns (a total of 336, someone commented) that in the past had served to store the water supply destined for Byzantine emperors. But she told them she had other plans, and no one asked any questions—just as no one asked any questions about her having spent the night in the same room as the Brazilian. They all ate breakfast together and each group set off for its destinations.
Karla’s destination, in theory, wasn’t in any guidebook. She walked to the edge of the Bosphorus and stood staring at the red bridge dividing Europe from Asia. A bridge! Connecting two such different, distant continents! She smoked two, three cigarettes, lowered the straps a bit on the nondescript top she was wearing, getting a little sun until three or four men came up and tried to start a conversation—and soon she was forced to pull her top back over her shoulders and move on.
Ever since boredom had set in among everyone on the trip, Karla had begun to face herself and her favorite question: Why do I want to go to Nepal? I was never one to believe much in these things; my Lutheran upbringing is stronger than any incense, mantras, sitting postures, meditation, sacred books, or esoteric sects. She didn’t want to go to Nepal to find answers to these things—she already had them, and she was tired of the need to make a constant show of her strength, her courage, an unwaning aggressivity, her uncontrollable competitiveness. All she’d ever done in her life was outrun others, but she would never be able to outrun herself. She had gotten used to who she was, despite her young age.
She wanted everything to change, but was incapable of changing herself.
She would have liked to say many more things to the Brazilian than she had, make him believe that with each passing day she was becoming an ever more important part of his life. She felt a morbid pleasure in knowing that Paulo had left feeling guilty for the awful sexual experience of the night before and the fact that she had done nothing to reassure him with sweet words: “Don’t worry, my love [my love!], the first time is always like that, we’re just getting to know each other.”
But circumstances didn’t allow her to get any closer to him, or
anyone else. Either because she lacked patience with others, or because others weren’t much help, weren’t trying to accept her as she was—the first thing they did was keep their distance, incapable of a bit of effort to break through the icy wall she was always hiding behind.
* * *
—
She was still capable of love, without expecting anything—changes, gratitude—in return.
And she had loved many times in her life. Whenever this had happened, love’s energy transformed the universe around her. Whenever this energy appears, it always manages to do its work—but things were different with her, she couldn’t stand to love for very long.
She yearned to be a vase where Love would come and leave its flowers and its fruit. Where the living water would preserve them as though they’d just been picked, ready to be delivered to whoever had the courage—yes, “courage” was the word—to seize them. But no one like that ever showed up—or, more accurately, people would no sooner show up than they would flee in fear because she was no vase but a storm of lightning, wind, and thunder, a force of nature that could never be tamed or merely channeled to stir windmills, light up cities, sow terror.
She wished they could see her for her beauty, but all anyone ever saw was the hurricane, and they never sought shelter from it. They preferred to flee to safer ground.
Her thoughts turned again to her family—though they were practicing Lutherans, they’d never sought to impose their beliefs. Once or twice, when she was a child, she’d been spanked, which was normal and hardly traumatic—everyone who lived in her city had been through the same thing.
She had excelled in school, was terrific at sports, was the most beautiful of all her classmates (and knew it), and had never had any trouble finding a boyfriend. Even so, she preferred her solitude.
Solitude. Her greatest pleasure. The origin of her dream of traveling to Nepal was to find a cave and remain there alone until her teeth fell out, her hair became white, the local villagers stopped bringing her food; spending her final sunset looking at the snow, nothing more.
Alone.
Her school friends envied her easygoing way with the boys, her college friends admired her for her independence and for knowing exactly what she wanted, and the people at work were always stunned and surprised by her creativity—in the end, she was the perfect woman, queen of the mountain, the lioness of the jungle, savior of lost souls. She had received marriage proposals since the day she turned eighteen, from all sorts of people—but above all, rich men, who added to their proposals a series of collateral benefits, such as gifts of jewelry (two diamond rings—of the many she’d received—were enough to pay for her ticket to Nepal and leave plenty to live on for a long time to come).
Anytime she received an expensive gift, she warned her suitor that she would not return it in the event they separated. The men would chuckle; they were used to being challenged by other men, more powerful than she, and didn’t take her seriously. They ended up falling into the abyss she’d created around herself, and it was then they realized that in reality they’d never gotten close to the fascinating girl, but stood on a fragile bridge made of wire unable to support the weight of the same things day after day. Another week, a month, and the inevitable moment of separation would arrive, and it was never necessary to say a thing—none of them had the courage to ask for anything back.
Until, three days into their relationship, as they ate breakfast in their fancy hotel room in Paris, where they’d gone for a book launch (no one refused a trip to Paris, it was one of her mottoes), one of these suitors told her something she would never forget:
“You’re depressed.”
She laughed. They barely knew each other, they’d just had dinner at an excellent restaurant, drunk the best wine and the finest champagne, and that was what he had to tell her?
“Don’t laugh. You suffer from depression. Or anxiety. Or both. But the fact of the matter is that, as you get older, you’ll find yourself at the point of no return. The earlier you accept this the better.”
She felt like telling him just how much luck she’d had in her life; she had a wonderful family, a job she liked, the admiration of others—but something else came out.
“Why would you say a thing like that?”
Her voice was full of scorn. The man, whose name she made a point of forgetting that same afternoon, didn’t want to talk about it—psychiatry was his profession, and he wasn’t there to work.
She insisted. Perhaps, deep down, he wanted to talk about it—at this point, she had the impression he was dreaming about spending the rest of his life at her side.
“We’ve been together so little time, what makes you say I’m depressed?”
“Because this little time amounts to forty-eight hours at your side. I’ve had the chance to observe you during the book launch Tuesday, and yesterday at dinner. Have you, by chance, ever loved anyone?”
“Many people.”
It was a lie.
“What does it mean to love?”
The question frightened her so much she came up with everything she could think of to answer it. Casting her fear aside, she responded in a measured voice.
“It’s to allow everything. To not spend your time thinking about the sunrise or enchanted forests, to not swim against the current, to allow yourself to be filled with joy. That, for me, is what it means to love.”
“Go on.”
“It’s to maintain your freedom, but in such a way that the person at your side never feels trapped by this. It’s a calm, serene thing, I’d even say it’s solitary in some way. Love for love’s sake, for no other reason—such as marriage, children, money, that sort of thing.”
“Fine words. But as long as we’re together, I suggest you think about what I’ve told you. Let’s not ruin our stay in such a special city by my making you question yourself and your making me work.”
OK, you’re right. But why tell me I suffer from depression or anxiety? Why so little interest in the things I have to say?
“Why would I be depressed?”
“One possible answer is that you’ve never truly loved. But at this point such an answer isn’t good enough—I know plenty of depressed people who come to me because they’ve loved too much, so to speak—they’ve given themselves up entirely. To be honest, I think—I shouldn’t be saying this—that your depression has some physical origin. A lack of a certain substance in your body. Could be serotonin, dopamine, but in your case it certainly isn’t noradrenaline.”
So depression was a chemical problem?
“Of course not. There are a million factors, but do you think we could get dressed and go walk along the Seine?”
“Of course. But before we do, finish your thought: What factors?”
“You said that one can love in solitude; there’s no doubt about that, but only those who’ve dedicated their lives to God or their neighbors. Saints. Visionaries. Revolutionaries. In this case, I’m talking about a more human love, which can only be felt when we’re near the person we love. A love that makes us suffer terribly when we can’t express it, or when we’re noticed by the object of our affections. I’m certain you’re depressed because you’re never truly present; your eyes shift from one side to the other, there’s no light behind them, just weariness. On the night of the book launch, I saw you were making a superhuman effort to speak with the others there—everyone must seem dull, inferior, all the same.”
He got up from the bed.
“That’s enough for me. I’m going to take a shower, or do you want to go first?”
“Go ahead. I’m going to pack my suitcase. Don’t rush, I need a few minutes alone after everything I just heard. Actually, I need a half hour alone.”
He chuckled, as if to say, “What did I tell you?” But he went into the bathroom. Five minutes later, Karla had packed her suitcase and put o
n her clothes. She opened and closed the door without making any noise. She walked past the reception desk, greeting all those people looking at her with a certain air of surprise, but the luxurious suite wasn’t in her name, so no one asked her anything.
She went up to the concierge and asked what time the next flight to Holland left. Which city? Doesn’t matter, I’m from there and know my way around. Two-fifteen in the afternoon, KLM. “Would you like us to buy the ticket and charge it to the room?”
She paused for a second; maybe she ought to get back at the man who’d read her soul without permission and who, besides, could have been wrong about everything.
But she didn’t. “No, thanks, I have the money here.” Karla never traveled anywhere depending on the men who every now and then decided to keep her company.
* * *
—
She took another look at the red bridge and remembered everything she’d read about depression—and everything she hadn’t read because she’d begun to really get scared—and she decided that, from the moment she crossed that bridge, she would be a new woman. She’d allow herself to fall for the wrong person, some guy who lived on the other side of the world, to miss him when he was gone or do everything to remain at his side, or sit meditating and recalling his face in whatever cave in Nepal she chose to live in, but she couldn’t continue living that life—the life of someone who has it all and can’t ever enjoy any of it.
Paulo stood before a door without a sign or any other indicator on it, in the middle of a narrow street lined with houses that looked abandoned. After considerable effort and many questions, he’d manage to locate a Sufi center, though he wasn’t sure he’d find any dancing dervishes. He’d managed to get there by going to the bazaar—where he’d waited for Karla but never found her; then he began to mimic the sacred dance while repeating the word “dervish.” Several people laughed, others thought he was crazy—they all kept their distance to avoid being hit by his outstretched arms.
