A Warrior's Life Part 6

Concerned with his public image, Paulo usually appended a footnote, asking Christina not to show the letters to anyone. 'They're very private and written with no thought for style,' he explained. 'You can say what I've written, but don't let anyone else read them.' At the end of a marathon week of visits, he bought a train ticket to New York, where he was going to decide on his next move. In a comfortable red-and-blue second-cla.s.s carriage on an Amtrak train, minutes after leaving the American capital, he felt a s.h.i.+ver run through him when he realized the purpose of the concrete constructions beside the railway line: they were fall-out shelters built in case of nuclear war. These dark thoughts were interrupted by a tap on his shoulder when the train was about to make its first stop in Elizabeth, New Jersey.

It was the conductor, wearing a blue uniform and with a leather bag round his waist, who said to him: 'Morning, sir, may I see your ticket?'

Surprised, and not understanding what he meant, Paulo responded in Portuguese: 'Desculpe.'

The man seemed to be in a hurry and in a bad mood: 'Don't you understand? I asked for your ticket! Without a ticket n.o.body travels on my train.'

It was only at this point that Paulo understood, with deep dismay, that all Vera's efforts to make him into a model English speaker had been in vain. Without her to turn to, he realized that it was one thing to read books in English, and even then with the help of his lover or of dictionaries. It was quite another to speak it and, most of all, to understand what people were saying in the language. The disappointing truth was that there he was alone in the United States and he couldn't say a single, solitary word in English.

CHAPTER 12.

Discovering America.

PAULO'S FIRST IMPRESSION OF NEW YORK could not have been worse. In marked contrast to the cleanliness and colour he was accustomed to seeing on cinema screens and in books, the city that opened up to him through the train windows as soon as he pa.s.sed through the Brooklyn tunnel and entered Manhattan Island appeared to be infested with beggars and ugly, poorly dressed, threatening-looking people. But this sight did not dishearten him. He wanted to stay only a few days in the city and then set off to find the original objective of his journey: the Grand Canyon in Arizona and the magical deserts of Mexico. He had US$300 and wanted to spend two months 'wandering from one side of the United States to the other'. The first thing he should do was to stop travelling by train and switch to Greyhound buses. He remembered having seen these buses in films, an elegant greyhound painted on the side. A pa.s.s costing US$99 gave you the right to travel for forty-five days to anywhere on the Greyhound network, more than two thousand towns across the United States, Mexico and Canada. Since his plan was to spend two months travelling, this meant that, with the money that remained, he could only afford to stay in YMCA hostels, which charged 6 dollars a night, including breakfast and dinner. could not have been worse. In marked contrast to the cleanliness and colour he was accustomed to seeing on cinema screens and in books, the city that opened up to him through the train windows as soon as he pa.s.sed through the Brooklyn tunnel and entered Manhattan Island appeared to be infested with beggars and ugly, poorly dressed, threatening-looking people. But this sight did not dishearten him. He wanted to stay only a few days in the city and then set off to find the original objective of his journey: the Grand Canyon in Arizona and the magical deserts of Mexico. He had US$300 and wanted to spend two months 'wandering from one side of the United States to the other'. The first thing he should do was to stop travelling by train and switch to Greyhound buses. He remembered having seen these buses in films, an elegant greyhound painted on the side. A pa.s.s costing US$99 gave you the right to travel for forty-five days to anywhere on the Greyhound network, more than two thousand towns across the United States, Mexico and Canada. Since his plan was to spend two months travelling, this meant that, with the money that remained, he could only afford to stay in YMCA hostels, which charged 6 dollars a night, including breakfast and dinner.

Two days was enough for New York to dispel the disappointment he had felt on arrival. Firstly, because, although the YMCA rooms were smallhalf the size of his room at his grandmother's houseand they had no bathroom, television or air conditioning, they were single and very clean, with bed linen changed daily. The staff were polite and while the food was not exactly haute cuisine, it was well cooked and tasty. Were it not for the discomfort of having to share a bathroom with all the other guests on the corridor, Paulo could happily have stayed there longer. The continuing problem was the language. Every day, in the dining room, he would annoy everyone else in the hungry, impatient queue with his inability to communicate to the cook what it was he wanted to eat. It was a relief to learn that the delicious beans served at the YMCA were called 'poroto'. Since this was a word he had no difficulty in p.r.o.nouncing, the problem was solved: he would eat nothing but 'poroto' until his English improved.

New York's tolerant, liberal atmosphere also helped to reconcile him to the city. Paulo discovered that s.e.x, cannabis and has.h.i.+sh were all available in the streets, especially in the areas around Was.h.i.+ngton Square, where groups of hippies spent their days playing guitars and enjoying the first rays of spring suns.h.i.+ne. One night, he arrived at the hostel restaurant only five minutes before the doors were to be closed. Even though almost all the tables were empty, he picked up his tray and sat down opposite a slim girl of about twenty, wearing what seemed to be the official uniform of hippie women the world overan ankle-length Indian dress in multi-coloured cotton. A smile appeared on her freckled face and Paulo, sure that he had enough English to be polite, said: 'Excuse me?'

The girl didn't understand: 'What?'

Realizing that he was incapable of p.r.o.nouncing even a ba.n.a.l 'excuse me', he relaxed and started to laugh at himself. Feeling more relaxed made communication easier, and, later that night, he and the girl, Janet, walked together through the city streets. However hard he tried to find out what it was she was studying, Paulo could not understand what the word 'belei' meant. Belei? Belei? But what did studying ' But what did studying 'belei' mean? Janet drew back and jumped up, her arms wide, performed a pirouette, and then curtseyed deeply. So that was what it was! She was studying ballet!

At the end of the evening, on the way back to the hostel, where men and women slept on different floors, the young couple stopped on the steps of a building in Madison Square Garden to say goodbye. Between kisses and hugs, Janet slipped her hand below Paulo's waist, over his jeans, and then started back and said, almost spelling out the words so that he could understand: 'I've been with other boys before, but you...Wow! You're the first one I've known who's had a square one.' Laughing, he had to explain that no, he did not have a square d.i.c.k. Rather than leaving his doc.u.ments in the wardrobe in the YMCA, he had put all his money and his return ticket to Brazil in his pa.s.sport and put the whole lot in a supposedly safe placehis underpants.

It was under the guidance of Janet, with whom he would often have s.e.x in quiet corners of parks and gardens, that he came to know a new world: the New York of the 1970s. He joined demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, went to concerts of baroque music in Central Park and was thrilled to go down some steps and find Pennsylvania station magically lit up. 'It's bigger than Central station in Rio,' he wrote to his girlfriend, 'only it's constructed entirely underground.' He was excited when he went to Madison Square Garden, 'where three months ago Ca.s.sius Clay was beaten by Joe Frazier'. His pa.s.sion for the boxer who would later take the name Muhammad Ali was such that he not only watched all his fights but also compared his tiny physical measurements with those of the American giant. Although he had no specific date to return home, time seemed too short to enjoy everything that New York had to offer a young man from a poor country under a military dictators.h.i.+p.

When he could, he tried to record in his letters the excitement he was experiencing: There are areas where everythingbooks, newspapers, postersis written in Chinese, or Spanish or Italian. My hotel is full of men in turbans, Black Panther militants, Indians in long clothes, everything. Last night, when I left my room, I broke up a fight between two old guys of sixty! They were bas.h.i.+ng the h.e.l.l out of each other! I haven't even told you anything about Harlem yet, the black district, it's amazing, fantastic. What is NY? I think NY is the prost.i.tutes walking the streets at midday in Central Park, it's the building where Rosemary's Baby Rosemary's Baby was filmed, it's the place where was filmed, it's the place where West Side Story West Side Story was filmed. was filmed.

Before sealing the envelopes he would cover the margins of his letters with sentimental declarations of love ('adored, loved, wonderful woman', or 'I'll telephone you even if I've got to go without food for a day just to hear your voice for a minute') and a few lies, such as 'Don't worry, I won't cheat on you'.

At the end of a torrid, two-week affair with New York, Paulo realized that he was limited by two things: neither his hesitant English nor his savings would be enough for him to travel alone across the United States for two months. The question of money could be resolved with a clever piece of belt-tightening suggested by Janet: if he used his Greyhound ticket for night journeys lasting more than six hours, the bus would become his hotel bedroom. The language problem, though, seemed insoluble. His schoolboy vocabulary might be enough to cope with basic needs, such as sleeping and eating, but Paulo knew that the journey would lose its charm if he couldn't properly understand what other people were saying. Faced with a choice between returning to Brazil and asking for help, he opted for the latter: he made a reverse-charge call to his aunt's house in Was.h.i.+ngton and invited his cousin Sergio, who spoke English fluently, to go with him. A few days later, the two young men, rucksacks on their backs and using the Greyhound buses as a hotel, headed off to Chicago, the first stop on the long haul to the Grand Canyon, in the heart of Arizona, more than 4,000 kilometres from Manhattan and so far away that the time there was three hours earlier than in New York.

The only records of this period are the letters he sent to Christina, and one notes the absence of any reference to his companion who was, after all, his saviour on the journey. This is not just a lapse, because, besides overlooking Sergio's presence, Paulo told his girlfriend that he was travelling alone. 'Perhaps I'll leave my camera with Granny during the journey,' he wrote, 'because I'm alone and can't take photos of myself, and it's better to buy postcards than to waste film on landscapes.' He wanted to make this marathon trip sound like a bold adventure.

With no money to spare, he recorded all his expenses on a piece of paper with the amounts in dollars and Brazilian cruzeiros: a packet of cigarettes 60 cents, a hamburger 80 cents, a subway ticket 30 cents, a cinema ticket 2 dollars. Each time they missed the night Greyhound bus, his savings would shrink by 7 dollars, the price of a room in one of the more modest roadside hotels. New York, with its mixture of civilization and barbarism, had left him 'shaken up', and it was hard for him to adjust to the more rural states in the Midwest. 'After NYC I've got little to say,' he complained to Christina in a near unintelligible scrawl written as the bus was moving. 'I'm only writing because I'm really missing my woman.' The majority of the cities he visited merited only superficial mention in his correspondence. His impression of Chicago was that it was the 'coldest' city he had so far encountered. 'The people are absolutely neurotic, and totally and uncontrollably aggressive. It's a city where they take work very seriously.'

After spending five days on the road, Paulo's eyes lit up at the sight through the dusty bus window of a road sign saying 'Cheyenne100 miles'. In the state of Wyoming, on the border with Colorado, in the heart of the American West, this was a city he felt he had known since childhood. He had read so many books and magazines and seen so many Westerns set in Cheyenne that he thought himself capable of reconstructing from memory the names of the streets, hotels and saloons where the cowboy and Indian adventures had taken place. His astonishment at seeing the road sign stemmed from the fact that he hadn't realized the city actually existed. In his mind, Cheyenne was a fantasy appropriated by the authors of books, films and cartoons in stories of the Wild West that he had read and seen during his childhood and adolescence.

He was disappointed to discover that while there were still cowboys in the city, in boots, Stetsons and belts with bull's buckles, and revolvers in holsters, they now travelled in convertible Cadillacs. The only traces of the Cheyenne he had seen in John Ford's Cheyenne Autumn Cheyenne Autumn were the carriages used by the local Amish community, which forbids the use of such modern inventions as lifts, telephones and cars. But his greatest disappointment was when he discovered that Pioneer Street, the favourite place for cowboys to hold duels in the evening in the mythical Cheyenne, had been transformed into a busy four-lane highway lined with shops selling electronic gadgets. were the carriages used by the local Amish community, which forbids the use of such modern inventions as lifts, telephones and cars. But his greatest disappointment was when he discovered that Pioneer Street, the favourite place for cowboys to hold duels in the evening in the mythical Cheyenne, had been transformed into a busy four-lane highway lined with shops selling electronic gadgets.

The obvious route to the Grand Canyon was to travel some 1,000 kilometres southwest, then cross Colorado and part of New Mexico into Arizona. However, because they both wanted to go to Yellowstone Park and make the most of their Greyhound ticket, they travelled in the opposite direction, northwards. When they realized that the closest stopping-off place to the park was Idaho Falls, 300 kilometres from Yellowstone, Paulo decided to take two risks. First, he spent US$30 on hiring a car. Second, since he had not taken his driving test he lied to the car-hire firm and presented his members.h.i.+p card of the Actors' Union in Rio as a Brazilian driving licence.

Although he was aware that he risked being arrested if stopped by a traffic policeman, he drove for the whole day past the glaciers in the park and the geysers spewing out hot water and sulphur on to the snow, and saw bears and deer crossing the road. In the evening, they went to return the car and decided to catch a Greyhound bus where they could shelter from the cold. Although it was the middle of summer and the two had experienced temperatures of up to 38C, two hours from the Canadian border, the cold was so unbearable that the heating in the car wasn't enough to keep them warm. As neither had suitable clothes for such low temperatures, when they arrived at the bus station in Boise, the capital of Idaho, they rushed to the Greyhound ticket office to ask what time the next night bus left. Going where? Anywhere that wasn't so cold. If the only destination with available seats at that time of night was San Francisco, then that was where they would go.

In the middle of the night, as the bus was crossing the Nevada desert, he wrote a letter to Christina boasting of how he had tricked the man at the car-hire firm with his false licence, but regretting the fact that the extra expense of hiring the car had 'messed up my budget'. He also said that he had discovered the reason for the strong smell of whisky pervading the Greyhound bus: 'Everyone here has a small bottle in his pocket. They drink a lot in the United States.' The letter is interrupted halfway through and starts again some hours later: I was going to go straight to San Francisco, but I discovered that gambling in Nevada is legal, so I spent the night here. I wanted to play and see how other people play. I didn't make any friends at the casino; they were all too busy gambling. I ended up losing 5 dollars in a one-armed bandityou know, those betting machines where you pull a handle. There was a cowboy sitting next to me wearing boots, hat and neckerchief, just like in the films. In fact the whole bus is full of cowboys. I'm in the Far West on the way to San Francisco, where I'm due to arrive at eleven at night. In seven hours' time, I'll have crossed the American continent, which not many other people have.

When they reached San Francisco, exhausted after travelling for twenty-two days, the cousins signed in at a YMCA hostel and spent the day sleeping, in an attempt to catch up on more than a hundred hours spent sitting in cramped buses.

The cradle of the hippie movement, San Francisco had as great an impact on Paulo as New York. 'This city is much freer than NYC. I went to a really smart cabaret and saw naked women making love with men on the stage in front of rich Americans with their wives,' he told her, excited but regretting the fact that he'd been unable to see more. 'I went in quickly and saw just a bit of the show, but as I didn't have enough money to buy a seat, I got thrown out.' He was astonished to see adolescents buying and consuming LSD pills quite openly; he bought some has.h.i.+sh in the hippie district, smoked it on the street and no one stopped him. He also took part in demonstrations against the war in Vietnam and saw a pacifist march by Buddhist monks being broken up by a gang of young blacks with truncheons. 'You breathe an air of complete madness in the streets of this city,' he said in a letter to Christina.

After five 'mind-blowing' days, the cousins caught another bus in the direction of the Grand Canyon. They got off halfway there, in Los Angeles, but as it was 4 July, Independence Day, the city was dead, and they stayed only a few hours. 'Nothing was open, and it was almost impossible to find somewhere to have a coffee,' he complained. 'The famous Hollywood Boulevard was a complete desert, with no one on the streets, but we did see how luxurious everything here is, even the most ordinary bar.' And since the cost of living in Los Angeles was incompatible with the backpackers' funds, they didn't stay the night. They took another bus and, twenty-four hours after leaving San Francisco, reached Flagstaff, the entrance to the Grand Canyon.

The extortionate prices of the hotels and restaurants were almost as impressive as the beauty of the canyon. Since there were no YMCA hostels in the area, they bought a nylon tent, which meant a 19-dollar hole in their tiny stash of savings, and spent the first night in a hippie camp, where at least free has.h.i.+sh was guaranteed. As soon as the sun began to rise, they took down their tent, filled their rucksacks with bottles of water and tinned food, and left on foot for the Grand Canyon. They walked all day beneath the blazing sun and when they decided to stop, exhausted and hungry, they discovered that they were at the widest point of the Canyon, which measures 20 kilometres from side to side. It is also the deepest; between them and the river was a drop of 1,800 metres. They pitched their tent, lit a small bonfire to heat up their tins of soup and fell asleep, exhausted, not waking until dawn the next day.

When Sergio suggested they go down to the river, Paulo was terrified. As there was absolutely no one around, apart from them, and they were on a path little used by tourists, he was worried that should they get into difficulties, there would be no one to come to their aid. However, Sergio was determined: if Paulo didn't want to, he would go alone. He put all his stuff in his rucksack and began the descent, oblivious to his cousin's protests: 'Serginho, the problem isn't going down, but coming back! It's going to get really hot and we've got to climb the equivalent of the stairs in a 500-storey building! In the blazing sun!'

Impervious, his cousin didn't even turn round. There was nothing for Paulo to do but pick up his rucksack and follow him down. The beauty of the area dispelled some of his fears. The Grand Canyon looked like a 450-kilometre gash in the desert of red sand, at the bottom of which was what appeared to be a tiny trickle of water. This was, in fact, the torrential Colorado River, which rises in the Rocky Mountains in the state of Colorado and flows more than 2,300 kilometres until it runs into the Sea of Cortez in Mexico, crossing six more American states (Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming). To be down there was indescribable.

After walking for some five hours, Paulo stopped and suggested to his cousin that they end their adventure there and begin the climb back up, saying: 'We didn't eat much last night, we haven't had a proper breakfast and up to now we haven't had any lunch. Take a look and see how far we've got to climb.'

His cousin remained determined. 'You can wait for me here, because I'm going down to the river bank.'

He continued walking. Paulo found some shade where he could sit, smoked a cigarette and enjoyed the splendour of the landscape as he sat in total silence. When he looked at his watch, he realized it was midday. He walked on a few metres, trying to see Sergio, but there was no sign of him. Indeed, as far as the eye could see, there was no one, no tourist, no Indians, not a soul for kilometres and kilometres. He realized that if he were to go down a little farther, he would come to a rocky ledge from where he would have a wider view of the area. However, even from there, he couldn't see his cousin. He began to shout out his name, waiting a few seconds after each shout, before shouting again. His voice echoed between the walls of red stone, but there was neither sign nor sound of his cousin. He was beginning to think that they had taken the wrong path. From fear to panic was but a step. Feeling entirely defenceless and alone, he became terrified. 'I'm going to die here,' he kept saying: 'I'm going to die. I can't take any more. I'm not going to get out of here. I'm going to die here, in this wonderful place.'

He was aware that, in midsummer, the temperatures around the Grand Canyon could be over 50C. His water had run out and it was unlikely that there would be a tap in the middle of that desert. Added to which, he had no idea where he was, since there were so many intersecting paths. He started to shout for help, but no one appeared, and he heard nothing but the echo of his own voice. It was past four in the afternoon. Desperate to find his cousin, he began to run, stumbling, in the direction of the river, knowing that every step he took meant another he would have to climb up on his return.

The sun was burning his face when he finally reached a sign of civilization. Fixed to a rock was a metal plate with a red b.u.t.ton and sign saying: 'If you are lost, press the red b.u.t.ton and you will be rescued by helicopters or mules. You will be fined US$500.' He had only 80 dollars left and his cousin must have about the same in his pocket, but the discovery of the sign made him certain of two things: they were not the first to be so foolish as to take that route; and the risk of dying began to fade, even though it might mean a few days in jail until their parents could send the money for the fine. However, first of all, Paulo had to find Sergio. He went another 200 metres farther down, never taking his eyes off the red b.u.t.ton, which was his one visible reference mark, and after a bend in the path, he came across a natural belvedere where there was a metal telescope with a coin slot. He inserted 25 cents, the lens opened and he began to scan the river banks, looking for his travel companion. There he was, in the shadow of a rock and apparently as exhausted as Paulo. He was sound asleep.

Rejecting the idea of summoning a helicopter, they climbed up to the top again, and it was midnight by the time they got there. They were exhausted, their skin was puffy with sunburn, but they were alive. After the long day, the idea of spending another night in the hippie camp was so appalling that Paulo made a suggestion: 'I think we deserve two things tonight: dinner in a restaurant and a night in a hotel.'

They found a comfortable, cheap motel, left their rucksacks in their room and went into the first restaurant they came to, where each ordered a T-bone steak so big it barely fitted on the plate. It cost 10 dollarsthe amount they usually spent each day. They barely had the strength to pick up knife and fork. They were both starving, though, and ate as quickly as they could. Five minutes later, however, they were in the toilet, throwing up. They returned to the motel and collapsed on to their beds for the last night they would spend together on their journey: the following day Sergio would be returning home to Was.h.i.+ngton and Paulo was to go on to Mexico.

The original reason he had accepted his mother's gift of a plane ticket had been that it would give him the chance to make a pilgrimage to the mysterious deserts that had inspired Carlos Castaneda, but he had been so thrilled by the novelty of the country as a whole that he had almost forgotten this. Now, with his entire body aching after his adventure in the Grand Canyon, and with money fast running out, he felt a great temptation to return to Brazil. His Greyhound pa.s.s was still valid for a few more days, though, and so he carried on as planned. Grown accustomed to the wealth of America, he was appalled by the poverty he found in Mexico, which was much like Brazil. He tried all the mushroom syrups and hallucinogenic cactus teas that he could, and then caught the bus back to New York, where he spent three more days, after which he flew home to Brazil.

CHAPTER 13.

Gisa.

A WEEK AFTER RETURNING TO BRAZIL, WEEK AFTER RETURNING TO BRAZIL, having recovered from his trip, Paulo had still not decided what to do with his life. One thing was certain: he was not going back to the law faculty, so he left the course in the middle of the academic year. He continued to attend cla.s.ses in theatre direction at the Guanabara State Faculty of Philosophywhich would later become the University of Rio de Janeiroand he did everything he could to get his articles published in Rio newspapers. He wrote an article about the liberal att.i.tude towards drugs in the United States and sent it to the most popular humorous weekly of the period, having recovered from his trip, Paulo had still not decided what to do with his life. One thing was certain: he was not going back to the law faculty, so he left the course in the middle of the academic year. He continued to attend cla.s.ses in theatre direction at the Guanabara State Faculty of Philosophywhich would later become the University of Rio de Janeiroand he did everything he could to get his articles published in Rio newspapers. He wrote an article about the liberal att.i.tude towards drugs in the United States and sent it to the most popular humorous weekly of the period, Pasquim Pasquim, which went on to become an influential opponent of the dictators.h.i.+p. He promised St Joseph that he would light fifteen candles to him if the text was published and, every Wednesday, he was the first to arrive at the newspaper stand on the corner near his home. He would avidly leaf through the magazine only to return it to the pile, disheartened. It was not until three weeks later that he realized the article had been rejected. Although this rejection tormented him for days, it was not enough to put paid to his dream of becoming a writer. When he realized that Pasquim Pasquim's silence was a resounding 'No', he made a strange note in his diary: 'I've been thinking about the problem of fame and have concluded that my good fortune hasn't yet turned up. When it does, it's going to be quite something.'

The problem was that while he waited for it to turn up, he needed to earn a living. He still enjoyed working in the theatre, but the returns weren't usually enough even to cover the costs of putting on the production. This led him to accept an invitation to teach on a private course preparing students for the entrance exam for theatre courses given by the Federation of Isolated State Schools in the State of Guanabara. It wouldn't contribute anything to his future plans, but, on the other hand, it wouldn't take up much time and it guaranteed him a monthly salary of 1,600 cruzeiros, some US$350.

On 13 August 1971, a little more than a month after his return from the United States, Paulo received a phone call from Was.h.i.+ngton. His grandfather, Arthur Araripe or Tuca, had just died. He had suffered severe cranial trauma when he fell down the stairs at his daughter's house in Bethesda, where he was staying, and had died instantly. Appalled by the news, Paulo sat in silence for a few minutes, trying to collect his thoughts. One of the last images he had of Tuca, smiling and sporting a beret as they arrived at the airport in Was.h.i.+ngton, seemed so fresh that he could not accept that the old man had died. Paulo felt that if he went out on to the verandah he would find Tuca dozing there, mouth open, over a copy of the Reader's Digest Reader's Digest. Or, as he loved to do, provoking his hippie grandson with his reactionary ideas, saying for instance that Pele was 'an ignorant black man' and that Roberto Carlos was 'an hysterical screamer'. Then he would defend right-wing dictators, starting with Salazar in Portugal and Franco in Spain (on these occasions, Paulo's father would join in and insist that 'any idiot' could paint like Pica.s.so or play the guitar like Jimi Hendrix). Instead of getting annoyed, Paulo would roar with laughter at his obstinate grandfather's over-the-top remarks, because, for all his conservatism, and perhaps because he himself had been a bit of a bohemian during his youth, he was the only member of the family who respected and understood the strange friends Paulo went around with. Having known him for so many years, and having built a closer relations.h.i.+p with him during the time he spent in his grandparents' small house, Paulo had come to consider Tuca to be almost a second father to him. A generous, tolerant father, the very opposite of his real father, the harsh and irascible Pedro. For these reasons, his grandfather's unexpected death was all the more painful, and the wound opened up by that loss would take time to heal.

Paulo continued to teach and to go to his theatre course, with which he was beginning to find fault. 'In the first year, the student learns to be a bit of a chiseller and to use personal charm to achieve whatever he or she wants,' he wrote in his diary. 'In the second year, the student loses any sense of organization he had before and in the third, he becomes a queer.' His proverbial paranoia reached unbearable levels when he learned that the detective Nelson Duarte, who was accused of belonging to the Death Squad, was going around the Escola Nacional de Teatro looking for 'cannabis users and communists'. On one such visit, the policeman was confronted by a brave woman, the teacher and speech and hearing therapist Gloria Beutenmuller, who wagged her finger at him and said: 'My students can wear their hair as long as they likeand if you arrest one of them, they'll have to be dragged out of here.'

Protected by the secrecy of his diary, Paulo made a solitary protest against these arbitrary arrests: Nelson Duarte again issued a threat against students and teachers with long hair, and the school issued a decree, banning long hair. I didn't go to the cla.s.s today because I haven't decided whether I'm going to cut mine or not. It's affected me deeply. Cutting my hair, not wearing necklaces, not dressing like a hippie...It's unbelievable. With this diary I'm writing a real secret archive of my age. One day, I'll publish the whole thing. Or else I'll put it all in a radiation-proof box with a code that's easy to work out, so that one day someone will read what I've written. Thinking about it, I'm a bit worried about even keeping this notebook.

In fact, he had already made plenty of notes showing that he didn't share the ideas of many of his left-wing friends who opposed the dictators.h.i.+p. His diary was peppered with statements such as: 'There's no point getting rid of this and replacing it with communism, which would just be the same s.h.i.+t' and 'Taking up arms never solved anything'. But the repression of any armed conflict was at its height and mere sympathizers as well as their friends were being rounded up. Censors.h.i.+p meant that the press could not publish anything about the government's use of violence against its opponents, but news of this nevertheless reached Paulo's ears, and the shadow cast by the security forces seemed to get closer by the day. One of his friends was imprisoned by the political police merely because he had renewed his pa.s.sport in order to go to Chile during the period of Salvador Allende's rule. A year earlier, Paulo had learned that a former girlfriend of his, Nancy Unger, had been shot and apprehended in Copacabana while resisting arrest. He found out that Nancy, along with sixty-nine other political prisoners, had been exiled from Brazil, in exchange for the Swiss amba.s.sador Enrico Giovanni Bucher, who had been kidnapped by command of the Popular Revolutionary Front. In the end, the repression became too much even for those who weren't part of the armed resistance. Persecuted by the censors, the composer Chico Buarque went into self-imposed exile in Italy. Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso moved to London after having their heads shaved in an army barracks in Rio. Gradually, Paulo was starting to hate the military, but nothing would make him overcome his fear and open his mouth, and say in public what he felt. Appalled that he could do nothing against a regime that was torturing and killing people, he fell into depression.

In September 1971, the army surrounded and killed Captain Carlos Lamarca in the interior of Bahia. When Paulo read excerpts from the dead guerrilla's diary that were published by the press, he wrote a long and bitter outburst that gives a faithful picture of his inner conflicts. Once again, he confessed that he avoided talking about the police in his diary for one reason only: fear. But how could he continue not protesting against what was going on around him? It was when he was alone, locked in his room that he gave expression to his pain: I'm living in a terrible climate, TERRIBLE! I can't take any more talk about imprisonment and torture. There is no freedom in Brazil. The area in which I work is subject to vile and stupid censors.h.i.+p.I read Lamarca's diary. I admired him only because he fought for his ideas, nothing more. Today, though, when I see the demeaning comments in the press, I felt like shouting, like screaming. I was really angry. And I discovered in his diary a great love for someone, a poetic love that was full of life, and the newspaper called it 'the terrorist's dependence on his lover'. I discovered a man who was full of self-doubt and hyper-honest with himself, even though he fought for an idea that I consider wrong.The government is torturing people and I'm frightened of torture, I'm frightened of pain. My heart is beating far too fast now, simply because these words could compromise me. But I have to write. The whole thing is f.u.c.ked. Everyone I know has either been imprisoned or beaten up. And none of them had anything to do with anything.I still think that one day they're going to knock on the door of this room and take this diary. But St Joseph will protect me. Now that I've written these lines, I know that I'm going to live in fear, but I couldn't continue to keep quiet, I needed to let it out. I'm going to type because it's faster. It needs to be fast. The sooner this notebook is out of my room the better. I'm really frightened of physical pain. I'm frightened of being arrested like I was before. And I don't want that to happen ever again: that's why I try not to think about politics at all. I wouldn't be able to resist. But I will resist. Up until now, 21st September 1971, I was scared. But today is an historic dayor perhaps just a few historic hours. I'm liberating myself from the prison that I built, thanks to all Their practices.It was very difficult for me to write these words. I'm repeating this so that I won't ever delude myself when I re-read this diary in a safe place, thirty years from now, about the times I'm living through now. But now I've done it. The die is cast.

Sometimes he would spend all day locked in his room at the back of his grandmother's house, smoking cannabis and trying to make a start on that dreamed-of book, or at least a play, or an essay. He had notebooks full of ideas for books, plays and essays, but something was missinginclination? inspiration?and when evening came, he still hadn't written a line. Otherwise, he taught for three hours a day and then went to the university. He would go in, talk to various people and, when he got fed up with doing that, end up alone in a bar near by, drinking coffee, chain-smoking and filling pages of notebooks with ideas.

It was on one such evening that a girl appeared, wearing a miniskirt and high boots. She had very long, thick dark hair. She sat down beside Paulo at the bar, ordered a coffee and struck up a conversation with him. She had just qualified as an architect and her name was Adalgisa Eliana Rios de Magalhes, or Gisa, from Alfenas in Minas Gerais; she was two years older than Paulo. She had left Minas for Rio in order to study at the Federal University and was now working for the Banco Nacional da Habitaco, although what she liked best was drawing comic strips. She was as slender as a catwalk model, and had an unusual face in which her dark melancholy eyes contrasted with a sensual mouth. They talked for some time, exchanged telephone numbers and parted. Once again, Paulo dismissed any possibility of a relations.h.i.+p developing, writing: 'She's ugly and has no s.e.x appeal.'

Unlike Pauloand this was something he never knewGisa had been an active militant in opposition to the military regime. She had never taken part in armed action or anything that might involve risking her lifeand this, in the jargon of repression, meant that she was a 'subversive', rather than a 'terrorist'but following her first year in architecture, she had been a member of several clandestine left-wing cells that had infiltrated the student movement. It was through the students' union at the university that she joined the Brazilian Communist Party, or PCB, where she handed out pamphlets at student a.s.semblies with copies of Voz Operaria Voz Operaria [ [The Worker's Voice]. She left the party and joined the Dissidencia da Guanabara, which changed its name in 1969 to Movimento Revolucionario 8 de Outubro, or MR-8, and was one of the groups responsible for the kidnapping of the United States amba.s.sador Charles Elbrick. Although she herself was never anything more than a low-ranking militant, Gisa was nevertheless an activist, and, when she met Paulo, she was having an affair with a young architect from Pernambuco, Marcos Paragua.s.su de Arruda Camara. He was the son of Diogenes de Arruda Camara, a member of the elite in the Partido Comunista do Brasil, who had been in prison in Rio since 1968, and was himself a militant.

In spite of Paulo's scornful remark after their first meeting, over the next few days, the two met up again every night in the small bar next to the theatre school. A week later, he walked her back to the apartment where she lived with her brother, Jose Reinaldo, at Flamengo beach. She invited him up, and they listened to music and smoked cannabis until late. When her brother arrived home at two in the morning, he found them lying naked on the sitting-room carpet. Less than a month later, Gisa broke up with Marcos Paragua.s.su: she and Paulo had decided to live together. Paulo moved in three weeks later, once she had managed to get rid of her brother, and immediately proposed that they get married in a month and a half, on Christmas Eve. Gisa accepted, despite feeling slightly uncomfortable about the speed with which he had moved into her home and his habit of walking around the apartment naked.

Hoping perhaps that marriage would help her son to settle down, Paulo's mother reacted as warmly as she had with his previous girlfriends. Then, on 22 November, three months after they had met, Paulo recorded in his diary: 'Gisa is pregnant. It looks as though we're going to have a son.' The fact that the baby would be a boy born under the sign of Leo appears to have made him still more excited at the thought of fatherhood. 'My powers will be re-born with this son,' he wrote delightedly. 'In the next eight months I'll redouble my energy and climb higher and higher.'

The dream lasted less than a week. After his initial excitement, Paulo began to feel a sense of horror whenever he thought of it, which was all the time. When reality dawned, and he saw that it would be absolute madness to have a child when he had no permanent employment and no means of supporting a family, the first person to be told of his decision was not Gisa but his mother. To Paulo's surprise, Lygia turned out to be not quite the committed Catholic when he told her that he was going to suggest to his girlfriend that she have an abortion. She agreed that having the child was not a good idea. Gisa resisted at first, before agreeing that she, too, was convinced that it would be irresponsible to have the baby. With the help of friends they found a clinic that specialized in clandestine abortionsabortion being a crimeand arranged the operation for 9 December 1971.

Neither managed to sleep the night before. In the morning, they got up in silence, had a bath and went in search of a taxi. They arrived at the clinic at seven on the dot, the time of the appointment. It was a surprise for them both when they saw that there were about thirty women there, the majority very young, and many with their husbands or boyfriendsall looking miserable. On arrival, each woman gave her name to the nurse, left a small pile of notes on the tablecheques were not acceptedand waited to be called. Although there were plenty of chairs, the majority preferred to stand. Five minutes later, Gisa was taken by another nurse to a staircase going up to the second floor. She left with her head bowed, without saying goodbye. In a matter of minutes, all the women had been called, with only a few men remaining in the waiting room.

Paulo sat on one of the chairs, took a notebook out of his bag and began to writein a very small hand so that his partners in misfortune would not be able to read what he was writing. Whether knowingly or not, each tried to conceal his concern with some gesture or other. Paulo was constantly blinking; the man on his right would empty half the tobacco from his cigarette into the ashtray before lighting up; another kept flipping through a magazine, meanwhile staring into s.p.a.ce. Despite his tic, Paulo did not appear to be nervous. He was, it was true, feeling an unpleasant sense of physical smallness, as though he had suddenly become a shrunken dwarf. Background music was coming from two loudspeakers, and although no one was really listening to it, they all kept time by tapping their feet or rattling their key rings. As he watched these movements, Paulo noted in his diary: 'They are all trying to keep their bodies as busy as possible and in the most varied ways, because their subconscious is clearly telling them: "Don't think about what's going on in there".' They all kept looking at the clock, and each time footsteps were heard, heads would turn toward the staircase. Occasionally, one would complain about how slowly time seemed to be pa.s.sing. A small group tried to put aside their thoughts by talking quietly about football. Paulo merely observed and wrote: A young man next to me is complaining about the delay and says that he's going to be late collecting his car from the garage. But I know he's not really like that. He's not thinking about his car, but he wants me to believe that so that he can play the part of the strong man. I smile and gaze into his neurones: there's his wife with her legs open, the doctor is inserting forceps, cutting, sc.r.a.ping and filling everything up with cotton wool once it's over. He knows that I know, turns the other way and is still, without looking at anything, breathing only deeply enough to stay alive.

At 8.30 in the morning, half the women had left and there was no sign of Gisa. Paulo went to the bar around the corner, had a coffee, smoked a cigarette and went back to the waiting room and his notebook, impatient and concerned that perhaps things were not going well for his girlfriend. An hour later, there was still no news. At 9.30 he put his hand in his pocket, hurriedly took out his fountain pen and wrote: 'I felt that it was now. My son returned to the eternity he had never left.'

Suddenly, no one knew from where, or why, they heard a sound that no one had really expected to hear in such a place: a loud, healthy baby's cry, followed immediately by a shout of surprise from a young lad in the waiting room: 'It's alive!'

For a moment, the men appeared to have been freed from the pain, misery and fear that united them in that gloomy room and they broke into a wild, collective burst of laughter. Just as the laughter stopped, Paulo heard footsteps: it was Gisa, returning from the operation, almost three hours after their arrival. Paler than he had ever seen her and with dark rings around her eyes, she looked very groggy and was still suffering from the effects of the anaesthetic. In the taxi on the way home, Paulo asked the driver to go slowly, 'because my girlfriend has cut her foot and it's hurting a lot'.

Gisa slept the whole afternoon and when she woke she couldn't stop crying. Sobbing, she told him that just as she was about to be anaesthetized, she had wanted to run out: 'The doctor put a thin tube inside me and took out a baby that was going to be born perfect. But now our son is rotting somewhere, Paulo...'

Neither could sleep. It was late at night when she went slowly over to the desk where he was sitting writing and said: 'I hate to ask you this, but I've got to change the dressing and I think I'll manage to do it alone. But if it's very painful, can you come into the bathroom with me to help?'

He smiled and replied with a supportive 'Of course', but once the bathroom door was shut, Paulo begged St Joseph a thousand times to save him from that unpleasant task. 'Forgive me my cowardice, St Joseph,' he murmured, looking up, 'but changing that dressing would be too much for me. Too much! Too much!' To his relief, minutes later, she released him from that obligation and lay down on the bed again. Since leaving the abortion clinic, Gisa had only stopped crying when she fell asleep.

On the Sat.u.r.day, Paulo took advantage of the fact that she seemed a little better and went off to do his teaching. When he got back in the evening, he found her standing at the bus stop in front of their building. The two returned home and only after much questioning from him did she confess what she had been doing in the street: 'I left the house to die.'

Paulo's reaction was astonis.h.i.+ng. He immediately said: 'I'm really sorry I interrupted such an important process. If you've decided to die, then go ahead and kill yourself.'

Her courage had failed her, though.

On the third night without sleep, Gisa only opened her mouth to cry, while he could not stop talking. He explained carefully that she had no way out: after being called to Earth, the Angel of Death would only go back if he could take a soul with him. He said that there was no point in turning back, because the Angel would follow her for ever, and even if she didn't want to die now, he could kill her later, for example by letting her be run over. He recalled how he had faced the Angel when he was an adolescent and had cut the throat of a goat so that he would not have to hand over his own life. The way out was to stand up to the Angel: 'You need to challenge him. Do what you decided to do: try to kill yourself but hope that you'll escape with your life.'

When Gisa closed her eyes, exhausted, he went back to his diary, where he pondered the mad course of action he was proposing to his girlfriend: I know that Gisa isn't going to die, but she doesn't know it and she can't live with that doubt. We have to give a reply to the Angel in some way or other. Some days ago, a friend of ours, Lola, slashed her whole body with a razor blade, but she was saved at the last moment. Lots of people have been attempting suicide recently. But few succeeded and that's good, because they escaped with their lives and managed to kill the person inside them whom they didn't like.

This macabre theory was not just the fruit of Paulo's sick imagination but had been scientifically proven by a psychiatrist whom he frequently visited, and whom he identified in his diary merely as 'Dr Sombra', or 'Dr Shadow'. The theory was that one should reinforce the patient's traumas. The doctor had told him quite categorically that no one is cured by conventional methods: 'If you're lost and think that the world is much stronger than you are,' he would say to his patients, 'then all that's left for you is suicide.' According to Paulo, this was precisely where the brilliance of his thesis lay: 'The subject leaves the consulting room completely devastated. It's only then that he realizes that he has nothing more to lose and he begins to do things that he would never have had the courage to do in other circ.u.mstances. All in all, Dr Sombra's method is really the only thing in terms of the subconscious that I have any real confidence in. It's cure by despair.'

When they woke the following daya brilliant, sunny summer SundayPaulo did not need to try to convince Gisa any further. He realized this when she put on a swimsuit, took a bottle of barbiturates from the bathroom cupboardhe thought it was Orap, or pimozide, which he had been taking since his first admission to the clinicand emptied the contents into her mouth, swallowing it all down with a gla.s.s of water. They went out together into the street, she stumbling as she walked, and proceeded down to the beach. Paulo stayed on the pavement while Gisa waded into the water, where she began swimming out to sea. Although he knew that with that amount of medication in her she would never have the strength to swim back, he waited, watching until she was just a black dot among the glittering waves, a black dot that was moving farther and farther away. 'I was scared, I wanted to give in, to call her, to tell her not to do it,' he wrote later, 'but I knew that Gisa wasn't going to die.'

Two men doing yoga on the beach went up to him, concerned that the girl was nearly out of sight, and said: 'We should call the lifeguard. The water's very cold and if she gets cramp she'll never get back.'

Paulo calmed them with a smile and a lie: 'No need, she's a professional swimmer.'

Half an hour later, when a group of people had begun to collect on the pavement, foreseeing a tragedy, Gisa began to swim back. When she reached the beach, pale and ghostly looking, she threw up, which probably saved her life, because she vomited up all the tablets. The muscles in her face and arms were stiff from the cold water and from the overdose. Paulo held her as they went to the house and then wrote the results of that 'cure by despair' in his diary: I'm thinking: Who's the Angel going to content himself with this time, now that Gisa is in my arms? She cried and was very tired, and of course she did still have eight tablets inside her. We came home, and she fell asleep on the carpet, but woke up looking quite different, with a new light in her eyes. For a while, we didn't go out for fear of contagion. The suicide epidemic was spreading like anything.

If anyone had looked through his diaries during the months prior to Gisa's attempted suicide, they would not have been surprised by Paulo's bizarre behaviour. Since reading Molinero's book, The Secret Alchemy of Mankind The Secret Alchemy of Mankind, he had become deeply immersed in the occult and in witchcraft. It was no longer just a matter of consulting gypsies, witch doctors and tarot readers. At one point, he had concluded that 'The occult is my only hope, the only visible escape'. As if he had put aside his dream of becoming a writer, he now concentrated all his energies on trying to 'penetrate deep into Magic, the last recourse and last exit for my despair'. He avidly devoured everything relating to sorcerers, witches and occult powers. On the bookshelves in the apartment he shared with Gisa, works by Borges and Henry Miller had given way to things such as The Lord of Prophecy The Lord of Prophecy, The Book of the Last Judgement The Book of the Last Judgement, Levitation Levitation and and The Secret Power of the Mind The Secret Power of the Mind. He would frequently visit Ibiapas, 100 kilometres from Rio, where he would take purifying baths of black mud administered by a man known as 'Paje Katunda'.

It was on one such trip that Paulo first attributed to himself the ability to interfere with the elements. 'I asked for a storm,' he wrote, 'and the most incredible storm immediately blew up.' However, his supernatural powers did not always work. 'I tried to make the wind blow, without success,' he wrote a little later, 'and I ended up going home frustrated.' Another trick that failed was his attempt to destroy something merely by the power of thought: 'Yesterday Gisa and I tried to break an ashtray by the power of thought, but it didn't work. And then, would you believe it, straight afterwards, while we were having lunch here, the maid came to say that she had broken the ashtray. It was bizarre.'

Sects had also become an obsession with Paulo. It might be Children of G.o.d or Hare Krishnas, followers of the Devil's Bible or even the faithful of the Church of Satan, whom he had met on his trip to the United States. All it took was a whiff of the supernaturalor of sulphur, depending on the case. Not to mention the myriad groups of wors.h.i.+ppers of creatures from outer s.p.a.ce or UFO freaks. He became so absorbed in the esoteric world that he eventually received an invitation to write in a publication devoted to the subject, the magazine A Pomba A Pomba. Published by PosterGraph, a small publis.h.i.+ng house dedicated to underground culture and printing political posters, this contained a miscellany of articles and interviews on subjects of interest to hippie groups: drugs, rock, hallucinations and paranormal experiences. Printed in black and white, every issue carried a photographic essay involving some naked woman or other, just like men's magazines, the difference being that the models for A Pomba A Pomba appeared to be women recruited from among the employees in the building where the magazine was produced. Like dozens of other, similar publications, appeared to be women recruited from among the employees in the building where the magazine was produced. Like dozens of other, similar publications, A Pomba A Pomba had no influence, although it must have had a reasonable readers.h.i.+p, since it managed to survive for seven months. For half the salary he received at the school, Paulo accepted the position of jack-of-all-trades on the magazine: he would choose the subjects, carry out the interviews, write articles. The visual aspectdesign, ill.u.s.trations and photographswas Gisa's job. It appears to have been a good idea, because after only two issues under Paulo's editors.h.i.+p, the owner of PosterGraph, Eduardo Prado, agreed to his proposal to launch a second publication, ent.i.tled had no influence, although it must have had a reasonable readers.h.i.+p, since it managed to survive for seven months. For half the salary he received at the school, Paulo accepted the position of jack-of-all-trades on the magazine: he would choose the subjects, carry out the interviews, write articles. The visual aspectdesign, ill.u.s.trations and photographswas Gisa's job. It appears to have been a good idea, because after only two issues under Paulo's editors.h.i.+p, the owner of PosterGraph, Eduardo Prado, agreed to his proposal to launch a second publication, ent.i.tled 2001 2001. With two publications to take care of, his salary doubled, and he had to give up teaching.

While he was doing research for an article on the Apocalypse, it was suggested to Paulo that he should go and see someone who called himself 'the heir of the Beast in Brazil', Marcelo Ramos Motta. He was surprised to find that the person he was to interview lived in a simple, austere apartment with good furniture and bookcases crammed with books. There was just one eccentric detail: all the books were covered with the same grey paper, without any indication as to the content apart from a small handwritten number at the foot of the spine. The other surprise was Motta's appearance. He wasn't wearing a black cloak and brandis.h.i.+ng a trident, as Paulo had expected, but instead had on a smart navy-blue suit, white s.h.i.+rt, silk tie and black patent-leather shoes. He was sixteen years older than Paulo, tall and thin, with a thick black beard, and a very strange look in his eye. His voice sounded as if he were trying to imitate someone. He did not smile, but merely made a sign with his hand for the interviewer to sit down, and then sat down opposite him.

Paulo took his notepad out of his bag and, to break the ice, asked: 'Why are all the books covered in grey paper?'

The man did not appear in the mood for small talk and said: 'That's none of your business.'

Startled by his rudeness, Paulo began to laugh: 'I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. I was just curious.'

Motta continued in the same vein: 'This is no matter for children.'

When the interview was over, Paulo wrote and published his article, but he couldn't stop thinking about that strange man and his library of books with blank spines. After several refusals, Motta agreed to meet him again and this time he opened the conversation by saying: 'I'm the world leader of a society called AAAstrum Argentum.' He got to his feet, picked up a copy of The Beatles' record Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and pointed out one of the figures on the crowded collage on the cover. This was a bald, elderly man, the second along in the photo, next to an Indian guru: 'This man is called Aleister Crowley, and we are the proponents of his ideas in the world. Go and find out about him, and then we'll talk again.' and pointed out one of the figures on the crowded collage on the cover. This was a bald, elderly man, the second along in the photo, next to an Indian guru: 'This man is called Aleister Crowley, and we are the proponents of his ideas in the world. Go and find out about him, and then we'll talk again.'

It was only after searching through libraries and second-hand bookshops that Paulo discovered that there were very few books available in Brazil about the old man on the cover of The Beatles' alb.u.m, lost among the images of Mae West, Mahatma Gandhi, Hitler, Jesus Christ and Elvis Presley. While he was preparing to go back to speak to the mysterious Motta, he continued to produce the two magazines with Gisa. Since the budget was not enough to take on even one collaborator, he wrote almost everything. So that the readers would not realize what a tiny budget the magazines had to survive on, he used a variety of pseudonyms as well as his own name.

At the beginning of 1972, a stranger appeared in the office, which was a modest room on the tenth floor of a commercial building in the centre of Rio de Janeiro. He was wearing a s.h.i.+ny suitone of those crease-resistant onesand a thin tie, and carried an executive briefcase, and he announced that he wanted to talk to 'the writer Augusto Figueiredo'. At the time, Paulo did not connect the visitor with the person who had phoned him some days earlier, also asking for Augusto Figueiredo. It was enough to awaken his dormant paranoia. The man had the look of a policeman and must have come there after a tip-off, looking for drugs, perhaps. The problem was that Augusto Figueiredo did not exist; it was one of the names Paulo used to sign his articles.

Terrified, but trying to appear calm, he attempted to get rid of the visitor as quickly as possible, saying: 'Augusto isn't here. Do you want to leave a message?'

'No. I need to talk to him. Can I sit and wait for him?'

The man was definitely a policeman. He sat at a table, picked up an old copy of A Pomba A Pomba, lit a cigarette and started to read, with the air of someone with all the time in the world. An hour later, he was still there. He had read every past copy of the magazine, but showed no sign of wanting to leave. Paulo recalled the lesson he had learned as a child, when jumping off the bridge into the river: the best way to curtail suffering was to face the problem head on. He decided to tell the truthfor he was absolutely certain this man was a policeman. First, though, he took the precaution of going through all the drawers in the office to make sure that there were no b.u.t.ts left over from cannabis joints.

He summoned up his courage and, blinking nervously, confessed that he had lied: 'You must forgive me, but there is no Augusto Figueiredo here. I'm the person who wrote the article, Paulo Coelho. What can I do for you?'

The visitor smiled broadly, held out his arms as if about to embrace him and said: 'Well, you're the person I want to talk to, man. How do you do? My name is Raul Seixas.'

CHAPTER 14.

The Devil and Paulo.

A PART FROM THEIR INTEREST PART FROM THEIR INTEREST in flying saucers and having both been disastrous students during their adolescence, Raul Seixas and Paulo Coelho appeared to have little in common. Seixas was working as a music producer for a multinational recording company, CBS; his hair was always tidy and he was never seen without a jacket, tie and briefcase. He had never tried drugs, not even a drag on a cannabis joint. Coelho's hair, meanwhile, was long and unruly, and he wore hipsters, sandals, necklaces, and spectacles with octagonal purple lenses. He also spent much of his time under the influence of drugs. Seixas had a fixed address, and was a real family man, with a daughter, Simone, aged two, while Paulo lived in 'tribes' whose members came and went according to the seasonsin recent months his 'family' had been Gisa and Stella Paula, a pretty hippie from Ipanema who was as fascinated as he was by the occult and the beyond. in flying saucers and having both been disastrous students during their adolescence, Raul Seixas and Paulo Coelho appeared to have little in common. Seixas was working as a music producer for a multinational recording company, CBS; his hair was always tidy and he was never seen without a jacket, tie and briefcase. He had never tried drugs, not even a drag on a cannabis joint. Coelho's hair, meanwhile, was long and unruly, and he wore hipsters, sandals, necklaces, and spectacles with octagonal purple lenses. He also spent much of his time under the influence of drugs. Seixas had a fixed address, and was a real family man, with a daughter, Simone, aged two, while Paulo lived in 'tribes' whose members came and went according to the seasonsin recent months his 'family' had been Gisa and Stella Paula, a pretty hippie from Ipanema who was as fascinated as he was by the occult and the beyond.

The differences between the two men were even more marked when it came to their cultural baggage. At twenty-five, Paulo had read and given stars to more than five hundred books, and he wrote articulately and fluentl