A Warrior's Life_ A Biography of Paulo Coelho_clone

Do what you want is the whole of the law. Viva! Viva! Viva the Sociedade Alternativa! As if wanting to leave no doubt as to their intentions, the authors transcribed word for word entire texts from the Liber Oz, finally showing their hand and making their allegiances crystal clear. While Raul sang the refrain, a backing track of his own voice sang: Number 666 is called Aleister Crowley! Viva! Viva! Viva the Sociedade Alternativa! The law of Thelema Viva! Viva! Viva the Sociedade Alternativa! The law of the strong That is our law and the joy of the world Viva! Viva! Viva the New Age! Although only the few initiates to the world of Crowley would understand this, Paulo Coelho and Raul Seixas had decided to become the spokesmen of OTO and, therefore, of the Devil. For many of their audience this was a coded message written to confuse the censors and arguing for a new society as an alternative to the military dictatorship. This also seemed to be the government’s view, because when ‘Sociedade Alternativa’ was released, the censors forbade Raul to sing it when he toured Brazil. With or without censorship, the fact is that everything was going so well that Paulo concluded that his days of material and emotional penury were over. That evening, as he sometimes did, instead of writing, he recorded his diary on tape, talking as if he were on stage:

On 15 April 1974, at the age of twenty-six, I, Paulo Coelho, finally finished paying for my crimes. Only at twenty-six did I become fully aware of this. Now give me my reward. I want what’s due to me. And what’s due to me will be whatever I want! And I want money! I want power! I want fame, immortality and love! While he was waiting for his other wishes to come true, he enjoyed the money, fame and love that had already come his way. At the beginning of May, Raul invited him and Gisa to go to Brasília, where he was going to do three shows during the Festival of the Nations being held in the federal capital on 10, 11 and 12 May. At the same time, they were going to start promoting the LP Gita, which was to be launched a few weeks later. A slave to the I Ching, Paulo threw the three coins several times until it was confirmed that the trip would present no danger. They were staying at the smart Hotel Nacional when, on the Friday afternoon, the day of the first show, the two were summoned by the Federal Police to be given the usual talk by the censors as to what could and could not be sung in public. The colonel and bureaucrat who received them explained that in their case the only banned song was ‘Sociedade Alternativa’. The sports stadium where the show was to be held was packed, and the first two shows passed off without incident. On the Sunday, the night of the final show, Raul, after spending the afternoon and evening smoking cannabis, had what he called ‘a turn’. He was unable to remember a single word of the songs on the programme. While the band kept the audience entertained, he squatted at the edge of the stage and whispered to his partner, who was sitting in the first row: ‘Help me, will you? I’m in deep shit. Get up here and keep the public quiet for a while, while I go and splash my face with water.’ With the microphone in his hand, Raul introduced Paulo to the crowd as ‘my dear partner’ and left him to deal with the problem. Since the audience were already clapping in time to the band, shouting out the banned refrain, Paulo simply did the same and began to sing along with them: Viva! Viva! Viva the Sociedade Alternativa! Viva! Viva! Viva the Sociedade Alternativa!

When he returned to Rio, he described the weekend in Brasília in just a few lines: ‘It was a very quiet trip. On Friday we talked to the censor and a colonel from the Federal Police. On Sunday, I talked to the crowd for the first time, although I was completely unprepared. Any mention of the Alternative Society is restricted to interviews.’ During that week Paulo made an important decision: he formalized his acceptance into the OTO as a probationer or novice, when he swore ‘eternal devotion to the Great Work’. From 19 May ‘of the year 1974 of the Common Era’ onwards, for followers of the Devil, Paulo Coelho de Souza’s ‘profane name’ would disappear and be replaced by the ‘magical name’ that he himself had chosen: Eternal Light, or Staars, or, simply, 313. After sending his oath off in the post, he noted in his diary: ‘Having been invoked so often, He must be breathing fire from his nostrils somewhere near by.’ He was. On the morning of 25 May, six days after his entrance into the world of darkness, Paulo was finally to have his much-desired meeting with the Devil.

CHAPTER 16 A devil of a different sort THE LARGE AMOUNT OF MONEY that Philips had deposited in Paulo’s bank account the previous year was just a hint of what was to come. Following the enormous success of Krig-Ha, Bandolo! the recording company launched a single featuring ‘Gita’ and ‘Não Pare na Pista’, the latter written on the Rio–Bahia highway when the two were returning from a few days’ rest in Dias d’Ávila, in the interior of Bahia, where Raul’s parents lived. The aim of the single was merely to give the public a taster of the LP that would be released in June, but in less than a month it had sold more than a hundred thousand copies, which won the creators an unexpectedly early Gold Disc, the first of six prizes that the two songs went on to win. Each time a radio station unwittingly made an invocation to the Devil as they played the refrain ‘Viva! Viva a Sociedade Alternativa!’ meant more money for Raul and Paulo. In April 1974, Paulo bought a large apartment in Rua Voluntários da Pátria, in Botafogo, a few blocks from the estate where he had been born and spent his childhood, and he moved in there with Gisa. On Friday, 24 May, two weeks after their short stay in Brasília, Raul telephoned to say that he had been ordered to go to the political police–known as the Dops–on the following Monday in order to ‘provide some information’. Being accustomed to frequent invitations to discuss which songs could appear in shows or on records, he didn’t appear to be worried, but just in case, he asked his partner to go with him. As soon as he rang off, Paulo consulted the I Ching as to whether there was any risk in going to the Dops. Since the answer seemed to be ‘No’–or at least so it seemed, for according to its followers, the interpretation of the oracle is not always very precise–he thought no more about the matter. When he woke on the Saturday morning, Paulo found a note on the bedside table from Gisa, saying that she had gone out early and would be back soon. As he scanned the front page of the Jornal do Brasil, the date on the masthead caught his eye: it was exactly two years since he had met Raul, a meeting that had totally

changed his life. He drank a cup of coffee, lit a cigarette, glanced through the window from where he could see the sun beating down on the pavement below and then went into his bedroom to put on some shorts before going for his usual hour- long walk. He could detect a slight smell of burning and checked the sockets and domestic appliances, but found nothing wrong. And yet the smell was getting stronger. No, it wasn’t the smell of a fuse blowing, it was something else, something very familiar. He felt a chill in his stomach as his memory took him back to the place where he had smelled the same smell now filling the apartment: the morgue in the Santa Casa de Misericórdia that he had visited daily for some months when collecting data for the obituary page of O Globo. It was the macabre smell of the candles that appeared to be permanently burning in the hospital morgue. The difference was that the odour permeating everything around him now was so strong that it seemed to be coming from 100, even 1,000, candles all burning at the same time. As he bent down to do up his trainers, he had the impression that the parquet floor was rising up and coming dangerously close to his face. In fact, his legs had unexpectedly given way beneath him, as if he were about to faint, throwing his chest forwards. He almost crashed to the ground. When the dizziness intensified, he tried to remember whether he had eaten anything strange, but no, it was nothing like that: he wasn’t feeling nauseous, he was simply caught up in a kind of maelstrom that seemed to be affecting everything around him. As well as the attacks of giddiness, which came and went, he realized that the apartment was full of a dark mist, as though the sun had suddenly disappeared and the place was being invaded by grey clouds. For a moment, he prayed that he was merely experiencing the moment most feared by drug addicts–a bad trip, provoked by the use of LSD. This, however, was impossible. He hadn’t taken LSD in ages, and he’d never heard of cannabis causing such hellish feelings. He tried to open the door and go outside, but fear paralysed him. It might be worse outside than in. By now, along with the dizziness and the smoke, he could hear terrifying noises, as though someone or some being were breaking everything around him, and yet everything remained in its place. Terrified and lacking the strength to do anything, he felt his hopes revive when the telephone rang. He prayed to God to let it be Euclydes Lacerda–Frater Zaratustra–who could put an end to his suffering. He picked up the phone, but almost immediately put it down again when he realized that he was invoking God’s name in order to speak to a disciple of the Devil. It was not Euclydes: the person calling was his friend Stella Paula, whom he had also recruited into the OTO. She was sobbing, as terrified as he was, and was calling to ask for help because her apartment was filled with black smoke, a strong smell of decomposition and other vile smells. Paulo broke down into uncontrollable sobs. He rang off and, remembering what he usually did when he’d had too much cannabis, he went to the refrigerator and drank several glasses of milk, one after the other, and

then put his head under the cold-water tap in the bathroom. Nothing happened. The smell of the dead, the smoke and the dizziness continued, as did the noise of things breaking, which was so loud that he had to cover his ears with his hands to deaden it. It was only then that he began to understand what was happening. Having broken all ties with Christianity, he had spent the last few years working with negative energies in search of something that not even Aleister Crowley had achieved: a meeting with the Devil. What was happening that Saturday morning was what Frater Zaratustra called a ‘reflux of magical energies’. All his prayers had been answered. Paulo was face-to-face with the Devil. He felt like throwing himself out the window, but jumping from the fourth floor might not necessarily kill him, and might do terrible damage and perhaps leave him crippled. Crying like an abandoned baby, his hands shielding his ears and his head buried between his knees, he recalled fragments of the threats that Father Ruffier had pronounced from the pulpit of the chapel at St Ignatius College. We are in hell! Here you can see only tears and hear only the grinding of teeth caused by the hatred of some against others. […] While we cry in pain and remorse the Devil smiles a smile that makes us suffer still more. But the worst punishment, the worst pain, the worst suffering is that we have no hope. We are here for ever. […] And the Devil will say: my dear, your suffering hasn’t even begun! That was it: he was in hell–a hell far worse than Father Ruffier had promised and which he seemed to be condemned to suffer alone. Yes, how long had this been going on–two hours? three? He had lost all notion of time, and there was still no sign of Gisa. Had something happened to her? In order to stop thinking, he began to count the books in the apartment, and then the records, the pictures, the knives, spoons, forks, plates, pairs of socks, underpants…When he reached the end, he started again. He was standing bent over the kitchen sink with his hands full of cutlery when Gisa returned. She was as confused as he was, shivering with cold, and with her teeth chattering. She asked him what was happening, but Paulo didn’t know. She became angry, saying: ‘What do you mean, you don’t know? You know everything!’ They clung to each other, knelt down on the kitchen floor and began to cry. When he heard himself confessing to Gisa that he was afraid to die, the ghosts of St

Ignatius College again rose up before him. ‘You’re afraid of dying?’ Father Ruffier had bawled at him once in front of his classmates. ‘Well, I’m shamed by your cowardice.’ Gisa found his cowardice equally shameful, especially in a man who, until recently, had been the great macho know-it-all, and who had encouraged her to become involved with the crazy warlocks of the OTO. However, in the midst of that mayhem, Paulo really didn’t care what that priest or his girlfriend or his parents might think of him. The only thing he knew was that he didn’t want to die, far less deliver his soul to the Devil. He finally plucked up the courage to whisper in Gisa’s ear: ‘Let’s go and find a church! Let’s get out of here and go straight to a church!’ Gisa, the left-wing militant, couldn’t believe her ears. ‘A church? Why do you need a church, Paulo?’ He needed God. He wanted a church so that he could ask God to forgive him for having doubted His existence and to put an end to his suffering. He dragged Gisa into the bathroom, turned on the cold-water tap of the shower and crouched beneath it with her. The evil smell, the grey clouds and the noise continued. Paulo began to recite out loud every prayer he knew–Hail Mary, Our Father, Salve Regina, the Creed–and eventually she joined in. They couldn’t remember how long they stayed there, but the tips of their fingers were blue and wrinkled by the time Paulo got up, ran into the sitting room and grabbed a copy of the Bible. Back in the shower, he opened it at random and came upon verse 24, chapter 9, of St Mark’s gospel, which he and Gisa began to repeat, like a mantra, under the showerhead: Lord, I believe! Help thou my unbelief… Lord, I believe! Help thou my unbelief… Lord, I believe! Help thou my unbelief… They repeated these words out loud hundreds, possibly thousands of times. Paulo renounced and forswore, again out loud, any connection with OTO, with Crowley and with the demons who appeared to have been unleashed that Saturday. When peace returned, it was dark outside. Paulo felt physically and emotionally drained. Terrified by what they had experienced, the couple did not dare to sleep in the apartment that night. The furniture, books and household objects were all in their usual places, as if that emotional earthquake had never taken place, but it seemed best not to take any chances and they went to spend the weekend with Lygia and Pedro in Gávea. Since she had been with Paulo, Gisa had become a regular visitor to

the Coelho household and was always made welcome, particularly by Lygia. Gisa’s one defect–in the eyes of Paulo’s parents–was her political radicalism. During the long Sunday lunches in Gávea when Paulo’s parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents would meet, Gisa would always defend her ideas, even though she knew she was among supporters of Salazar, Franco and the Brazilian military dictatorship. Although everything indicates that she had gradually distanced herself from the political militancy of her student days, her views had not changed. When the couple left on Monday morning, Lygia invited them to a small dinner she was going to hold that evening for her sister Heloísa, ‘Aunt Helói’. The two took a taxi back to their apartment–for Paulo had still not learnt to drive. There were no smells, no mists, no shards of glass, nothing to indicate that two days earlier the place had been the scene of what both were sure had been a battle between Good and Evil. When he chose the clothes he was going to wear after his shower, Paulo decided that he would no longer be a slave to superstition. He took from his wardrobe a pale blue linen shirt with short sleeves and pockets trimmed with embroidery, which was a present his mother had given him three years earlier and which he had never worn. This was because the shirt had been bought on a trip his parents had made to Asunción, the capital of the neighbouring country whose name, since his imprisonment in Ponta Grossa, he had never again pronounced. In wearing that shirt from Paraguay he wanted, above all, to prove to himself that he was free of his esoteric tics. He had lunch with Gisa and, at two in the afternoon, went over to Raul’s apartment to accompany him to the Dops. It took more than half an hour to travel the traffic-ridden 15 kilometres that separated Jardim de Alah, where Raul lived, and the Dops building in the centre of the city, and the two men spent the time discussing plans for the launch of their LP Gita. A year earlier, when the Krig-Ha, Bandolo! album had been released, the two, at Paulo’s suggestion, had led a ‘musical march’ through the streets of the commercial area in old Rio, and this had been a great success. This ‘happening’ had garnered them valuable minutes on the TV news as well as articles in newspapers and magazines. For Gita they wanted to do something even more extravagant. Calmly going to an interview with the political police when Brazil still had a military dictatorship, without taking with them a lawyer or a representative of the recording company, was not an irresponsible act. Besides being reasonably well known–at least Raul was–neither had any skeletons in the cupboard. Despite Paulo’s arrest in Ponta Grossa in 1969 and their skirmishes with the censors, they could not be accused of any act that might be deemed to show opposition to the dictatorship. Besides, the regime had eradicated all the armed combat groups operating in the country. Six months earlier, at the end of 1973, army troops had destroyed the last centres of guerrilla resistance in Araguaia in the south of Pará, leaving a total of sixty-nine dead. Having annihilated all armed opposition, the repressive machinery was slowly being wound down. The regime was still committing many crimes and

atrocities–and would continue to do so–but on that May Monday morning in 1974, it would not have been considered utter madness to keep an appointment with the political police, especially since any allegations of torture and the killing of prisoners were mostly made against the intelligence agencies and other sectors of the army, navy and air force. When the taxi left them at the door of the three-storey building in Rua da Relação, two blocks away from the Philips headquarters, it was three on the dot on 27 May. While Paulo sat on a bench, reading a newspaper, Raul showed the summons to the man at a window and then disappeared off down a corridor. Half an hour later, the musician returned. Instead of going over to Paulo, who was getting up ready to leave, he went over to a public telephone opposite, pretended to dial a number, and began to sing in English: ‘My dear partner, the men want to talk to you, not to me…’ When Paulo failed to understand that Raul was trying to alert him to the fact that he might be in danger, Raul continued tapping his fingers on the telephone and repeating, as though it were a refrain: ‘They want to talk to you, not to me…They want to talk to you, not to me…’ Paulo still didn’t understand. He stood up and asked, smiling: ‘Stop messing around, Raul. What are you singing?’ When he made to leave, a policeman placed a hand on his shoulder and said: ‘You’re not going anywhere. You’ve got some explaining to do.’ Paulo only had time to murmur a rapid ‘Tell my father’ to Raul before being led away. He was taken through a labyrinth of poorly lit corridors and across a courtyard until they reached a corridor with cells on either side, most of which appeared to be empty and from which emanated a strong smell of urine combined with disinfectant. The man with him stopped in front of one of them, occupied by two young men, shoved him inside and then turned the key in the lock. Without saying a word to the others, Paulo sat down on the floor, lit a cigarette and, panic- stricken, tried to work out what could possibly lie behind this imprisonment. He was still immersed in these thoughts when one of the men, who was younger than he, asked: ‘Aren’t you Paulo Coelho?’ Startled, he replied: ‘Yes, I am. Why?’ ‘We’re Children of God. I’m married to Talita. You met her in Amsterdam.’ This was true. He recalled that during his trip to Holland, a young Brazilian girl had come up to him on seeing the Brazilian flag sewn on to the shoulder of his denim jacket. Like Paulo, the two young men had no idea why they were there. The Children of God sect, which had been started in California some years earlier, had managed to attract hundreds of followers in Brazil and now faced serious allegations, among which was that they encouraged sex with children, even between parents and their own children. The presence of the three in the Dops cells was like a snapshot of the state of political repression in Brazil. The much-feared, violent

machine created by the dictatorship to confront guerrillas was now concerned with hippies, cannabis users and followers of eccentric sects. It wasn’t until about six in the evening that a plainclothes policeman with a pistol in his belt and holding a cardboard folder in his hand opened the door of the cell and asked: ‘Which one of you is Paulo Coelho de Souza?’ Paulo identified himself and was taken to a room on the second floor of the building, where there was only a table and two chairs. The policeman sat on one of them and ordered Paulo to sit in the other. He took from the folder the four-page comic strip that accompanied Krig-Ha, Bandolo! and threw it down on the table. Then he began a surrealist dialogue with the prisoner. ‘What kind of shit is this?’ ‘It’s the insert that accompanies the album recorded by me and Raul Seixas.’ ‘What does Krig-Ha, Bandolo! mean?’ ‘It means “Watch out for the enemy!”’ ‘Enemy? What enemy? The government? What language is it written in?’ ‘No! No, it’s not against the government. The enemy are African lions and it’s written in the language spoken in the kingdom of Pal-U-Don.’ Convinced that this skinny, long-haired man was making a fool of him, the policeman looked as if he was about to turn nasty, thus obliging Paulo to explain carefully that it was all a work of fiction inspired by the places, people and language of the Tarzan cartoons which were set in an imaginary place in Africa called Pal-U- Don. The man was still not satisfied. ‘And who wrote this stuff?’ ‘I did, and my partner, who’s an architect, illustrated it.’ ‘What’s your partner’s name? I want to interview her too. Where is she now?’ Paulo panicked at the thought of involving Gisa in this nightmare, but he knew that there was no point in lying; nor was there any reason to lie, since they were both innocent. He looked at his watch. ‘Her name is Adalgisa Rios. We were invited to supper this evening at my parents’ house. She should be there by now.’ The policeman gathered up the papers, cigarettes and lighter he had scattered on the table, got up and ordered the terrified prisoner to follow him, saying: ‘Right, let’s go. Let’s go and find your old lady.’ As he was being bundled into a black-and-white van bearing the symbol of the Rio de Janeiro Security Police, Paulo felt momentary relief. This meant that he had been officially arrested and, in theory at least, was under state protection. Hell meant being picked up in unmarked cars with false number plates by plainclothes policemen, men with no orders and no official mandate, and who had been linked with many cases of torture and with the disappearance, so far, of 117 political

prisoners. His parents could hardly believe it when they saw their son get out of the car, surrounded by four armed men. They said that Gisa had not yet arrived and wanted to know what was going on. Paulo tried to calm them down, saying that it was just a minor problem with Krig-Ha, Bandolo! It would soon be resolved, and he and Gisa should even be back in time for dinner.

Photographic Insert Lygia Araripe Coelho de Souza holding her baby Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, 1947.

Paulo as a baby and playing with his cousins (in sandals and shorts), Rio de Janeiro, 1950s.

Paulo, aged ten (second from left, first row), at Our Lady Victorious School, Rio de Janeiro, 1957.

Paulo, aged fifteen (fourth from left, second row from top), at St Ignatius College, a respected boys’ schools in Rio de Janeiro, in 1962.

The forged school document Paulo used to get into the left-leaning ‘Paissandu set’ in 1965. Adding two years to his age gained him admittance to this group of intellectual film-lovers.

Paulo used to classify and rank the books he read. In this list, Martin Luther King wins his highest rating.

Fabíola Fracarolli in 1967, one of Paulo’s many girlfriends during the late 1960s.

Paulo and Fabíola.

Paulo with fellow actors in an adaptation of Jorge Amado’s Capitães da Areia at the Teatro Serrador in Rio de Janeiro, 1966.

Paulo (fifth from the left, front row) with cast and crew on the opening night of Capitães da Areia.

Paulo as Captain Hook (far right) and the other actors in his production of Peter Pan, 1969. Fabíola, who subsidised the production, played Peter Pan and Paulo’s friend Kakiko (centre, front row) wrote the score.

Kakiko, Paulo, Vera and Arnold (left to right) make their first stop in Registro on their ill-fated trip to Asunción, Paraguay, 1969.

Paulo during his trip across the United States, 1971.

Paulo during his 24-hour marijuana experiment at Kakiko’s house in Friburgo, 1971.

Paulo and his girlfriend Gisa. Following the termination of her pregnancy, she took an overdose of barbiturates and nearly drowned.

Paulo used black magic techniques and rituals in the drama courses he ran in 1973 at schools in Mato Grosso, Brazil.

Paulo breaks his hour-long pact with the Devil, 11 November 1971.

Paulo’s registration card as prisoner no. 13720. He and Gisa were imprisoned on account of the Krig-Ha, Bandolo! comic strip, 1974.

A leaflet advertising a presentation by the Crowleyites and the launch of Paulo’s Arquivos do Inferno.

The psychedelic comic strip accompanying the Krig-Ha, Bandolo! LP, written by Paulo and Raul Seixas and illustrated by Gisa, that so intrigued the Brazilian police, 1974.

Paulo and Cissa leave the altar of St Joseph’s Church, Rio de Janeiro, as man and wife, 2 July 1976.

Paulo on his visit to London in 1976.

Paulo and Christina in January 1980.

Paulo and Christina bought this Mercedes-Benz from the Indian embassy in Budapest for their European trip in 1982 after having struggled in their previous car, a Citröen 2CV.

Paulo’s visit to Dachau concentration camp in 1982 saw his birth as an author.

Nandor Glid’s bronze memorial at the camp.

The cover of Arquivos do Inferno featured Paulo with Christina and his old Crowleyite colleague Stella, 1982. The preface was by ‘Andy Wharol’, who never read the book.

Béla Lugosi on the cover of Manual Prático do Vampirismo, 1985. Though credited as the main author, Paulo didn’t write a single word and persuaded a friend to produce his chapters.

Paulo asked the I Ching in 1988 how to ensure 100,000 sales of The Alchemist. The oracle replied, ‘The great man brings good luck.’

Paulo in Egypt in 1987. The trip would provide inspiration for The Alchemist.

Paulo and Christina in the Mojave desert in 1988, where they practised the spiritual exercises of St Ignatius Loyola.

Paulo cemented an image of Our Lady of Aparecida in a grotto in Glorieta Canyon, New Mexico, writing a message in the wet mortar beneath it. The image was subsequently stolen.

The cartoon that appeared in Jornal do Brasil, 1993. According to the accompanying article, putting books by Paulo on the school curriculum would make students more stupid.

Jacques Chirac congratulates Paulo at the Paris Expo convention centre in 1998, after he had been ignored by the official Brazilian delegation. Brazilian First Lady Ruth Cardoso looks on.

Paulo takes a photo of himself in the hotel bathroom, wearing the Légion d’Honneur with which he has just been decorated by the French president in 1999.

Paulo is received by Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, 1998.

Mônica Antunes, Paulo’s literary agent, with Paulo and friends in Dubai.

Paulo and Christina in Prague in 2005 with their gift to the Infant Jesus of a gold-embroidered cloak, fulfilling a promise Paulo made three decades earlier.

Paulo signing books in Cairo, 2005. Egypt is the world’s leading producer of pirate editions of his books.