Aleph (15 page)
Authors: Paulo Coelho
I continue to stroke her hair.
“You remember what I said at the embassy, don’t you?
Everyone says that I have extraordinary talent, that I’m a great violinist and that success and acclaim are assured. My teacher told you so, adding, ‘But she’s very insecure, unstable.’ That’s not true—I have great technique, and I know where to look when I need inspiration, but that isn’t what I was born for, and no one will convince me otherwise. The violin is my way of running away from reality, my chariot of fire that takes me far from myself, and I owe my life to it. I survived so that I would meet someone who would free me from all the hatred I feel. When I read your books, I realized that you were that person. Of course.”
“Of course.”
“I tried to help Tatiana, saying that ever since I was a young girl, I’ve done my best to destroy all the men who came near me, simply because one of them tried unconsciously to destroy me. She wouldn’t believe it, though. She thinks I’m just a child. She agreed to meet me only so that she could get nearer to you.”
She moves a little closer. I can feel the warmth of her body.
“She asked if she could go with us to Lake Baikal. She says that even though the train passes through Novosibirsk every day, she has never had a reason to get on it before. But now she does.”
As I predicted, now that I’m lying here next to her, I feel only tenderness for the young woman by my side. I turn out the light, and the room is lit by the glow from the welding torches being used on a building site opposite my window.
“I said she couldn’t, that even if she did get on the train, she wouldn’t be allowed into your carriage. The guards
won’t let you pass from one class to another. She thought I was just trying to put her off.”
“People here work all night,” I say.
“Are you listening to me?”
“Yes, I’m listening, but I don’t understand. Another person comes looking for me in precisely the same circumstances as you, but instead of helping her, you drive her away. ”
“That’s because I’m afraid that she’ll get too close to you, and then you’ll lose interest in me. I don’t know exactly who I am or what I’m doing here, and it could all disappear from one moment to the next.”
I reach out my left hand for my cigarettes, then light one for me and one for her. I place the ashtray on my chest.
“Do you desire me?” she asks.
I feel like saying, “Yes, I desire you when you’re far away, when you’re just a fantasy. Today I practiced aikido for nearly an hour, thinking about you all the time—about your body, your legs, your breasts—and yet the fighting used up only a tiny part of that energy. I love and desire my wife, and yet I also desire you. I’m not the only man who desires you, nor am I the only married man ever to desire another woman. We all commit adultery in our thoughts, ask forgiveness, then do it all over again. But it isn’t fear of committing a sin that keeps me from touching you, even though you’re here in my arms. I don’t suffer from that kind of guilt. There’s something far more important now than making love to you. That’s why I feel perfectly at peace lying beside you, looking at the hotel room lit by the glow from the building site next door.”
However, instead I say, “Of course I desire you. Very much. I’m a man, and you’re a very attractive woman. Besides, I feel a great tenderness for you, a feeling that grows with each day that passes. I admire the way you can change so easily from woman to child, from child to woman. It’s like a bow touching the strings of a violin and creating a divine melody.”
The ends of our cigarettes glow more intensely as we both inhale.
“Why don’t you touch me, then?”
I put out my cigarette, and she does the same. I continue to stroke her hair and try to make that journey back into the past.
“I need to do something very important for us both. You remember the Aleph? Well, I need to go through the door that frightened us both so much.”
“And what should I do?”
“Nothing. Just stay by my side.”
I begin to imagine the ring of golden light moving up and down my body. It starts at my feet, goes up as far as my head and then back again. At first, I find it hard to concentrate, but gradually the ring begins to move more quickly.
“May I speak?”
Of course she can. The ring of fire is not of this world.
“There’s nothing worse than being rejected. Your light finds the light of another soul, and you think that the windows will open, the sun will pour in, and all your old wounds will finally heal. Then, suddenly, none of that happens. Perhaps I’m paying the price for all those men I hurt.”
The golden light, which had come into being by dint
of sheer imagination—a well-known way of getting back to one’s past lives—is now beginning to move of its own accord.
“No, you’re not paying the price for anything. Neither am I. Remember what I said on the train, about how we’re experiencing now everything that happened in the past and will happen in the future. In this precise moment, in a hotel in Novosibirsk, the world is being created and destroyed. We’re redeeming all our sins, if that’s what we choose to do.”
Not only in Novosibirsk but everywhere in the Universe, time beats like God’s vast heart, expanding and contracting. She draws closer, and I feel her small heart beating, too, ever louder.
The golden ring around my body is moving faster now. The first time I did this exercise, right after reading a book about “discovering the mysteries of past lives,” I was immediately transported to mid-nineteenth-century France and saw myself writing a book on the same subjects I write about now. I learned what my name was, where I lived, what kind of pen I was using, even the sentence I had just written. I was so scared that I returned at once to the present, to Copacabana, to the room where my wife was sleeping peacefully by my side. The following day, I found out everything I could about the person I had been and, a week later, decided to meet myself again. It didn’t work. And however often I tried, I failed every time.
I spoke to J. about it. He explained that there is always an element of “beginner’s luck,” conceived by God simply to show that it’s possible, but after that, the situation goes into reverse and returns to what it was before. He advised
me not to try again unless I had some really serious issue to resolve in one of my past lives—otherwise, it was just a waste of time.
Years later, I was introduced to a woman in São Paulo. She was a very successful homeopath who had a deep compassion for her patients. Whenever we met, I felt that I had known her before. We talked about this feeling, which she said she shared. One day, we were standing on the balcony of my hotel, gazing out at the city, and I proposed doing the ring-of-fire exercise together. We were both projected toward the door I had seen when Hilal and I discovered the Aleph. That day, the homeopath said good-bye to me with a smile on her face, but I never spoke to her again. She refused to answer my phone calls or to see me when I went to her clinic, and I soon realized that there was no point in insisting.
The door, however, was open; the tiny crack in the dike had become a hole through which the water was beginning to gush forth. Over the years, I met three other women whom I also felt I had known before, but I didn’t make the same mistake again and performed the ring-of-fire exercise alone. None of those women knew that I was responsible for some terrible event in their past lives.
The knowledge of what I’d done didn’t paralyze me, though. I was determined to put it right. Eight women had been the victims of that tragedy, and I was sure that one of them would eventually tell me how the story had ended. I knew almost everything, you see, apart from the curse that had been put on me.
That was why I had set off on the Trans-Siberian Railway and, more than a decade later, plunged once more
into the Aleph. The fifth woman is now lying by my side, talking about things that no longer interest me because the ring of fire is spinning faster and faster. No, I don’t want to take her with me back to where we first met.
“Only women believe in love; men don’t,” she says.
“Men do believe in love,” I say.
I am still stroking her hair. Her heartbeat is slowing now. I imagine that her eyes are closed, that she feels loved and protected, and that the idea of rejection has vanished as quickly as it appeared.
Her breathing slows, too. She moves, but this time merely to find a more comfortable position. I move as well, to replace the ashtray on the bedside table; then I fold her in my arms.
The golden ring is spinning incredibly fast from my feet to my head and back again. Then suddenly I feel the air around me vibrating, as if there had been an explosion.
T
HE LENSES OF MY EYEGLASSES
are smeared. My fingernails are filthy. The candle scarcely gives off enough light for me to make out where I am, but I can see that the sleeves of the clothes I’m wearing are made of coarse fabric.
Before me is a letter. Always the same letter.
Córdoba, July 11, 1492
My dear
,
We have few weapons left, but one of these is the Inquisition, which has been the target of vicious attacks
.
The bad faith of some and the prejudices of others would have people believe that the Inquisitor is a monster. At this difficult and delicate moment, when this supposed Reform is fomenting rebellion in homes and disorder in the streets, slandering the court of Christ and accusing it of torture and other monstrous acts, we are still the authority! And authority has a duty to impose the maximum penalty on those who harm the general good, to amputate the infected limb from the ailing body and thus prevent others from following its example. It is therefore only right that the death sentence should be imposed on those who, by continuing to spread heresy, cause many souls to be hurled into the fires of Hell
.
These women believe they are at liberty to proclaim the poison of their evil ways, to preach lust and Devil worship. They are nothing but witches! Spiritual punishments are not always enough. Most people are incapable of understanding them. The Church must—and does—have the right to denounce what is wrong and to demand radical action from the authorities
.
These women have come to separate husband from wife, brother from sister, father from children. The Church is a merciful mother, always ready to forgive; our one concern is that these women should repent so that we can deliver their purified souls to the Creator and, as if by a divine art—through which one can read the inspired words of Christ—carefully mete out their punishments until they confess to their rituals and machinations and to the spells they have cast on the city, which is now plunged into chaos and anarchy
.
This year, we managed to drive the Mohammedans back into Africa, guided as we were by Christ’s victorious arm. They had almost become the dominant power here, but Faith helped us win every battle. The Jews fled, too, and those who stayed will be converted, by force if necessary
.
Worse than the Jews and the Moors was the treachery of those who claimed to believe in Christ but betrayed us. They, too, will be punished when they least expect it; it is only a matter of time
.
Now we need to concentrate our efforts on those who, like wolves in sheep’s clothing, have so insidiously infiltrated our flock. This is your chance to show everyone that evil will never go unnoticed, because if these women succeed, the news will spread, a bad example will have been set, and the wind of sin will become a hurricane. We will be so weakened that the Moors will return, the Jews will regroup, and fifteen hundred years of struggle for the Peace of Christ will be buried
.
It is said that torture was instituted by the court of the Holy Office. Nothing could be further from the truth! On the contrary, when Roman law made torture legal, the Church at first rejected it. Now, though, driven by necessity, we, too, have adopted it, but its use is strictly limited. The Pope gave his permission—not an order—declaring that in very rare cases torture could be used. That permission is restricted exclusively to heretics. In the court of the Inquisition, so unjustly discredited, our watchwords are Wisdom, Honesty, and Prudence. After any denunciation, we always allow sinners the grace of the sacrament of confession before they face the judgment of Heaven, where
secrets unknown to us will be revealed. Our greatest concern is to save these poor souls, and the Inquisitor has the right to interrogate and to prescribe the necessary methods that will make the guilty confess. That is when torture is occasionally used, but only as prescribed above
.
Meanwhile, the enemies of the divine glory accuse us of being heartless executioners, unaware that the Inquisition uses torture with a moderation and leniency unknown in the civil courts! Torture can be used only once in every trial, and so I hope you will not waste the one opportunity you have. If you do not act appropriately, you will bring discredit on the court and we will be compelled to free those who came into this world only to sow the seed of sin. We are all weak; only the Lord is strong. But He makes us strong when He bestows on us the honor of fighting for the glory of His name
.
You must not hesitate. If these women are guilty, they must confess before we can deliver them to the Lord’s mercy
.
And even though this is your first time and your heart is full of what you judge to be compassion—but which is really nothing but weakness—remember that Christ did not flinch from whipping the money changers from the Temple. Your Superior will show you the correct procedures so that when the time comes you will be able to use the whip, the Wheel, and whatever else without your courage failing you. Remember that there is nothing more merciful than death by burning; that is the most legitimate form of purification. The fire burns the flesh but cleanses the soul, which can then rise up to the glory of God!
Your work is vital if order is to be maintained, if our country is to overcome these internal difficulties, if the Church is to regain the power under threat by these iniquitous creatures, and if the word of the Lamb is to echo once more in people’s hearts. Sometimes fear is necessary in order for the soul to find its path again. Sometimes war is necessary in order that we can finally find peace. We do not care how we are judged now, because the future will judge us and will recognize our work
.
And even if the people of the future do not understand what we have done and forget that we had to be harsh in order for people to become as meek and mild as the Son of God told us we should be, we know that our reward awaits us in Heaven
.
The seeds of evil must be torn from the Earth before they put down roots and grow. Help your Superior to carry out his sacred duty with no feelings of hatred for these poor creatures but with no pity for the Evil One, either
.
Remember that there is another court in Heaven, and that court will demand to know how you carried out God’s wishes here on Earth
.
F.T.T., O.P
.
