A Warrior's Life: A Biography of Paulo Coelho

436 Pages·2014·2.35 MB·English

by  Fernando Morais

Paulo Coelho
A Warrior’s Life
The Authorized Biography
Fernando Morais
For Marina, my companion on yet another crossing
of the Rubicon
When the world fails to end in the year 2000, perhaps
what will end is this fascination with the work of Paulo
Coelho.
Wilson Martins, literary critic, April 1998, O Globo
Brazil is Rui Barbosa, it’s Euclides da Cunha, but it’s
also Paulo Coelho. I’m not a reader of his books, nor
am I an admirer, but he has to be accepted as a fact of
contemporary Brazilian life.
Martins again, July 2005, O Globo
Contents
Epigraph
Chapter 1 Paulo today: Budapest–Prague–Hamburg–Cairo
Chapter 2 Childhood
Chapter 3 Schooldays
Chapter 4 First play, first love
Chapter 5 First encounter with Dr Benjamim
Chapter 6 Batatinha’s début
Chapter 7 Ballad of the Clinic Gaol
Chapter 8 Shock treatment
Chapter 9 The great escape
Chapter 10 Vera
Chapter 11 The marijuana years
Chapter 12 Discovering America
Chapter 13 Gisa
Chapter 14 The Devil and Paulo
Chapter 15 Paulo and Raul
Chapter 16 A devil of a different sort
Photographic Insert
Chapter 17 Paulo renounces the Devil
Chapter 18 Cissa
Chapter 19 London
Chapter 20 Christina
Chapter 21 First meeting with Jean
Chapter 22 Paulo and Christina–publishers
Chapter 23 The road to Santiago
Chapter 24 The Alchemist
Chapter 25 The critics’ response
Chapter 26 Success abroad
Chapter 27 World fame
Chapter 28 Becoming an ‘immortal’
Chapter 29 The Zahir
Chapter 30 One hundred million copies sold
Facts about Paulo Coelho
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
CHAPTER 1
Paulo today: Budapest–Prague–Hamburg–Cairo
I
T’S A DREARY, GREY EVENING in May 2005 as the enormous white Air France Airbus
A600 touches down gently on the wet runway of Budapest’s Ferihegy airport. It is
the end of a two-hour flight from Lyons in the south of France. In the cabin, the
stewardess informs the passengers that it’s 6.00 p.m. in Hungary’s capital city and
that the local temperature is 8°C. Seated beside the window in the front row of
business class, his seat belt still fastened, a man in a black T-shirt looks up and
stares at some invisible point beyond the plastic wall in front of him. Unaware of the
other passengers’ curious looks, and keeping his eyes fixed on the same spot, he
raises the forefinger and middle finger of his right hand as though in blessing and
remains still for a moment.
After the plane stops, he gets up to take his bag from the overhead locker. He
is dressed entirely in black–canvas boots, jeans and T-shirt. (Someone once
remarked that, were it not for the wicked gleam in his eye, he could be mistaken for
a priest.) A small detail on his woollen jacket, which is also black, tells the other
passengers–at least those who are French–that their fellow traveller is no ordinary
mortal, since on his lapel is a tiny gold pin embossed in red, a little larger than a
computer chip, indicating to those around him that he is a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour. This is the most coveted of French decorations, created in 1802 by
Napoleon Bonaparte and granted only at the personal wish of the President of the
Republic. The award, which was given to the traveller at the behest of Jacques
Chirac, is not, however, the only thing that marks him out. His thinning, close-
cropped white hair ends in a tuft above the nape of his neck, a small white ponytail
some 10 centimetres long. This is a sikha, the lock of hair worn by Brahmans,
orthodox Hindus and Hare Krishna monks. His neat white moustache and goatee
beard are the final touch on a lean, strong, tanned face. At 1.69 metres he’s fairly
short, but muscular and with not an ounce of fat on his body.
With his rucksack on his back and dying for a cigarette, he joins the queue of
passengers in the airport corridor, with an unlit, Brazilian-made Galaxy Light
between his lips. In his hand is a lighter ready to be flicked on as soon as it’s
allowed, which will not, it seems, be soon. Even for someone with no Hungarian, the
meaning of the words ‘Tilos adohanyzas’ is clear, since it appears on signs
everywhere, alongside the image of a lighted cigarette with a red line running
through it. Standing beside the baggage carousel, the man in black looks anxiously
over at the glass wall separating international passengers from the main concourse.
His black case with a white heart chalked on it is, in fact, small enough for him to
have taken it on board as hand luggage, but its owner hates carrying anything.
After going through customs and passing beyond the glass wall, the man in
black is visibly upset to find that his name does not appear on any of the boards held
up by the drivers and tour reps waiting for passengers on his flight. Worse still, there
are no photographers, reporters or television cameras waiting for him. There is no
one. He walks out on to the pavement, looking around, and even before lifting the
collar of his jacket against the cold wind sweeping across Budapest, he lights his
cigarette and consumes almost half of it in one puff. The other Air France
passengers go their separate ways in buses, taxis and private cars, leaving the
pavement deserted. The man’s disappointment gives way to anger. He lights another
cigarette, makes an international call on his mobile phone and complains in
Portuguese and in a slightly nasal voice: ‘There’s no one waiting for me in
Budapest! Yes! That’s what I said!’ He repeats this, hammering each word into the
head of the person at the other end: ‘That’s right–there’s no one waiting for me here
in Budapest. No one. I said no one!’
He rings off without saying goodbye, stubs out his cigarette and starts to
smoke a third, pacing disconsolately up and down. Fifteen interminable minutes
after disembarking he hears a familiar sound. He turns towards it, and his eyes light
up. An enormous smile appears on his face. The reason for his joy is only a few
metres away: a crowd of reporters, photographers, cameramen and paparazzi are
running towards him calling his name, nearly all of them holding a microphone and
a recorder. Behind them is a still larger group–his fans.
‘Mister Cole-ro! Mister Paulo Cole-ro!’
This is how Hungarians pronounce the surname of the Brazilian author Paulo
Coelho, the man in black who has just arrived in Budapest as guest of honour at the
International Book Festival. The invitation was a Russian initiative, rather than a
Brazilian one (Brazil doesn’t even have a stand), Russia being the guest country at
the 2005 festival. Coelho is the most widely read author in Russia, which, with 143
million inhabitants, is one of the most populous countries in the world. Along with
the reporters come people bearing copies of his most recent success, The Zahir, all
open at the title page, as they step over the tangle of cables on the ground and face
the hostility of the journalists, simply to get his autograph. The flashbulbs and the
bluish glow from the reflectors cast a strange light on the shaven head of the author,
who looks as if he were on the strobe-lit dance floor of a 1970s disco. Despite the
crowd and the discomfort, he wears a permanent, angelic smile and, even though
he’s drowning in a welter of questions in English, French and Hungarian, he appears
to be savouring an incomparable pleasure: world fame. He is in his element. Mister
Cole-ro with his sparkling eyes and the sincerest possible smile is once again Paulo
Coelho, superstar and a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, whose books
have been translated into 66 languages and dialects across 160 countries. He is a
man accustomed to receiving a pop star’s welcome from his readers. He tells the
journalists that he has been to Hungary only once, more than twenty years before.
‘I’m just afraid that fifteen years of capitalist tourism may have done Budapest more
harm than the Russians did in half a century,’ he says provocatively, referring to the
period when the country was part of the former Soviet Union.
That same day, the author had another opportunity to savour public
recognition. While waiting for the plane at Lyons airport he was approached by a
fellow Brazilian, who told him that he had read and admired his work. On being
called to take the bus to the plane, they walked together to the gate, but the other
Brazilian, when asked to produce his boarding pass, couldn’t find it. Anxious that
the other passengers would grow impatient as the man searched clumsily through his
things, the Air France employee moved him to one side, and the queue moved on.
Out of kindness, Paulo Coelho stood beside his fellow countryman, but was
told: ‘Really, you don’t need to wait. I’ll find it in a minute.’
All the other passengers were now seated in the bus, and the Air France
employee was threatening to close the door. ‘I’m sorry, but if you haven’t got a
boarding pass, you can’t board the plane.’
The Brazilian began to see his holiday plans falling apart, but he wasn’t
going to give up that easily. ‘But I know I’ve got it. Only a few minutes ago I
showed it to the author Paulo Coelho, who was with me, because I wanted to know if
we were going to be sitting next to each other.’
The Frenchman stared at him. ‘Paulo Coelho? Do you mean that man is Paulo
Coelho?’ On being assured that this was so, he ran over to the bus, where the
passengers were waiting for the problem to be resolved, and shouted, ‘Monsieur
Paulo Coelho! ’ Once the author had stood up and confirmed that he had indeed seen
his fellow Brazilian’s boarding pass, the Frenchman, suddenly all politeness and
cordiality, beckoned to the cause of the hold-up and allowed him to board the bus.
Night has fallen in Budapest when a tall, thin young man announces that
there are to be no more photos or questions. To the protests of both journalists and
fans, Paulo Coelho is now seated in the back of a Mercedes, its age and impressive
size suggesting that it may once have carried Hungary’s Communist leaders. Also in
the car are the men who are to be his companions for the next three days: the driver
and bodyguard, Pal Szabados, a very tall young man with a crew cut; and Gergely
Huszti, who freed him from the reporters’ clutches and who is to be his guide. Both
men were appointed by the author’s publisher in Hungary, Athenäum.
When the car sets off, and even before Gergely has introduced himself, Paulo
asks for a moment’s silence and, as he did in the plane, he gazes into the distance,
raises his forefinger and middle finger, and for a few seconds prays. He performs
this solitary ceremony at least three times a day–when he wakes, at six in the
evening and at midnight–and repeats it in planes when taking off and landing and in
cars when driving off, regardless of whether he is on a long-haul flight or a short trip
in a cab.
On the way to the hotel, Gergely reads out the planned programme: a debate
followed by a signing session at the book festival; a visit to the Budapest
underground with the prefect, Gabor Demszky; five individual interviews for various
television programmes and major publications; a press conference; a photo shoot
with Miss Peru, one of his readers (who is in Hungary for the Miss Universe
contest); two dinners; a show at an open-air disco…
Coelho interrupts Gergely in English. ‘Stop there, please. You can cut out the
visit to the underground, the show and Miss Peru. None of that was on the
programme.’
The guide insists: ‘I think we should at least keep the visit to the
underground, as it’s the third oldest in the world…And the prefect’s wife is a fan of
yours and has read all your books.’
‘Forget it. I’ll sign a book especially for her, but I’m not going to the
underground.’
With the underground, the disco and Miss Peru scrapped, the author approves
the schedule, showing no signs of fatigue in spite of the fact that he has had an
exhausting week. With the launch of The Zahir he has given interviews to reporters
from the Chilean newspaper El Mercurio, the French magazine Paris Match, the
Dutch daily De Telegraaf, the magazine produced by Maison Cartier, the Polish
newspaper Fakt and the Norwegian women’s magazine Kvinner og Klær. At the
request of a friend, an aide to the Saudi royal family, he also gave a long statement
to Nigel Dudley and Sarah MacInnes from the magazine Think, a British business
publication.
Half an hour after leaving the airport, the Mercedes stops in front of the
Gellert, an imposing four-star establishment on the banks of the Danube, one of the
oldest spa hotels in Central Europe. Before signing in, Paulo embraces a beautiful
dark-haired woman who has just arrived from Barcelona and has been waiting for
him in the hotel lobby. Holding her hand is a chubby, blue-eyed little boy. She is
Mônica Antunes and the boy is her son. Although she acts as Paulo Coelho’s literary
agent, it would be a mistake to consider her, as people often do, as merely that,
because it accounts for only a small part of the work she has been doing since the
end of the 1980s.