Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life

537 Pages·2009·2.5 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.’