Paulo Coelho - Aleph

“Be blessed. And just as you are transforming your own life, may you transform the lives of those around you. When they ask, do not forget to give. When they knock at your door, be sure to open it. When they lose something and come to you, do whatever you can to help them find what they have lost. First, though, ask; knock at the door and find out what is missing from your life. A hunter always knows what to expect—eat or be eaten.”

I nod.

“You have experienced this before and will do so many times,” the shaman goes on. “Someone who is your friend is also a friend of the eagle of Baikal. Nothing special will happen tonight; you will have no visions, no magical experiences or trances that bring you into contact with the living or the dead. You will receive no special power. You will merely feel joy when the eagle of Baikal shows the lake to your soul. You will see nothing, but up above, your spirit will be filled with delight.”

My spirit is indeed filled with delight, even though I can see nothing. I don’t have to. I know he is telling the truth. When my spirit returns to my body, it will be wiser and calmer.

Time stops, because I can no longer keep track of it. The flames flicker, casting strange shadows on the shaman’s face, but I am barely here. I allow my spirit to go strolling; it needs to, after so much work and effort by my side. I don’t feel cold anymore. I don’t feel anything. I am free and will remain so for as long as the eagle of Baikal is flying over the lake and the snowy mountains. It’s a shame that my spirit cannot tell me what it sees, but then again, I don’t need to know everything that happens to me.

The wind is getting up again. The shaman makes a low bow to the earth and to the sky. The fire, in the shelter of its hole, suddenly goes out. I look at the moon, which is high in the sky now, and I can see the shapes of birds flying around us. The shaman is once again an old man. He seems tired as he puts his drum back into a large embroidered bag.

Yao sticks his hand in his left pocket and pulls out a handful of coins and notes. I do the same. Yao says, “We went begging for the eagle of Baikal. Here is what we received.”

The shaman bows and thanks us for the money, and we all walk unhurriedly back to the boat. The sacred island of the shamans has its own spirit; it is dark, and we can never be sure that we are putting our feet in the right place.

When we reach the shore, we look for Hilal, but the two women explain that she has gone back to the hotel. Only then do I realize that the shaman did not mention her once.

THE HEAT IN MY ROOM is still on maximum. Before even bothering to reach for the light switch, I take off my anorak, hat, and scarf, and go over to the window, intending to open it and let in a little fresh air. The hotel is on a small hill, and I can see the lights of the village below going out one by one. I stand there for a while, imagining the marvels that my spirit must have seen. Then, just as I’m about to turn around, I hear a voice saying, “Don’t turn around.”

Hilal is there, and the tone in which she says these words frightens me. She sounds deadly serious.

“I’m armed.”

No, that’s impossible. Unless those women…

“Take a few steps back.”

I do as ordered.

“A little more. That’s it. Now take a step to the right. Okay, stop there.”

I’m not thinking anymore. The survival instinct has taken charge of all my reactions. In a matter of seconds my mind has processed my options: I could throw myself on the floor or try to strike up a conversation or simply wait and see what she does next. If she really is determined to kill me, she’ll do so soon, but if she doesn’t shoot in the next few minutes, she’ll start talking, and that will improve my chances.

There is a deafening noise, an explosion, and I find myself covered in shards of glass. The bulb above my head has burst.

“In my right hand I have my bow, and in my left my violin. No, don’t turn around.”

I stay where I am and breathe a sigh of relief. There’s nothing magical or special about what has just happened; opera singers can shatter a champagne glass, for example, by singing a particular note that makes the air vibrate at a frequency that can cause very fragile objects to break.

The bow touches the strings again, producing the same piercing sound.

“I know what happened. I saw it. The women took me there with no need for a ring of light.”

She’s seen it.

An immense weight is lifted off my glass-strewn shoulders. Yao doesn’t know it, but our journey to this place is also part of my journey back to my kingdom. I didn’t need to tell her anything. She had seen it.

“You abandoned me when I most needed you. I died because of you and have returned now to haunt you.”

“You’re not haunting me or frightening me. I was forgiven.”

“You forced me to forgive you. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

Another shrill, unpleasant chord.

“If you like, you can withdraw your forgiveness.”

“No, I don’t want to. You are forgiven. And if you needed me to forgive you a hundred times over, I would. But the images were very confused in my mind. I need you to tell me exactly what happened. I remember only that I was naked. You were looking at me, and I was telling everyone there that I loved you and that was why I was condemned to death. My love condemned me.”

“Can I turn around now?”

“Not yet. First, tell me what happened. All I know is that in a past life I died because of you. It could have been here, it could have been somewhere else in the world, but I sacrificed myself in the name of love to save you.”

My eyes have grown accustomed to the darkness now, but the heat in the room is unbearable.

“What did those women do, exactly?”

“We sat down together on the lakeshore; they lit a fire, beat on a drum, went into a trance, and gave me something to drink. When I drank, I started getting these confusing images in my head. They didn’t last long. All I remember is what I’ve just told you. I thought it was some kind of nightmare, but they assured me that you and I had been together in a past life. You told me so yourself.”

“No, it happened in the present; it’s happening now. At this moment, I’m in a hotel room in some nameless Siberian village, but I’m also in a dungeon near Córdoba in Spain. I’m with my wife in Brazil, as well as with the many other women I’ve known, and in some of those lives I myself am a woman. Play something.”

I take off my sweater. She starts to play a sonata not originally written for the violin. My mother used to play it on the piano when I was a child.

“There was a time when the world, too, was a woman, and her energy was very beautiful. People believed in miracles; the present moment was all there was, and so time did not exist. The Greeks have two words for time, the first of which is kairos , meaning God’s time, eternity. Then a change occurred. The battle for survival, the need to know when to plant crops so that they could be harvested. That was when time as we know it now became part of our history. The Greeks call it Chronos; the Romans called it Saturn, a god whose first act was to devour his own children. We became the slaves of memory. Keep playing, and I’ll explain more clearly.”

She continues to play. I start to cry but manage to keep talking.

“At this moment, I am in a garden in a town, sitting on a bench at the back of my house, looking up at the sky and trying to work out what people mean when they use the expression ‘building castles in the air,’ an expression I first heard an hour ago. I am seven years old. I am trying to build a golden castle but finding it hard to concentrate. My friends are having supper in their houses, and my mother is playing the same music I’m hearing now, only on the piano. If I didn’t feel the need to describe what I’m feeling, I would be entirely there. The smell of summer, cicadas singing in the trees, and me thinking about the little girl I’m in love with.”