Пауло Коэльо - Hippie

That is, until the mountains emerged before them. And the valley. And the river that cut through the giant rocks. Someone asked where they were, and the Indian man from earlier said they had just crossed into Austria.

“Soon we’ll get off and stop near the river running in the middle there so we can all clean up. Nothing better than cold water to make you feel that you have blood running in your veins and thoughts you can cast aside.”

Everyone became excited by the idea of taking off all their clothes, the absolute freedom, this connection to nature without any intermediaries.

The driver turned onto a rocky road, the bus swung from one side to the other, and many people screamed for fear of turning over, but the driver only chuckled. They had finally arrived at the bank of a stream or, more accurately, a branch of the river that broke off from the rest, forming a gentle curve where the water was calmer before it rejoined the flowing current.

“Half an hour. Take the opportunity to wash what you’re wearing.”

Everyone ran for their backpacks—any hippie pack always included a tiny hand towel, a toothbrush, and bars of soap, since they always ended up camping rather than staying in hotels.

“It’s so funny, this business of people thinking we don’t take showers. It’s possible we’re even cleaner than the majority of all the family men and women who level these accusations.”

Accusations? Who cared about that? Simply recognizing these criticisms gave power to their critics. The person who made this comment was the target of a series of angry looks—they had never paid any attention to what others said. Well, that was only half-true; they liked to call attention with their clothes and their flowers, their open and provocative sensuality, their low-cut blouses that hinted at breasts without bras, that sort of thing. And long skirts, because these were more sensual and more elegant—at least that was the determination of the group’s self-proclaimed stylists, whoever they were. Sensuality, by the way, wasn’t a means of attracting men but a way of being proud of your own body and making sure everyone noticed.

Those without towels grabbed spare T-shirts, blouses, sweaters, underwear—anything that could be used to dry off. Then they went down to the river, tossing off their clothing as they ran except the two young girls, of course, who took off their clothes but kept on their bras and panties.

A fairly strong cold wind blew in, and the driver explained that because the place they’d come to was dry and at a high altitude, the humidity and the air currents would help everything to dry much faster.

“That’s why I picked this spot.”

No one along the road above could see what was happening. The mountains kept the sun from coming out, but such was the place’s beauty—rocks surrounded them on both sides, pine trees clinging to the sides, stones polished by centuries of friction—that the first thing they decided to do was to throw themselves into the cold water without thinking—all at once, shouting, throwing water on one another, a moment of communion among the varied groups that had formed, as though to say, “This is why we live as pilgrims, because we belong to a world that hates standing still.”

If we stay quiet for an hour, we’ll begin to hear God, Paulo thought to himself. But if we cry out with joy, God will also hear us and come down to bless us.

The driver and his assistant, who must have seen the nude bodies of young people unafraid to bare themselves a million times, left the group to take a bath and went to check the tire pressure and oil.

That was the first time Paulo had seen Karla naked, and he had to keep his jealousy in check. Her breasts were neither large nor small, they reminded him of the model they’d seen during the photo shoot back in Dam Square—but actually, she was much, much more beautiful.

But the real queen of them all was Mirthe, with her long legs and perfect proportions, a goddess who’d descended upon some valley in the middle of the Austrian Alps. She smiled when she noticed Paulo watching her, and he smiled back, knowing that it all added up to nothing more than a game to make Rayan jealous and prompt him to distance himself from his Dutch temptation. As we all know, a game with ulterior motives can still become a reality—and for a moment Paulo dreamed of it and decided that from there on out he was going to make a greater effort with the woman who—of her own free will—was becoming increasingly close to him.

The travelers washed their clothes. The two annoying little girls pretended not to see the group of more than twenty nude people standing right next to them, and soon they seemed to have hit upon some captivating subject of conversation. Paulo washed and squeezed out his shirt and underwear, thought about washing his pants and using the spare ones he always carried with him, but he thought it better to leave this for the next group bath—jeans were useful in any situation, but they took a long time to dry.

He noted what seemed to be a small chapel on top of one of the mountains and the scores in the vegetation carved by the intermittent rivers that must have run through there each spring when the snow melted. At that moment, they were streaks of sand.

The rest was absolute chaos, the chaos of black rocks mixed with other rocks, without any order, any attention to appearance—which made them especially beautiful. They weren’t trying to do anything, not even to fall into order or arrangement so as to better resist nature’s constant assault. They could have been there for millions of years or a mere two weeks. Signs near the entrance asked drivers to be wary of rockslides, which meant the mountains were still in the process of formation, they were living, the rocks sought each other out the way human beings do.

This chaos was beautiful, it was the font of life, it was how he imagined the universe beyond that place—and also within himself. It was a beauty that wasn’t the fruit of comparisons, of prayers, or desires—simply a way of living a long life in the form of rocks, of pine trees that threatened to plummet from the mountains but which must have been there for years because they knew they were welcome there, pleasing in the eyes of the rocks, and each adored the other’s company.

“Further up there’s some sort of church or a chapel,” someone said.

Yes, everyone had noticed it but they all thought it had been a personal discovery and now they knew it wasn’t, and they silently asked themselves if someone lived there or if it had been abandoned years earlier, why it was painted white in a place where the rocks were black, how someone had managed to climb up there to build it in the first place. But anyway, there was the chapel, the only thing that differed from the surrounding primal chaos.

And there they all stood, gazing at the pines and the rocks, trying to determine the exact location where the surrounding mountains peaked, putting their clean clothes back on, and realizing, once again, that a bath was capable of curing many sorrows that refuse to budge from our minds.

The bus horn blew, it was time to resume their journey—something they’d forgotten about completely amid the beauty of that place.

By the look of it, Karla could be a bit obsessive with certain subjects.

“But how did you learn all this about parallel realities? It’s one thing to have an epiphany, a revelation in some cave, but returning over these thousands of miles is something else entirely. It’s not as if there’s a single spot where spiritual experiences are possible—God is all around us.”

“Yes, God is all around us. I always keep him close when I walk through the fields of Dooradoyle—the place where my family has lived for centuries—or when I go to watch the sea in Limerick.”