radical change in our lives, a change that is associated with the same principle: loss. When faced by any loss, there’s no point in trying to recover what has been, it’s best to take advantage of the large space that opens up before us and fill it with something new. In theory, every loss is for our good; in practice, though, that is when we question the existence of God and ask ourselves, ‘What did I do to deserve this?’
Lord, preserve me from tragedy and I will follow Your desires.
The moment I think this, there is a great crack of thunder and the sky is lit up by a flash of lightning.
Again, fear and trembling. A sign. Here I am trying to persuade myself that I always give the best of myself and nature is telling me exactly the opposite: anyone truly committed to life never stops walking. Heaven and earth are meeting in a storm which, when it’s over, will leave the air purer and the fields fertile, but before that happens, houses will be destroyed, centuries-old trees will topple, paradises will be flooded.
A yellow shape approaches.
I surrender myself to the rain. There’s more lightning, but my feeling of helplessness is being replaced by something positive, as if my soul were gradually being washed clean by the water of forgiveness.
Bless and you will be blessed.
The words emerge naturally from me – a wisdom I didn’t know I had, which I know does not belong to me, but which appears sometimes and stops me doubting everything I have learned over the years.
My great problem is this: despite such moments, I continue to doubt.
The yellow shape is there before me. It’s my wife, wearing one of the garish capes we use when we go walking in remote parts of the mountains. If we get lost, we’ll be easy to find.
‘Have you forgotten that we’re going out to supper tonight?’
No, I haven’t forgotten. I abandon universal metaphysics, in which thunder claps are the voices of the gods, and return to the reality of a provincial town and a supper of good wine, roast lamb and the cheerful conversation of friends, who will tell us about their recent adventures on their Harley-Davidson. I go back home to change my clothes and give my wife a brief summary of my conversation with J. that afternoon.
‘Did he tell you where you should go?’ she asks.
‘He told me to make a commitment.’
‘And is that so very hard? Stop being so difficult. You’re acting like an old man.’
Hervé and Véronique have invited two other guests, a middle-aged French couple. One of them is introduced as a ‘clairvoyant’, whom they met in Morocco.
The man seems neither pleasant nor unpleasant, merely absent. Then, in the middle of supper, as if he had entered a kind of trance, he says to Véronique:
‘Be careful when driving. You’re going to have an accident.’
I find this remark in the worst possible taste, because if Véronique takes it seriously, her fear will end up attracting negative energy and then things really might turn out as predicted.
‘How interesting,’ I say, before anyone else can react. ‘You are presumably capable of travelling in time, back into the past and forward into the future. I was speaking about just that with a friend this afternoon.’
‘When God allows me to, I can see. I know who each of the people around this table was, is and will be. I don’t understand my gift, but I long ago learned to accept it.’
The conversation should be about the trip to Sicily with friends who share a passion for classic Harley-Davidsons, but suddenly it seems to have taken a dangerous turn into areas I don’t want to enter right now. A case of synchronicity.
It’s my turn to speak:
‘You also know, then, that God only allows us to see such things when he wants something to change.’
I turn to Véronique and say, ‘Just take care. When something on the astral plane is placed on the earthly plane, it loses a lot of its force. In other words, I’m almost sure there will be no accident.’
Véronique offers everyone more wine. She thinks that the Moroccan clairvoyant and I are on a collision course. This isn’t the case; the man really can ‘see’ and that frightens me. I’ll talk to Hervé about it afterwards.
The man barely looks at me; he still has the absent air of someone who has unwittingly entered another dimension and now has a duty to communicate what he is experiencing. He wants to tell me something, but chooses, instead, to turn to my wife.
‘The soul of Turkey will give your husband all the love she possesses, but she will spill his blood before she reveals what it is she is seeking.’
Another sign confirming that I should not travel now, I think, knowing full well that we always try to interpret things in accordance with what we want and not as they are.
Chinese Bamboo
Sitting in this train travelling from Paris to London, on my way to the Book Fair, is a blessing to me. Whenever I visit England, I remember 1977, when I left my job with a Brazilian recording company determined, from then on, to make my living as a writer. I rented a flat in Bassett Road, made various friends, studied vampirology, discovered the city on foot, fell in love, saw every film being shown and, before a year had passed, I was back in Rio, incapable of writing a single line.
This time I will only be staying in London for three days. There will be a signing session, meals in Indian and Lebanese restaurants, and conversations in the hotel lobby about books, bookshops and authors. I have no plans to return to my house in Saint Martin until the end of the year. From London I will get a flight back to Rio, where I can again hear my mother tongue spoken in the streets, drink acai juice every night and gaze tirelessly out of my window at the most beautiful view in the world: Copacabana beach.
Shortly before we arrive, a young man enters the carriage carrying a bunch of roses and starts looking around him. How odd, I think, I’ve never seen flower-sellers on Eurostar before.
‘I need twelve volunteers,’ he says. ‘Each person will carry a single rose and present it to the woman who is the love of my life and whom I’m going to ask to marry me.’
Several people volunteer, including me, although, in the end, I’m not one of the chosen twelve. Nevertheless, when the train pulls into the station, I decide to follow the other volunteers. The young man points to a girl on the platform. One by one, the passengers hand her their red roses. Finally, he declares his love for her, everyone applauds, and the young woman turns scarlet with embarrassment. Then the couple kiss and go off, their arms around each other.
One of the stewards says:
‘That’s the most romantic thing I’ve seen in all the time I’ve been working here.’
The scheduled book-signing lasts nearly five hours, but it fills me with positive energy and makes me wonder why I’ve been in such a state all these months. If my spiritual progress seems to have met an insurmountable barrier, perhaps I just need to be patient. I have seen and felt things that very few of the people around me will have seen and felt.
Before setting out
