Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections (6 page)

W
e all have a tendency to believe in ‘Murphy’s Law’: that everything we do will turn out wrong. Jean Claude Carrière has an interesting story about precisely that feeling.

A man was quietly eating his breakfast. Suddenly, the piece of bread that he had just spread with butter fell to the ground.

Imagine his surprise when he looked down and saw that it had landed buttered side up! The man thought he had witnessed a miracle. Excited, he went to tell his friends what had happened, and they were all amazed; because when a piece of bread falls on the floor, it nearly always lands buttered side down, making a mess of everything.

‘Perhaps you’re a saint,’ one friend said. ‘And this is a sign from God.’

Soon the whole village knew, and they all started animatedly discussing the incident: how was it that, against all expectations, the man’s slice of bread had fallen on the floor buttered side up? Since no one could come up with a credible answer, they went to see a Teacher, who lived nearby and told him the story.

The Teacher requested that he be given one night to pray, reflect, and seek divine inspiration. The following day, they all returned, eager for an answer.

‘It’s quite simple really,’ said the Teacher. ‘The fact is, that the piece of bread fell exactly as it should have fallen, but the butter had been spread on the wrong side.’

I
don’t really own many books. A few years ago, driven by the idea of getting the maximum quality of life with the minimum number of possessions, I made certain choices. This doesn’t mean that I opted for the life of a monk; on the contrary, divesting yourself of many of your possessions gives you enormous freedom. Some of my friends (male and female) complain that, because they have so many clothes, they waste hours of their life trying to decide what to wear. Now that I have reduced my wardrobe to ‘basic black’, I no longer have this problem.

However, I’m not here to talk about fashion, but about books. To return to my main point, I decided to keep only four hundred books in my library, some because they have sentimental value, others because I’m always re-reading them. I took this decision for various reasons, and one of them was the sadness I felt at seeing how libraries, which have been painstakingly acquired over a lifetime, are often simply sold off as a job lot once the collector is dead, with no respect shown for them at all. Also why keep all these books at home? To prove to my friends how cultivated I am? To decorate the walls? The books I have bought would be of far more use in a public library than in my house.

I used to say that I needed my books in case I ever wanted to look something up in them. Now, however, when I want to find out something, I turn on my computer, type in the key word or words, and everything I need to know appears on the screen – courtesy of the internet, the biggest library on the planet.

Of course, I still continue to buy books – there’s no electronic substitute for them; but as soon as I’ve finished a book, I let it go; I give it to someone else, or to the public library. My intention is not to save forests or to be generous. I simply believe that a book has its own journey to make, and should not be condemned to being stuck on a shelf.

Being a writer and living, as I do, on royalties, I might be working to my own detriment; after all, the more books that are bought, the more money I earn. However, that would be unfair on the reader, especially in countries where a large part of the government budget for buying books for libraries is clearly not based on the two main criteria for making a serious choice – the pleasure one gets from reading a book, plus the quality of the writing.

Let’s leave our books free to travel, then, to be touched by other hands, and enjoyed by other eyes. As I’m writing this, I have a vague memory of a poem by Jorge Luis Borges, which speaks of books that will never again be opened.

Where am I now? Sitting in a café in a small Pyrenean town in France, enjoying the air-conditioning, because the heat outside is unbearable. I happen to have Borges’ complete works in my house, which is a few kilometres from where I’m writing this – he’s one of those authors I constantly
read and re-read. But why not put my theory to the test?

I cross the street and make the five-minute walk to another café, one that is equipped with computers (an establishment known by the nice, but contradictory, name of ‘cyber-café’). I greet the owner, order a glass of ice-cold mineral water, go to a search engine, and key in some of the words of the one line I do remember, along with the name of the author. In less than two minutes, I have the poem before me:

There is a line from Verlaine I’ll never now recall,

There is a street nearby from which my footsteps are barred,

There is a mirror that has looked its last on my face,

There is a door I have closed for the final time.

Amongst the books in my library (I can see them now)

There are some I will never open again.

I felt exactly the same about many of the books I gave away: that I would simply never open them again, because new, interesting books are constantly being published, and I love to read. Now, I think it’s wonderful that people should have libraries; generally speaking, a child’s first contact with books arises out of their curiosity to find out about those bound volumes containing pictures and words; but I find it equally wonderful when, at a book-signing, a reader comes up to me clutching a battered copy of one of my books that has been passed from friend to friend dozens of times. This means that the book has travelled just as its author’s mind travelled while he was writing it.

O
nce, in the winter of 1981, I was walking with my wife through the streets of Prague and we came across a young man making drawings of the buildings around him.

Although I have a real horror of carrying things when I’m travelling (and we still had a lot of journeying ahead of us), I really liked one of the drawings and decided to buy it.

When I held out the money, I noticed that the young man was not wearing gloves, despite the −5°C temperatures.

‘Why aren’t you wearing gloves?’ I asked.

‘So that I can hold my pencil.’

And he began telling me how he adored Prague in winter, and how it was the best season in which to draw the city. He was so pleased with this sale, that he asked if he could draw a portrait of my wife – without charge.

While I was waiting for him to finish the drawing, I realized that something strange had happened. We had been talking for almost five minutes, and yet neither of us could speak the other’s language. We made ourselves understood by gestures, smiles, facial expressions, and the desire to share something.

That simple desire to share something meant that we
could enter the world of language without words, where everything is always clear, and there is no danger of being misinterpreted.

A
week after the 2003 Frankfurt Book Fair, I get a call from my Norwegian publisher. The organizers of the concert being arranged for the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi, would like me to write something for the event.

This is an honour I should not refuse; after all, Shirin Ebadi is a legendary figure. She may be less than five feet tall, but she has sufficient stature to speak out in defence of human rights, and to have her voice heard all around the world. At the same time, I feel slightly nervous about such a responsibility – the event will be televised in 110 countries, and I have only two minutes to talk about someone who has dedicated her whole life to other people. I walk in the forests near the old mill where I live when I am in Europe. Several times, I consider phoning to tell them that I can’t think of anything to say; but then, what makes life interesting are the challenges we face, and so I end up accepting the invitation.

I travel to Oslo on 9 December, and the following day – a lovely, sunny day – I am in the audience at the award ceremony. The vast windows of the Prefecture provide a view of the port where, at about the same time of year, twenty
years before, I had sat with my wife, looking out at the icy sea and eating prawns that had just been brought in by the fishing boats. I think of the long journey that has brought me from that port to this room, but my memories of the past are interrupted by the sound of trumpets and the arrival of the Queen and the royal family. The organizing committee hands over the prize, and Shirin Ebadi gives a passionate speech denouncing the way certain governments are using the so-called war on terror as a justification for trying to create a kind of worldwide police state.

That night, at the concert in honour of the prize-winner, Catherine Zeta-Jones announces that my text will be read. At that moment, I press a button on my mobile phone, and the phone rings in the old mill where I live (this has all been planned beforehand), and my wife is suddenly there with me, listening to Michael Douglas as he reads my words.

This is what I wrote, words which can, I think, be applied to all those who are working to create a better world.

The Persian poet Rumi once said that life is like being sent by a king to another country in order to carry out a particular task. The person sent may do a hundred other things in that other country, but if he or she fails to fulfil the particular task he or she was charged with, it is as if nothing had been done.

To the woman who understood her task.

To the woman who looked at the road ahead of her, and knew that hers would be a difficult journey.

To the woman who did not attempt to make light of
those difficulties, but, on the contrary, spoke out against them and made them clearly visible.

To the woman who made the lonely feel less alone, who fed those who hungered and thirsted for justice, who made the oppressor feel as bad as those he oppressed.

To the woman who always keeps her door open, her hands working, her feet moving.

To the woman who personifies the verses of that other Persian poet, Hafez, when he says:

Not even seven thousand years of joy can justify seven days of repression.

To the woman who is here tonight, may she be each and every one of us, may her example spread, may she still have many difficult days ahead, so that she can complete her work, so that, for the generations to come, the meaning of ‘injustice’ will be found only in dictionary definitions and never in the lives of human beings.

And may she travel slowly, because her pace is the pace of change, and change, real change, always takes a very long time.

A
visitor arrives from Morocco and tells me a curious story about how certain desert tribes perceive original sin.

Eve was walking in the Garden of Eden when the serpent slithered over to her.

‘Eat this apple,’ said the serpent.

Eve, who had been properly instructed by God, refused.

‘Eat this apple,’ insisted the serpent. ‘You need to look more beautiful for your man.’

‘No, I don’t,’ replied Eve. ‘He has no other woman but me.’

The serpent laughed.

‘Of course he has.’

And when Eve did not believe him, he led her up to a well on the top of a hill.

‘She’s in that cave. Adam hid her in there.’

Eve leaned over and, reflected in the water of the well, she saw a lovely woman. She immediately ate the apple the serpent was holding out to her.

According to this same Moroccan tribe, a return to paradise is guaranteed to anyone who recognizes his or her reflection in the water and feels no fear.

T
he journalist from
The Mail on Sunday
appears at my hotel in London and asks one simple question: ‘If you were to die today, what kind of funeral would you like?’

The truth is that the idea of death has been with me every day since 1986, when I walked the Road to Santiago. Up until then, I had always been terrified at the thought that, one day, everything would end; but on one of the stages of that pilgrimage, I performed an exercise that consisted in experiencing what it felt like to be buried alive. It was such an intense experience that I lost all fear, and afterwards saw death as my daily companion, who is always by my side, saying: ‘I will touch you, but you don’t know when. Therefore live life as intensely as you can.’

Because of this, I never leave until tomorrow what I can do or experience today – and that includes joys, work obligations, saying I’m sorry if I feel I’ve offended someone, and contemplation of the present moment as if it were my last. I can remember many occasions when I have smelled the perfume of death: that far-off day in 1974, in Aterro do Flamengo (Rio de Janeiro), when the taxi I was travelling in was blocked by another car, and a group of armed paramilitaries jumped out and put a hood over my head. Even
though they assured me that nothing bad would happen to me, I was convinced that I was about to become another of the military regime’s ‘disappeared’.

Or when, in August 1989, I got lost on a climb in the Pyrenees. I looked around at the mountains bare of snow and vegetation, thought that I wouldn’t have the strength to go back, and concluded that my body would not be found until the following summer. Finally, after wandering around for many hours, I managed to find a track that led me to a remote village.

The journalist from
The Mail on Sunday
insists: but what would my funeral be like? Well, according to my will, there will be no funeral. I have decided to be cremated, and my wife will scatter my ashes in a place called El Cebrero in Spain – the place where I found my sword. Any unpublished manuscripts and typescripts will remain unpublished (I’m horrified at the number of ‘posthumous works’ or ‘trunks full of papers’ that writers’ heirs unscrupulously publish in order to make some money; if the authors chose not to publish these things while they were alive, their privacy should be respected). The sword that I found on the Road to Santiago will be thrown into the sea, and thus be returned to the place whence it came. And my money, along with the royalties that will continue to be received for another seventy years, will be devoted entirely to the charitable foundation I have set up.

‘And what about your epitaph?’ asks the journalist. Well, since I’m going to be cremated, there won’t be a headstone on which to write an inscription, since my ashes will have been carried away on the wind. But if I had
to choose a phrase, I would choose this: ‘He died while he was still alive.’ That might seem a contradiction in terms; but I know a lot of people who have stopped living, even though they continue working and eating and carrying on with their usual social activities. They do everything on automatic pilot, unaware of the magic moment that each day brings with it, never stopping to think about the miracle of life, not understanding that the next minute could be their last on the face of this planet.

The journalist leaves, and I sit down at the computer and decide to write this. I know it’s not a topic anyone likes to think about, but I have a duty to my readers – to make them think about the important things in life. And death is possibly
the
most important thing. We are all walking towards death, but we never know when death will touch us and it is our duty, therefore, to look around us, to be grateful for each minute. But we should also be grateful to death, because it makes us think about the importance of each decision we take, or fail to take; it makes us stop doing anything that keeps us stuck in the category of the ‘living dead’ and, instead, urges us to risk everything, to bet everything on those things we always dreamed of doing, because, whether we like it or not, the angel of death is waiting for us.