Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life (3 page)

The audience doesn’t want him to leave. Waving their books in the air, they yell: ‘
Ne! Ne! Ne!
’

In the midst of the uproar, the interpreter explains that ‘
ne
’ means ‘no’–those present do not want the author to leave without signing their books. The problem is that the security people are also saying ‘
ne
’. There are simply too many people. The cries of ‘
Ne! Ne!
’ continue unabated. Coelho pretends not to have understood what the security people are saying, takes a pen out of his pocket and returns, smiling, to the microphone. ‘If you can get yourselves in some kind of order, I’ll try and sign a few.’

Dozens of people immediately start pushing forward, climbing on to the stage and surrounding the author. Fearing a stampede, the security guards decide to step in. They lift Coelho bodily off the floor and carry him through the curtains and from there to a secure room. He bursts out laughing.

‘You could have left me there. I’m not frightened of my readers. What I fear is creating panic. In 1998, in Zagreb, a security man with a pistol at his waist tried to break up the queue and you can imagine how dangerous that was! My readers would never harm me.’

With two bodyguards in front of him and two behind, and under the curious gaze of onlookers, the author is accompanied down the corridors of the convention centre to the Athenäum stand, where copies of
The Zahir
await him. The queue of 500 people has become a crowd too large to organize. The 150 voucher holders wave their numbered cards in the air, surrounded by the majority, who have only copies of Paulo Coelho’s books as their passport to an autograph. He is, however, used to such situations and immediately takes command. Speaking in French with an interpreter on hand, he raises his arms to address the multitude–and yes, this really is a multitude: 1,500? 2,000? It’s impossible to know who is there to get his autograph or to get a glimpse of their idol and who has
simply been attracted by the crowd. Finding it hard to be heard, he shouts: ‘Thank you for coming. I know lots of you have been here since midday and I’ve asked the publisher to provide water for you all. We’re going to have two queues, one for those who’ve got a voucher and the other for those who haven’t. I’m going to try to deal with everyone. Thank you!’

Now comes the hard work. While waiters circulate with trays of cold mineral water, the author tries to create some order out of the chaos. He signs thirty books for those in the queue and then another thirty for those who have had to wait outside. Every fifty or sixty minutes he pauses briefly to go to the toilet or to a small area outside, the only place in the entire conference centre where he can smoke, and which he has named ‘bad boy’s corner’. On his third visit, he comes across a non-smoker, book in hand, waiting out of line for an autograph. He is Jacques Gil, a twenty-year-old Brazilian from Rio who has moved to Hungary to play for the oldest football club there, Újpest. Coelho quickly signs the book and takes four or five drags on his cigarette. He then hurries back to the stand, where the crowd is waiting patiently.

By the time the last of the fans reach the table, it is dark, and with the official programme at an end, it is time to relax. The original group–with the addition of half-a-dozen young men and women who refuse to leave–agree to meet after dinner in the hotel foyer for an evening’s entertainment. At ten, everyone goes to a karaoke bar in Mammut, a popular shopping centre. The young Hungarians accompanying the author are disappointed when they learn that the sound system isn’t working.

‘That’s too bad,’ one complains to the manager. ‘We managed to persuade Paulo Coelho to sing for us…’

The mention of Coelho’s name again opens doors, and the manager whispers something to a shaven-headed man, who immediately picks up a motorcycle helmet from the table and rushes off. The manager returns to the group, smiling. ‘There’s no way we’re going to miss a performance by Paulo Coelho just because we’ve no karaoke equipment. My partner has gone to borrow some from another club. Please, take a seat.’

The motorcyclist takes so long to come back that the much-hoped-for performance becomes what musicians might call an ‘impromptu’ and a fairly modest one at that. Coelho sings Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ with
Andrew, a young American student on holiday in Hungary. He follows this up with a solo version of ‘Love Me Tender’, but declines to give an encore.

Everyone returns to the hotel at midnight, and the following morning, the members of the group go their separate ways. Mônica returns with her son and Juana to Barcelona, Lea goes back to Switzerland, and the author, after an hour’s walk through the centre of Budapest, is once again sitting in the back of the Mercedes driven by Szabados. Next to him is a cardboard box full of his books. He opens one at the first page, signs it and hands it to Gergely, who is in the front seat. In the last two books, he writes a personal dedication to his driver and his guide. An hour later, he is sitting in business class in another Air France plane, this time bound for Paris, and again he is saying his silent prayer.

When the plane has taken off, a beautiful young black woman with her hair arranged in dozens of tiny plaits approaches him with a copy of
The Pilgrimage
in Portuguese. Her name is Patrícia and she is secretary to the famous Cape Verdean singer Cesária Évora. She asks him to sign the book. ‘It’s not for me, it’s for Cesária, who’s sitting back there. She’s a big fan of yours, but she’s really shy.’

Two hours later in Paris, at Charles de Gaulle airport, Coelho has yet another short but unexpected signing and photo session, when he’s recognized by a group of Cape Verdean Rastafarians who are waiting for the singer. Their excitement attracts the attention of other people, who immediately recognize the author and ask to be allowed to take some photos as well. Although he’s clearly tired, he cheerfully deals with all of them. At the exit, a chauffeur is waiting with a Mercedes provided by Coelho’s French publisher. Although a suite costing 1,300 euros a day has been reserved for him at the Hotel Bristol, one of the most luxurious hotels in the French capital, he prefers to stay at his own place, a four-bedroom apartment in the smart 16th
arrondissement
with a wonderful view of the Seine. The problem is getting there. Today marks the anniversary of the massacre of the Armenians by the authorities of the Ottoman Empire, and a noisy demonstration is being held outside the Turkish Embassy, which is right near the apartment building. On the way, the Mercedes passes newspaper stands and kiosks displaying a full-page advertisement
for
Feminina
, the weekly women’s supplement with a circulation of 4 million, which is offering its readers an advance chapter from
The Zahir
. An enormous photo of the author fills the front page of the
Journal du Dimanche
, advertising an exclusive interview with him.

By dint of driving on the pavement and going the wrong way down one-way streets, Georges, the chauffeur, finally manages to park outside the apartment block. Despite having bought the place more than four years ago, Coelho is so unfamiliar with it that he still hasn’t managed to learn the six-digit code needed to open the main door. Christina is upstairs waiting for him, but she has no mobile with her and, besides, he can’t remember the phone number of the apartment. There are two alternatives: he can wait until a neighbour arrives or shout up to Christina for her to throw down the key. It’s drizzling, and the wait is becoming uncomfortable. In a six-storey building with just one apartment per floor he might have to wait hours for a Good Samaritan to come in or out. The only thing to do is to shout and hope that Christina is awake.

He stands in the middle of the street and yells, ‘Chris!’

No response. He tries again. ‘Christina!’

He looks round, fearing that he might be recognized, and yells one more time, ‘Chris-tiii-naaaaaa!’

Like a mother looking down at a naughty child, she appears, smiling, in jeans and woollen jumper, on the small balcony on the third floor and throws the bunch of keys to Coelho (who really does look tired now).

The couple spend only one night there. The following day they are both installed in suite 722 of the Hotel Bristol. The choice of hotel is deliberate: it is a temple to luxury in the Faubourg St Honoré and it is here that Coelho set parts of
The Zahir
, among the Louis XV sofas in the hotel lobby. In the book, the main character meets his wife, the journalist Esther, in the hotel café to drink a cup of hot chocolate decorated with a slice of crystallized orange. In recognition of this, the Bristol has decided to name the drink ‘
Le chocolat chaud de Paulo Coelho
’ and the name is now written in gold letters on tiny bars of chocolate served to guests at 10 euros a go.

On this particular afternoon, the hotel has become a meeting place for journalists, celebrities and various foreign guests, all of whom have been
invited to a dinner where Flammarion will announce the scoop of the year in the European publishing world: it has signed a contract to publish Paulo Coelho. Since 1994, the author has remained faithful to the small publisher Éditions Anne Carrière, which has achieved sales that have been the envy of even the most well-established publishing houses: in a little more than ten years it has sold 8 million copies of his books. After years of turning down ever-more enticing and hard-to-refuse offers, the author has decided to give way to what is reputed to be a 1.2 million-euro deposit in his bank account by Flammarion, although both parties refuse to confirm this sum.

Paulo and Christina appear in the hotel lobby. She is an attractive fifty-five-year-old, slightly shorter than Paulo, with whom she has been living since 1980. She is discreet and elegant, with fair skin, brown eyes and a delicate nose. On the inside of her left arm, she bears a tattoo of a small blue butterfly identical to Paulo’s. Her glossy hair is cut just below her ears, and over her long black dress she’s wearing a bright red shawl. But it is the two rings on her fingers (‘blessed by a tribal leader’, she explains) that attract most attention. They are a gift brought by Paulo from Kazakhstan. He, as ever, is dressed entirely in black–trousers, jacket, cowboy boots. The only slight change is that he is wearing a collar and tie.

The first friend to arrive is also a guest at the hotel and has come a long way. He is the Russian journalist Dmitry Voskoboynikov, a large, good-natured man who still bears the scars from the injuries he suffered during the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, where he and his wife Evgenia were spending Christmas and New Year. A former London correspondent for TASS and the son of a member of the KGB, he is the owner of Interfax, a news agency with its headquarters in Moscow and which covers the world from Portugal to the farthest-flung regions of eastern Asia. The four sit round one of the small tables in the marble lobby and Evgenia, a magnificent blonde Kazak, gives the author a special present–a richly bound edition of
The Zahir
translated into her mother tongue. Four glasses of champagne appear on the table along with crystal bowls full of shelled pistachios. The subject changes immediately to gastronomy and Evgenia says that she has eaten a ‘
couscous à Paulo Coelho
’ in Marrakesh, and Dmitry recalls dining in a Restaurant Paulo Coelho at Gstaad. The
conversation is interrupted by the arrival of another well-known journalist, the Brazilian Caco Barcellos, the head of the European offices of Rede Globo de Televisão. He has arrived recently from their London office, having been sent to Paris solely to report on the Flammarion dinner. At seven in the evening, Georges arrives with the Mercedes to take Paulo and Christina to the ceremony. The choice of venue for this banquet for 250 guests leaves no doubt as to the importance of the evening: it is the restaurant Le Chalet des Îles, a mansion that Napoleon III ordered to be dismantled and brought over from Switzerland to be rebuilt, brick by brick, on one of the islands on the lake of the Bois de Boulogne as proof of his love for his wife, the Spanish Countess Eugenia de Montijo. The guests are checked by security guards on the boat that takes them across to the Île Supérieure. On disembarking, they are taken by receptionists to the main door, where the directors of Flammarion take turns greeting the new arrivals. Publishers, literary critics, artists, diplomats and well-known representatives of the arts in Europe are surrounded by paparazzi and teams from gossip magazines wanting photos and interviews. There are at least two ambassadors present, Sergio Amaral from Brazil and Kuansych Sultanov from Kazakhstan, where
The Zahir
is partly set. The only notable absentee is Frédéric Beigbeder, a former advertising executive, writer and provocative literary critic, who has worked as a publisher at Flammarion since 2003. Some years ago, when he was a critic for the controversial French weekly
Voici
, he wrote a very negative review of Paulo Coelho’s
Manual of the Warrior of Light
. When everyone is seated, the author goes from table to table, greeting the other guests. Before the first course is served, there is a short speech from Frédéric Morel, managing director of Flammarion, who declares the new contract with Paulo Coelho to be a matter of pride for the publisher, which has launched so many great French writers. The author appears genuinely moved and gives a short address, thanking everyone for their good wishes and saying how pleased he is that so many people have come. After dessert, champagne toasts and dancing to a live band, the evening comes to an end. The following morning an hour-long flight takes the author and Christina to Pau in the south of France. There they take the car Coelho left in the car park some days earlier–a modest rented Renault Scénic identical to
Chris’s. His obvious lack of interest in consumer goods, even a certain stinginess, means that although he’s very rich, he didn’t own his first luxury car until 2006, and even that was obtained without any money changing hands. The German car-makers Audi asked him to produce a short text–about two typed pages–to accompany their annual shareholders report. When asked how much he wanted for the work he joked: ‘A car!’ He wrote the article and sent it off by e-mail. A few days later, a truck from Germany delivered a brand-new, gleaming black Audi Avant. When he heard that the car cost 100,000 euros, a Brazilian journalist worked out that the author had earned 16 euros per character. ‘Not bad,’ Coelho remarked when he read this. ‘Apparently Hemingway got paid 5 dollars a word.’