Like the Flowing River: Thoughts and Reflections (12 page)

M
aria Emilia Voss, a pilgrim to Santiago, tells the following story.

In ancient China, around the year 250
BC
, a certain prince of the region of Thing-Zda was about to be crowned emperor; however, according to the law, he first had to get married.

Since this meant choosing the future empress, the prince needed to find a young woman whom he could trust absolutely. On the advice of a wise man, he decided to summon all the young women of the region in order to find the most worthy candidate.

An old lady, who had served in the palace for many years, heard about the preparations for this gathering and felt very sad, for her daughter nurtured a secret love for the prince.

When the old lady got home, she told her daughter and was horrified to learn that she intended going to the palace.

The old lady was desperate.

‘But, daughter, what on earth will you do there? All the richest and most beautiful girls from the court will be present. It’s a ridiculous idea! I know you must be suffering, but don’t turn that suffering into madness.’

And the daughter replied:

‘My dear mother, I am not suffering and I certainly haven’t gone mad. I know that I won’t be chosen, but it’s my one chance to spend at least a few moments close to the prince, and that makes me happy, even though I know that a quite different fate awaits me.’

That night, when the young woman reached the palace, all the most beautiful girls were indeed there, wearing the most beautiful clothes and the most beautiful jewellery, and prepared to do anything to seize the opportunity on offer.

Surrounded by the members of his court, the prince announced a challenge.

‘I will give each of you a seed. In six months’ time, the young woman who brings me the loveliest flower will be the future empress of China.’

The girl took her seed and planted it in a pot, and since she was not very skilled in the art of gardening, she prepared the soil with great patience and tenderness, for she believed that if the flowers grew as large as her love, then she need not worry about the results.

Three months passed and no shoots had appeared. The young woman tried everything; she consulted farmers and peasants, who showed her the most varied methods of cultivation, but all to no avail. Each day she felt that her dream had moved farther off, although her love was as alive as ever.

At last, the six months were up, and still nothing had grown in her pot. Even though she had nothing to show, she knew how much effort and dedication she had put in
during that time, and so she told her mother that she would go back to the palace on the agreed date and at the agreed hour. Inside, she knew that this would be her last meeting with her true love, and she would not have missed it for the world.

The day of the audience arrived. The girl appeared with her plantless pot, and saw that all the other candidates had achieved wonderful results: each girl bore a flower lovelier than the last, in the most varied forms and colours.

Finally, the longed-for moment came. The prince entered and he studied each of the candidates with great care and attention. Having inspected them all, he announced the result and chose the servant’s daughter as his new wife.

All the other girls present began to protest, saying that he had chosen the only one of them who had failed to grow anything at all.

Then the prince calmly explained the reasoning behind the challenge.

‘This young woman was the only one who cultivated the flower that made her worthy of becoming the empress: the flower of honesty. All the seeds I handed out were sterile, and nothing could ever have grown from them.’

I
had published, at my own expense, a book entitled
The Archives of Hell
(of which I am very proud, but which is not currently available in bookshops simply because I have not yet found the courage to revise it). We all know how difficult it is to get published, but it is an even more complicated business getting your book into the shops. Every week, my wife would visit the bookshops in one part of the city, whilst I would go to another part to do the same thing.

So one day, she was crossing Avenida Copacabana with some copies of my book under her arm and there, on the other side of the street, were Jorge Amado and his wife Zélia Gattai! Almost without thinking, she went over and told them that her husband was a writer. Jorge and Zélia (who must hear this sort of thing every day) were kindness itself; they invited her to have a coffee with them, asked for a copy of the book, and concluded by sending me their best wishes for my literary career.

‘You’re mad!’ I said, when she came home. ‘Don’t you know he’s the most important writer in Brazil?’

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Anyone who has got where he has must have a pure heart.’

A pure heart: Christina could not have spoken a truer word. And Jorge, the most famous Brazilian writer outside of Brazil, was (and is) the great indicator of which way Brazilian literature was going.

One day, however,
The Alchemist
, written by another Brazilian, made it into the bestseller list in France, and in a few weeks it reached number one.

Days later, I received a cutting of the list, along with an affectionate letter from Jorge congratulating me. There is no room in Jorge Amado’s pure heart for feelings like jealousy.

Some journalists – from inside and outside Brazil – began trying to provoke him by asking him leading questions. Never, at any time, did Jorge allow himself to take the easy path of destructive criticism; indeed, he became my defender at a very difficult time in my life, when most reviews of my work were extremely harsh.

I finally won my first foreign literary award, in France to be precise. It just so happened that, on the date fixed for the award ceremony, I had a previous commitment in Los Angeles. Anne Carrière, my French publisher, was in despair. She talked to the American publishers, who refused to cancel any of the planned lecture tour.

The date of the award ceremony was approaching, and the prizewinner could not go: what should she do? Without consulting me, Anne phoned Jorge Amado and explained the situation. Jorge immediately offered to go there as my representative.

Not only that, but he telephoned the Brazilian ambassador and invited him along too, and made a wonderful
speech that touched the hearts of everyone present.

The oddest thing of all is that I only met Jorge Amado in person nearly a year after the prize-giving. Ah, but I had already learned to admire his heart as much as I admired his books: a famous author who never despises beginners, a Brazilian who is pleased to see other Brazilians succeed, a human being always ready to help when asked.

I
believe that, at least once a week, we all come across a stranger with whom we would like to talk, but we always lack the courage to do so. A few days ago, I received a letter on this subject sent by a reader I will call Antonio. I give below a shortened version of what happened to him.

I was walking along the Gran Vía when I saw a woman – petite, light-skinned, and well-dressed – begging for money from passers-by. As I approached, she asked me for a few coins with which to buy a sandwich. In Brazil, I was used to beggars wearing very old, dirty clothes, and so I decided not to give her anything and walked on. The look she gave me, however, left me with a strange feeling.

I went to my hotel and suddenly felt an incomprehensible urge to go back and give her some money – I was on holiday, I had just had lunch, I had money in my pocket, and it must be terribly humiliating to have to beg in the street and to be stared at by everyone.

I went back to the place where I had seen her. She was no longer there; I searched the nearby streets, but could find no trace of her. The following day, I repeated this pilgrimage, again in vain.

From that day on, I slept only fitfully. I returned to Brazil and told a friend about my experience. She said that I had failed to make some very important connection and advised me to ask for God’s help. I prayed, and seemed to hear a voice saying that I needed to find the beggar-woman again. I kept waking up in the night, sobbing. I realized that I could not go on like this, and so I scraped together enough money to buy a ticket back to Madrid in order to look for the beggar-woman.

I began a seemingly endless search, to which I devoted myself entirely; but time was passing, and my money was running out. I had to go to the travel agent’s to change my flight date home, having resolved not to go back to Brazil until I had given the woman the money I had failed to give her on that first meeting.

As I was coming out of the travel agent’s, I stumbled on a step and collided with someone – it was the woman I was looking for.

I automatically put my hand in my pocket, took out all the money I had in there, and held it out to her. I felt a profound sense of peace, and thanked God for that second wordless meeting, for that second chance.

I have been back to Spain several times since, and I know that I will never meet her again; but I did what my heart demanded.

I
was married to a young woman called Cecília and – at a period in my life when I had decided to give up everything for which I no longer felt any enthusiasm – we had gone to live in London. We stayed in a small, second-floor flat in Palace Street and were having great difficulty making new friends. However, every night, a young couple would leave the pub next door and walk past our window waving and calling to us to come down.

I was extremely worried about bothering the neighbours, and so I never went down, pretending, instead, that it had nothing to do with me. But the couple kept calling up to us, even when there was no one at the window.

One night, I did go down to complain about the noise. Their laughter immediately turned to sadness; they apologized, and went away. That night, I realized that, although we very much wanted to make new friends, I was far more concerned about ‘what the neighbours would say’.

I decided that the next time, I would invite the couple up to have a drink with us. I waited all week at the window, at the time they usually passed, but they never came back. I started going to the pub in the hope of seeing them, but the owner of the pub claimed not to know them.

I placed a notice in the window saying: ‘Call again.’ All this achieved was that, one night, a group of drunks began hurling every swearword under the sun at our window, and our neighbour – the one I had been so worried about – ended up complaining to the landlord.

I never saw the couple again.

‘I
’ve always been fascinated by the story of the Sybilline books,’ I said to Mônica, my friend and literary agent, while we were driving to Portugal, ‘which is about the importance of seizing every opportunity while it’s there, and how if you don’t, it’s lost for ever.’

The Sibyls, who were prophetesses capable of foreseeing the future, lived in Ancient Rome. One day, one of them came to the Emperor Tiberius’ palace bearing nine books. She claimed that they contained the future of the Empire and asked for ten gold talents in payment. Tiberius thought this far too expensive and refused to buy them.

The Sibyl left, burned three of the books, and returned with the remaining six. ‘They still cost ten gold talents,’ she said. Tiberius laughed and sent her away. How did she have the nerve to sell six books for the price of nine?

The Sibyl burned three more of the books and went back to Tiberius with the three remaining volumes. ‘They still cost ten gold talents,’ she said. Intrigued, Tiberius ended up buying the three volumes, but he could only read in them a little of what the future held.

When I had finished telling the story, I realized that we
were passing through Ciudad Rodrigo, close to the border between Spain and Portugal. There, four years earlier, I had been offered a book, but had declined to buy it.

‘Let’s stop here. I think that remembering the Sybilline books was a sign for me to put right a mistake I made in the past.’

During the first tour I made of Europe publicizing my books, I had had lunch in Ciudad Rodrigo. Afterwards, I visited the cathedral and met a priest. ‘Doesn’t the inside of the church look lovely in the afternoon sun,’ he said. I liked this remark; we talked a little, and he showed me round the church’s altars and cloisters and inner gardens. In the end, he offered me a book he had written about the church, but I chose not to buy it. When I left, I felt guilty; after all, I’m a writer, and there I was in Europe trying to sell my work, so why not buy the priest’s book out of solidarity? Then I forgot all about the episode, until that moment.

I stopped the car, and Mônica and I walked across the square in front of the church, where a woman was looking up at the sky.

‘Good afternoon,’ I said, ‘I’m looking for a priest who wrote a book about this church.’

‘Oh, you mean Father Stanislau. He died a year ago,’ she replied.

I felt terribly sad. Why had I not given Father Stanislau the same joy I feel whenever I see someone reading one of my own books?

‘He was one of the kindest men I’ve ever known,’ the woman went on. ‘He came from a very humble family, but
became an expert in archaeology. He helped my son get a grant to go to university.’

I told her why I was there.

‘Don’t go blaming yourself over a trifle like that, my dear,’ she said. ‘Go and visit the church again.’

I thought this was a sign too and so I did as she said. There was only one priest in the confessional, waiting for the faithful who did not come. I went over to him and he indicated that I should kneel down, but I said:

‘No, I don’t want to confess. I just came to buy a book about this church by a man called Stanislau.’

The priest’s eyes lit up. He left the confessional and returned minutes later with a copy of the book.

‘How wonderful that you should come here just for this,’ he said. ‘I’m Father Stanislau’s brother, and it makes me really proud. He must be in heaven now, glad to see that his work is considered so important.’

Of all the priests I could have met, I had come across Stanislau’s brother. I paid for the book, thanked him, and he embraced me. As I turned to leave, I heard him say:

‘Doesn’t the inside of the church look lovely in the afternoon sun!’

These were the same words that Father Stanislau had said four years before. Life always gives us a second chance.