Witch of Portobello Read online

  “You don’t need to worry,” I said, feeling a desire to hold her hand. “It’ll be all right. Talk about calligraphy. Talk about dancing. Talk about the things you know.”

  “If I did that, I’d never discover what it is I don’t know. When I’m there, I’ll have to allow my mind to go still and let my heart begin to speak. But it’s the first time I’ve done that, and I’m frightened.”

  “Would you like me to come with you?”

  She accepted at once. We arrived at the restaurant, ordered some wine, and started to drink. I was drinking in order to get up the courage to say what I thought I was feeling, although it seemed absurd to me to be declaring my love to someone I hardly knew. And she was drinking because she was afraid of talking about what she didn’t know.

  After the second glass of wine, I realized how on edge she was. I tried to hold her hand, but she gently pulled away.

  “I can’t be afraid.”

  “Of course you can, Athena. I often feel afraid, and yet, when I need to, I go ahead and face up to whatever it is I’m afraid of.”

  I was on edge too. I refilled our glasses. The waiter kept coming over to ask what we’d like to eat, and I kept telling him that we’d order later.

  I was talking about whatever came into my head. Athena was listening politely, but she seemed far away, in some dark universe full of ghosts. At one point, she told me again about the woman in Scotland and what she’d said. I asked if it made sense to teach what you didn’t know.

  “Did anyone ever teach you how to love?” she replied.

  Could she be reading my thoughts?

  “And yet,” she went on, “you’re as capable of love as any other human being. How did you learn? You didn’t, you simply believe. You believe, therefore you love.”

  “Athena…”

  I hesitated, then managed to finish my sentence, although not at all as I had intended.

  “…perhaps we should order some food.”

  I realized that I wasn’t yet prepared to mention the things that were troubling my world. I called the waiter over and ordered some starters, then some more starters, a main dish, a pudding, and another bottle of wine. The more time I had, the better.

  “You’re acting strangely. Was it my comment about your books? You do what you like. It’s not my job to change your world. I was obviously sticking my nose in where it wasn’t wanted.”

  I had been thinking about that business of “changing the world” only a few seconds before.

  “Athena, you’re always telling me about…no, I need to talk about something that happened in that bar in Sibiu, with the gypsy music.”

  “In the restaurant, you mean?”

  “Yes, in the restaurant. Today we were discussing books, the things that we accumulate and that take up space. Perhaps you’re right. There’s something I’ve been wanting to do ever since I saw you dancing that night. It weighs more and more heavily on my heart.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “Of course you do. I’m talking about the love I’m discovering now and doing my best to destroy before it reveals itself. I’d like you to accept it. It’s the little I have of myself, but it’s not my own. It’s not exclusively yours, because there’s someone else in my life, but I would be happy if you could accept it anyway. An Arab poet from your country, Khalil Gibran, says: ‘It is well to give when asked, but it is better to give unasked.’ If I don’t say everything I need to say tonight, I’ll merely be a spectator watching events unfold rather than the person actually experiencing them.”

  I took a deep breath. The wine had helped me to free myself.

  She drained her glass, and I did the same. The waiter appeared with the food, making a few comments about the various dishes, explaining the ingredients and the way in which they had been cooked. Athena and I kept our eyes fixed on each other. Andrea had told me that this is what Athena had done when they met for the first time, and she was convinced it was simply a way of intimidating others.

  The silence was terrifying. I imagined her getting up from the table and citing her famous, invisible boyfriend from Scotland Yard, or saying that she was very flattered, but she had to think about the class she was to give the next day.

  “And is there anything you would withhold? Some day, all that you have shall be given. The trees give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish.”

  She was speaking quietly and carefully because of the wine she’d drunk, but her voice nevertheless silenced everything around us.

  “And what greater merit shall there be than that which lies in the courage and the confidence, nay the charity, of receiving? You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.”

  She said all this without smiling. I felt as if I were conversing with a sphinx.

  “Words written by the same poet you were quoting. I learned them at school, but I don’t need the book where he wrote those words. I’ve kept his words in my heart.”

  She drank a little more wine. I did the same. I couldn’t bring myself to ask if she accepted my love or not, but I felt lighter.

  “You may be right. I’ll donate my books to a public library and only keep those I really will reread one day.”

  “Is that what you want to talk about now?”

  “No. I just don’t know how to continue the conversation.”

  “Shall we eat, then, and enjoy the food. Does that seem a good idea?”

  No, it didn’t seem like a good idea. I wanted to hear something different, but I was afraid to ask, and so I babbled on about libraries, books, and poets, regretting having ordered so many dishes. I was the one who wanted to escape now, because I didn’t know how to continue.

  In the end, she made me promise that I would be at the theater for her first class, and for me that was a signal. She needed me; she had accepted what I had unconsciously dreamed of offering her ever since I saw her dancing in a restaurant in Transylvania, but which I had only been capable of understanding that night.

  Or, as Athena would have said, of believing.

  ANDREA MCCAIN, ACTRESS

  Of course I’m to blame. If it hadn’t been for me, Athena would never have come to the theater that morning, gathered us all together, asked us to lie down on the stage and begin a relaxation exercise involving breathing and bringing our awareness to each part of the body.

  “Relax your thighs…”

  We all obeyed, as if we were before a goddess, someone who knew more than all of us, even though we’d done this kind of exercise hundreds of times before. We were all curious to know what would come after “…now relax your face and breathe deeply.”

  Did she really think she was teaching us anything new? We were expecting a lecture, a talk! But I must control myself. Let’s get back to what happened then. We relaxed, and then came a silence that left us completely disoriented. When I discussed it with my colleagues afterward, we all agreed that we felt the exercise was over, that it was time to sit up and look around, except that no one did. We remained lying down, in a kind of enforced meditation, for fifteen interminable minutes.

  Then she spoke again.

  “You’ve had plenty of time to doubt me now. One or two of you looked impatient. But now I’m going to ask you just one thing: when I count to three, be different. I don’t mean be another person, an animal, or a house. Try to forget everything you’ve learned in drama courses. I’m not asking you to be actors and to demonstrate your abilities. I’m asking you to cease being human and to transform yourselves into something you don’t know.”

  We were all still lying on the floor with our eyes closed and so couldn’t see how anyone else was reacting. Athena was playing on that uncertainty.

  “I’m going to say a few words and you’ll immediately associate certain images with those words. Remember that you’re all full of the poison of preconceived ideas and that if I were to say fate, you would probably start imagining your lives in the futu
re. If I were to say red, you would probably make some psychoanalytic interpretation. That isn’t what I want. As I said, I want you to be different.”

  She couldn’t explain what she really wanted. When no one complained, I felt sure they were simply being polite, but that when the “lecture” was over, they would never invite Athena back. They would even tell me that I’d been naive to have sought her out in the first place.

  “The first word is sacred.”

  So as not to die of boredom, I decided to join in the game. I imagined my mother, my boyfriend, my future children, a brilliant career.

  “Make a gesture that means sacred.”

  I folded my arms over my chest, as if I were embracing all my loved ones. I found out later that most people opened their arms to form a cross, and that one of the women opened her legs, as if she were making love.

  “Relax again, and again forget about everything and keep your eyes closed. I’m not criticizing, but from what I saw, you seem to be giving form to what you consider to be sacred. That isn’t what I want. When I give you the next word, don’t try to define it as it manifests itself in the world. Open all the channels and allow the poison of reality to drain away. Be abstract, and then you will enter the world I’m guiding you toward.”

  That last phrase had real authority, and I felt the energy in the theater change. Now the voice knew where it wanted to take us. She was a teacher now, not a lecturer.

  Earth, she said.

  Suddenly I understood what she meant. It was no longer my imagination that mattered, but my body in contact with the soil. I was the earth.

  “Make a gesture that represents earth.”

  I didn’t move. I was the soil of that stage.

  “Perfect,” she said. “None of you moved. For the first time you all experienced the same feeling. Instead of describing something, you transformed yourself into an idea.”

  She fell silent again for what I imagined were five long minutes. The silence made us feel lost, unable to tell whether she simply had no idea how to continue, or if she was merely unfamiliar with our usual intense rhythm of working.

  “I’m going to say a third word.”

  She paused.

  “Center.”

  I felt—and this was entirely unconscious—that all my vital energy went to my navel, where it glowed yellow. This frightened me. If someone touched it, I could die.

  “Make a gesture for center!”

  Her words sounded like a command. I immediately placed my hands on my belly to protect myself.

  “Perfect,” said Athena. “You can sit up now.”

  I opened my eyes and saw the extinguished stage lights up above me, distant and dull. I rubbed my face and got to my feet. I noticed that my colleagues looked surprised.

  “Was that the lecture?” asked the director.

  “You can call it a lecture if you like.”

  “Well, thank you for coming. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we have to start rehearsals for the next play.”

  “But I haven’t finished yet.”

  “Perhaps another time.”

  Everyone seemed confused by the director’s reaction. After some initial doubts, I think we were enjoying the session—it was different, no pretending to be things or people, no visualizing apples or candles. No sitting in a circle holding hands, as if we were practicing some sacred ritual. It was simply something slightly absurd, and we wanted to know where it would take us.

  Without a flicker of emotion, Athena bent down to pick up her bag. At that moment, we heard a voice from the stalls.

  “Marvelous!”

  Heron had come to join her. The director was afraid of him because Heron knew the theater critics on his newspaper and had close ties with the media generally.

  “You stopped being individuals and turned into ideas. What a shame you’re so busy, but don’t worry, Athena, we’ll find another group to work with and then I can see how your ‘lecture’ ends. I have contacts.”

  I was still thinking about the light traveling through my whole body to my navel. Who was that woman? Had my colleagues experienced the same thing?

  “Just a moment,” said the director, aware of the look of surprise on everyone’s face. “I suppose we could postpone rehearsals today…”

  “No, you mustn’t do that. Besides, I have to get back to the newspaper and write something about this woman. You carry on doing what you always do. I’ve just found an excellent story.”

  If Athena felt lost in that debate between the two men, she didn’t show it. She climbed down from the stage and went off with Heron. We turned to the director and asked him why he’d reacted like that.

  “With all due respect, Andrea, I thought the conversation in the bar about sex was far more interesting than the nonsense we’ve just been engaging in. Did you notice how she kept falling silent? She didn’t know what to do next!”

  “But I felt something strange,” said one of the older actors. “When she said center, it was as if all my vital energy were suddenly focused in my navel. I’ve never experienced that before.”

  “Did you? Are you sure?” asked an actress, and judging by her words, she’d experienced the same thing.

  “She’s a bit of a witch, that woman,” said the director, interrupting the conversation. “Let’s get back to work.”

  We started doing our usual stretching exercises, warm-ups, and meditation, all strictly by the book. Then after a few improvisations, we went straight into a read-through of the new script. Gradually, Athena’s presence seemed to be dissolving, and everything was returning to what it was—a theater, a ritual created by the Greeks thousands of years ago, where we were used to pretending to be different people.

  But that was pure playacting. Athena wasn’t like that, and I was determined to see her again, especially after what the director had said about her.

  HERON RYAN, JOURNALIST

  Unbeknownst to Athena, I’d followed exactly the same steps as the actors, obeying everything she told us to do, except that I kept my eyes open so that I could follow what was happening onstage. The moment she said, “Make a gesture for center,” I’d placed my hand on my navel, and to my surprise, I saw that everyone, including the director, had done the same. What was going on?

  That afternoon, I had to write a dreary article about a visiting head of state—a real drag. In order to amuse myself between phone calls, I decided to ask colleagues in the office what gesture they would make if I said the word center. Most of them made jokey comments about political parties. One pointed to the center of the Earth. Another put his hand on his heart. But no one, absolutely no one, thought of their navel as the center of anything. In the end, though, I managed to speak to someone who had some interesting information on the subject.

  When I got home, Andrea had had a bath, laid the table, and was waiting for me to start supper. She opened a bottle of very expensive wine, filled two glasses, and offered me one.

  “So how was supper last night?”

  How long can a man live with a lie? I didn’t want to lose the woman standing there before me, who had stuck with me through thick and thin, who was always by my side when I felt my life had lost meaning and direction. I loved her, but in the crazy world into which I was blindly plunging, my heart was far away, trying to adapt to something it possibly knew but couldn’t accept: being large enough for two people.

  Since I would never risk letting go of a certainty in favor of a mere possibility, I tried to minimize the significance of what had happened at the restaurant, mainly because nothing had happened, apart from an exchange of lines by a poet who had suffered greatly for love.

  “Athena’s a difficult person to get to know.”

  Andrea laughed.

  “That’s precisely why men must find her so fascinating. She awakens that rapidly disappearing protective instinct of yours.”

  Best to change the subject. I’ve always been convinced that women have a supernatural ability to know what’s going on in a
man’s soul. They’re all witches.

  “I’ve been looking into what happened at the theater today. You don’t know this, but I had my eyes open throughout the exercises.”

  “You’ve always got your eyes open. I assume it’s part of being a journalist. And you’re going to talk about the moment when we all did exactly the same thing. We talked a lot about that in the bar after rehearsals.”

  “A historian told me about a Greek temple where they used to predict the future [Editor’s note: the temple of Apollo at Delphi] and which housed a marble stone called ‘the navel.’ Stories from the time describe Delphi as the center of the planet. I went to the newspaper archives to make a few enquiries: in Petra, in Jordan, there’s another ‘conic navel,’ symbolizing not just the center of the planet, but also of the entire universe. Both ‘navels’ try to show the axis through which the energy of the world travels, marking in a visible way something that is only there on the ‘invisible’ map. Jerusalem is also called the navel of the world, as is an island in the Pacific Ocean, and another place I’ve forgotten now, because I had never associated the two things.”

  “Like dance!”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “No, I know what you mean—belly dancing, the oldest form of dance recorded, in which everything revolves about the belly. I was trying to avoid the subject because I told you that in Transylvania I saw Athena dance. She was dressed, of course, but—”

  “All the movement began with her navel and gradually spread to the rest of the body.”

  She was right.

  Best to change the subject again and talk about the theater, about boring journalistic stuff, then drink a little wine and end up in bed making love while, outside, the rain was starting to fall. I noticed that, at the moment of orgasm, Andrea’s body was all focused on her belly. I’d seen this many times before, but had never thought anything of it.