The Witch of Portobello Page 17

  Some people, though, were smiling. They had understood the importance of the dance and from that night on would doubtless allow their bodies and souls to drift--even though, as always happens, they would have to pay a price.

  Only the boy, Hagia Sofia, Heron, and myself were left in the room.

  "I asked you to stay here alone."

  Without a word, Heron picked up his coat and left.

  Hagia Sofia was looking at me. And, little by little, I watched her change back into Athena. The only way of describing that change is to compare it with the change that takes place in an angry child: we can see the anger in the child's eyes, but once distracted and once the anger has gone, the child is no longer the same child who, only moments before, was crying. The "being," if it can be called that, seemed to have vanished into the air as soon as its instrument lost concentration.

  And now I was standing before an apparently exhausted woman.

  "Make me some tea."

  She was giving me an order! And she was no longer universal wisdom but merely someone my boyfriend was interested in or infatuated with. Where would this relationship take us?

  But making a cup of tea wouldn't destroy my self-esteem. I went into the kitchen, boiled some water, added a few chamomile leaves, and returned to the living room. The child was asleep on her lap.

  "You don't like me," she said.

  I made no reply.

  "I don't like you either," she went on. "You're pretty and elegant, a fine actress, and have a degree of culture and education which I, despite my family's wishes, do not. But you're also insecure, arrogant, and suspicious. As Hagia Sofia said, you are two, when you could be one."

  "I didn't know you remembered what you said during the trance, because in that case, you are two people as well: Athena and Hagia Sofia."

  "I may have two names, but I am only one--or else all the people in the world. And that is precisely what I want to talk about. Because I am one and everyone, the spark that emerges when I go into a trance gives me very precise instructions. I remain semiconscious throughout, of course, but I'm saying things that come from some unknown part of myself, as if I were suckling on the breast of the Mother, drinking the milk that flows through all our souls and carries knowledge around the earth. Last week, which was the first time I entered into contact with this new form, I received what seemed to me to be an absurd message: that I should teach you."

  She paused.

  "Obviously, this struck me as quite mad, because I don't like you at all."

  She paused again, for longer this time.

  "Today, though, the source repeated the same message, and so I'm giving you that choice."

  "Why do you call it Hagia Sofia?"

  "That was my idea. It's the name of a really beautiful mosque I saw in a book. You could, if you like, be my student. That's what brought you here on that first day. This whole new stage in my life, including the discovery of Hagia Sofia inside me, only happened because one day you came through that door and said: 'I work in the theater and we're putting on a play about the female face of God. I heard from a journalist friend that you've spent time in the Balkan mountains with some gypsies and would be prepared to tell me about your experiences there.'"

  "Are you going to teach me everything you know?"

  "No, everything I don't know. I'll learn through being in contact with you, as I said the first time we met, and as I say again now. Once I've learned what I need to learn, we'll go our separate ways."

  "Can you teach someone you dislike?"

  "I can love and respect someone I dislike. On the two occasions when I went into a trance, I saw your aura, and it was the most highly developed aura I've ever seen. You could make a difference in this world, if you accept my proposal."

  "Will you teach me to see auras?"

  "Until it happened to me the first time, I myself didn't know I was capable of doing so. If you're on the right path, you'll learn too."

  I realized then that I too was capable of loving someone I disliked. I said yes.

  "Then let us transform that acceptance into a ritual. A ritual throws us into an unknown world, but we know that we cannot treat the things of that world lightly. It isn't enough to say yes, you must put your life at risk, and without giving it much thought either. If you're the woman I think you are, you won't say: 'I need to think about it.' You'll say--"

  "I'm ready. Let's move on to the ritual. Where did you learn the ritual, by the way?"

  "I'm going to learn it now. I no longer need to remove myself from my normal rhythm in order to enter into contact with the spark from the Mother, because once that spark is installed inside you, it's easy to find again. I know which door I need to open, even though it's concealed among many other entrances and exits. All I need is a little silence."

  Silence again!

  We sat there, our eyes wide and staring, as if we were about to begin a fight to the death. Rituals! Before I even rang the bell of Athena's apartment for the first time, I had already taken part in various rituals, only to feel used and diminished afterward, standing outside a door I could see, but not open. Rituals!

  All Athena did was drink a little of the tea I prepared for her.

  "The ritual is over. I asked you to do something for me. You did, and I accepted it. Now it is your turn to ask me something."

  I immediately thought of Heron, but it wasn't the right moment to talk about him.

  "Take your clothes off."

  She didn't ask me why. She looked at the child, checked that he was asleep, and immediately began to remove her sweater.

  "No, really, you don't have to," I said. "I don't know why I asked that."

  But she continued to undress, first her blouse, then her jeans, then her bra. I noticed her breasts, which were the most beautiful I'd ever seen. Finally she removed her knickers. And there she was, offering me her nakedness.

  "Bless me," said Athena.

  Bless my "teacher"? But I'd already taken the first step and couldn't stop now, so I dipped my fingers in the cup and sprinkled a little tea over her body.

  "Just as this plant was transformed into tea, just as the water mingled with the plant, I bless you and ask the Great Mother that the spring from which this water came will never cease flowing, and that the earth from which this plant came will always be fertile and generous."

  I was surprised at my own words. They had come neither from inside me nor outside. It was as if I'd always known them and had done this countless times before.

  "You have been blessed. You can get dressed now."

  But she didn't move, she merely smiled. What did she want? If Hagia Sofia was capable of seeing auras, she would know that I hadn't the slightest desire to have sex with another woman.

  "One moment."

  She picked up the boy, carried him to his room, and returned at once.

  "You take your clothes off too."

  Who was asking this? Hagia Sofia, who spoke of my potential and for whom I was the perfect disciple? Or Athena, whom I hardly knew, and who seemed capable of anything, a woman whom life had taught to go beyond her limits and to satisfy any curiosity?

  We had started a kind of confrontation from which there was no retreat. I got undressed with the same nonchalance, the same smile, and the same look in my eyes.

  She took my hand, and we sat down on the sofa.

  During the next half hour, both Athena and Hagia Sofia were present; they wanted to know what my next steps would be. As they asked me this question, I saw that everything really was written there before me, and that the doors had only been closed before because I hadn't realized that I was the one person in the world with the authority to open them.

  HERON RYAN, JOURNALIST

  The deputy editor hands me a video and we go into the projection room to watch it.

  The video was made on the morning of April 26, 1986, and shows normal life in a normal town. A man is sitting, drinking a cup of coffee. A mother is taking her baby for a walk. P
eople in a hurry are going to work. A few people are waiting at a bus stop. A man on a bench in a square is reading a newspaper.

  But there's a problem with the video. There are various horizontal lines on the screen, as if the tracking button needed to be adjusted. I get up to do this but the deputy editor stops me.

  "That's just the way it is. Keep watching."

  Images of the small provincial town continue to appear, showing nothing of interest apart from these scenes from ordinary everyday life.

  "It's possible that some people may know that there's been an accident two kilometers from there," says my boss. "It's possible that they know there have been thirty deaths--a large number, but not enough to change the routine of the town's inhabitants."

  Now the film shows school buses parking. They will stay there for many days. The images are getting worse and worse.

  "It isn't the tracking, it's radiation. The video was made by the KGB. On the night of April 26, at twenty-three minutes past one in the morning, the worst ever man-made disaster occurred at Chernobyl, in the Ukraine. When a nuclear reactor exploded, the people in the area were exposed to ninety times more radiation than that given out by the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The whole region should have been evacuated at once, but no one said anything--after all, the government doesn't make mistakes. Only a week later, on page thirty-two of the local newspaper, a five-line article appeared, mentioning the deaths of workers, but giving no further explanation. Meanwhile, Workers Day was celebrated throughout the former Soviet Union, and in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, people paraded down the street unaware of the invisible death in the air."

  And he concludes, "I want you to go and see what Chernobyl is like now. You've just been promoted to special correspondent. You'll get a twenty percent increase in your salary and be able to suggest the kind of article you think we should be publishing."

  I should be jumping for joy, but instead I'm gripped by a feeling of intense sadness, which I have to hide. It's impossible to argue with him, to say that there are two women in my life at the moment, that I don't want to leave London, that my life and my mental equilibrium are at stake. I ask when I should leave. As soon as possible, he says, because there are rumors that other countries are significantly increasing their production of nuclear energy.

  I manage to negotiate an honorable way out, saying that, first, I need to talk to experts and really get a grip on the subject, and that I'll set off once I've collected the necessary material.

  He agrees, shakes my hand, and congratulates me. I don't have time to talk to Andrea, because when I get home, she's still at the theater. I fall asleep at once and again wake up to find a note saying that she's gone to work and that coffee is on the table.

  I go to the office, try to ingratiate myself with the boss who has "improved my life," and phone various experts on radiation and energy. I discover that, in total, nine million people worldwide were directly affected by the disaster, including three to four million children. The initial thirty deaths became, according to the expert John Gofmans, 475,000 cases of fatal cancers and an equal number of nonfatal cancers.

  A total of two thousand towns and villages were simply wiped off the map. According to the Health Ministry in Belarus, the incidence of cancer of the thyroid will increase considerably between 2005 and 2010, as a consequence of continuing high levels of radioactivity. Another specialist explains that in addition to the nine million people directly exposed to radiation, more than sixty-five million in many countries around the world were indirectly affected by consuming contaminated foodstuffs.

  It's a serious matter, which deserves to be treated with respect. At the end of the day, I go back to the deputy editor and suggest that I travel to Chernobyl for the actual anniversary of the accident, and meanwhile do more research, talk to more experts, and find out how the British government responded to the tragedy. He agrees.

  I phone Athena. After all, she claims to be going out with someone from Scotland Yard and now is the time to ask her a favor, given that Chernobyl is no longer classified as secret and the Soviet Union no longer exists. She promises that she'll talk to her "boyfriend" but says she can't guarantee she'll get the answers I want.

  She also says that she's leaving for Scotland the following day and will only be back in time for the next group meeting.

  "What group?"

  The group, she says. So that's become a regular thing, has it? What I want to know is when we can meet to talk and clear up various loose ends.

  But she's already hung up. I go home, watch the news, have supper alone, and later go out again to pick Andrea up from the theater. I get there in time to see the end of the play, and to my surprise, the person onstage seems totally unlike the person I've been living with for nearly two years; there's something magical about her every gesture; monologues and dialogues are spoken with an unaccustomed intensity. I am seeing a stranger, a woman I would like to have by my side, then I realize that she is by my side and is in no way a stranger to me.

  "How did your chat with Athena go?" I ask on the way home.

  "Fine. How was work?"

  She was the one to change the subject. I tell her about my promotion and about Chernobyl, but she doesn't seem interested. I start to think that I'm losing the love I have without having yet won the love I hope to win. However, as soon as we reach our apartment, she suggests we take a bath together, and before I know it, we're in bed. First, she puts on that percussion music at full volume (she explains that she managed to get hold of a copy) and tells me not to worry about the neighbors--people worry too much about them, she says, and never live their own lives.

  What happens from then on is something that goes beyond my understanding. Has this woman making positively savage love with me finally discovered her sexuality, and was this taught to her or provoked in her by that other woman? While she was clinging to me with a violence I've never known before, she kept saying, "Today I'm your man, and you're my woman."

  We carried on like this for almost an hour, and I experienced things I'd never dared experience before. At certain moments, I felt ashamed, wanted to ask her to stop, but she seemed to be in complete control of the situation, and so I surrendered, because I had no choice. In fact, I felt really curious.

  I was exhausted afterward, but Andrea seemed reenergized.

  "Before you go to sleep, I want you to know something," she said. "If you go forward, sex will offer you the chance to make love with gods and goddesses. That's what you experienced today. I want you to go to sleep knowing that I awoke the Mother that was in you."

  I wanted to ask if she'd learned this from Athena, but my courage failed.

  "Tell me that you liked being a woman for a night."

  "I did. I don't know if I would always like it, but it was something that simultaneously frightened me and gave me great joy."

  "Tell me that you've always wanted to experience what you've just experienced."

  It's one thing to allow oneself to be carried away by the situation, but quite another to comment coolly on the matter. I said nothing, although I was sure that she knew my answer.

  "Well," Andrea went on, "all of this was inside me and I had no idea. As was the person behind the mask that fell away while I was onstage today. Did you notice anything different?"

  "Of course. You were radiating a special light."

  "Charisma--the divine force that manifests itself in men and women. The supernatural power we don't need to show to anyone because everyone can see it, even usually insensitive people. But it only happens when we're naked, when we die to the world and are reborn to ourselves. Last night, I died. Tonight, when I walked onstage and saw that I was doing exactly what I had chosen to do, I was reborn from my ashes. I was always trying to be who I am but could never manage it. I was always trying to impress other people, have intelligent conversations, please my parents, and at the same time, I used every available means to do the things I would really like to do. I've always forged my path w
ith blood, tears, and willpower, but last night, I realized that I was going about it the wrong way. My dream doesn't require that of me. I have only to surrender myself to it, and if I find I'm suffering, grit my teeth, because the suffering will pass."

  "Why are you telling me this?"

  "Let me finish. In that journey where suffering seemed to be the only rule, I struggled for things for which there was no point struggling. Like love, for example. People either feel it or they don't, and there isn't a force in the world that can make them feel it. We can pretend that we love each other. We can get used to each other. We can live a whole lifetime of friendship and complicity, we can bring up children, have sex every night, reach orgasm, and still feel that there's a terrible emptiness about it all, that something important is missing. In the name of all I've learned about relationships between men and women, I've been trying to fight against things that weren't really worth the struggle. And that includes you.

  "Today, while we were making love, while I was giving all I have, and I could see that you too were giving of your best, I realized that your best no longer interests me. I will sleep beside you tonight, but tomorrow I'll leave. The theater is my ritual, and there I can express and develop whatever I want to express and develop."

  I started to regret everything--going to Transylvania and meeting a woman who might be destroying my life, arranging that first meeting of the "group," confessing my love in that restaurant. At that moment, I hated Athena.

  "I know what you're thinking," said Andrea. "That your friend Athena has brainwashed me, but that isn't true."

  "I'm a man, even though tonight in bed I behaved like a woman. I'm a species in danger of extinction because I don't see many men around. Few people would risk what I have risked."

  "I'm sure you're right, and that's why I admire you, but aren't you going to ask me who I am, what I want, and what I desire?"