Читать книгу Brida - Пауло Коэльо, Paulo Coelho - Страница 14

The old building was in the centre of town, in a place that is now only visited by tourists in search of a little nineteenth-century romanticism. Brida had had to wait a week before Wicca would agree to see her, and now she was standing outside a mysterious grey building, struggling to contain her excitement. That building was exactly as she’d imagined it would be; it was just the kind of place where the type of person who visited the bookshop should live.

There was no lift. She went up the stairs slowly so as not to be out of breath when she reached the floor she wanted, and when she arrived, she rang the bell of the only door there.

Inside, a dog barked. Then, after a brief delay, a slim, elegant, serious-looking woman opened the door.

‘I phoned earlier,’ said Brida.

Wicca indicated that she should come in, and Brida found herself in a living room entirely painted in white and with examples of modern art everywhere – with paintings on the walls and sculptures and vases on the tables. The light from outside was filtered through white curtains. The room was cleverly divided into different areas to accommodate sofas, dining table and a well-stocked library. Everything was in the very best taste and reminded Brida of the architecture and design magazines she used to look at on the newstands.

‘It must have cost a fortune,’ she thought.

Wicca led Brida into the vast living room, into an area furnished by two Italian armchairs in leather and steel. Between the two chairs was a low glass table with steel legs.

‘You’re very young,’ said Wicca at last.

There was little point in making her usual comment about ballerinas, and so Brida said nothing, waiting to hear what the woman would say next and meanwhile wondering what such a modern design was doing inside an old building like that. Her romantic idea of the search for knowledge had once again been shaken.

‘He phoned me,’ Wicca said, and Brida understood that she was referring to the bookseller.

‘I came in search of a Teacher. I want to follow the road of magic.’

Wicca looked at Brida. She clearly possessed a Gift, but she needed to know why the Magus of Folk had been so interested in her. The Gift on its own was not enough. If the Magus had been new to magic, he might have been impressed by the clarity with which the Gift manifested itself in the young woman, but he had lived long enough to know that everyone possesses a Gift. He was wise to such traps.

She got up, went over to one of the bookshelves and picked up her favourite deck of cards.

‘Do you know how to lay the cards?’ she asked.

Brida nodded. She had done a few courses and knew that the deck in the woman’s hand was a tarot deck, with seventy-eight cards. She had learned various ways of laying out the tarot and was glad to have a chance to show off her knowledge.

However, the woman kept hold of the deck. She shuffled the cards, then placed them face down, in no particular order, on the glass table. This was a method quite unlike any Brida had learned on her courses. The woman sat looking at them for a moment, said a few words in a strange language, then turned over just one of the cards.

It was card number 23. A king of clubs.

‘Good protection,’ she said. ‘From a strong, powerful man with dark hair.’

Her boyfriend was neither strong nor powerful, and the Magus’s hair was grey.

‘Don’t think about his physical appearance,’ said Wicca, as if she had read her thoughts. ‘Think of your Soulmate.’

‘What do you mean “Soulmate”?’ Brida was surprised. The woman inspired a strange respect, different from the respect she had felt for the Magus or for the bookseller.

Wicca did not answer the question. She again shuffled the cards, and again spread them in that same disorderly manner on the table, except that this time the cards were face up. The card in the middle of that apparent confusion was card number 11. A woman forcing open the mouth of a lion.

Wicca picked up the card and asked Brida to hold it. Brida did so, although without knowing quite what was required of her.

‘In previous incarnations, your stronger side was always a woman,’ Wicca said.

‘What do you mean by “Soulmate”?’ Brida asked again. It was the first time she had challenged the woman, but it was, nonetheless, a very timid challenge.

Wicca remained silent for a moment. A suspicion crossed her mind – for some reason the Magus had not taught the girl about Soulmates. ‘Nonsense,’ she said to herself and brushed the thought aside.

‘The Soulmate is the first thing people learn about when they want to follow the Tradition of the Moon,’ she said. ‘Only by understanding the Soulmate can we understand how knowledge can be transmitted over time.’

As Wicca continued her explanation, Brida remained silent, feeling anxious.

‘We are eternal because we are all manifestations of God,’ Wicca said. ‘That is why we go through many lives and many deaths, emerging out of some unknown place and going towards another equally unknown place. You must get used to the fact that there are many things in magic which are not and never will be explained. God decided to do certain things in a certain way and why He did this is a secret known only to Him.’

‘The Dark Night of Faith,’ thought Brida. So it existed in the Tradition of the Moon as well.

‘The fact is that this happens,’ Wicca went on. ‘And when people think of reincarnation, they always come up against a very difficult question: if, in the beginning, there were so few people on the face of the Earth, and now there are so many, where did all those new souls come from?’

Brida held her breath. She had asked herself this question many times.

‘The answer is simple,’ said Wicca, after pausing to savour the young woman’s eager silence. ‘In certain reincarnations, we divide into two. Our souls divide as do crystals and stars, cells and plants.

‘Our soul divides in two, and those new souls are in turn transformed into two and so, within a few generations, we are scattered over a large part of Earth.’

‘And does only one of those parts know who it is?’ asked Brida. She had many questions to ask, but she wanted to ask them one at a time, and this seemed the most important.

‘We form part of what the alchemists call the Anima mundi, the Soul of the World,’ said Wicca, without replying to the question. ‘The truth is that if the Anima mundi were merely to keep dividing, it would keep growing, but it would also become gradually weaker. That is why, as well as dividing into two, we also find ourselves. And that process of finding ourselves is called Love. Because when a soul divides, it always divides into a male part and a female part.

‘That’s how the Book of Genesis explains it: the soul of Adam was split in two, and Eve was born out of him.’

Wicca stopped suddenly and sat looking at the cards scattered on the table.

‘There are many cards,’ she said, ‘but they’re all part of the same deck. In order to understand their message, we need them all, all are equally important. So it is with souls. Human beings are all interlinked, like the cards in this deck.

‘In each life, we feel a mysterious obligation to find at least one of those Soulmates. The Greater Love that separated them feels pleased with the Love that brings them together again.’

‘But how will I know who my Soulmate is?’ Brida felt that this was one of the most important questions she had ever asked in her life.

Wicca laughed. She had already asked herself that question and with the same eager anxiety as the young woman opposite her. You could tell your Soulmate by the light in their eyes, and since time began, that has been how people have recognised their true love. The Tradition of the Moon used a different process: a kind of vision that showed a point of light above the left shoulder of your Soulmate. But she wouldn’t tell the girl that just yet; she might one day learn to see that point of light, or she might not. She would get her answer soon enough.

‘By taking risks,’ she said to Brida. ‘By risking failure, disappointment, disillusion, but never ceasing in your search for Love. As long as you keep looking, you will triumph in the end.’

Brida remembered the Magus saying something similar when he spoke about the path of magic. ‘Perhaps it’s all the same thing,’ she thought.

Wicca started picking up the cards from the table, and Brida sensed that her time was nearly up. Yet there was one other question to ask.

‘Is it possible to meet more than one Soulmate in each life?’

‘Yes,’ thought Wicca with a certain bitterness. And when that happens, the heart is divided, and the result is pain and suffering. Yes, we can meet three or four Soulmates, because we are many and we are scattered. The young woman was asking the right questions, but she had to avoid answering them.

‘The essence of Creation is one and one alone,’ she said. ‘And that essence is called Love. Love is the force that brings us back together, in order to condense the experience dispersed in many lives and many parts of the world.

‘We are responsible for the whole Earth because we do not know where they might be, those Soulmates we were from the beginning of time. If they are well, then we, too, will be happy. If they are not well, we will suffer, however unconsciously, a portion of their pain. Above all, though, we are responsible for reencountering, at least once in every incarnation, the Soulmate who is sure to cross our path. Even if it is only for a matter of moments, because those moments bring with them a Love so intense that it justifies the rest of our days.’

The dog barked in the kitchen. Wicca finished picking up the cards and looked again at Brida.

‘We can also allow our Soulmate to pass us by, without accepting him or her, or even noticing. Then we will need another incarnation in order to find that Soulmate. And because of our selfishness, we will be condemned to the worst torture humankind ever invented for itself: loneliness.’

Wicca got up and showed Brida to the door.

‘You didn’t come here to find out about your Soulmate,’ she said, before saying goodbye. ‘You have a Gift, and once I know what that Gift is, I might be able to teach you the Tradition of the Moon.’

Brida felt very special. She needed to feel this, for the woman inspired a respect she had felt for very few other people.

‘I’ll do my best. I want to learn the Tradition of the Moon.’

‘Because,’ she thought, ‘the Tradition of the Moon doesn’t require you to spend the night alone in a dark forest.’

‘Now listen to me,’ said Wicca sternly. ‘Every day from today, at an hour of your choosing, sit down alone at a table and spread the tarot deck as I did, completely at random. Don’t try to understand anything. Simply study the cards. They will teach you all you need to know for the moment.’

‘It’s like the Tradition of the Sun: me teaching myself again,’ thought Brida as she went down the stairs. And only when she was on the bus did she realise that the woman had spoken of a Gift. But she could talk about that at their next meeting.