After a few telephone calls, he relaxes for an hour in an area in the garden (or in the woods around the house), where he practises kyudo, the Japanese martial art of archery, which requires both physical strength and mental discipline. Halfway through the afternoon, he sits down in front of his computer to write the short weekly column of 120 words that is published in thirty newspapers around the world, from Lebanon (Al Bayan) to South Africa (Odyssey), from Venezuela (El Nacional) to India (The Asian Age), and from Brazil (O Globo) to Poland (Zwierciadlo).
In other respects, the couple’s day-to-day life differs little from that of the 300 other inhabitants of the village. They have a small circle of friends, none of whom are intellectuals or celebrities or likely to appear in the gossip columns. ‘I can access 500 television channels,’ Coelho declared years ago in an interview with the New York Times, ‘but I live in a village where there’s no baker.’ There’s no baker, no bar, no supermarket and no petrol station. As is the case in the majority of France’s 35,000 communes, there isn’t a single commercial establishment in sleepy Saint-Martin. Tarbes is the nearest place for shops, as long as you get there before five in the afternoon, when the small town starts to shut down. Coelho’s evening programme often consists of a visit to one of the three good restaurants there.
Eventually, it is time for Coelho to return to work. An e-mail from Sant Jordi contains a packed programme for the following three weeks which, if he agrees to it, will mean a round-the-world trip. On the programme are invitations to the launch of The Zahir in Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Paris. He is also to receive the Goldene Feder prize in Hamburg, and there are signings as well in Egypt, Syria and Lebanon, plus a trip to Warsaw for the birthday of Jolanda, the wife of the President of Poland at the time, Aleksander Kwaśniewski. Then on to London to take part with Boris Becker, Cat Stevens and former secretary general of the UN Boutros Boutros-Ghali in a fund-raising dinner for the campaign against the use of land-mines. The following day he will return to France for dinner with Lily Marinho, widow of Roberto Marinho, the owner of Organizações Globo. Four days later, he is supposed to attend the launch of The Zahir in Japan and South Korea. On his return to Europe he will stop off in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, for the sixty-fifth birthday of the President, Nursultan Nazarhayev. The last engagement on the list cannot be missed: an invitation from Klaus Schwab, creator and president of the World Economic Forum held annually in Davos, for the author to speak at the opening of another of Schwab’s enterprises, the Cultural Festival in Verbier, where young classical musicians from all over the world meet.
Coelho brushes away the invisible fly two or three times and mutters something along the lines of: ‘No human being could possibly do all that.’
Christina hears the complaint and teases him gently: ‘Look, you were the one who chose to be a Formula 1 champion, so get in your Ferrari and drive!’
The remark soothes him. He laughs and agrees that not only did he make that choice, but he fought his whole life to become what he is now, and so has no right to complain. ‘But I still can’t take on the whole programme. Some of the events are too close together and on three different continents!’
Usually, the stress of travel is caused not by the engagements themselves, but by the misery of modern air travel, especially since 9/11, when the consequent increase in vigilance and bureaucracy has created even longer delays for passengers. He faces the same queues, delays and over-bookings as his millions of readers, and one of the problems with the programme suggested by Sant Jordi is that it will have to be undertaken entirely on commercial flights. Coelho prints out the list and, pen in hand, starts by cutting out any engagements that entail intercontinental flights, which means putting off Latin America, Japan and South Korea, and the birthday party in Kazakhstan. Syria and Lebanon also go, but Egypt remains. Warsaw is replaced by Prague, where he wants to fulfil a promise made twenty years earlier. Finally, he decides that his first stop, in the Czech Republic, will be followed by Hamburg, where he will receive his prize and from where he will fly on to Cairo. However, the problem, once again, is flights. There are no connections that will allow him to stick to the timetables for Germany and Egypt. The Germans refuse to change the programme, which has already been printed and distributed, but they suggest an alternative: the private plane of Klaus Bauer, president of the media giant Bauer Verlagsgruppe, which sponsors the Goldene Feder prize, will take him and those in his party from Hamburg to Cairo as soon as the ceremony is over.
Hours later, when the programme has been agreed by all concerned, he telephones Mônica and jokes: ‘Since we’re going to Prague, what about putting on a “blitzkrieg” there?’
‘Blitzkrieg’ is the name Coelho gives to book signings that take place unannounced and with no previous publicity. He simply walks into a bookshop chosen at random, greets those present with ‘Hi, I’m Paulo Coelho’ and offers to sign copies of his books for anyone who wants him to. Some people say that these blitzkriegs are basically a form of exhibitionism, and that the author loves to put them on for the benefit of journalists. This certainly appeared to be the case when the reporter Dana Goodyear was travelling with him in Italy, where a blitzkrieg in Milan bore all the marks of having been deliberately staged for her benefit. In Prague, in fact, he is suggesting a middle way: to tell the publisher only the night before so that while there is no time for interviews, discussions or chat shows to be set up, there is time to make sure, at least, that there are enough books for everyone should the bookshop be crowded.
However, the objective of this trip to the Czech Republic has nothing to do with selling books. When he set out on the road back to Catholicism in 1982, after a period in which he had entirely rejected the faith and become involved in Satanic sects, Coelho was in Prague with Christina during a long hippie-style trip across Europe. They visited the church of Our Lady Victorious in order to make a promise to the Infant Jesus of Prague. For some inexplicable reason, Brazilian Christians have always shown a particular devotion to this image of the child, which has been in Prague since the seventeenth century. The extent of this devotion can be judged by the enormous number of notices that have been published over the years in newspapers throughout Brazil, containing a simple sentence, followed by the initials of the individual: ‘To the Infant Jesus of Prague, for the grace received. D.’ Like millions of his compatriots, Coelho also came to make a request, and by no means a small one. He knelt at the small side altar where the image is displayed, said a prayer and murmured so quietly that even Christina, who was beside him, could not hear: ‘I want to be a writer who is read and respected worldwide.’
He realized that this was quite a request, and that he would need to find a comparable gift to give in return. As he was praying, he noticed the moth-eaten clothes worn by the image, which were copies of the tunic and cloak made by Princess Policena Loblowitz in 1620 for the first known image of the Infant Jesus of Prague. Still in a whisper, he made a promise which, at the time, seemed somewhat grandiose: ‘When I’m a well-known author, respected worldwide, I will return and bring with me a gold-embroidered cloak to cover your body.’
Three decades later the idea of the blitzkrieg is really an excuse to revisit Prague and repay the grace he has been granted. Made exactly to fit the image, which is about half a metre high, the red velvet cloak, embroidered with fine gold thread, is the result of weeks of work by Paula Oiticica, Christina’s mother.
Packed in an acrylic box so that it can be transported safely, the gift creates a small incident at Charles de Gaulle airport, when the police demand that the package be passed through an X-ray machine in order to prove that it doesn’t conceal drugs or explosives; unfortunately, it’s too big for the machine. Coelho refuses