The Witch of Portobello

  She had come to London fleeing the civil war that had broken out in Lebanon. Her father, a Maronite Christian [Editor's note: a branch of the Catholic Church, which, although it comes under the authority of the Vatican, does not require priests to be celibate and uses both Middle Eastern and Orthodox rituals], had started to receive death threats because he worked for the Lebanese government, but despite this, he couldn't make up his mind to leave and go into exile. Then Athena, overhearing a phone conversation, decided that it was time she grew up, that she assumed her filial responsibilities and protected those she loved.

  She performed a kind of dance and pretended that she'd gone into a trance (she had learned all about this kind of thing at school when she studied the lives of the saints), and started making various pronouncements. I don't know how a mere child could possibly persuade adults to make decisions based on what she said, but that, according to Athena, was precisely what happened. Her father was very superstitious, and she was convinced that she'd saved the lives of her family.

  They arrived here as refugees, but not as beggars. The Lebanese community is scattered all over the world, and her father soon found a way of reestablishing his business, and life went on. Athena was able to study at good schools, she attended dance classes--because dance was her passion--and when she'd finished at secondary school, she chose to take a degree in engineering.

  Once they were living in London, her parents invited her out to supper at one of the most expensive restaurants in the city and explained, very carefully, that she had been adopted. Athena pretended to be surprised, hugged them both, and said that nothing would change their relationship.

  The truth was, though, that a friend of the family, in a moment of malice, had called her "an ungrateful orphan" and put her lack of manners down to the fact that she was "not her parents' 'real' daughter." She had hurled an ashtray at him, cutting his face, and then cried for two whole days, after which she quickly got used to the idea that she was adopted. The malicious family friend was left with an unexplained scar and took to saying that he'd been attacked in the street by muggers.

  I asked if she would like to go out with me the next day. She told me that she was a virgin, went to church on Sundays, and had no interest in romantic novels--she was more concerned with reading everything she could about the situation in the Middle East.

  She was, in short, busy. Very busy.

  "People think that a woman's only dream is to get married and have children. And given what I've told you, you probably think that I've suffered a lot in life. It's not true, and, besides, I've been there already. I've known other men who wanted to 'protect' me from all those tragedies. What they forget is that, from Ancient Greece on, the people who returned from battle were either dead on their shields or stronger, despite or because of their scars. It's better that way: I've lived on a battlefield since I was born, but I'm still alive and I don't need anyone to protect me."

  She paused.

  "You see how cultured I am?"

  "Oh, very, but when you attack someone weaker than yourself, you make it look as if you really do need protection. You could have ruined your university career right there and then."

  "You're right. Okay, I accept the invitation."

  We started seeing each other regularly, and the closer I got to her, the more I discovered my own light, because she always encouraged me to give the best of myself. She had never read any books on magic or esoterics. She said they were things of the Devil, and that salvation was only possible through Jesus--end of story. Sometimes, though, she said things that didn't seem entirely in keeping with the teachings of the Church.

  "Christ surrounded himself with beggars, prostitutes, tax collectors, and fishermen. I think what he meant by this was that the divine spark is in every soul and is never extinguished. When I sit still, or when I'm feeling very agitated, I feel as if I'm vibrating along with the whole Universe. And I know things then that I don't know, as if God is guiding my steps. There are moments when I feel that everything is being revealed to me."

  Then she would correct herself:

  "But that's wrong."

  Athena always lived between two worlds: what she felt was true and what she had been taught by her faith.

  One day, after almost a semester of equations, calculations, and structural studies, she announced that she was going to leave university.

  "But you've never said anything to me about it!" I said.

  "I was even afraid of talking about it to myself, but this morning I went to see my hairdresser. She worked day and night so that her daughter could finish her sociology degree. The daughter finally graduated and, after knocking on many doors, found work as a secretary at a cement works. Yet even today, my hairdresser said very proudly: 'My daughter's got a degree.' Most of my parents' friends and most of my parents' friends' children also have degrees. This doesn't mean that they've managed to find the kind of work they wanted. Not at all; they went to university because someone, at a time when universities seemed important, said that in order to rise in the world, you had to have a degree. And thus the world was deprived of some excellent gardeners, bakers, antique dealers, sculptors, and writers."

  I asked her to give it some more thought before taking such a radical step, but she quoted these lines by Robert Frost:

  Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--

  I took the one less traveled by,

  And that has made all the difference.

  The following day, she didn't turn up for class. At our following meeting, I asked what she was going to do.

  "I'm going to get married and have a baby."

  This wasn't an ultimatum. I was twenty, she was nineteen, and I thought it was still too early to take on such a commitment.

  But Athena was quite serious. And I needed to choose between losing the one thing that really filled my thoughts--my love for that woman--and losing my freedom and all the choices that the future promised me.

  To be honest, the decision was easy.

  FATHER GIANCARLO FONTANA, SEVENTY-TWO

  Of course I was surprised when the couple, both of them much too young, came to the church to arrange the wedding ceremony. I hardly knew Lukas Jessen-Petersen, but that same day, I learned that his family--obscure aristocrats from Denmark--was totally opposed to the union. They weren't just against the marriage, they were against the Church as well.

  According to his father--who based himself on frankly unanswerable scientific arguments--the Bible, on which the whole religion is based, wasn't really a book, but a collage of sixty-six different manuscripts whose authors' real names or identities remain unknown; he said that almost a thousand years had elapsed between the writing of the first book and the last, longer than the time that has elapsed since Columbus discovered America. And no living being on the planet--from monkeys down to parrots--needs Ten Commandments in order to know how to behave. All that it takes for the world to remain in harmony is for each being to follow the laws of nature.

  Naturally, I read the Bible and know a little of its history, but the human beings who wrote it were instruments of Divine Power, and Jesus forged a far stronger bond than the Ten Commandments: love. Birds and monkeys, or any of God's creatures, obey their instincts and merely do what they're programmed to do. In the case of the human being, things are more complicated because we know about love and its traps.

  Oh dear, here I am making a sermon, when I should be telling you about my meeting with Athena and Lukas. While I was talking to the young man--and I say talking, because we don't share the same faith, and I'm not, therefore, bound by the secret of the confessional--I learned that, as well as the household's general anticlericalism, there was a lot of resistance to Athena because she was a foreigner. I felt like quoting from the Bible, from a part that isn't a profession of faith, but a call to common sense: "Thou shalt not abhor an Edomite, for he is thy brother; thou shalt not abhor an Egyptian, because thou wast a stranger in his land."

  I'm sorry, ther
e I am quoting the Bible again, and I promise I'll try to control myself from now on. After talking to the young man, I spent at least two hours with Sherine, or Athena as she preferred to be called.

  Athena had always intrigued me. Ever since she first started coming to the church, it seemed to me that she had one clear ambition: to become a saint. She told me--although her fiance didn't know this--that shortly before civil war broke out in Beirut, she'd had an experience very similar to that of St. Therese of Lisieux: she had seen the streets running with blood. One could attribute this to some trauma in childhood or adolescence, but the fact is that, to a greater or lesser extent, all creative human beings have such experiences, which are known as "possession by the sacred." Suddenly, for a fraction of a second, we feel that our whole life is justified, our sins forgiven, and that love is still the strongest force, one that can transform us forever.

  But at the same time we feel afraid. Surrendering completely to love, be it human or divine, means giving up everything, including our own well-being or our ability to make decisions. It means loving in the deepest sense of the word. The truth is that we don't want to be saved in the way God has chosen; we want to keep absolute control over our every step, to be fully conscious of our decisions, to be capable of choosing the object of our devotion.

  It isn't like that with love--it arrives, moves in, and starts directing everything. Only very strong souls allow themselves to be swept along, and Athena was a strong soul. So strong that she spent hours in deep contemplation. She had a special gift for music; they say that she danced very well too, but since the church isn't really the appropriate place for that, she used to bring her guitar each morning and spend some time there singing to the Holy Virgin before going off to her classes.

  I can still remember the first time I heard her. I'd just finished celebrating morning mass with the few parishioners prepared to get up that early on a winter's morning, when I realized that I'd forgotten to collect the money left in the offering box. When I went back in, I heard some music that made me see everything differently, as if the atmosphere had been touched by the hand of an angel. In one corner, in a kind of ecstasy, a young woman of about twenty sat playing her guitar and singing hymns of praise, with her eyes fixed on the statue of the Holy Virgin.

  I went over to the offering box. She noticed my presence and stopped what she was doing, but I nodded to her, encouraging her to go on. Then I sat down in one of the pews, closed my eyes, and listened.

  At that moment, a sense of paradise, of "possession by the sacred," seemed to descend from the heavens. As if she understood what was going on in my heart, the young woman began to intersperse music with silence. Each time she stopped playing, I would say a prayer. Then the music would start up again.

  And I was conscious that I was experiencing something unforgettable, one of those magical moments which we only understand when it has passed. I was entirely in the present, with no past, no future, absorbed in experiencing the morning, the music, the sweetness, and the unexpected prayer. I entered a state of worship and ecstasy and gratitude for being in the world, glad that I'd followed my vocation despite my family's opposition. In the simplicity of that small chapel, in the voice of that young woman, in the morning light flooding everything, I understood once again that the grandeur of God reveals itself through simple things.

  After many tears on my part and after what seemed to me an eternity, the young woman stopped playing. I turned round and realized that she was one of my parishioners. After that, we became friends, and whenever we could, we shared in that worship through music.

  However, the idea of marriage took me completely by surprise. Since we knew each other fairly well, I asked how she thought her husband's family would react.

  "Badly, very badly."

  As tactfully as I could, I asked if, for any reason, she was being forced into marriage.

  "No, I'm still a virgin. I'm not pregnant."

  I asked if she'd told her own family, and she said that she had, and that their reaction had been one of horror, accompanied by tears from her mother and threats from her father.

  "When I come here to praise the Virgin with my music, I'm not bothered about what other people might think, I'm simply sharing my feelings with her. And that's how it's always been, ever since I was old enough to think for myself. I'm a vessel in which the Divine Energy can make itself manifest. And that energy is asking me now to have a child, so that I can give it what my birth mother never gave me: protection and security."

  "No one is secure on this earth," I replied. She still had a long future ahead of her; there was plenty of time for the miracle of creation to occur. However, Athena was determined:

  "St. Therese didn't rebel against the illness that afflicted her; on the contrary, she saw it as a sign of God's glory. St. Therese was only fifteen, much younger than me, when she decided to enter a convent. She was forbidden to do so, but she insisted. She decided to go and speak to the pope himself--can you imagine? To speak to the pope! And she got what she wanted. That same Glory is asking something far simpler and far more generous of me--to become a mother. If I wait much longer, I won't be able to be a companion to my child, the age difference will be too great, and we won't share the same interests."

  She wouldn't be alone in that, I said.

  But Athena continued, as if she wasn't listening:

  "I'm only happy when I think that God exists and is listening to me; but that isn't enough to go on living, when nothing seems to make sense. I pretend a happiness I don't feel; I hide my sadness so as not to worry those who love me and care about me. Recently, I've even considered suicide. At night, before I go to sleep, I have long conversations with myself, praying for this idea to go away; it would be such an act of ingratitude, an escape, a way of spreading tragedy and misery over the earth. In the mornings, I come here to talk to St. Therese and to ask her to free me from the demons I speak to at night. It's worked so far, but I'm beginning to weaken. I know I have a mission, which I've long rejected, and now I must accept it. That mission is to be a mother. I must carry out that mission or go mad. If I don't feel life growing inside me, I'll never be able to accept life outside me."

  LUKAS JESSEN-PETERSEN, EX-HUSBAND

  When Viorel was born, I had just turned twenty-two. I was no longer the student who had married a fellow student, but a man responsible for supporting his family, and with an enormous burden on my shoulders. My parents, who didn't even come to the wedding, made any financial help conditional on my leaving Athena and gaining custody of the child (or, rather, that's what my father said, because my mother used to phone me up, weeping, saying I must be mad, but saying too how much she'd like to hold her grandson in her arms). I hoped that, as they came to understand my love for Athena and my determination to stay with her, their resistance would gradually break down.

  It didn't. And now I had to provide for my wife and child. I abandoned my studies at the Engineering Faculty. I got a phone call from my father, a mixture of stick and carrot: he said that if I continued as I was, I'd end up being disinherited, but that if I went back to university, he'd consider helping me, in his words, "provisionally." I refused. The romanticism of youth demands that we always take very radical stances. I could, I said, solve my problems alone.

  During the time before Viorel was born, Athena began helping me to understand myself better. This didn't happen through sex--our sexual relationship was, I must confess, very tentative--but through music.

  As I later learned, music is as old as human beings. Our ancestors, who traveled from cave to cave, couldn't carry many things, but modern archaeology shows that, as well as the little they might have with them in the way of food, there was always a musical instrument in their baggage, usually a drum. Music isn't just something that comforts or distracts us, it goes beyond that--it's an ideology. You can judge people by the kind of music they listen to.

  As I watched Athena dance during her pregnancy and listened to her play the guitar
to calm the baby and make him feel that he was loved, I began to allow her way of seeing the world to affect my life too. When Viorel was born, the first thing we did when we brought him home was to play Albinoni's Adagio. When we quarreled, it was the force of music--although I can't make any logical connection between the two things, except in some kind of hippyish way--that helped us get through difficult times.

  But all this romanticism didn't bring in the money. Since I played no instrument and couldn't even offer my services providing background music in a bar, I finally got a job as a trainee with a firm of architects, doing structural calculations. They paid me a very low hourly rate, and so I would leave the house very early each morning and come home late. I hardly saw my son, who would be sleeping by then, and I was almost too exhausted to talk or make love to my wife. Every night, I asked myself: When will we be able to improve our financial situation and live in the style we deserve? Although I largely agreed with Athena when she talked about the pointlessness of having a degree in engineering (and law and medicine, for example), there are certain basic technical facts that are essential if we're not to put people's lives at risk. And I'd been forced to interrupt my training in my chosen profession, which meant abandoning a dream that was very important to me.

  The rows began. Athena complained that I didn't pay enough attention to the baby, that he needed a father, that if she'd simply wanted a child, she could have done that on her own, without causing me all these problems. More than once, I slammed out of the house, saying that she didn't understand me, and that I didn't understand either how I'd ever agreed at twenty to the "madness" of having a child, before we had even a minimum of financial security. Gradually, out of sheer exhaustion and irritation, we stopped making love.

  I began to slide into depression, feeling that I'd been used and manipulated by the woman I loved. Athena noticed my increasingly strange state of mind, but instead of helping me, she focused her energies on Viorel and on music. Work became my escape. I would occasionally talk to my parents, and they would always say, as they had so many times before, that she'd had the baby in order to get me to marry her.