The Witch of Portobello

d he write about medicine too?"

I knew I had better not answer that. I saw that she'd picked up on the word teacher and assumed it must be related to my profession.

The young woman got to her feet. I felt she knew what I was talking about. I could see her light shining more intensely. I only achieve this state of perception when I'm close to someone very like myself.

"Would you mind coming with me to the bus station?" she asked.

Not at all. My plane didn't leave until later that night, and a whole, dull, endless day stretched out before me. At least I would have someone to talk to for a while.

She went upstairs, returned with her suitcases in her hand and a series of questions in her head. She began her interrogation as soon as we left the hotel.

"I may never see you again," she said, "but I feel that we have something in common. Since this may be the last opportunity we have in this incarnation to talk to each other, would you mind being direct in your answers?"

I nodded.

"Based on what you've read in all those books, do you believe that through dance we can enter a trancelike state that helps us to see a light? And that the light tells us nothing--only whether we're happy or sad?"

A good question!

"Of course, and that happens not only through dance, but also through anything that allows us to focus our attention and to separate body from spirit. Like yoga or prayer or Buddhist meditation."

"Or calligraphy."

"I hadn't thought of that, but it's possible. At such moments, when the body sets the soul free, the soul either rises up to heaven or descends into hell, depending on the person's state of mind. In both cases, it learns what it needs to learn: to destroy or to heal. But I'm no longer interested in individual paths; in my tradition, I need the help of--Are you listening to me?"

"No."

She had stopped in the middle of the street and was staring at a little girl who appeared to have been abandoned. She went to put her hand in her bag.

"Don't do that," I said. "Look across the street at that woman, the one with cruel eyes. She's put the girl there purely in order to--"

"I don't care."

She took out a few coins. I grabbed her hand.

"Let's buy her something to eat. That would be more useful."

I asked the little girl to go with us to a bar and bought her a sandwich. The little girl smiled and thanked me. The eyes of the woman across the street seemed to glitter with hatred, but for the first time, the gray eyes of the young woman walking at my side looked at me with respect.

"What were you saying?" she asked.

"It doesn't matter. Do you know what happened to you a few moments ago? You went into the same trance that your dancing provokes."

"No, you're wrong."

"I'm right. Something touched your unconscious mind. Perhaps you saw yourself as you would have been if you hadn't been adopted--begging in the street. At that moment, your brain stopped reacting. Your spirit left you and traveled down to hell to meet the demons from your past. Because of that, you didn't notice the woman across the street--you were in a trance, a disorganized, chaotic trance that was driving you to do something that was good in theory, but, in practice, pointless. As if you were--"

"In the blank space between the letters. In the moment when a note of music ends and the next has not yet begun."

"Exactly. And such a trance can be dangerous."

I almost said: "It's the kind of trance provoked by fear. It paralyzes the person, leaves them unable to react; the body doesn't respond, the soul is no longer there. You were terrified by everything that could have happened to you had fate not placed your parents in your path." But she had put her suitcases down on the ground and was standing in front of me.

"Who are you? Why are you saying all this?"

"As a doctor, I'm known as Deidre O'Neill. Pleased to meet you, and what's your name?"

"Athena. Although according to my passport I'm Sherine Khalil."