The Witch of Portobello

She drank a little more wine. I did the same. I couldn't bring myself to ask if she accepted my love or not, but I felt lighter.

"You may be right. I'll donate my books to a public library and only keep those I really will reread one day."

"Is that what you want to talk about now?"

"No. I just don't know how to continue the conversation."

"Shall we eat, then, and enjoy the food. Does that seem a good idea?"

No, it didn't seem like a good idea. I wanted to hear something different, but I was afraid to ask, and so I babbled on about libraries, books, and poets, regretting having ordered so many dishes. I was the one who wanted to escape now, because I didn't know how to continue.

In the end, she made me promise that I would be at the theater for her first class, and for me that was a signal. She needed me; she had accepted what I had unconsciously dreamed of offering her ever since I saw her dancing in a restaurant in Transylvania, but which I had only been capable of understanding that night.

Or, as Athena would have said, of believing.

ANDREA MCCAIN, ACTRESS

Of course I'm to blame. If it hadn't been for me, Athena would never have come to the theater that morning, gathered us all together, asked us to lie down on the stage and begin a relaxation exercise involving breathing and bringing our awareness to each part of the body.

"Relax your thighs..."

We all obeyed, as if we were before a goddess, someone who knew more than all of us, even though we'd done this kind of exercise hundreds of times before. We were all curious to know what would come after "...now relax your face and breathe deeply."

Did she really think she was teaching us anything new? We were expecting a lecture, a talk! But I must control myself. Let's get back to what happened then. We relaxed, and then came a silence that left us completely disoriented. When I discussed it with my colleagues afterward, we all agreed that we felt the exercise was over, that it was time to sit up and look around, except that no one did. We remained lying down, in a kind of enforced meditation, for fifteen interminable minutes.

Then she spoke again.

"You've had plenty of time to doubt me now. One or two of you looked impatient. But now I'm going to ask you just one thing: when I count to three, be different. I don't mean be another person, an animal, or a house. Try to forget everything you've learned in drama courses. I'm not asking you to be actors and to demonstrate your abilities. I'm asking you to cease being human and to transform yourselves into something you don't know."

We were all still lying on the floor with our eyes closed and so couldn't see how anyone else was reacting. Athena was playing on that uncertainty.

"I'm going to say a few words and you'll immediately associate certain images with those words. Remember that you're all full of the poison of preconceived ideas and that if I were to say fate, you would probably start imagining your lives in the future. If I were to say red, you would probably make some psychoanalytic interpretation. That isn't what I want. As I said, I want you to be different."

She couldn't explain what she really wanted. When no one complained, I felt sure they were simply being polite, but that when the "lecture" was over, they would never invite Athena back. They would even tell me that I'd been naive to have sought her out in the first place.

"The first word is sacred."

So as not to die of boredom, I decided to join in the game. I imagined my mother, my boyfriend, my future children, a brilliant career.

"Make a gesture that means sacred."

I folded my arms over my chest, as if I were embracing all my loved ones. I found out later that most people opened their arms to form a cross, and that one of the women opened her legs, as if she were making love.

"Relax again, and again forget about everything and keep your eyes closed. I'm not criticizing, but from what I saw, you seem to be giving form to what you consider to be sacred. That isn't what I want. When I give you the next word, don't try to define it as it manifests itself in the world. Open all the channels and allow the poison of reality to drain away. Be abstract, and then you will enter the world I'm guiding you toward."

That last phrase had real authority, and I felt the energy in the theater change. Now the voice knew where it wanted to take us. She was a teacher now, not a lecturer.

Earth, she said.

Suddenly I understood what she meant. It was no longer my imagination that mattered, but my body in contact with the soil. I was the earth.

"Make a gesture that represents earth."

I didn't move. I was the soil of that stage.

"Perfect," she said. "None of you moved. For the first time you all experienced the same feeling. Instead of describing something, you transformed yourself into an idea."

She fell silent again for what I imagined were five long minutes. The silence made us feel lost, unable to tell whether she simply had no idea how to continue, or if she was merely unfamiliar with our usual intense rhythm of working.