The Witch of Portobello

"I'm a man, even though tonight in bed I behaved like a woman. I'm a species in danger of extinction because I don't see many men around. Few people would risk what I have risked."

"I'm sure you're right, and that's why I admire you, but aren't you going to ask me who I am, what I want, and what I desire?"

I asked.

"I want everything. I want savagery and tenderness. I want to upset the neighbors and placate them too. I don't want a woman in my bed, I want men, real men, like you, for example. Whether they love me or are merely using me, it doesn't matter. My love is greater than that. I want to love freely, and I want to allow the people around me to do the same.

"What I talked about to Athena were the simple ways of awakening repressed energy, like making love, for example, or walking down the street saying: 'I'm here and now.' Nothing very special, no secret ritual. The only thing that made our meeting slightly different was that we were both naked. From now on, she and I will meet every Monday, and if I have any comments to make, I will do so after that session. I have no desire to be her friend. Just as, when she feels the need to share something, she goes up to Scotland to talk with that Edda woman, who, it seems, you know as well, although you've never mentioned her."

"I can't even remember meeting her!"

I sensed that Andrea was gradually calming down. I prepared two cups of coffee, and we drank them together. She recovered her smile and asked about my promotion. She said she was worried about those Monday meetings, because she'd learned only that morning that friends of friends were inviting other people, and Athena's apartment was a very small place. I made an enormous effort to pretend that everything that had happened that evening was just a fit of nerves or premenstrual tension or jealousy on her part.

I put my arms around her, and she snuggled into my shoulder. And despite my own exhaustion, I waited until she fell asleep. That night, I dreamed of nothing. I had no feelings of foreboding.

And the following morning, when I woke up, I saw that her clothes were gone, the key was on the table, and there was no letter of farewell.

DEIDRE O'NEILL, KNOWN AS EDDA

People read a lot of stories about witches, fairies, paranormals, and children possessed by evil spirits. They go to films showing rituals featuring pentagrams, swords, and invocations. That's fine, people need to give free rein to their imagination and to go through certain stages. Anyone who gets through those stages without being deceived will eventually get in touch with the Tradition.

The real Tradition is this: the teacher never tells the disciple what he or she should do. They are merely traveling companions, sharing the same uncomfortable feeling of "estrangement" when confronted by ever-changing perceptions, broadening horizons, closing doors, rivers that sometimes seem to block their path and which, in fact, should never be crossed, but followed.

There is only one difference between teacher and disciple: the former is slightly less afraid than the latter. Then, when they sit down at a table or in front of a fire to talk, the more experienced person might say: "Why don't you do that?" But he or she never says: "Go there and you'll arrive where I did," because every path and every destination are unique to the individual.

The true teacher gives the disciple the courage to throw his or her world off balance, even though the disciple is afraid of things already encountered and more afraid still of what might be around the next corner.

I was a young, enthusiastic doctor who, filled by a desire to help my fellow human beings, traveled to the interior of Romania on an exchange program run by the British government. I set off with my luggage full of medicines and my head full of preconceptions. I had clear ideas about how people should behave, about what we need to be happy, about the dreams we should keep alive inside us, about how human relations should evolve. I arrived in Bucharest during that crazed, bloody dictatorship and went to Transylvania to assist with a mass vaccination program for the local population.

I didn't realize that I was merely one more piece on a very complicated chessboard, where invisible hands were manipulating my idealism, and that ulterior motives lay behind everything I believed was being done for humanitarian purposes: stabilizing the government run by the dictator's son, allowing Britain to sell arms in a market dominated by the Soviets.

All my good intentions collapsed when I saw that there was barely enough vaccine to go round; that there were other diseases sweeping the region; that however often I wrote asking for more resources, they never came. I was told not to concern myself with anything beyond what I'd been asked to do.

I felt powerless and angry. I'd seen poverty from close up and would have been able to do something about it if only someone would give me some money, but they weren't interested in results. Our government just wanted a few articles in the press so that they could say to their political parties or to their electorate that they'd dispatched groups to various places in the world on a humanitarian mission. Their intentions were good--apart from selling arms, of course.

I was in despair. What kind of world was this? One night, I set off into the icy forest, cursing God, who was unfair to everything and everyone. I was sitting beneath an oak tree when my protector approached me. He said I could die of cold, and I replied that I was a doctor and knew the body's limits, and that as soon as I felt I was getting near those limits, I would go back to the camp. I asked him what he was doing there.

"I'm speaking to a woman who can hear me, in a world in which all the men have gone deaf."

I thought he meant me, but the woman he was referring to was the forest itself. When I saw this man wandering about among the trees, making gestures and saying things I couldn't understand, a kind of peace settled on my heart. I was not, after all, the only person in the world left talking to myself. When I got up to return to the camp, he came over to me again.

"I know who you are," he said. "People in the village say that you're a very decent person, always good-humored and prepared to help others, but I see something else: rage and frustration."

He might have been a government spy, but I decided to tell him everything I was feeling, even though I ran the risk of being arrested. We walked together to the field hospital where I was working; I took him to the dormitory, which was empty at the time (my colleagues were all having fun at the annual festival being held in the town), and I asked if he'd like a drink. He produced a bottle from his pocket.

"Palinka," he said, meaning the traditional drink of Romania, with an incredibly high alcohol content. "On me."

We drank together, and I didn't even notice that I was getting steadily drunk. I only realized the state I was in when I tried to go to the toilet, tripped over something, and fell flat.

"Don't move," said the man. "Look at what is there before your eyes."

A line of ants.

"They all think they're very wise. They have memory, intelligence, organizational powers, a spirit of sacrifice. They look for food in summer, store it away for the winter, and now they are setting forth again, in this icy spring, to work. If the world was destroyed by an atomic bomb tomorrow, the ants would survive."

"How do you know all this?"

"I studied biology."