Paulo Coelho on the phone, expecting me to drop everything and come to Miami for the launch of a book. Not what I expected, and frankly rude, that’s what I was thinking. Didn’t he understand I was a busy person? And that I had nothing at all to do with the publishing industry?
“Thank you for calling, I am glad to hear you liked my letter and glad that your book is being translated into English. I look forward to reading it. And thank you for the kind invitation but I have a very busy week ahead and cannot possibly join you in Miami,” I responded.
“Ok, I understand you cannot come to Miami. But your letter was an omen and I am required to follow the omens. So let me think about this and I will call you again,” Paulo replied.
I quickly instructed him not to call me again at the office, worried that someone would take an embarrassing message from this esoteric writer. Please call me at home; I gave him the number.
A few nights later Paulo called. His assistant Mônica had a flight out of JFK to her home in Barcelona, Spain. He loves road trips in America (I knew that, having read The Valkyries) and had decided to drive her from Miami to New York. He had made reservations for the two of us to meet at a restaurant on the Upper East Side at 8pm on Friday.
That seemed safe enough, and my Friday night routine was to leave the office “early” for a standing 6pm massage appointment not far from the restaurant he named. I figured I would have an interesting story to tell at the start of my business meetings, and fulfill my apparent obligation, reiterating over dinner that I was just an ordinary reader with no publishing connections.
I came home the following evening to find a message on my answering machine from a woman named Belisa Ribeiro. She had just returned from Miami and was giving a party for Paulo on Saturday night and they were all looking forward to meeting me. I fumed. Who are these people, presumptively taking over my life? And anyway, wasn’t that the name of the woman who had been press secretary to Fernando Collor, the just-impeached President? No no no. I wanted nothing to do with these people. One dinner, and that’s that.
Friday afternoon my office phone rang again. It was Paulo Coelho, in a panic. The story was a bit confused, but somehow Mônica had missed her plane, there was a problem with getting into the hotel room, they needed to freshen up after a long day in the car. “And this is my problem?” I’m thinking. But welcoming visitors in need is what I do. I made some mental calculations; if I left immediately there would be just enough time.
I gave Paulo the address, rushed home to locate my spare key and set out extra towels, all the time running a mental stream of complaints, completely irritated by the whole situation. How I was being imposed upon, might end up late to my massage, I really was just soooo over this. The doorbell rang and I buzzed him in the main door.
I took a deep breath and opened my apartment door. Our eyes met.
I knew what Paulo looked like from the photo on the jacket of the book, that was no surprise. The surprise was that when I looked into his eyes, it was as though I was seeing an old friend. All my angry thoughts simply dissolved. I knew instantly and with no doubt at all that this man would be an important person in my life.
We did the Brazilian two-cheek kiss, tudo bem routine. He had left Mônica in the hotel lobby and would go back for her, he explained. I giggled inside; maybe they had not been so sure about me either. I showed him the bathroom and the kitchen, handed him the key, gave instructions for setting the alarm, and told him I would see them at the restaurant.
1993 in the West Village: two friends enjoying endless espressos and endless arguments
Over dinner and a bottle of Spanish wine, they told me the story. When The Alchemist was first published in Brazil, it sold so poorly that his original publisher dropped it. Paulo knocked on every door until he found a second publisher willing to take a risk on the book. One of the few people who had bought the original book was a 19-year-old woman named Mônica Antunes, not much older now as she sat next to me in the restaurant. Like me, she had contacted Paulo after being profoundly affected by his book. Even though she had recently married and moved to Spain, Mônica was continuing to act as Paulo’s #1 fan and assistant and had hopes of selling the book rights in Europe.
The next bit of luck came when a visiting American psychologist read The Alchemist in Portuguese. He offered to translate the book into English, and relentlessly presented it to American publishing houses, eventually landing the deal with Harper Collins. That was an important step, Mônica explained, because of the way the international literary market works. Very few books that are not written in English are translated from their original language directly into other languages. Overseas publishers wait for the English edition; if it is a success, they translate from that version.
I was starting to see my mistake. I had been thinking that Paulo was well-connected with all kinds of professional support at his disposal, and therefore I could not imagine I could possibly add anything of value. Now I understood that every bit of success he’d had so far was due to a grassroots effort of family and friends who believed in his work. The story was touching and inspiring, and it made sense that Paulo was so adamant about following the omen my letter represented to him with its timing. Count me in.
At the party the following evening Belisa and I became instant friends and conspirators. Why is there no slang word for the female equivalent of a bromance? I guess because it is no big deal for two smart, capable, big-hearted women to form an instant bond.
Harper Collins had printed an initial run of 50,000 copies. If by some miracle those 50,000 copies sold and there was a second printing, they might agree to publish his other books. Harper Collins was taking out ads in the New York Times and had hosted at the American Booksellers Association convention. That seemed unlikely to sell out the printing. But there were a lot of Brazilians in the U.S. and a publicity blitz in Brazil could help. That was where Belisa’s help came in, organizing the Brazilian media to cover the launch of The Alchemist in English.
One of the many magazine and newspaper articles about Paulo in my apartment.
And at this point 16 Saint Lukes Place becomes a character itself in this story. My charming West Village brownstone with its literary history would be the perfect backdrop for those interviews. Paulo was going to need to spend time in New York meeting with his publisher and promoting the book. My apartment sat empty during the two weeks of each month I spent in Brazil anyway; even when I was in NYC I worked stupidly long hours and it would be available all day.
I never asked for the key back.
I was leaving for my monthly trip to Brazil and Paulo was heading home to Rio. By chance, he and Christina already had plans to be in São Paulo the following week for the opening of a friend’s one-man show. We met for dinner and I joined them at the show. Chris agreed to the plan, and my apartment became Paulo’s base for the launch of The Alchemist in English.
We had ambitions to sell out that five-figure first printing, maybe even hit six figure sales. Maybe get it published in Spain. There was no way we could have imagined The Alchemist would be translated into over 80 languages, with sales climbing into nine figures. It’s hard to keep track. 150 million copies? 180 million copies? Something like that.
In 1993, I was the one whose clients were C-level executives and Ministers of Finance, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Paulo was a struggling author with modest success in Latin America. We did not imagine that one day presidents and movie stars would be seen with copies of The Alchemist and Paulo would be a regular attendee at the World Economic Forum, joining the annual meeting in Davos with business, government and “thought” leaders from around the world. In the articles from 1993, my offer to host him in NYC was treated as a big deal.
It wasn’t like Paulo and I never saw each other during the months he was my guest at 16 Saint Lukes Place. We gradually became friends. Paulo needed to improve his English and I needed to improve my Portuguese. He proposed we tell each other important stories from our lives. I would tell one in Portuguese, with him coaching me on vocabulary and grammar. Then we would switch.
The only book Paulo ever autographed for me.
We met friends for dinner and prowled flea markets on weekends, drinking endless espressos with our endless arguments. Paulo disapproved of my pursuit of Buddhist and native American spiritual traditions, arguing that as a person of European descent I should follow a European tradition. He was shocked to discover I did not own a copy of the Bible, and marched me to the Strand to buy one.
For my part, I thought that his translator did not have the business savvy to continue to act as his agent and only did a mediocre job at translation. On the other hand, I argued that he wasn’t giving Mônica her due; she deserved to be compensated as his agent abroad.
There turned out to be a myriad of small ways in which I could help - then, and over the next few years. And there was a big way in which spending time with Paulo was a gift to me. The handwriting was on the wall for Brazil; I would be lucky if my job survived until the end of the year. And I was not really sure I wanted another assignment with the Bank. By the time I was on my journey back from Tibet, I was writing journal entries questioning how long I would stay in banking in light of my reawakened spiritual and social conscience. I always felt there was value in working inside the system, but my cognitive dissonance was growing as the era of Gordon Gecko “greed is good” dawned.
And at least sometimes as I wrestled with those questions in 1993, I could turn to a friend whose little book would eventually help hundreds of millions of people figure out how to find their destiny, read the omens, and follow their dreams.
2022 - me wearing a t-shirt Paulo sent me after I admired it on his social media