Aleph by Paulo Coelho Page A

to understand each other very well through looks and gestures. Hilal decides to take part in this morning’s conversation and describes some of the difficulties faced by musicians struggling to make a living. It might be a prestigious profession, but many musicians earn less than taxi drivers.
    “How old are you?” asks my editor.
    “Twenty-one.”
    “You don’t look it.”
    She says this in a way that implies she looks much older. And she really does. It had never occurred to me that she was so young.
    “The director of the music conservatory came to see me at the hotel in Ekaterinburg,” says the editor. “She said you were one of the most talented violinists she’s ever known but that you had suddenly lost all interest in music.”
    “It was the Aleph,” Hilal replies, avoiding my eyes.
    “The Aleph?”
    Everyone looks at her in surprise. I pretend not to have heard.
    “Yes, the Aleph. I couldn’t find it, and my energy stopped flowing. Something in my past was blocking it.”
    The conversation seems to have taken a completely surrealturn. I still say nothing, but my publisher tries to ease the situation.
    “I published a mathematics book with that word in the title. In technical language, it means ‘the number that contains all numbers.’ The book was about the kabbalah and mathematics. Apparently, mathematicians use the Aleph to represent the cardinality of infinite sets …”
    No one appears to be following this explanation. He stops midway.
    “It’s in the Apocalypse as well,” I say, as if I’d just picked up the thread of the conversation. “Where the Lamb is defined as the beginning and the end, as the thing that is beyond time. It’s also the first letter of the alphabet in Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic.”
    The editor now regrets having made Hilal the center of attention and decides to bring her down a peg or two.
    “Nevertheless, for a girl of twenty-one, just out of music school and with a brilliant career ahead of her, it must be quite enough to have traveled all the way from Moscow to Ekaterinburg.”
    “Especially for someone who’s a
spalla
,” says Hilal.
    She noticed the confusion her use of the word “Aleph” caused and is delighted to confuse the publisher still further with yet another mysterious term.
    The tension grows, until Yao intervenes.
    “You’re a
spalla
already? Congratulations!”
    Then, turning to the rest of the group, he adds, “As you all know,
spalla
is the first violin in an orchestra, the last player to come onto the stage before the conductor enters, and who is always seated in the first row on the left. He or she is responsible for making sure all the other instrumentsare in tune. Actually, I know an interesting story on the subject, which took place when I was in Novosibirsk, our next stop. Would you like to hear it?”
    Everyone agrees, as if they had, indeed, always known the meaning of the word
“spalla.”
    Yao’s story turns out not to be particularly interesting, but confrontation between Hilal and my editor is averted. After a tedious dissertation on the marvels of Novosibirsk, everyone has calmed down and people are considering going back to their compartments and trying to rest for a little, while I once again regret ever having had the idea of crossing a whole continent by train.
    “Oh, I’ve forgotten to put up today’s thought,” says Yao.
    On a yellow Post-it, he writes, “Dreamers can never be tamed,” and sticks it on the mirror next to the previous day’s “thought.”
    “There’s a TV reporter waiting at one of the next stations, and he’d like to interview you,” says my publisher.
    I say “Fine,” glad of any distraction, anything to help pass the time.
    “Write about insomnia,” says my publisher. “You never know, it might help you sleep.”
    “I want to interview you, too,” says Hilal, and I see that she has fully recovered from her lethargy.
    “Make an appointment with my publisher,” I tell her.
    I go