Read Online Paulo Coelho: A Warrior's Life by Fernando Morais - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Fernando Morais
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classes at Our Lady Victorious had a maximum of twenty-five boys in them. However, the fact that he was bottom of the class didn’t mean that the Coelhos were bringing up a fool. On the contrary. Their son may have hated studying, but he loved reading. He would read anything and everything, from fairy tales to Tarzan, and whatever his parents bought him or his friends lent him. Little by little, Coelho became the estate’s resident storyteller. Years later, his aunt, Cecília Dantas Arraes, would recall the ‘boy with skinny legs and baggy, wide-legged trousers’: ‘When he wasn’t thinking up some mischief, he would be sitting on the pavement with his friends around him while he told stories.’
One night, he was with his parents and grandparents watching a quiz programme, The Sky’s the Limit . A professor was answering questions about the Roman Empire and when the quiz master asked the professor who had succeeded Julius Caesar, Paulo jumped up and, to everyone’s astonishment, said: ‘Octavius Augustus’, adding: ‘I’ve always liked Octavius Augustus. He was the one August was named after, and that’s the month I was born in.’
Knowing more than his friends was one way of compensating for his physical weakness. He was very thin, frail and short, and both on the estate and at school he was known as ‘Pele’–‘skin’–a Rio term used at the time for boys who were always getting beaten up by their classmates. He may have been his peers’ favourite victim, but he soon learned that knowing things no one else knew and reading stories none of his peers had read was one way of gaining their respect.
He realized that he would never come top in anything at school, but when he learned that there was to be a writing competition for all the boys in the third year, he decided to enter. The subject was ‘The Father of Aviation’, Alberto Santos Dumont. This is what Coelho wrote:
Once upon a time, there was a boy named Alberto Santos Dumont. Every day, early in the morning, Alberto would watch the birds flying and sometimes he would think: ‘If eagles can fly, why can’t I, after all, I’m more intelligent than the eagles.’ Santos Dumont then decided to study hard, and his father and his mother, Francisca Dumont, sent him to an aeromodelling school.
Other people, such as Father Bartholomew and Augusto Severo, had tried to fly before. Augusto Severo flew in a balloon that he had built, but it fell to earth and he died. But Santos Dumont did not give up. He built a balloon that was a tube filled with gas and he flew, went round the Jefel [sic] Tower in Paris and landed in the same place he had taken off from.
Then he decided to invent an aeroplane that was heavier than air. Its shell was made of bamboo and silk. In 1906, in Champs de Bagatelle, he tried out the aeroplane. Lots of people laughed, convinced he would never fly. But Santos Dumont with his 14-bis travelled along for more than 220 metres and suddenly the wheels left the ground. When the crowd saw it there was a cry of ‘Ah!’ And that was it, aviation had been invented.
The best composition was to be chosen by a vote among the pupils. Paulo was so lacking in confidence that when it came to voting, he ended up choosing the work of another pupil. When the votes were counted, though, he was astonished to find that he was the winner. The pupil for whom he had voted came second, but was later disqualified when it was discovered that he had copied the text from a newspaper article.
However, Paulo’s performance in the competition was not reflected in other subjects. When the time came for him to take the entrance exam for St Ignatius, the strict discipline and sacrifices imposed by the harsh regime at Our Lady Victorious proved useless and he failed. As punishment, inorder to prepare for the retake, he was forced to stay in Rio having private lessons. This meant he had to forgo the annual family holiday in Araruama, where one of his uncles lived.
One night, he was with his parents and grandparents watching a quiz programme, The Sky’s the Limit . A professor was answering questions about the Roman Empire and when the quiz master asked the professor who had succeeded Julius Caesar, Paulo jumped up and, to everyone’s astonishment, said: ‘Octavius Augustus’, adding: ‘I’ve always liked Octavius Augustus. He was the one August was named after, and that’s the month I was born in.’
Knowing more than his friends was one way of compensating for his physical weakness. He was very thin, frail and short, and both on the estate and at school he was known as ‘Pele’–‘skin’–a Rio term used at the time for boys who were always getting beaten up by their classmates. He may have been his peers’ favourite victim, but he soon learned that knowing things no one else knew and reading stories none of his peers had read was one way of gaining their respect.
He realized that he would never come top in anything at school, but when he learned that there was to be a writing competition for all the boys in the third year, he decided to enter. The subject was ‘The Father of Aviation’, Alberto Santos Dumont. This is what Coelho wrote:
Once upon a time, there was a boy named Alberto Santos Dumont. Every day, early in the morning, Alberto would watch the birds flying and sometimes he would think: ‘If eagles can fly, why can’t I, after all, I’m more intelligent than the eagles.’ Santos Dumont then decided to study hard, and his father and his mother, Francisca Dumont, sent him to an aeromodelling school.
Other people, such as Father Bartholomew and Augusto Severo, had tried to fly before. Augusto Severo flew in a balloon that he had built, but it fell to earth and he died. But Santos Dumont did not give up. He built a balloon that was a tube filled with gas and he flew, went round the Jefel [sic] Tower in Paris and landed in the same place he had taken off from.
Then he decided to invent an aeroplane that was heavier than air. Its shell was made of bamboo and silk. In 1906, in Champs de Bagatelle, he tried out the aeroplane. Lots of people laughed, convinced he would never fly. But Santos Dumont with his 14-bis travelled along for more than 220 metres and suddenly the wheels left the ground. When the crowd saw it there was a cry of ‘Ah!’ And that was it, aviation had been invented.
The best composition was to be chosen by a vote among the pupils. Paulo was so lacking in confidence that when it came to voting, he ended up choosing the work of another pupil. When the votes were counted, though, he was astonished to find that he was the winner. The pupil for whom he had voted came second, but was later disqualified when it was discovered that he had copied the text from a newspaper article.
However, Paulo’s performance in the competition was not reflected in other subjects. When the time came for him to take the entrance exam for St Ignatius, the strict discipline and sacrifices imposed by the harsh regime at Our Lady Victorious proved useless and he failed. As punishment, inorder to prepare for the retake, he was forced to stay in Rio having private lessons. This meant he had to forgo the annual family holiday in Araruama, where one of his uncles lived.
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