Medium

Something was in the air at the Casa de Dom Inacio. More in the water. Wheelchairs and walking aids had been discarded, stacked to the rafters of a room in the Casa. Phoebe from the Sunshine Coast and I were among thousands who travelled here to seek help from Medium Joao de Deus. I needed him to save me from blindness while Phoebe needed relief from pain so severe she cried herself to sleep. Phoebe had seen Medium Joao before and regarded him as the next best thing to Jesus Christ. From eastern Australia, we crossed the Pacific Ocean, flew over the Andes, and took a bus ride to Medium Joao’s Casa in Abadiania, west of Brasilia. Stephen Green led our group, Phoebe and me and ten others.

At the Pousada Santa Rita, we were told we’d missed Paul Simon’s visit by less than a day and Sting not long before that. Maybe it wasn’t only marketing hype and they really had an A-list. Still, how come we never get to meet the rich and the famous but only get to hear about missing them?

The pousada was a complex of single-storey buildings within a walled compound whose exteriors were coloured lime-green. The door to my room, Room 34, was yellow, set in a wall of oyster grey. When I lay on the single bed, I faced a wall of avocado green. Above me, the pearl grey ceiling sloped sharply towards the back of the room. Two other walls were a vibrant cantaloupe pink and a calming shade of blue like the deep parts of the sea where the blue water meets the green. Generous meals with local coffee and lots of fresh local fruit were served in a common dining room.

Among our rumpled jeans, comfy T-shirts, nondescript Aussie hats (not a single Akubra) and sensible shoes, Phoebe radiated style and substance. She wore floaty black tops, black stretch leggings and spiky heels: Barbie dressed as a witch for Halloween. Blonde tresses framed a cover-girl face. Her eyes were picture-book sapphire blue, her nose like Marilyn’s, too cute for words. When she smiled, she showed us her small perfect teeth. Below chin level, her breasts had collapsed, merging with jelly-belly and saddlebag thighs to form a toad-like shape. Was she the subject of some spiteful deity with a mad sense of humour? Did she hate her body? Did her chronic pain say self-loathing?

Gerard from Room 27, chatty, fortyish and balding, enticed us to Café Cher with promises of strawberry milkshakes and lemon cheesecake. We skirted shallow puddles on the unpaved main street, watched by local storekeepers and a couple of dogs. Small dim Third World shops sold crystals, local art and produce, avocados the size of cannon-balls. Smarter newer salons offered First World me-me services for the self-focused: spa treatments, eight different types of massage, ayurvedic ear-candling. Café Cher had a menu of organic juices, super foods, guava smoothies containing goji berries, acai and chia seeds. The café’s green plastic chairs, orange drinking straws and tall pink plastic tumblers were eye-popping after the brownish-greyish puddles of the road outside. Sipping her milkshake under the large trees in the courtyard, Phoebe said she planned a shopping binge, a crystal bed for her holistic therapy clinic in Maleny and as many crystals as she could carry, most intended for re-sale.

Gerard touched my arm. “Slow down, hold the cynicism, enjoy the experience.” He was a veteran pilgrim, regarding visits to the Casa as uplifting experiences which allowed him to combine holidays with spiritual healing. He came with perennial hopes of miracles, having left the seminary in search of answers beyond. He’d been to Lourdes and Varanasi. No clue as to how he financed a life of no work and many holidays.

Phoebe’s room and mine were separated by the cantaloupe pink wall. Next morning, the roar of a motor percolated through, interspersed with hundreds of other sounds, the minutiae of Phoebe preparing to face the world. As I walked past her open door on my way to breakfast, she was rummaging in two open suitcases, her bed strewn with sachets and bottles, electrical leads and adapters, shiny gadgets with nozzles and brushes. Curling tongs? Hair-straighteners? Colourants? “Don’t wait for me,” she shouted above the noise of the hairdryer. “I’ll catch up.”

In the following days and nights, the pink wall muffled, but did not keep out, piteous sounds of moaning and vomiting. If I respected her privacy and pretended I noticed nothing, would that be heartless? If I offered sympathy and assistance, would I sound like a stalker? I didn’t want to make the mistake of reading too much between the lines, of putting two and two together and coming up with 4.25. She was rumoured to be a tough businesswoman with strong opinions. I could contribute zilch.

We were as motley a group as any that ever journeyed to Canterbury. We brought to the Casa hundreds and thousands of our griefs, like cats laying mice at the feet of Medium Joao. At least half our group complained of chronic constipation. In the room next to Gerard’s was Neville, who’d been an actor. Neville recited Shakespeare from his wheelchair. I joined him sometimes, missing the occasional line. In another wheelchair sat Louise, eyes darting, neck stiff with self-righteous beliefs, joints stiff with arthritis. Despite fifteen visits, the wheelchair used by our group leader Stephen had not joined the rusting heap in the Casa. Not everyone experiences miracles, Stephen explained. Each of us has a different journey. Stephen said frequent hugging was a compulsory aspect of healing. Sick, unhappy people were hug-deficient or hug-deprived.

At the Casa shop, a twinkling cave of prisms and refracted beams, a dark-haired man with intense eyes zoomed in on Phoebe. He introduced himself as Roberto. “We are offering a special price on crystal beds this week,” he said. He placed in her hand a leaflet with a price list.

Phoebe scanned the contents, turned the leaflet over. “Does the price include delivery to Maleny?”

Roberto smiled at Phoebe. Oh Grandmama, what white teeth you have. “No delivery charge. We pack everything neat, in one A4 box. You can take it straight away. No problem going through Customs. We do it for many countries.”

Phoebe smiled at Roberto. “I’ll need to read this leaflet and think about it.”

Roberto held Phoebe’s eyes. “Someone as beautiful as you should not suffer the pain you do.” Phoebe dropped her eyes, bit her lower lip. Roberto said, “Let me help you.”

He selected a tiny rose quartz carving, an angel, from the glittering array on his shelves, studied it like a sommelier with a bottle of 1869 Chateau Lafite Rothschild, and placed it in Phoebe’s palm, bending her fingers round it, covering her hand with his for several moments, eyes closed. He threaded the crystal on a fine leather thong and fastened it round Phoebe’s neck, his fingertips trailing on her skin. Phoebe held the counter to steady herself, her eyes bright with tears.

Roberto smiled at Phoebe. “Your crystal has been blessed by the Entities. Now, returning to this special discount: it closes in two days but listen—I will do something else for you—I will write a note saying you and I discussed the crystal bed today, so the discount is still available to you should you purchase after the offer expires.”

At dinner, Phoebe announced she was buying a crystal bed from Roberto. As a current of interest crackled round the table, Stephen looked down at his plate, the cords in his neck tight as guitar strings. “You should have asked me first,” he said.

After dinner, Gerard and I ate peach ice-cream in waffle cones as we strolled in the street outside the pousada. “Stephen seemed very upset. Has he missed out on a good commission?”

Gerard took out a handkerchief and dabbed his lips. “Stephen couldn’t compete with Roberto’s offer to Phoebe. He charged me $22,000 two years ago.”

“What! That’s the price of a small car!”

Medium Joao held audiences on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, Each of us—patient? pilgrim? supplicant?—was allowed three questions or requests. We were to wear all-white clothing, nothing crossing over the torso. Since we would be amongst poor Brazilian peasants, I’d assembled my wardrobe of loose tops, shapeless pants and white sandals from my local op-shop, total investment $20. Phoebe, by contrast, was a picture of conspicuous consumption in knee-length tunic of white lace costing hundreds, maybe many hundreds. Under that was a diaphanous blouse and soft embroidered pants. A lace mantilla rested like a drift of butterflies on her long blonde curls. Through sandals of white leather straps her toenails gleamed, fire-engine red. A wedding rather than a pilgrimage?

Each clutching a little piece of paper with our three requests, we shuffled in slow procession past rows and rows of people deep in meditation. A host of Entities supported Medium Joao’s mission. Some slumped in their wheelchairs, looking barely alive. Voices droned in prayer and in chants. At last I stood before him, the Miracle Man, Joao de Deus.

I saw a man tired, perhaps even bored, lounging in a chair of carved timber upholstered in red velvet, a biggish man, somewhat paunchy under his short-sleeved white shirt. He wore white trousers like the rest of us.

He said he could help me but I would need to return twice more.

Two more meetings in the Casa, Thursday and Friday?

No, two more journeys to the Casa after this visit.

Phoebe and I were sent for crystal bed therapy. My vulgar preconceptions were shaped by Disney’s Snow White lying in a crystal coffin, defying ageing and putrefaction like St Bernadette. What I found was a couch just like the one in my local diagnostic clinic, a metal frame painted pale blue, blue upholstery covered in clear plastic. At one end was a post with a metal arm carrying a row of crystals in a familiar colour scheme—blue, red, yellow, blue, green, red—not the Google logo, surely? An attendant, looking like my suburban radiographer’s assistant, positioned the crystals over my chakras. Chakras? A mask protected my eyes while the crystals zapped my chakras for twenty minutes.

Phoebe was in the Casa garden, needing to rest. While I waited, I attempted meditation in the garden overlooking the verdant bowl of a large caldera where the soil showed richly-red, the terra roxa that nurtures the coffee plantations of Brazil.

“I had a nice rest but otherwise, nothing. You look like you had a hell of a session.”

Phoebe struggled back from some far place, her voice emerging like bubbles of tar. “Uh-h-h … it was amazing … very powerful.”

“Really? How? What happened?”

The blue-blue eyes snapped. “You can’t ask things like that. It’s personal.”

“Oh, sorry, but what’s this business about chakras? Isn’t that a Hindu concept? How do chakras get mixed up with crystals in a deeply Catholic country?”

Big breath out. “Medium Joao’s powers transcend religions and cultures. Don’t be so negative. This negative energy is destructive. You’re going to ruin everything.” She looked down at the mango trees in the caldera for a long moment. Was I so disgusting that she couldn’t bear to look at me? I was. As she rose to go, she said, “Stop being an arsehole.”

I asked Stephen what the coloured crystals were, hoping he’d have fabulous tales about jaguar tears, anaconda spit and the esoteric relationships between stones and healing. Did Brazilians give romantic names to stones, like the Chinese who name their best-loved turquoises Spirit of the Dawning and Wings of Hope?

“No,” said Stephen, “the colours are filters. The crystals themselves are colourless quartz.”

“So what’s the point of coloured filters?”

“That’s the way it is. Try to accept these things. It’s important to lay down your cynicism.”

We did the serious stuff inspired by medieval monastic life, dominated by silence, meditation and isolation. Our group dispersed, each on a specific regimen of prolonged meditation, of crystal bed therapy and spiritual surgery. We sat many hours in silence on hard wooden benches, eyes shut, with various Entities channelling dead healers, meditating or performing invisible spiritual surgery. Experienced pilgrims like Gerard stocked up on large quantities of blessed water and brought cushions for these sessions. After surgery, I went to the farmacia to purchase passiflora medication (one capsule three times a day) and retired to my room for a forty-hour period of intensive meditation in near-darkness, no conversation or reading, no sex, no chillies, no pork. We were urged to drink many litres of blessed water. Stephen silently delivered plates of food to my door at meal times. The sounds of Casa life flowed outside my room but my yellow door remained steadfastly unmolested. The pink wall conveyed a much-diminished version of Phoebe’s presence next door. Was she sequestered alone, forbidden sufficient light to look in a mirror?

Forty hours of isolation, meditation and reduced rations left me looking wan, even slimmer. Not Phoebe though. Hair newly re-ringleted, red in lip and nail, she bustled about in a meaningful way, leaving no one in doubt that she was avoiding my eye while she exhorted Gerard to defend himself against “negative energies”. Had her forty hours been used to identify demons? I was glad the Catholic Inquisition had ended hundreds of years ago.

The next time I stood before Medium Joao, I tried to look beyond the tired overweight man to find the peasant boy he had been, of pure heart and gift. It wasn’t easy. He was surrounded by supporters who attended to crowd control, the theatrics, merchandising and administration of a successful business. Perhaps in his youth Medium Joao had been like the young Elvis, rejoicing in the shining gift he’d received from God, wanting only to share his miraculous abilities, but the marketing people had put him in a cage to produce golden eggs. Now he was fenced in by a multitude of schemes and financial obligations. Among the poor Brazilian peasants, Medium Joao’s supporters stood out, one wearing a heavy gold necklace and a gold Rolex.

Medium Joao didn’t look unhappy though. Perhaps he accepted commerce as the embarrassing price of bringing his gift to the masses. Though Medium Joao himself levied no charge for treatments, the Casa’s associated businesses sold millions of herbal medicine capsules, huge volumes of water Blessed by the Entities, millions of dollars’ worth of blessed triangles, gewgaws, crystals, crystal beds and crystal bed therapies. The Casa website even advertised Medium Joao as a global business with overseas tours, like a rock star.

Despite declining health, he was reliably available to the adoring masses, going through the motions, hinting at miracles, fulfilling his job description. Following his stroke some years earlier, the bean-counters may have scrutinised the bottom line and looked at succession planning. The death of a cult figure must not result in the demise of the cult’s lucrative businesses. The brand must be maintained.

Phoebe and I were scheduled to leave the same day at the close of our fortnight in the Casa. Stephen helped her cram her numerous purchases into a suitcase she had bought specifically for carrying her shopping. Neville and Louise tottered out of their wheelchairs for farewell hugs. Gerard had a gift for me, a fridge magnet bearing a blessing from Santa Rita de Cascia. “You’ll be back,” he announced. Phoebe shot him a look. She pushed her heavy bags towards Gerard and directed him to load her luggage in the taxi.

Stephen gave the Brazilian driver instructions in English. Didn’t Stephen sense the irony of speaking no Portuguese even after fifteen visits? A tour leader who didn’t know the language? The taxi driver tried to lighten the crypt-like silence during the ride with some dance music but quickly gave up. I’d heard Phoebe tell Stephen her pain wasn’t better. I’d heard her confide to Louise that a clairvoyant had predicted she would meet the love of her life this year. That would explain the wedding regalia. Maybe she thought Abadiania was where it would come true, but Roberto is married with three children. At the airport she brushed past me in her purposeful stride to the duty-free Armani counter. No goodbye, no backward glance.

Back in Brisbane, I woke one night to find my room filled with light. I was in Medium Joao’s Casa among hundreds of white-clad people, each with a white cloth bag hanging from the shoulder. Medium Joao appeared, smiled and gave me his hand. He looked slimmer and fitter. We walked among the throngs. No one noticed.

How to evaluate the results of his treatment? I asked for help with vision loss. Nothing happened, so I scored that an F. But other things happened that must surely rate A+ for unexpected bonuses. For instance, I’d lost my sense of smell some years ago. It’s a neurological tic which runs in my family. Medium Joao gave me back some sort of ability to smell, and delightful experiences to go with it. I wake often to delightful sensations, my bedroom smelling of roses, gardenias, jasmine. Sometimes I wake to the aromas of a pastry shop, of mille-feuilles, toasted almond flakes, vanilla, powdered sugar. My hand, tucked under my pillow, near my face, my fingers and elbows: all smell delicious. Wouldn’t it be ironic if Medium Joao tweaked my olfactory system instead of my optic nerve? Spiritual dyslexia? And another thing: the eczema which bothered me all my life has disappeared. Even the scars and scabs from years of scratching and picking have gone. Maybe he reset my self-love/self-worth mode.

So what can save me from blindness? What don’t I want to see? Why don’t I want to see? Will two more visits to the Casa allow Medium Joao to fine-tune this olfactory/optic nerve mix-up? Perhaps the business works by giving each of us a taste of what we wish for, so we keep coming back for more, like beagles working lines of luggage bags in the airport.

Joao de Deus may be the most miraculous healer since Jesus, or a charlatan, but if his interventions give me the result I want, hey, I’m a happy customer. His faith or mine? Does it matter? The Sichuanese saying, made famous by Deng Xiaoping, goes: if a cat catches mice, it matters not if the cat is black or yellow. That doesn’t hold, however, if the cat catches lizards or attacks your pet bird instead. You’d have to say this cat failed its brief because you’ve still got your mouse problem.