Eleven Minutes

She knew how attractive she was, and although she rarely listened to her mother, there was one thing her mother said that she never forgot: ‘Beauty, my dear, doesn’t last.’ With this in mind, she continued to keep her boss at arm’s length, though without putting him off completely, and this brought her a considerable increase in salary (she didn’t know how long she would be able to string him along with the mere hope of one day getting her into bed, but at least she was earning good money meanwhile). He also paid her overtime for working late (her boss liked having her around, perhaps worried that if she went out at night, she might find the great love of her life). She worked for two years solidly, paid money each month to her parents for her keep, and, at last, she did it! She saved up enough money to go and spend a week’s holiday in the city of her dreams, the place where film and TV stars live, the picture postcard image of her country: Rio de Janeiro!

Her boss offered to go with her and to pay all her expenses, but Maria lied to him, saying that, since she was going to one of the most dangerous places in the world, the one condition her mother had laid down was that she was to stay at the house of a cousin trained in judo.

‘Besides, sir,’ she said, ‘you can’t just leave the shop without some reliable person to look after it.’

‘Don’t call me "sir",’ he said, and Maria saw in his eyes something she recognised: the flame of love. And this surprised her, because she had always thought he was only interested in sex; and yet, his eyes were saying the exact opposite: ‘I can give you a house, a family, some money for your parents.’ Thinking of the future, she decided to stoke the fire.

She said that she would really miss the job, as well as the colleagues she just adored working with (she was careful not to mention anyone in particular, leaving the mystery hanging in the air: did ‘colleague’ mean him?) and she promised to take great care of her purse and her honour. The truth was quite different: she didn’t want anyone, anyone at all, to spoil what would be her first week of total freedom. She wanted to do everything – swim in the sea, talk to complete strangers, look in shop windows, and be prepared for a Prince Charming to appear and carry her off for good.

‘What’s a week after all?’ she said with a seductive smile, hoping that she was wrong. ‘It will pass in a flash, and I’ll soon be back at work.’

Saddened, her boss resisted at first, but finally accepted her decision, for at the time he was making secret plans to ask her to marry him as soon as she got back, and he didn’t want to spoil everything by appearing too pushy.

Maria travelled for forty-eight hours by bus, checked into a cheap hotel in Copacabana (Copacabana! That beach, that sky…) and even before she had unpacked her bags, she grabbed the bikini she had bought, put it on, and despite the cloudy weather, made straight for the beach. She looked at the sea fearfully, but ended up wading awkwardly into its waters.

No one on the beach noticed that this was her first contact with the ocean, with the goddess Iemanjá, the maritime currents, the foaming waves and, on the other side of the Atlantic, with the coast of Africa and its lions. When she came out of the water, she was approached by a woman trying to selling wholefood sandwiches, by a handsome black man who asked if she wanted to go out with him that night, and by another man who didn’t speak a word of Portuguese but who asked, using gestures, if she would like to have a drink of coconut water.

Maria bought a sandwich because she was too embarrassed to say ‘no’, but she avoided speaking to the two strangers. She felt suddenly disappointed with herself; now that she had the chance to do anything she wanted, why was she behaving in this ridiculous manner? Finding no good explanation, she sat down to wait for the sun to come out from behind the clouds, still surprised at her own courage and at how cold the water was, even in the height of summer.

However, the man who couldn’t speak Portuguese reappeared at her side bearing a drink, which he offered to her. Relieved not to have to talk to him, she drank the coconut water and smiled at him, and he smiled back. For some time, they kept up this comfortable, meaningless conversation – a smile here, a smile there – until the man took a small red dictionary out of his pocket and said, in a strange accent: ‘bonita’ – ‘pretty’. She smiled again; however much she wanted to meet her Prince Charming, he should at least speak her language and be slightly younger.

The man went on leafing through the little book:

‘Supper…tonight?’

Then he said:

‘Switzerland!’

And he completed this with words that sound like the bells of paradise in whatever language they are spoken:

‘Work! Dollars!’

Maria did not know any restaurant called Switzerland, and could things really be that easy and dreams so quickly fulfilled? She erred on the side of caution: ‘Thank you very much for the invitation, but I already have a job and I’m not interested in buying any dollars.’

The man, who understood not a word she said, was growing desperate; after many more smiles back and forth, he left her for a few minutes and returned with an interpreter. Through him, he explained that he was from Switzerland (the country, not a restaurant) and that he would like to have supper with her, in order to talk to her about a possible job offer. The interpreter, who introduced himself as the person in charge of foreign tourists and security in the hotel where the man was staying, added on his own account:

‘I’d accept if I were you. He’s an important impresario looking for new talent to work in Europe. If you like, I can put you in touch with some other people who accepted his invitation, got rich and are now married with children who won’t have to worry about being mugged or unemployed.’

Then, trying to impress her with his grasp of international culture, he said:

‘Besides, Switzerland makes excellent chocolates and watches.’

Maria’s only stage experience had been in the Passion play that the local council always put on during Holy Week, and in which she had had a walk-on part as a waterseller. She had barely slept on the bus, but she was excited by the sea, tired of eating sandwiches, wholefood or otherwise, and confused because she didn’t know anyone and needed to find a friend. She had been in similar situations before, in which a man promises everything and gives nothing, so she knew that all this talk of acting was just a way of getting her interested.

However, convinced that the Virgin had presented her with this chance, convinced that she must enjoy every second of her week’s holiday, and because a visit to a good restaurant would provide her with something to talk about when she went home, she decided to accept the invitation, as long as the interpreter came too, for she was already getting tired of smiling and pretending that she could understand what the foreigner was saying.

The only problem was also the gravest one: she did not have anything suitable to wear. A woman never admits to such things (she would find it easier to admit that her husband had betrayed her than to reveal the state of her wardrobe), but since she did not know these people and might well never see them again, she felt that she had nothing to lose.

‘I’ve just arrived from the northeast and I haven’t got the right clothes to wear to a restaurant.’

Through the interpreter, the man told her not to worry and asked for the address of her hotel. That evening, she received a dress the like of which she had never seen in her entire life, accompanied by a pair of shoes that must have cost as much as she earned in a year.

She felt that this was the beginning of the road she had so longed for during her childhood and adolescence in the sertão, the Brazilian backlands, putting up with the constant droughts, the boys with no future, the poor but honest town, the dull, repetitive way of life: she was ready to be transformed into the princess of the universe! A man had offered her work, dollars, a pair of exorbitantly expensive shoes and a dress straight out of a fairy tale! All she lacked was some make-up, but the receptionist at her hotel took pity on her and helped her out, first warning her not to assume that every foreigner was trustworthy or that every man in Rio was a mugger.

Maria ignored the warning, put on her gifts from heaven, spent hours in front of the mirror, regretting not having brought a camera with her in order to record the moment, only to realise that she was late for her date. She raced off, just like Cinderella, to the hotel where the Swiss gentleman was staying.

To her surprise, the interpreter told her that he would not be accompanying them.

‘Don’t worry about the language, what matters is whether or not he feels comfortable with you.’

‘But how can he if he doesn’t understand what I’m saying?’

‘Precisely. You don’t need to talk, it’s all a question of vibes.’

Maria didn’t know what ‘vibes’ were; where she came from, people needed to exchange words, phrases, questions and answers whenever they met. But Maílson – the name of the interpreter-cum-security officer – assured her that in Rio de Janeiro and the rest of the world, things were different.

‘He doesn’t need to understand, just make him feel at ease. He’s a widower with no children; he owns a nightclub and is looking for Brazilian women who want to work abroad. I said you weren’t the type, but he insisted, saying that he had fallen in love with you when he saw you coming out of the water. He thought your bikini was lovely too.’

He paused.

‘But, frankly, if you want to find a boyfriend here, you’ll have to get a different bikini; no one, apart from this Swiss guy, will go for it; it’s really old-fashioned.’

Maria pretended that she hadn’t heard. Maílson went on:

‘I don’t think he’s interested in just having a bit of a fling; he reckons you’ve got what it takes to become the main attraction at his club. Of course, he hasn’t seen you sing or dance, but you could learn all that, whereas beauty is something you’re born with. These Europeans are all the same; they come over here and imagine that all Brazilian women are really sensual and know how to samba. If he’s serious, I’d advise you to get a signed contract and have the signature verified at the Swiss consulate before leaving the country. I’ll be on the beach tomorrow, opposite the hotel, if you want to talk to me about anything.’

The Swiss man, all smiles, took her arm and indicated the taxi awaiting them.

‘If he has other intentions, and you have too, then the normal price is three hundred dollars a night. Don’t accept any less.’

Before she could say anything, she was on her way to the restaurant, with the man rehearsing the words he wanted to say. The conversation was very simple:

‘Work? Dollars? Brazilian star?’

Maria, meanwhile, was still thinking about what the interpreter-cum-security officer had said: three hundred dollars a night! That was a fortune! She didn’t need to suffer for love, she could play this man along just as she had her boss at the shop, get married, have children and give her parents a comfortable life. What did she have to lose? He was old and he might die before too long, and then she would be rich – these Swiss men obviously had too much money and not enough women back home.

They said little over the meal – just the usual exchange of smiles – and Maria gradually began to understand what Maílson had meant by ‘vibes’. The man showed her an album containing writing in a language that she did not know; photos of women in bikinis (doubtless better and more daring than the one she had worn that afternoon), newspaper cuttings, garish leaflets in which the only word she recognised was ‘Brazil’, wrongly spelled (hadn’t they taught him at school that it was written with an ‘s’?). She drank a lot, afraid that the man would proposition her (after all, even though she had never done this in her life before, no one could turn their nose up at three hundred dollars, and things always seem simpler with a bit of alcohol inside you, especially if you’re among strangers). But the man behaved like a perfect gentleman, even holding her chair for her when she sat down and got up. In the end, she said that she was tired and arranged to meet him on the beach the following day (pointing to her watch, showing him the time, making the movement of the waves with her hands and saying ‘a-ma-nhà’ – ‘tomorrow’ – very slowly).

He seemed pleased and looked at his own watch (possibly Swiss), and agreed on the time.

She did not go to sleep straight away. She dreamed that it was all a dream. Then she woke up and saw that it wasn’t: there was the dress draped over the chair in her modest room, the beautiful shoes and that rendezvous on the beach.

From Maria’s diary, on the day that she met the Swiss man:

Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back where I came from because I didn’t have the courage to say ‘yes’ to life?

I made my first mistake when I was eleven years old, when that boy asked me if I could lend him a pencil; since then, I’ve realised that sometimes you get no second chance and that it’s best to accept the gifts the world offers you. Of course it’s risky, but is the risk any greater than the chance of the bus that took forty-eight hours to bring me here having an accident? If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself. If I’m looking for true love, I first have to get the mediocre loves out of my system. The little experience of life I’ve had has taught me that no one owns anything, that everything is an illusion – and that applies to material as well as spiritual things. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever (as has happened often enough to me already) finally comes to realise that nothing really belongs to them.