Eleven Minutes

She was about to say ‘waiting for the phone to ring’, but she thought it best to say nothing.

‘My dear, you’re still very young, you’ve got your whole life ahead of you. Read. Forget everything you’ve been told about books and just read.’

‘I’ve read loads of books.’

Suddenly, Maria remembered what Maílson the security officer had told her about ‘vibes’. The librarian before her seemed a very sweet, sensitive person, someone who might be able to help her if all else failed. She needed to win her over; her instinct was telling her that this woman could become her friend. She quickly changed tack.

‘But I’d like to read more. Could you help me choose some books?’

The woman brought her The Little Prince. She started leafing through it that same night, saw the drawings on the first page of what seemed to be a hat, but which, according to the author, all children would instantly recognise as a snake with an elephant inside it. ‘Well, I don’t think I can ever have been a child, then,’ she thought. ‘To me, it looks more like a hat.’ In the absence of any television to watch, she accompanied the prince on his journeys, feeling sad whenever the word ‘love’ appeared, for she had forbidden herself to think about the subject at the risk of feeling suicidal. However, apart from the painful, romantic scenes between a prince, a fox and a rose, the book was really interesting, and she didn’t keep checking every five minutes that the battery in her mobile phone was still fully charged (she was terrified of missing her big chance purely out of carelessness).

Maria became a regular visitor to the library, where she would chat to the woman, who seemed as lonely as she was, ask her to suggest more books and discuss life and authors – until her money had nearly run out. Another two weeks and she would not even have enough left to buy her ticket back to Brazil.

And, since life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant, the phone finally rang.

Three months after discovering the word ‘lawyer’ and after two months of living on the compensation she had received, someone from a model agency asked if Senhora Maria was still at this number. The reply was a cool, long-rehearsed ‘yes’, so as not to appear too eager. She learned that an Arab gentleman, who worked in the fashion industry in his country, had been very taken by her photos and wanted to invite her to take part in a fashion show. Maria remembered her recent disappointments, but also the money that she so desperately needed.

They arranged to meet in a very chic restaurant. She found herself with an elegant man, older and more charming than Roger, who asked her:

‘Do you know who painted that picture over there? It’s a Miró. Have you heard of Joan Miró?’

Maria said nothing, as if she were concentrating on the food, rather different from that in the Chinese restaurants where she normally ate. Meanwhile, she made a mental note: on her next visit to the library, she would have to ask for a book about Miró.

But the Arab was saying:

‘This was the table where Fellini always sat. Do you know his films at all?’

She said she adored them. The man began asking more probing questions and Maria, knowing that she would fail the test, decided to be straight with him:

‘I’m not going to spend the evening pretending to you. I can just about tell the difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi, but that’s about it. I thought we came here to discuss a fashion show.’

He seemed to appreciate her frankness.

‘We’ll do that when we have our after-supper drink.’

There was a pause, while they looked at each other, each trying to imagine what the other was thinking.

‘You’re very pretty,’ said the man. ‘If you come up and have a drink with me in my hotel room, I’ll give you a thousand francs.’

Maria understood at once. Was it the fault of the model agency? Was it her fault? Should she have found out more about the nature of this supper? It wasn’t the agency’s fault, or hers, or the man’s: this was simply how things worked. Suddenly she missed her hometown, missed Brazil, missed her mother’s arms. She remembered Maílson, on the beach, when he had mentioned a fee of three hundred dollars; at the time, she had thought it funny, much more than she would have expected to receive for spending the night with a man. However, at that moment, she realised that she had no one, absolutely no one in the world she could talk to; she was alone in a strange city, a relatively experienced twenty-two-year-old, but none of her experience could help her to decide what would be the best response.

‘Could you pour me some more wine, please.’

The Arab man filled her glass, and her thoughts travelled faster than the Little Prince on his travels to all those planets. She had come in search of adventure, money and possibly a husband; she had known that she would end up getting proposals such as this, because she was no innocent and was used to the ways of men. She still believed in model agencies, stardom, a rich husband, a family, children, grandchildren, nice clothes, a triumphant return to the place where she was born. She dreamed of overcoming all difficulties purely by dint of her own intelligence, charm and willpower.

But reality had just fallen in on her. To the man’s surprise, she began to cry. He did not know what to do, caught between his fear of causing a scandal and his instinctive desire to protect her. He called the waiter over in order to ask for the bill, but Maria stopped him.

‘No, don’t do that. Pour me some more wine and just let me cry for a while.’

And Maria thought about the little boy who had asked to borrow a pencil, about the young man who had kissed her and how she had kept her mouth closed, about her excitement at seeing Rio for the first time, about the men who had used her and given nothing back, about the passions and loves lost along the way. Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books. A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.

Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person’s whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly. What should she do? Should she run back to Brazil, become a teacher of French and marry her former boss? Should she take a small step forward; after all, it was only one night, in a city where she knew no one and no one knew her. Would that one night and that easy money mean that she would inevitably carry on until she reached a point in the road where there was no turning back? What was happening here – a great opportunity or a test set her by the Virgin Mary?

The Arab was looking around at the paintings by Joan Miró, at the place where Fellini used to have lunch, at the girl who took the coats and at the other customers arriving and leaving.

‘Didn’t you realise?’

‘More wine, please,’ said Maria, still in tears.

She was praying that the waiter would not come over and realise what was going on, and the waiter, who was watching it all from a distance, out of the corner of his eye, was praying that the man and the girl would hurry up and pay the bill, because the restaurant was full and there were people waiting.

At last, after what seemed an eternity, she spoke:

‘Did you say a thousand francs for one drink?’

Maria was surprised by her own tone of voice.

‘Yes,’ said the man, regretting having suggested it in the first place. ‘But I really wouldn’t want…’

‘Pay the bill and let’s go and have that drink at your hotel.’

Again, she seemed like a stranger to herself. Up until then, she had been a nice, cheerful, well-brought-up girl, and she would never have spoken like that to a stranger. But that girl, it seemed to her, had died forever: before her lay another existence, in which drinks cost one thousand francs or, to use a more universal currency, about six hundred dollars.

And everything happened as expected: she went to the Arab’s hotel, drank champagne, got herself almost completely drunk, opened her legs, waited for him to have an orgasm (it didn’t even occur to her to pretend to have one too), washed herself in the marble bathroom, picked up the money, and allowed herself the luxury of a taxi home.

She fell into bed and slept dreamlessly all night.

From Maria’s diary, the next day:

I remember everything, although not the moment when I made the decision. Oddly enough, I have no sense of guilt. I used to think of girls who went to bed with men for money as people who had no other choice, and now I see that it isn’t like that. I could have said ‘yes’ or ‘no’; no one was forcing me to accept anything.

I walk about the streets and look at all the people, and I wonder if they chose their lives? Or were they, like me, ‘chosen’ by fate? The housewife who dreamed of becoming a model, the banker who wanted to be a musician, the dentist who felt he should write a book and devote himself to literature, the girl who would have loved to be a TV star, but who found herself instead working at the checkout in a supermarket.

I don’t feel in the least bit sorry for myself. I am still not a victim, because I could have left that restaurant with my dignity intact and my purse empty. I could have given that man sitting opposite me a lesson in morality or tried to make him see that before him sat a princess who should be wooed not bought. I could have responded in all kinds of ways, but – like most people – I let fate choose which route I should take.

I’m not the only one, even though my fate may put me outside the law and outside society. In the search for happiness, however, we are all equal: none of us is happy – not the banker/musician, the dentist/writer, the checkout girl/actress, or the housewife/model.

So that was how it worked (#ulink_06965157-dabe-5374-9c6a-7f0a55a75228). As easy as that. There she was in a strange city where she knew no one, but what had been a torment to her yesterday, today gave her a tremendous sense of freedom, because she didn’t need to explain herself to anyone.

She decided that, for the first time in many years, she would devote the entire day to thinking about herself. Up until then, she had always been preoccupied with what other people were thinking: her mother, her schoolfriends, her father, the people at the model agencies, the French teacher, the waiter, the librarian, complete strangers in the street. In fact, no one was thinking anything, certainly not about her, a poor foreigner, who, if she disappeared tomorrow, wouldn’t even be missed by the police.

Fine. She went out early, had breakfast in her usual cafe, went for a stroll around the lake and saw a demonstration held by refugees. A woman out walking a small dog told her that they were Kurds, and Maria, instead of pretending that she knew the answer in order to prove that she was more cultivated and intelligent than people might think, asked:

‘Where do Kurds come from?’

To her surprise, the woman didn’t know. That’s what the world is like: people talk as if they knew everything, but if you dare to ask a question, they don’t know anything. She went into an Internet cafe and discovered that the Kurds came from Kurdistan, a non-existent country, now divided between Turkey and Iraq. She went back to the lake in search of the woman and her dog, but she had gone, possibly because the dog had got fed up after half an hour of staring at a group of human beings with banners, headscarves, music and strange cries.

‘I’m just like that woman really. Or rather, that’s what I used to be like: someone pretending to know everything, hidden away in my own silence, until that Arab guy got on my nerves, and I finally had the courage to say that the only thing I knew was how to tell the difference between two soft drinks. Was he shocked? Did he change his mind about me? Of course not. He must have been amazed at my honesty. Whenever I try to appear more intelligent than I am, I always lose out. Well, enough is enough!’