Eleven Minutes (12 page)

She opened her handbag and found inside a pen she had bought in a supermarket. Anything would do.

'This is for you. I bought it so that I could note down some ideas about farm management. I used it for two days, I worked until I was too tired to work any more. It
contains some of my sweat, some of my concentration and my willpower, and I'm giving it to you now.'

She placed the pen gently in his hand.

'Instead of buying something that you would like to have, I'm giving you something that is mine, truly mine. A gift. A sign of respect for the person before me, asking him to understand how important it is to be by his side. Now he has
a small part of me with him, which I gave him with my free, spontaneous will.'

Ralf got up, went over to a shelf and returned, carrying something. He held it out to Maria.

'This is a carriage belonging to an electric train set I
had when I was a child. I wasn't allowed to play with it on
my own, because my father said it had been imported from the
United States and was very expensive. So I had to wait until
he felt like setting up the train in the living room, but he spent most Sundays listening to opera. That's why the train survived my childhood, but never gave me any happiness. I've still got all the track, the engine, the houses, even the manual, because I had a train that wasn't mine and with which
I never played.

'I wish I'd destroyed it along with all the other toys I
was given and which I've since forgotten all about, because
that passion for destruction is part of how a child discovers the world. But this pristine train set always reminds me of a part of my childhood that I never lived, because it was too precious and it meant too much work for my father. Or perhaps
it was just that whenever he set the train up, he was afraid he might show his love for me.'

Maria began staring into the fire. Something was happening, and it wasn't just the wine or the cosy atmosphere. It was that exchange of gifts.

Ralf turned to the fire too. They said nothing, listening
to the crackle of the flames. They drank their wine, as if it didn't matter that they said nothing, did nothing. They were just there, together, staring in the same direction.

'I have a lot of pristine train sets in my life too,' said Maria, after a while. 'One of them is my heart. And I only played with it when the world set out the tracks, and then it wasn't always the right moment.'

'But you loved.'

'Oh, yes, I loved, I loved very deeply. I loved so deeply that when my love asked me for a gift, I took fright and fled.'

'I don't understand.'

'You don't have to. I'm teaching you because I've discovered something I didn't know before. The giving of
gifts. Giving something of one's own. Giving something important rather than asking. You have my treasure: the pen with which I wrote down some of my dreams. I have your treasure: the carriage of a train, part of your childhood that you did not live.

'I carry with me part of your past, and you carry with you
a little of my present. Isn't that lovely?'

She said all this without blinking, and without surprise, as if she had known for ages that this was the best and only way to behave. She got lightly to her feet, took her jacket from the coat rack and kissed Ralf on the cheek. Ralf Hart
did not make any move to get up, hypnotised by the fire, Perhaps thinking about his father.

'I never understood why I kept that carriage. Now I do:

it was in order to give it to you one night before an open fire. Now the house feels lighter.'

He said that the next day he would give the rest of the tracks, engines, smoke pills, to some children's home.

'It could be a rarity, of a kind that isn't made any more;

it could be worth a lot of money,' said Maria, but immediately regretted her words. That wasn't what mattered, the point was to free yourself from something that cost your heart even more.

Before she said anything else that did not quite chime
with the moment, she again kissed him on the cheek and walked
to the front door. He was still gazing into the fire, and she had to ask him softly if he would open the door for her.

Ralf got up, and she explained that, although she was glad
to see him staring into the fire, Brazilians have a strange superstition: when you visit someone for the first time, you must not be the one to open the door when you leave, because
if you do, you will never return to that house.

'And I want to come back.'

'Although we didn't take our clothes off and I didn't come inside you, or even touch you, we've made love.'

She laughed. He offered to take her home, but she refused.

'I'll come and see you tomorrow, then, at the Copacabana.'

'No, don't. Wait a week. I've learned that waiting is the most difficult bit, and I want to get used to the feeling, knowing that you're with me, even when you're not by my side.'

She walked back through the cold and the dark, as she had
so many times before in Geneva; normally, these walks were associated with sadness, loneliness, the desire to go back to Brazil, financial calculations, timetables, nostalgia for the language she hadn't spoken freely for ages.

Now, though, she was walking in order to find herself, to find that woman who had sat with a man by a fire for forty minutes and who was full of light, wisdom, experience and charm. She had seen that woman's face a long time ago, when
she was walking by the lakeside wondering whether or not she should devote herself to a life that
wasn't hers - on that afternoon, the woman had a terribly
sad smile on her face. She had seen her for a second time on that folded canvas, and now she was with her again. She
only caught a taxi after she had walked quite a way, when the magic presence had gone, leaving her alone again, as usual.

It was best not to think too much about it all, so as not
to spoil it, so as not to let the beauty of what she had just experienced be replaced by anxiety. If that other Maria
really existed, she would return when the moment was right.

An extract from the diary Maria wrote on the night she was
given the train carriage: i
J
Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone. From that point onwards, things change, fl
the man and the woman come into play, but what m
1 happens before - the attraction that brought them % together - is impossible to explain. It is untouched desire in its purest state.

When desire is still in this pure state, the man and the woman fall in love with life, they live each moment reverently, consciously, always ready to celebrate the next blessing.

When people feel like this, they are not in a hurry, they
do not precipitate events with unthinking actions. They know that the inevitable will happen, that what is real always
finds a way of revealing itself. When the moment comes, they
do not hesitate, they do not miss an opportunity, they do not let slip a single magic moment, because they respect the importance of each second.

ift
In the days that followed, Maria found herself once more
caught in the trap she had tried so hard to avoid, but she
felt neither sad nor concerned. On the contrary, now that she had nothing to lose, she was free.

She knew that, however romantic the situation, one day, Ralf Hart would realise that she was just a prostitute, while he was a respected artist, that she lived in a far-off
country that was in a state of permanent crisis, while he
lived in paradise, with his life organised and protected from birth. He had received his education in the best schools, museums and art galleries of the world, while she had barely finished secondary school. Dreams like theirs never lasted
long, and Maria had enough experience of life to know that reality usually chose not to fit in with her dreams. And that was now her great joy: to say to reality that she didn't need it, that she was no longer dependent on what happened in
order to be happy.

'God, I'm such a romantic'

During the week, she tried to think of something that would make Ralf Hart happy; for he had restored to her a
dignity and a 'light' that she thought were lost forever. But
The only way she had of repaying him was with the thing he thought was her speciality: sex. Since there was little to
inspire her in the routine at the Copacabana, she decided to look elsewhere.

She again went to see a few porn movies, and again found
nothing of interest in them, apart, perhaps, from the varying number of people involved. When films proved of no help, she decided, for the first time since she had arrived in Geneva, to buy some books, although she still didn't see the point in cluttering up her apartment with something which, once read, had no further use. She went to the bookshop she had seen when she and Ralf had walked down the road to Santiago, and asked if they had any books about sex.

'Oh, loads,' said the shop assistant. 'In fact, it seems to be all people care about. There's a special section
devoted to the subject, but in just about every other novel
you can see around you there's always at least one sex scene. Whether it's hidden away in pretty little love stories or discussed in serious tomes on human behaviour, it appears to
be all anyone thinks about.'

Maria, with all her experience, knew that the woman was
wrong: people wanted to think like that because they thought
sex was everyone else's sole concern. They went on diets, wore wigs, spent hours at the hairdresser's or at the gym, put on sexy clothes, all in an attempt to awaken the necessary spark. And what happened? When the moment came to
go to bed with someone, eleven minutes later it was all over. There was no creativity involved, nothing that would lift
them up to paradise; the fire provoked by the spark soon burned out.

But there was no point arguing with the young blonde woman, who believed that the world could be explained in
books. She asked to be directed to the special section, and there she found various books about gay men, lesbians, nuns revealing scandals in the church, illustrated books showing oriental techniques, all involving extremely uncomfortable positions, but only one of the titles interested her: Sacred Sex. At least it was different.

She bought it, went home, tuned to a particular radio
station that always helped her to think (because they played such calming music), opened the book and noticed various illustrations, showing postures that only a circus performer could possibly hope to achieve. The text itself was very
dull.

Maria had learned enough in her profession to know that
not everything in life is a matter of what position you adopt when making love, and that any variation usually occurs naturally, without thinking, like the steps in a dance. Nevertheless, she tried to concentrate on what she was
reading.

Two hours later, she had come to two conclusions.

First, she needed to eat supper, because she had to get back to the Copacabana.

Second, the person who had written the book clearly
understood nothing, absolutely nothing about the subject. It was just a lot of empty theory, oriental nonsense, pointless rituals and idiotic suggestions. She noticed that the author had studied meditation in the Himalayas (she must find out where they were), attended courses in yoga (she
had heard of that), and had obviously read widely in the subject, for she kept quoting other authors, but she had failed to learn what was essential. Sex wasn't theories, incense, erogenous zones, bows and salaams. How did that person (a woman) have the nerve to write on a subject which
not even Maria, who worked in the field, knew in depth.

Perhaps it was all the fault of the Himalayas or the need to complicate something whose very beauty lay in simplicity and passion. If that woman could get away with publishing and selling such a stupid book, perhaps she should think
seriously again about writing her own: Eleven Minutes. It wouldn't be cynical or false - it would just be her story. But she had neither the time nor the interest; she needed
to focus her energies on making Ralf Hart happy and on learning how to manage a farm.

From Maria's diary, just after abandoning the boring book: I've met a man and fallen in love with him. I allowed
myself to fall in love for one simple reason: I'm not expecting anything to come of it. I know that, in three months' time, I'll be far away and he'll be just a memory, but I couldn't stand living without love any longer; I had reached my limit.

I'm writing a story for Ralf Hart - that's his name. I'm not sure he'll come back to the club where I
work, but, for the first time in my life, that doesn't matter. It's enough just to love him, to be with him in
my thoughts and to colour this lovely city with his
steps, his words, his love. When I leave this country, it will have a face and a name and the memory of a fireplace. Everything else I experienced here, all the difficulties I
had to overcome, will be as nothing compared to that memory.

I would like to do for him what he did for me. I've been thinking about it a lot, and I realise that I didn't go into that cafe by chance; really important meetings are planned by the souls long before the bodies see each other.

Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meetings are waiting for us, but more often than not, we
avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes direction.

Everyone knows how to love, because we are all born with
that gift. Some people have a natural talent for it, but the majority of us have to re-learn, to remember how to love, and everyone, without exception, needs to burn on the bonfire of past emotions, to relive certain joys and griefs, certain ups and downs, until they can see the connecting thread that
exists behind each new encounter; because there is a connecting thread.

And then, our bodies learn to speak the language
of the soul, known as sex, and that is what I can give to
the man who gave me back my soul, even though he has no idea how important he is to my life. That is what he asked me for and that is what he will have; I want him to be very happy.