Eleven Minutes

Why was she thinking about him? Why was she thinking about someone who, at that very moment, might be painting another woman, saying that she had a "special light," that she could be his sex goddess?

"I'm thinking about him because I was able to talk to him."

How ridiculous! Did she think about the librarian? No. Did she think about Nyah, the Filipino girl, the only one of all the women who worked at the Copacabana with whom she could share some of her feelings? No, she didn't. And they were people with whom she had often talked and with whom she felt comfortable.

She tried to divert her attention to thoughts of how hot it was, or to the supermarket she hadn't managed to get to yesterday. She wrote a long letter to her father, full of details about the piece of land she would like to buy--that would make her family happy. She did not give a date for her return, but she hinted that it would be soon. She slept, woke up, slept again and woke again. She realized that the book about farming was fine for Swiss farmers, but completely useless for Brazilians--they were two entirely different worlds.

As the afternoon wore on, she noticed that the earthquake, the volcano, the pressure was diminishing. She felt more relaxed; this kind of sudden passion had happened before and had always subsided by the next day--good, her universe continued unchanged. She had a family who loved her, a man who was waiting for her and who now wrote to her frequently, telling her that the draper's shop was expanding. Even if she decided to get on a plane that night, she had enough money to buy a small farm. She had got through the worst part, the language barrier, the loneliness, the first night in the restaurant with that Arab man, the way in which she had persuaded her soul not to complain about what she was doing with her body. She knew what her dream was and she was prepared to do anything to achieve it. And that dream did not, by the way, include men, at least not men who didn't speak her mother tongue or live in her hometown.

When the earthquake had subsided, Maria realized she was partly to blame. Why had she not said to him: "I'm lonely, I'm as miserable as you are, yesterday you saw my 'light,' and it was the first nice, honest thing a man has said to me since I got here."

On the radio they were playing an old song: "my loves die even before they're born." Yes, that was what happened with her, that was her fate.

From Maria's diary, two days after everything had returned to normal:

Passion makes a person stop eating, sleeping, working, feeling at peace. A lot of people are frightened because, when it appears, it demolishes all the old things it finds in its path.

No one wants their life thrown into c

haos. That is why a lot of people keep that threat under control, and are somehow capable of sustaining a house or a structure that is already rotten. They are the engineers of the superseded.

Other people think exactly the opposite: they surrender themselves without a second thought, hoping to find in passion the solutions to all their problems. They make the other person responsible for their happiness and blame them for their possible unhappiness. They are either euphoric because something marvelous has happened or depressed because something unexpected has just ruined everything.

Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it--which of these two attitudes is the least destructive?

I don't know.

On the third day, as if risen from the dead, Ralf Hart returned, almost too late, for Maria was already talking to another customer. When she saw him, though, she politely told the other man that she didn't want to dance, that she was waiting for someone else.

Only then did she realize that she had spent the last three days waiting for him. And at that moment, she accepted everything that fate had placed in her path.

She didn't get angry with herself; she was happy, she could allow herself that luxury, because one day she would leave this city; she knew this love was impossible, and yet, expecting nothing, she could nevertheless have everything she still hoped for from that particular stage in her life.

Ralf asked her if she would like a drink, and Maria asked for a fruit juice cocktail. The owner of the bar, pretending that he was washing glasses, stared uncomprehendingly at her: what had made her change her mind? He hoped they wouldn't just sit there drinking, and felt relieved when Ralf asked her to dance. They were following the ritual; there was no reason to feel worried.

Maria felt Ralf's hand on her waist, his cheek pressed to hers, and the music--thank God--was too loud for them to talk. One fruit juice cocktail wasn't enough to give her courage, and the few words they had exchanged had been very formal. Now it was just a question of time: would they go to a hotel? Would they make love? It shouldn't be difficult, since he had already said that he wasn't interested in sex--it would just be a matter of going through the motions. On the other hand, that lack of interest would help to kill off any vestige of potential passion--she didn't know now why she had put herself through such torment after their first meeting.

Tonight she would be the Understanding Mother. Ralf Hart was just another desperate man, like millions of others. If she played her role well, if she managed to follow the rules she had laid down for herself since she began working at the Copacabana, there was no reason to worry. It was very dangerous, though, having that man so near, now that she could smell him--and she liked the way he smelled--now that she could feel his touch--and she liked his touch--now that she realized she had been waiting for him--she did not like that.

Within forty-five minutes they had fulfilled all the rules, and the man went over to the owner of the bar and said:

"I'm going to spend the rest of the night with her. I'll pay you as if I were three clients."

The owner shrugged and thought again that the Brazilian girl would end up falling into the trap of love. Maria, for her part, was surprised: she hadn't realized that Ralf Hart knew the rules so well.

"Let's go back to my house."

Perhaps that was the best thing to do, she thought. Although it went against all of Milan's advice, she decided, in this case, to make an exception. Apart from finding out once and for all whether or not he was married, she would also find out how famous painters live, and one day she would be able to write an article for her local newspaper, so that everyone would know that, during her time in Europe, she had moved in intellectual and artistic circles.

"What an absurd excuse!" she thought.

Half an hour later, they arrived at a small village near Geneva, called Cologny; there was a church, a bakery, a town hall, everything in its proper place. And he really did live in a two-storey house, not an apartment! First reaction: he really must be rich. Second reaction: if he were married, he wouldn't dare to do this, because they would be bound to be seen by someone.

So, he was rich and single.

They went into a hall from which a staircase ascended to the second floor, but they went straight ahead to the two rooms at the back that looked onto the garden. There was a dining table in one of the rooms, and the walls were crowded with paintings. In the other room were sofas and chairs, packed bookshelves, overflowing ashtrays and dirty glasses that had clearly been there for a long time.

"Would you like a coffee?"