Eleven Minutes

Last night, when Ralf Hart looked at me, he opened a door, as if he were a thief; but when he left, he took nothing from me, on the contrary, he left behind him the scent of roses--he wasn't a thief, he was a bridegroom visiting me.

Every human being experiences his or her own desire; it is part of our personal treasure and, although, as an emotion, it can drive people away, generally speaking, it brings those who are important to us closer. It is an emotion chosen by my soul, and it is so intense that it can infect everything and everyone around me.

Each day I choose the truth by which I try to live. I try to be practical, efficient, professional. But I would like to be able always to choose desire as my companion. Not out of obligation, not to lessen my loneliness, but because it is good. Yes, very good.

On average, thirty-eight women worked at the Copacabana on a regular basis, but only one of them, the Filipino, Nyah, was what Maria would consider a friend. Women stayed there an average of six months minimum and three years maximum, because they would either get a proposal of marriage, be set up as a mistress, or no longer pull in the clients, in which case, Milan would delicately ask them to find somewhere else to work.

That is why it was important to respect each other's clientele and never try to seduce men who always headed for a particular girl as soon as they came in. Apart from being dishonest, it could also be very dangerous. The previous week, a Colombian woman had quietly taken a cut-throat razor out of her pocket, placed it on the glass being used by one of the Yugoslav girls, and said, in the calmest of voices, that she would mark her face if she persisted in giving in to the advances of a certain bank manager who was a regular customer. The Yugoslav said that the man was a free agent and that, if he chose her, she couldn't really say no.

That night, the man came in, greeted the Colombian woman, but went over to the Yugoslav's table. They had a drink, danced and the Yugoslav winked at the Colombian (a provocation too far in Maria's view), as if saying: "See? He chose me!"

But that wink contained many unspoken things: he chose me because I'm prettier, because I went with him last week and he enjoyed it, because I'm young. The Colombian said nothing. When the Yugoslav came back, two hours later, the Colombian sat down beside her, took the razor out of her pocket and made a cut on the Yugoslav's face, near her ear. It wasn't a deep cut, and it wasn't dangerous, but it was enough to leave a small scar to remind her of that night. The two started fighting, blood spurted everywhere and the frightened customers fled.

When the police arrived, wanting to know what was going on, the Yugoslav said that she had cut her face on a glass that had fallen from a shelf (there are no shelves in the Copacabana). This was the law of silence, or what Italian prostitutes like to call omerta: any problem to be resolved in Rue de Berne, from love to death, would be resolved, but without the interference of the law. They made their own laws there.

The police knew about the omerta and could see that the woman was lying, but they didn't insist--arresting someone, trying them and then keeping them in prison would cost the Swiss taxpayer far too much money. Milan thanked the police for their prompt response, but, he said, it was all a misunderstanding or else a rival nightclub owner trying to make trouble.

As soon as they left, he asked the two women not to come back to his club. After all, the Copacabana was a family place (a statement Maria found hard to grasp) and had a reputation to keep up (this left her still more intrigued). There were no fights there, because the first law was to respect another woman's client.

The second law was total discretion, "just like a Swiss bank," he said. This was largely because, there, the women could trust the clients, who were selected much as a bank selects its clients, based on the state of their current account and on personal references. Mistakes were occasionally made; there were a few rare cases of non-payment, of girls being threatened or roughed up, but in the many years he had spent struggling to create and develop his club's reputation, Milan had become an expert at recognizing who should or shouldn't be invited in. None of the women knew exactly what these criteria were, but they had often seen some well-dressed man being told that the club was full that night (even though it was empty) and that it would be full the following nights too (i.e. please don't come back). They had also seen unshaven men dressed in casual clothes being enthusiastically invited by Milan to a glass of champagne. The owner of the Copacabana did not judge by appearances, and he was always right.

It was a good working relationship, and seemed to suit all parties involve

d. The great majority of the clientele were married, or held important positions in some company or other. Some of the women who worked there were also married and had children and went to parents' evenings at their children's schools, but knew that they ran no risk of being exposed; if one of the other parents turned up at the Copacabana, they would be compromised too and so could say nothing: that is how omerta worked.

There was comradeship amongst the women, but not friendship; no one talked much about their lives. In the few conversations she had had, Maria found no bitterness, guilt or sadness amongst her colleagues, only a kind of resignation, and a strangely defiant glint in the eye, as if they were proud of the way they confronted the world, independently and confidently. After a week, any new arrival was considered a "fellow professional" and received instructions always to help keep marriages intact (a prostitute cannot be seen as a threat to the stability of the home), never to accept invitations to meet outside working hours, to listen to confessions without offering an opinion, to moan at the moment of climax (Maria learned that everyone did this, but that they hadn't told her on her very first day because it was one of the tricks of the trade), to say hello to the police in the street, to keep her work permit up to date as well as any health checks, and, finally, not to probe too deeply into the moral or legal aspects of what she was doing; they were what they were, and that was that.

Before it got busy, Maria could always be seen with a book in her hand, and she soon became known as the intellectual of the group. At first, they wanted to know if she was reading a love story, but when they saw that the books were about dry-as-dust subjects like economics, psychology and--recently--farm management, they left her alone to continue her researches and her note-taking in peace.

Because she had a lot of regular clients and because she went to the Copacabana every night, even when it wasn't busy, Maria earned both Milan's confidence and her colleagues' envy; they said she was ambitious, arrogant and thought only about earning money--the last bit was true, but she felt like asking if they weren't all there for the very same reason.

Anyway, remarks like that never killed anyone--they were part of the life of any successful person, and it was best to get used to them, rather than let herself be diverted from her two goals: going back to Brazil on the chosen date and buying a farm.

Ralf Hart was in her thoughts from morning to night now, and for the first time she was able to feel happy with an absent love--although she slightly regretted having confessed her love, thus running the risk of losing everything. But what had she got to lose, if she was asking for nothing in exchange? She remembered how her heart had beat faster when Milan mentioned that Ralf was--or had been--a special client. What did that mean? She felt betrayed and jealous.

It was normal to feel jealous, although life had taught her that it was pointless thinking you could own another person--anyone who believes that is just deceiving themselves. Despite this, she could not stop herself having these feelings of jealousy, or of having grand intellectual thoughts about it, or even thinking it was a proof of fragility.

"The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility. Anyway, if my love is real (and not just a way of distracting myself, deceiving myself, and passing the time that never seems to pass in this city), freedom will conquer jealousy and any pain it causes me, since pain is also part of the natural process. Anyone who practices sport knows this: if you want to achieve your objectives, you have to be prepared for a daily dose of pain or discomfort. At first, it's unpleasant and demotivating, but in time you come to realize that it's part of the process of feeling good, and the moment arrives when, if you don't feel pain, you have a sense that the exercises aren't having the desired effect."

The danger lies in focusing on that pain, giving it a particular person's name, and keeping it always present in your thoughts. Maria, thank God, had managed to free herself from that.

Even so, she sometimes found herself wondering where he was, why he didn't come and see her, if he had found that whole story about the train station and repressed desire stupid, if he had gone away forever because she had confessed her love for him.

To avoid beautiful thoughts turning into suffering, she developed a method: when something positive to do with Ralf Hart came into her head--and this could be the fire and the wine, an idea she would like to discuss with him, or simply the pleasurable longing involved in wanting to know when he would come back--Maria would stop what she was doing, smile up at the sky and give thanks for being alive and to be expecting nothing from the man she loved.

On the other hand, if her heart began to complain about his absence or about things she shouldn't have said while they were together, she would say to herself:

"Oh, so you want to think about that, do you? All right, then, you do what you like, while I get on with more important things."

She would continue to read or, if she was out, she would focus her attention on everything around her: colors, people, sounds--especially sounds, the sound of her own footsteps, of the pages turning, of cars, of fragments of conversations, and the unfortunate thought would eventually go away. If it came back five minutes later, she would repeat the process, until those thoughts, finding themselves accepted but also gently rejected, would stay away for quite considerable periods of time.

One of these "negative thoughts" was the possibility of never seeing him again. With a little practice and a great deal of patience, she managed to transform this into a "positive thought": when she left, Geneva would have the face of a man with old-fashioned long hair, a child-like smile and a grave voice. If someone asked her, many years later, what the place she had known in her youth was like, she could reply:

"Very beautiful, and capable of loving and being loved."

From Maria's diary, on a slack night at the Copacabana:

After all the time I've spent with the people who come here, I have reached the conclusion that sex has come to be used as some kind of drug: in order to escape reality, to forget about problems, to relax. And like all drugs, this is a harmful and destructive practice.