Eleven Minutes

"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, hypnotized 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:

Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone. From that point onwards, things change, the man and the woman come into play, but what 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.

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 realize 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 organized 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 specialty: 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 behavior, 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.