It was an interesting conversation, but Maria didn't want to think about these things, mainly because she could already feel the juices flowing and her vagina getting wet--just remembering his touch, the blindfolds, his hands moving over her body. No, she wasn't dead to sex; that man had managed to rescue her. It was good to be alive.
The librarian, however, was warming to her subject.
"Its 'discovery' didn't mean it received any more respect, though." The librarian seemed to have become an expert on clitorology, or whatever that science is called. "The mutilations we read about now in certain African tribes, who still insist on removing the woman's right to sexual pleasure, are nothing new. In the nineteenth century, here in Europe, they were still performing operations to remove it, in the belief that in that small, insignificant part of the female anatomy lay the root of hysteria, epilepsy, adulterous tendencies and sterility."
Maria held out her hand to say goodbye, but the librarian showed no signs of tiring.
"Worse still, dear Dr. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, said that in a normal woman, the female orgasm should move from the clitoris to the vagina. His most faithful followers went further and said that if a woman's sexual pleasure remained concentrated in the clitoris, this was a sign of infantilism or, worse, bisexuality.
"And yet, as we all know, it is very difficult to have an orgasm just through penetration. It's good to have sex with a man, but pleasure lies in that little nub discovered by an Italian!"
Distracted, Maria realized that she had that problem diagnosed by Freud: she was still in the infantile stage, her orgasm had not moved to the vagina. Or was Freud wrong?
"And what do you think about the G-spot?"
"Do you know where it is?"
The other woman blushed and coughed, but managed to say:
"As you go in, on the first floor, the back
window."
Brilliant! She had described the vagina as if it were a building! Perhaps she had read that explanation in a book for young girls, to say that if someone knocks on the door and comes in, you'll discover a whole universe inside your own body. Whenever she masturbated, she preferred to concentrate on her G-spot rather than on the clitoris, since the latter made her feel rather uncomfortable, a pleasure mingled with real pain, rather troubling.
She always went straight to the first floor, to the back window!
Seeing that the librarian was clearly never going to stop talking, perhaps because she had discovered in Maria an accomplice to her own lost sexuality, she gave a wave of her hand and left, trying to concentrate on whatever nonsense came into her head, because this was not a day to think about farewells, clitorises, restored virginities or G-spots. She focused on what was going on around her--bells ringing, dogs barking, a tram rattling over the tracks, footsteps, her own breathing, the signs offering everything under the sun.
She did not feel like going back to the Copacabana, and yet she felt an obligation to work until the end, although she had no real idea why--after all, she had saved enough money. She could spend the afternoon doing some shopping, talking to the bank manager, who was a client of hers, but who had promised to help her manage her savings, having a cup of coffee somewhere, sending off the clothes that wouldn't fit into her suitcases. It was strange, for some reason, she was feeling rather sad; perhaps because it was still another two weeks before she would leave, and she needed to get through that time, to look at the city with different eyes and feel glad for what she had experienced there.
She came to a crossroads where she had been hundreds of time before; you could see the lake from there and the water spout, and, on the far pavement, in the middle of the public gardens, the lovely floral clock, one of the city's symbols...and that clock would not allow her to lie, because...
Suddenly, time and the world stood still.
What was this story she had been telling herself since the morning, something about her recently restored virginity?
The world seemed frozen, that second would never end, she was face to face with something very serious and very important in her life, she could not just forget about it, she could not do as she did with her nighttime dreams, which she always promised herself she would write down and which she never did...
"Don't think about anything! The world has stopped. What's going on?"
ENOUGH!
The bird, the lovely story about the bird she had just written--was it about Ralf Hart?
No, it was about her!
FULL STOP!
It was 11:11 in the morning, and she was frozen in that moment. She was a foreigner inside her own body, she was rediscovering her recently restored virginity, but its rebirth was so fragile that if she stayed there, it would be lost forever. She had experienced Heaven perhaps, certainly Hell, but the Adventure was coming to an end. She couldn't wait two weeks, ten days, one week--she needed to leave now, because, as she stood looking at the floral clock, with tourists taking pictures of it and children playing all around, she had just found out why she was sad.
And the reason was this: she didn't want to go back.
And the reason she didn't want to go back wasn't Ralf Hart, Switzerland or Adventure. The real reason couldn't have been simpler: money.
Money! A special piece of paper, decorated in sombre colors, which everyone agreed was worth something--and she believed it, everyone believed it--until you took a pile of that paper to a bank, a respectable, traditional, highly confidential Swiss bank and asked: "Could I buy back a few hours of my life?" "No, madam, we don't sell, we only buy."
Maria was woken from her delirium by the sound of screeching brakes, a motorist shouting, and a smiling old gentleman, speaking English, telling her to step back onto the pavement--the pedestrian light was red.