Eleven Minutes (16 page)

From outside came the sound of thunder and lightning; a huge storm was approaching.

'But I can't do it,' Maria said. 'It seems ridiculous to
me Pretending that you're my master and I'm your slave. We don't need “theatre” to find suffering; life offers us more than enough opportunities.'

Terence had just finished lighting the candles. He picked
one up and placed it in the middle of the table, then served the champagne, and caviar. Maria was drinking quickly, thinking about the one thousand francs in her bag, about
this stranger who both fascinated and frightened her, and about how she could control her fear. She knew that, with this man, no night would ever be the same as another; she could not intimidate him in any way.

'Sit down.'

His voice alternated between being gentle and
authoritarian. Maria obeyed, and a wave of heat swept up her body; that order was familiar, she felt more secure.

'It's theatre. I've got to get involved in the play.' It was nice being ordered around. She didn't have to
think, just obey. She asked for more champagne, and he brought vodka; it went to one's head more quickly, loosened one up, and went better with the caviar.

He opened the bottle; Maria was more or less drinking alone, while she listened to the thunder and lightning outside. Everything was conspiring to make the moment
perfect, as if the energies of the skies and the earth were also showing their violent side.

After a while, Terence took a small suitcase out of the wardrobe and placed it on the bed.

'Don't move.'

Maria sat motionless. He opened the suitcase and took out two pairs of chrome metal handcuffs.

'Sit with your legs apart.'

She obeyed - impotent out of choice, submissive because
she wanted to be. She saw him looking between her legs, he
could see her black pants, her long stockings, her thighs, he could imagine her pubic hair, her sex.

'Stand up!'

She leaped up from her chair. She found it hard to stand straight and realised that she was drunker than she thought.

'Don't look at me. Lower your head, respect your master!' Before she could lower her head, she saw a slender whip being removed from the suitcase, then cracking through the air, as if it had a life of its own.

'Drink. Keep your head down, but drink.'

She drank another one, two, three glasses of vodka. This wasn't just theatre now, it was reality: control was out of her hands. She felt like an object, a mere instrument, and incredible though it may seem, that feeling of submission gave her a sense of complete freedom. She was no longer the teacher, the one who instructs, consoles, listens to
confessions, the one who excites; before the awesome power of this man, she was just a girl from the interior of Brazil.

'Take off your clothes.'

The order was delivered abruptly, without a flicker of
desire, and yet, nothing could have been more erotic. Keeping
her head down as a sign of reverence, Maria unbuttoned her dress and let it slip to the floor.

'You're not behaving yourself, you know.' Again the whip cracked through the air.

You need to be punished. How dare a girl your age contradict me? You should be on your knees before me!'

Maria made as if to kneel down, but the whip brought er up short; for the first time it touched her flesh - her buttocks. It stung, but seemed to leave no mark.

'Did I tell you to kneel down?'

'No.'

The whip again flicked across her buttocks.

'Say, “No, sir!”'

Another stinging whiplash. For a fraction of a second, it occurred to her that she could either stop this right now or else choose to go through with it, not for the money, but because of what he had said the first time - that you only
know yourself when you go beyond your limits.

And this was new, it was an Adventure, and she could decide later on if she wanted to continue, but at that
moment, she had ceased to be the girl with just three aims in life, who earned her living with her body, who had met a man
who had an open fire and interesting stories to tell. Here, she was no one, and being no one meant that she could be everything she had ever dreamed of.

'Take the rest of your clothes off. And walk up and down so that I can see you.'

Once more she obeyed, keeping her head down, saying not a word. The man who was watching her, still fully dressed and
utterly impassive, was not the same person who had chatted to her on their way here from the club - he was a Ulysses who
had travelled from London, a Theseus come down from the heavens, a kidnapper invading the safest city in the world, and who had the coldest heart on earth. She removed her pants and her bra, feeling at once defenceless and protected. The whip cracked again, this time without touching her body.

'Keep your head down! You're here to be humiliated, to submit to my every desire, do you understand?'

'Yes, sir.'

He grabbed her arms and put the first pair of handcuffs on
her wrists.

'You're going to get a good beating. Until you learn to behave yourself.'

He slapped her bottom with the flat of his hand. Maria cried out; this time it had hurt.

'Oh, so you're complaining, are you? Well, I haven't even started yet.'

Before she could do anything, he had placed a leather gag
on her mouth. It didn't stop her speaking, she could still say 'yellow' or 'red', but she felt now that it was her
destiny to allow this man to do whatever he wished with her, and there was no way she could escape now. She was naked, gagged and handcuffed, with vodka flowing in her veins rather than blood.

Another slap on her buttocks.

'Walk up and down!'

Maria started to walk, obeying his commands: 'stop', 'turn
to the right', 'sit down', 'open your legs'. He slapped »er again and again, whether she deserved it or not, and she felt the pain and felt the humiliation - which was more intense
and more potent than the pain - and she felt as if she were in another world, in which nothing existed, and it
was an almost religious feeling: self-annihilation, subjective and a complete loss of any sense of Ego, desire or selfless!• She was very wet and very aroused, but unable to understand what was going on.

'Down on your knees again!'

Since she always kept her head down, as a sign of
obedience and humiliation, Maria could not see exactly what was happening, but she noticed that in that other universe, on that other planet, the man was breathing hard, worn out
with wielding the whip and spanking her hard on the buttocks, whilst she felt herself filling up with strength and energy.

She had lost all shame now, and wasn't bothered about showing her pleasure; she started to moan, pleading with him to touch her, but, instead, the man grabbed her and threw her onto the bed.

He violently forced her legs apart - although she knew
this violence would not actually harm her - and tied each leg
to one corner of the bed. Now that her wrists were handcuffed behind her, her legs splayed, her mouth gagged, when would he penetrate her? Couldn't he see that she was ready, that she wanted to serve him, that she was his slave, his creature, his object, and would do anything he ordered her to do?

'Would you like me to take you further still?'

She saw him place the end of the whip handle against her vagina. He rubbed it up and down, and when it touched her
clitoris, she lost all control. She had no idea how long they had been there nor how many times she had been spanked, but suddenly she came and had the orgasm which, in all those months, dozens, no, hundreds of men had failed to give her. There was a burst of light, she felt herself entering a kind
of black hole in her soul, in which intense pain and fear mingled with total pleasure, pushing her beyond all previously known limits and she moaned and screamed,
her voice muffled by the gag, she writhed about on the
bed, feeling the handcuffs cutting into her wrists and the leather thongs bruising her ankles, she moved as never before precisely because she could not move, she screamed as never before because she had a gag on her mouth and no one would be able to hear her. This was pain and pleasure, the end of the whip handle pressing ever harder against her clitoris and the orgasm flooding out of her mouth, her vagina, her pores, her eyes, her skin.

She entered a kind of trance, and slowly, very slowly, she began to come down; there was no whip pressing between her legs now, just sweat-drenched hair, kind hands removing the handcuffs, untying the leather thongs around her ankles.

She lay there, confused, unable to look at the man because
she was ashamed of herself, of her screams, of her orgasm. He was stroking her hair and he too was breathing hard, but the pleasure had been entirely hers; he had not enjoyed a single moment of ecstasy.

Her naked body embraced that of this fully clothed man, who was exhausted from shouting orders and keeping tight
control of the situation. She didn't know what to say, now to continue, but she felt safe and protected, because he had invited her to go to a place inside herself that she had
never known before; he was her protector and her master. She started to cry, and he waited patiently until she had finished.

What did you do to me?' she asked tearfully.

'What you wanted me to do.'

She looked at him, feeling that she needed him desperately.

'I didn't force you or oblige you to do anything, nor did
I hear you say “yellow”; I had only the power you gave me. There was no obligation, no blackmail on my part, only your will; you may have been the slave and I the master, but my only power was to push you in the direction of your own freedom.'

Handcuffs. Leather thongs around her ankles. A gag. Humiliation that was more intense and more potent than any pain. And yet - he was quite right - the feeling was one of total freedom. Maria felt full of energy and vigour and was surprised to see that the man beside her was utterly exhausted.

'Did you come?'

'No,' he said. 'The master is here to drive the slave on. The pleasure of the slave is the joy of the master.'

None of this made sense, because it wasn't the way it was
in stories, it wasn't the way it was in real life. But here
in this fantasy world, she was full of light, while he seemed opaque, drained.

'You can leave whenever you want,' Terence said.

'I don't want to leave, I want to understand.'

'There's nothing to understand.'

She got up in all the beauty and intensity of her nakedness and poured two glasses of wine. She lit two cigarettes and gave him one of them - the roles were reversed, she was now the mistress serving the slave, rewarding him for the pleasure he had given her.

'I'll get dressed and then I'll leave, but, first, I'd like to talk a little.'

'There's nothing to talk about. That's all I wanted, and
you were marvellous. I'm tired now and I have to go back to
London tomorrow.'

He lay down and closed his eyes. Maria didn't know if he
was just pretending to sleep and she didn't care; she smoked
a leisurely cigarette and slowly sipped her wine, with her
face pressed against the window pane, looking out at the lake opposite and wishing that someone, on the other shore, could
see her like this - naked, replete, satisfied, confident. She got dressed and left without saying goodbye, and was
not bothered whether she opened the door or he did, because she wasn't sure that she wanted to come back.

Terence heard the door close, waited to see if she would
come back, saying that she had forgotten something, and only after a few minutes did he get up and light another
cigarette.

The girl had style, he thought. She had withstood the whip well, although this was the oldest, the most common and the least severe of the punishments. For a moment, he sat
remembering the first time he had experienced that mysterious relationship between two beings who want to be close, but can only be so by inflicting suffering.

Millions of couples out there practised the art of
sadomasochism every day, without even realising it. They Went to work, came back, complained about everything, insulted their wife or were insulted by her, felt
wretched, but were, nonetheless, tightly bound to their own unhappiness, not realising that all it would take was a single gesture, a final goodbye, to free them from that oppression. Terence had experienced this with his wife, a well-known English singer; he was tormented by jealousy, he
made scenes, and spent whole days dosed up with painkillers, whole nights hopelessly drunk. She loved him and couldn't understand why he behaved like that; he loved her and
couldn't understand his own behaviour. It was as if the agony that the one inflicted on the other was necessary, fundamental to life.

One day, a musician - whom he had always thought of as
very strange, because he seemed so normal in the midst of all those exotic people - left a book behind in the studio: Venus
in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Terence started leafing through it and, as he read, he began to understand himself better.

'The lovely woman took off her clothes and picked up a
long, short-handled whip. “You asked for it,” she said, “so
I'm going to whip you.“ ”Oh, yes,” murmured her lover, “please, I beg you.”'

His wife was on the other side of the glass screen, rehearsing. She had asked them to turn off the microphones
that allowed the technicians to listen in to everything, and they had done so. Terence was thinking that perhaps she was making a date with the pianist, and he realised that she was driving him mad, but it was as if he was so accustomed to suffering now that he could not live without it.

I'm going to whip you,' said the naked woman in the book he was reading. 'Oh, yes, 'please, I beg you.'

He was a good-looking man, and a force to be reckoned with in the record company, why did he need to lead such a
life?

Because he wanted to. He deserved to suffer because life
had been so good to him, and he wasn't worthy of all these blessings - money, respect, fame. He felt that his career was leading him to a point where he would become dependent on success, and that frightened him, because he had seen a lot
of people plummet from the heights.

He read the book. He started reading everything he could find about the mysterious union between pain and pleasure.

His wife found the videos he was renting and the books he was hiding from her, and asked him what it was all about, was he sick? Terence said no, it was just research he was doing for
a new cover. Then he said nonchalantly:

'Perhaps we should try it.'

They did. They began very timidly, using the manuals they found in porn shops. Gradually, they developed new techniques, took their activities to dangerous limits, and yet they felt that their marriage was even stronger. They
were accomplices in something hidden, forbidden, proscribed. Their joint experience was transformed into art: they
created new outfits - leather with metal studs. His wife went on stage wearing boots and a suspender belt and Wlelding a
whip, and the audience went wild. Her new record shot to the top of the charts in England and went on
triumph in the rest of Europe. Terence was surprised
how young people accepted his personal fantasies as
perfectly natural, and the only explanation he could find was that it provided a means of expressing repressed violence in
an intense but inoffensive manner.

The whip came to be the group's logo and was reproduced on
T-shirts, fake tattoos, stickers and postcards. Terence's intellectual bent drove him to track down the origins of all this, so that he could understand himself better.

These origins did not lie, as he had told Maria, with
those penitents trying to drive away the Black Death. Ever since the Dark Ages, man has understood that suffering, if confronted without fear, is his passport to freedom.

Egypt, Rome and Persia all shared the notion that a man
can save his country and his world by sacrificing himself. Whenever there was a great natural disaster in China, the emperor was punished, because he was the divinity's Earthly representative. In ancient Greece, the finest Spartan warriors were whipped once a year, from morning till night, in homage to the goddess Artemis, while the crowd urged them on, calling on them to withstand the pain with dignity, for
it was preparing them for the world of war. At the end of the day, the priests would examine the wounds on the warriors' backs and use them to predict the citys future.

The priests of the desert, in an ancient, fourth-century Christian community that grew up around a monastery in Alexandria, used flagellation as a way of driving oUt
demons or of proving the futility of the body in the spiritual search. The history of saints was full of similar examples St Rosa running through the garden, letting the
thorns tear her skin, St Domingos Loricatus whipping himself every night before sleeping, the martyrs who voluntarily offered themselves up to a slow death on the cross or being torn apart by wild animals. They all said that pain, once mastered, could lead to religious ecstasy.

Recent, unconfirmed studies indicated that a particular kind of fungus with hallucinogenic properties grew in the
wounds and caused visions. The pleasure was so intense that the practice soon left the monasteries and convents and spread throughout the world.

In 1718, A Treatise on Self-flagellation was published, which showed how to achieve pleasure through pain, but
without harming the body. At the end of that century, there
were dozens of places in Europe where people were prepared to suffer in order to attain joy. There are records of kings and princesses who had their slaves whip them, until they found
that another kind of pleasure - albeit more exhausting and
less gratifying - was to be found not only in being whipped, but also in inflicting pain.

While he was smoking his cigarette, Terence took a certain
Pleasurable pride in knowing that most people would be unable to understand what he was thinking.

It was better to belong to an exclusive club to which the chosen had access. He remembered again how the sacrament of marriage had been transformed into the miracle
of marriage. His wife knew that he visited Geneva for
this purpose and she didn't mind; on the contrary, in this sick world, she was glad that her husband got the reward he wanted after a hard week at work.

The girl who had just left the room had understood everything. He felt that his soul was very close to hers, although he wasn't yet ready to fall in love, for he loved his wife. But he liked to think that he was free and could dream of a new relationship.

All he had to do was to get her to attempt the next and
most difficult stage: the transformation into SacherMasoch's
'Venus in Furs', the Dominatrix, the Mistress, capable of humiliating and punishing without pity. If she passed the test, he was ready to open his heart and let her in.

From Maria's diary, when she was still drunk on vodka and pleasure:

When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I
stopped being who I am, I found myself.

When I experienced humiliation and total submission, I was free. I don't know if it was all a dream, or if it only happens once. I know that I can perfectly well live without it, but I would like to do it again, to repeat the experience, to go still further.

I was a bit frightened by the pain, but it wasn't as bad
as the humiliation, and it was just a pretext. When I had my first orgasm in many months, despite
all the many men I've been with and the many different
things they've done with my body, I felt - is this possible?

- closer to God. I remembered what he said about how the flagellants, in offering up their pain for the salvation of humanity, found pleasure. I didn't want to save humanity, or him or me; I was just there.

The art of sex is the art of controlled abandon.

A
I I
It wasn't theatre this time, they were in a real train
station, at Maria's request, because she liked the pizza you could buy there. There was nothing wrong with being a bit wayward sometimes. Ralf ought to have come to see her the day before, when she was still a woman in search of love, an open fire, wine and desire. But life had chosen otherwise, and
today she had got through the whole day without once having
to make herself concentrate on the sounds around her or on the present moment, simply because she hadn't thought about Ralf; she had discovered other more interesting things to think about.

What was she to do with this man beside her, who was eating a pizza he probably didn't like and who was just
passing the time until the moment came for them to go to his house? When he had come into the club and offered her a
drink, she had thought of telling him that she wasn't interested any more and that he should find someone else; on the other hand, she had an enormous need to talk to s°meone about the previous night.

She had tried talking to one or two of the other prosties
Wno served the 'special clients', but none of them tell her anything, because Maria was bright, she
lea
rned quickly and had become the great threat in the
Copacabana. Of all the men she knew, Ralf Hart was the
only one who would understand, because Milan considered him
too to be a 'special client'. But he looked at her with eyes alight with love, and that made things difficult; it was best
to say nothing.