Eleven Minutes (20 page)

'Around 1900, when the first batteries came onto the market, traditional medicine started experimenting with electricity to see if it could cure mental illness or hysteria. It was also used to get rid of spots and to
stimulate the skin. You see these two ends? Well, they were placed here,' he indicated his temples, 'and the battery created the same sort of static electricity that you get in Switzerland when the air's very dry.'

Static electricity was something that never happened in
Brazil, but was very common in Switzerland. Maria had
discovered it one day when she opened the door of a taxi; she had heard a crack and received a shock. She thought there
must be something wrong with the car and had complained, saying that she wasn't going to pay the fare' and the driver had insulted her and told her she was stupid. He was right;

it wasn't the car, it was the dry air. Ane receiving several more shocks, she began to be arrai touching anything made of metal, until she discovered 1 supermarket a bracelet she
could wear that discharge electricity accumulated in the body.

She turned to the man:

'But that's really nasty.'

Nyah was getting more and more irritated by Maria's remarks. In order to avoid future conflicts with her only
possible friend, she kept her arm around the man's shoulder, thus leaving no room for doubt as to who he belonged to.

'It depends where you put it,' said the man, laughing loudly.

He turned the little handle and the two rods seemed to
turn violet. He quickly placed them on the two women; there was a crack, but the shock was more ticklish than painful. Milan came over.

'Would you mind not using that in here, please.'

The man put the rods back inside the box. Nyah seized the moment and suggested that they go straight to the hotel. The man seemed rather disappointed, since the new arrival seemed far more interested in his machine than the
woman who was now suggesting they go back to his hotel. He put on his jacket and stowed the box away inside a leather briefcase, saying:

'They've started making them again now; they've become quite fashionable amongst people in search of sPecial
pleasures. But you'd only find ones like this in rare medical collections, museums and antique shops.'

Milan and Maria just stood there, not knowing what to say. Have you ever seen one before?'

Not like that, no. It probably did cost a fortune, but he
s a top executive with an oil company ... I've seen mod^rn ones, though.'

'What do they do with them?'

'The man puts them inside his body ... and then asks the
woman to turn the handle. He gets an electric shock inside.'

'Couldn't he do that on his own?'

'You can do most kinds of sexual activity on your own, but
if they stopped believing that it was more fun with another person, my bar would go bankrupt and you would have to find
work in a greengrocer's shop. By the way, your special client said that he would be here tonight, so make sure you turn
down any other offers.'

'Oh, I will, including his. I came to say goodbye. I'm leaving.'

Milan appeared not to react.

'Is it the painter?'

'No, it's the Copacabana. There's a limit to everything, and I reached mine this morning when I was looking at that
floral clock near the lake.'

'And what is the limit?'

'The price of a farm in the interior of Brazil. I know I
could earn more money, that I could work for another year
- after all, what difference would it make?

'Well, I know what difference it would make; I would be
caught in this trap forever, just as you are and the clients the
are, the businessmen, the air stewards, the talent scouts, the record company executives, the many men I have known to
whom I have sold my time and which they can't sell to me. If
I stay another day, I'll be here for another year and if I
stay another year, I'll never leave.'

Milan nodded discreetly, as if he understood and agree
with everything she had said, although he couldn't actually
say anything, for fear of infecting all the other girls
who worked for him. He was a good man, and although he didn't give her his blessing, neither did he try to convince Maria that she was wrong.

She thanked him and asked for a drink - a glass of
champagne, she couldn't stand another fruit juice cocktail. She could drink now that she wasn't working. Milan told her
to phone him if ever she needed anything; she would always be welcome.

She made to pay for the drink, and he said it was on the house. She accepted: she had, after all, given that house a great deal more than one drink.

From Maria's diary, when she got home:

I don't remember exactly when, but one Sunday recently, I decided to go to church to attend mass. After some time, I realised that I was in the wrong church - it was a Protestant church.

I was about to leave, but the vicar was just beginning his sermon, and I thought it would be rude to get up at that point, and it was a real blessing, because that day I heard things I very much needed to hear.

He said something like:

'In all the languages in the world, there is the same proverb: “What the eyes don't see, the heart
doesn't grieve over.” Well, I say that there isn't an
°unce of truth in it. The further off they are, the
closer to the heart are all those feelings that we try to
repress and forget. If we're in exile, we want to store away every tiny memory of our roots. If we're far from the person
we love, everyone we pass in the street reminds us of them.

'The gospels and all the sacred texts of all religions
were written in exile, in search of God's understanding, of the faith that moves whole peoples, of the pilgrimage of
souls wandering the face of the Earth. Our ancestors did not know, as we do not know, what the Divinity expects from our lives and it is out of that doubt that books are written, pictures painted, because we don't want to forget who we are
- nor can we.'

At the end of the service, I went up to him and thanked
him: I said that I was a stranger in a strange land, and I
thanked him for reminding me that what the eyes don't see, the heart does grieve over. And my heart has grieved so much, that today I'm leaving.

She picked up her two suitcases and put them on the bed; they had always been there, waiting for the day when everything would come to an end. She had imagined that she would fill them with presents, new clothes, photographs of
snow and of the great European capitals, souvenirs of a happy time when she had lived in the safest and most generous
country in the world. She had a few new clothes, it was true, and a few photos taken in the snow that fell one day in
Geneva, but apart from that, nothing was as she had imagined it would be.

She had arrived with the dream of earning lots of money, learning about life and who she was, buying a farm for her parents, finding a husband, and bringing her family over to
see where she lived. She was returning with just enough money to realise one of those dreams, without ever having visited
the mountains and, worse still, a stranger to herself. But she was happy; she knew the time had come to stop.

Not many people do.

She had had only four adventures - being a dancer in a cabaret, learning French, working as a prostitute
and
falling hopelessly in love. How many people can boast of exPeriencing so much excitement in one year? She was
happy, despite the sadness, and that sadness had a name:

it wasn't prostitution, or Switzerland or money - it was Ralf
Hart. Although she had never acknowledged it to herself, deep
down, she would like to have married him, that man who was
now waiting for her in a church, ready to take her off to see his friends, his paintings, his world.

She considered standing him up and getting a room in a
hotel near the airport, since the flight left early the next morning; from now on, every minute spent by his side would be
a year of suffering in the future, for everything she could have said to him and didn't, for her memories of his hands, his voice, his loving support, and his stories.

She opened one suitcase and took out the little carriage from the electric train set that he had given her on that
first night in his house. She looked at it for a few minutes, then threw it in the bin; it didn't deserve to go to Brazil, and it had proved useless and unfair to the child who had always wanted it.

No, she wouldn't go to the church; he might ask her
something about tomorrow, and if she was honest and told him that she was leaving, he would beg her to stay and promise
her everything in order not to lose her at that moment, he
would openly declare all the love he had already shown to her during the time they had spent together. But their
relationship was based on freedom, and no other sort of relationship would work - perhaps that was the only reason they loved each other, because they knew they did not need each other. Men always take offence when a woman says: 'I need you', and Maria wanted
take away with her the image of a Ralf Hart who was
utterly in love and utterly hers, and ready to do anything for her.

She still had time to decide whether or not to go and meet him; at the moment, she needed to concentrate on more
practical matters. She looked at all the things she couldn't pack and which she had no idea what to do with. She decided that the owner could decide on their fate when he came to
check the apartment and found all the household appliances in the kitchen, the pictures bought in a second-hand market, the towels and the bedclothes. She couldn't take any of that with her to Brazil, even though her parents had more need of them than any Swiss beggar; they would always remind her of everything she had risked.

She left the apartment and went to the bank and asked to withdraw all her money. The manager - who had been to bed with her in the past - said that this really wasn't a good
idea, since her francs would continue earning money and she could receive the interest in Brazil. Besides, what if she were mugged, that would mean months of work wasted. Maria hesitated for a moment, thinking - as she always did
- that he really was trying to help. However, after reflecting a moment, she concluded that the point of the
money was not that it should be transformed into more paper, but into a farm, a home for her parents, a few cattle and a lot more work.

She withdrew every last centime, put it in a small bag she had bought specially for the occasion and attached it to a belt beneath her clothes.

She went to the travel agency, praying that she would
have the courage to go through with her decision. When she
said she wanted to get a different flight, she was told that if she went on tomorrow's flight, she would have to change planes in Paris. That didn't matter - all she needed was to get far enough away from there before she had second
thoughts.

She walked to one of the bridges and bought an ice cream, even though the weather had started to get cold again, and
she took one last look at Geneva. Everything seemed different to her, as if she had just arrived and needed to visit the museums, the historical monuments, the fashionable bars and restaurants. It's odd how, when you live in a city, you
always postpone getting to know it and usually end up never knowing it at all.

She thought she would feel happy because she was going
home, but she wasn't. She thought she would feel sad because she was leaving a city that had treated her so well, but she didn't. The only thing she could do now was to shed a few
tears, feeling rather afraid of herself, an intelligent young woman, who had everything going for her, but who tended to
make the wrong decisions.

She just hoped that this time she was right.

*

The church was completely empty when she went in, and she was able to examine in silence the splendid stained-glass
windows, lit from outside by the light of a day washed clean by last night's storm. Before her stood an empty cross; she was confronted not by an instrument of torture, by the bloodied body of a dying man, but by a symbol of
resurrection, in which the instrument of torture had lost all its meaning, its terror, its importance. She remembered the
whip on that night of thunder and lightning; it was the same thing. 'Dear God, what am I saying?'

She was pleased too not to see any images of suffering saints, covered in bloodstains and open wounds - this was simply a place where people gathered to worship something they could not understand.

She stood in front of the monstrance, in which was kept the body of a Jesus in whom she still believed, although she
had not thought about him for a long time. She knelt down and promised God, the Virgin, Jesus and all the saints
that
whatever happened that day, she would not change her mind and would leave anyway. She made this promise
cause she knew love's traps all too well, and knew how
y they can change a woman's mind.

shortly afterwards, she felt a hand touch her shoulder and
she inclined her head so that her face rested on the hand.

'How are you?'

'I'm fine,' she said in a voice without a trace of anxiety in it. 'I'm fine. Let's go and have a coffee.'

They left the church hand-in-hand, as if they were two lovers meeting again after a long time. They kissed in public, and a few people shot them scandalised looks; but
they both smiled at the unease they were causing and at the desires they were provoking by their scandalous behaviour, because they knew that, in fact, those people wished they could be doing the same thing. That was the real scandal. They went into a cafe which was the same as all the
others, but that afternoon, it was different, because they were there together and because they loved each other. They
talked about Geneva, the difficulties of the French language, the stained-glass windows in the church, the evils of smoking
- both of them smoked and hadn't the slightest intention of giving up.

She insisted on paying for the coffee and he accepted.

They went to the exhibition and she got to know his world:

the artists, the rich who looked richer than they actually
were, the millionaires who looked poor, the people discussing things she had never even heard about. They all liked her and
praised her French; they asked about Carnival, football, Brazilian music. They were nice, polite, kind, charming. When they left, he said that he would come to the club that night to see her. She asked him not to, she had the night off and would like to invite him out to supper.