Eleven Minutes (21 page)

He accepted and they said goodbye, arranging to meet at his house before going to have supper at a delightful
restaurant in the little square in Cologny, which they had often driven past in the taxi, and where she had always wanted to stop, but had never asked to.

Then Maria remembered her one friend and decided to go to the library to tell her that she would not be coming back. She got caught up in the traffic for what seemed like an eternity, until the Kurds had (once more!) finished their demonstration and the cars could move freely again. Now, however, she was the mistress of her own time, and it didn't matter.

By the time she reached the library, it was just about to close.

'Forgive me if I'm being too personal, but I haven't
anyone else, any woman friend, I can talk to about certain things,' said the librarian as soon as Maria came in.

She didn't have any women friends? After spending her
whole life in the same place and meeting all kinds of people
at work, did she really have no one she could talk to? Maria had found someone like herself, or, rather, like everyone else.

'I was thinking about what I read about the clitoris ...' Didn't she ever think about anything else!

It's just that, although I used to enjoy sex with my Usband, I always found it very difficult to reach orgasm during intercourse. Do you think that's normal?'

'Do you find it normal that there are daily
demonstrations by Kurds? That women in love run away from their Prince Charming? That people dream about farms rather
than love? That men and women sell their time, but can never buy it back again? And yet, all these things happen, so it really doesn't matter what I believe or don't believe; all
these things are normal. Everything that goes against Nature, against our most intimate desires, is normal in our eyes, even though it's an aberration in God's eyes. We seek out our own inferno, we spend millennia building it, and after all
that effort, we are now able to live in the worst possible way.'

She looked at the woman standing in front of her and, for the first time, she asked what her name was (she only knew
her surname). Her name was Heidi, she was married for thirty years and never - never! - during that time had she asked herself if it was normal not to have an orgasm during intercourse with her husband.

'I don't know if I should have read all those things! Perhaps it would have been better to live in ignorance, believing that a faithful husband, an apartment with a view of the lake, three children and a job in the public sector were all that a woman could hope for. Now, ever since you arrived, and since I read the first book, I'm obsessed with what my life has become. Is everyone the same?'

'I can guarantee you that they are.' And standing before
that woman who was asking her advice, Maria felt hers to be very wise.

'Would you like me to give you details?'

Maria nodded.

'You're obviously too young to understand these things, but that's precisely why I would like to share a little of my life with you, so that you don't make the same mistakes I
did.

'But why is it that my husband never noticed my clitoris? He assumed that the orgasm happened in the vagina, and I
found it really, really difficult to pretend something that he imagined I must be feeling. Of course, I did experience
pleasure, but a different kind of pleasure. It was only when the friction was on the upper part ... do you know what I mean?'

'I know.'

'And now I know why. It's in there,' she pointed to a book
on her desk, whose title Maria couldn't see. 'There are lots
of nerve endings that connect the clitoris and the Gspot and which are crucial to orgasm. But men think that penetration
is all. Do you know what the G-spot is?'

'Yes, we talked about it the other day,' said Maria, slipping into the role of Innocent Girl. 'As you go in, on the first floor, the back window.'

'That's right!' And the librarian's eyes lit up. 'Just you ask how many of your male friends have heard of it. None of them! It's absurd. But just as an Italian discovered the
clitoris, the G-spot is a twentieth-century discovery! Soon
it will be in all the headlines, and then no one will be able
to ignore it any longer! Have you any idea what revolutionary times we're living in?'

Maria glanced at her watch, and Heidi realised that she'd have to talk fast, in order to teach this pretty young
woman that all women have the right to be happy and fulfilled, in order that the next generation should benefit from all these extraordinary scientific discoveries.

'Dr Freud didn't agree because he wasn't a woman and, since he experienced his orgasm through his penis, he felt that women must, therefore, experience pleasure in their vagina. We've got to go back to basics, to what has always given us pleasure: the clitoris and the G-spot! Very few women enjoy a satisfactory sexual relationship, so if you have difficulty in getting the pleasure you deserve, let me
suggest something: change position. Make your lover lie down and you stay on top; your clitoris will strike his body
harder and you - not he - will be getting the stimulus you need. Or, rather, the stimulus you deserve!'

Maria, meanwhile, was only pretending that she wasn't listening to the conversation. So she wasn't the only one!

She didn't have a sexual problem, it was all just a question of anatomy! She felt like kissing the librarian, as if a gigantic weight had been lifted off her heart. How good to have discovered this while she was still young! What a marvellous day she was having! Heidi gave a conspiratorial smile.

'They may not know it, but we have an erection too. The clitoris becomes erect!'

'They' presumably meant men. Since this was such an intimate conversation, Maria decided to risk a question:

'Have you ever had an affair?'

The librarian looked shocked. Her eyes gave off a km of sacred fire, she blushed scarlet, though whether out
of rage or shame it was impossible to tell. After a
while though, the battle between telling the truth or pretending ended. She simply changed the subject.

'Getting back to our erection, to our clitoris, did you know that it became rigid?'

'Yes, I've known that ever since I was a child.'

Heidi seemed disappointed. Perhaps she had just never noticed. Nevertheless, she resolved to go on:

'Anyway, apparently, if you rub your ringer round it, without touching the actual tip, you can experience even more intense pleasure. So take note! Men who do respect a woman's body immediately touch the tip, not knowing that this can sometimes be quite painful, don't you agree? So, after your first or second encounter, take control of the situation: get
on top, decide how and when pressure should be applied, and increase and decrease the rhythm as you see fit. According to the book I'm reading, a frank conversation about it might
also be a good idea.'

'Did you ever have a frank conversation with your husband?'

Again, Heidi avoided this direct question, saying that things were different then. Now she was more interested in sharing her intellectual experiences.

'Try to think of your clitoris as the hands of a clock and
ask your partner to move it back and forth between eleven and one, do you understand?'

Yes, she knew what the woman was talking about and didn't entirely agree, although the book wasn't far from the truth.

As soon as she mentioned the word 'clock', though, M
Maria glanced at her watch, and explained that she had
really come to say goodbye, her job placement had come to an end. The woman seemed not to hear her.

'Would you like to borrow this book about the clitoris?'

'No, thanks. I've got other things to think about at the moment.'

'And you don't want to borrow anything else?' 'No. I'm
going back to my own country, but I just wanted to thank you for always having treated me with such respect and understanding. Perhaps we'll meet again some time.'

They shook hands and wished each other much happiness.

Heidi waited until the girl had left, then thumped the desk. Why hadn't she seized the opportunity to share
something which, the way things were going, would probably go
to the grave with her? Since the girl had had the courage to
ask if she had ever betrayed her husband, why had she not answered, now that she was discovering a new world in which women were finally acknowledging how difficult it was to achieve a vaginal orgasm?

'Oh well, it doesn't matter. The world isn't just about sex.'

No, it wasn't the most important thing in the world, but
it was still important. She looked around her; most of the thousands of books surrounding her were love stories. It was always the same: someone meets someone, falls in love, loses them and finds them again. There are souls speaking unto
souls, there are distant places, adventures, sufferings, anxieties, but very rarely anyone saying: 'Excuse me, sir, but why don't you try acquiring a better understanding of the female body?' Why didn't books talk openly about that?

Perhaps people weren't really interested. Men would always
go looking for novelty; they were still the troglodyte Unter, obeying the reproductive instinct of the human race.

And what about women? In her personal experience, the
desire to have a good orgasm with one's partner lasted only for the first few years; then the frequency of orgasms diminished, but no one talked about it, because every woman thought it was her problem alone. And so they lied, pretending that they found their husband's desire to make love every night oppressive. And by lying, they left other women feeling worried.

They turned their thoughts to other things: children, cooking, timetables, housework, bills to pay, their husband's affairs - which they tolerated - holidays abroad during which they were more concerned with their children than with themselves, their complicity, or even love, but no sex.

She should have been more open with that young Brazilian
woman, who seemed to her an innocent creature, old enough to be her daughter, and still incapable of understanding what
the world was like. An immigrant, far from home, working hard
at a boring job, waiting for a man she could marry, and with whom she could fake a few orgasms, find security, reproduce this mysterious human race, and then forget all about such
things as orgasms, the clitoris or the G-spot (which was only discovered in the twentieth century!!). Being a good wife, a good mother, making sure there was nothing lacking in the
home, masturbating occasionally in secret, thinking about some man who had passed her in the street and looked at her
longingly, Keeping up appearances - why was the world so concerned with appearances?

That is why she had not replied to the question: 'Have you ever had an affair?'

These things go with you to the grave, she thought. Her husband had been the only man in her life, although sex was now a thing of the remote past. He had been an excellent companion, honest, generous and good-humoured, and had struggled to bring up the family and to keep all those who worked with him happy. He was the ideal man that all women
dream of, and that is precisely why she felt so bad when she thought of how she had one day desired and been with another man.

She remembered how they had met. She was coming back from
the small mountain town of Davos, when all the train services were interrupted for some hours by an avalanche. She phoned
home so that no one would be worried, bought a few magazines and prepared for a long wait at the station.

That was when she noticed the man sitting next to her, along with his rucksack and sleeping bag. He had greying hair and sunburned skin, and was the only person in the station
who didn't seem concerned about the absence of any trains; on the contrary, he was smiling and looking around him for
someone to talk to. Heidi opened one of the Magazines, but - ah, sweet mystery of life! - her eyes happened to catch his and she didn't manage to look away quickly enough to avoid
him coming over to her.

Before she could - politely - say that she really needed
to finish reading an important article, he began to talk. He
told her that he was a writer and was returning from a
meeting in Davos and that the delay would mean him
missing his flight home. When they got to Geneva, would she mind helping him find a hotel?

Heidi was watching him: how could anyone be so cheerful
about missing a plane and having to wait in an uncomfortable train station until things were sorted out?

The man began talking to her as if they were old friends.

He told her about his travels, about the mystique of literary creation and, to her horror, about all the women he had known and loved in his lifetime. Heidi merely nodded and let him
talk. Occasionally he would apologise for talking so much and
ask her to tell him something about herself, but all she
could say was: 'Oh, I'm just an ordinary person, nothing very special.'

Suddenly, she found herself hoping that the train would never arrive; the conversation was so enthralling; she was discovering things that she had only encountered before in
fiction. And since she would never see him again, she got up her nerve and (quite why she could never say) began asking
him about subjects of particular interest to her. Her marriage was going through a rough patch, her husband was
very demanding of her time, and Heidi wanted to know what she could do to make him happy. The man offered her some interesting explanations, told her a story, but didn't seem very comfortable talking about her husband.

'You're a very interesting woman,' he said, something that no one had said to her for years.

Heidi didn't know how to react; he saw her embarrassment and immediately started talking about deserts, mountains, lost cities, women with veiled faces or bare midriffs, about warriors, pirates and wise men.

The train arrived. They sat down next to each other, and she was no longer a married woman who lived in a chalet
looking out over the lake and had three children to bring up, she was an adventurer arriving in Geneva for the first time.

She looked at the mountains and the river and felt glad to be sitting beside a man who wanted to go to bed with her
(because that's all men think about) and who was doing his
best to impress her. She wondered how many other men had felt the same, but to whom she had never given the slightest encouragement; that morning, however, the world had changed, and she was suddenly a thirtyeight-year-old adolescent, dazzled by this man's attempts to seduce her; it was the best feeling in the world.