Eleven Minutes

“But love is a terrible thing: I’ve seen my girlfriends suffer and I don’t want the same thing to happen to me. They used to laugh at me and my innocence, but now they ask me how it is I manage men so well. I smile and say nothing, because I know that the remedy is worse than the pain: I simply don’t fall in love. With each day that passes, I see more clearly how fragile men are, how inconstant, insecure and surprising they are...A few of my girlfriends’ fathers have propositioned me, but I’ve always refused. At first, I was shocked, but now I think it’s just the way men are. Although my aim is to understand love, and although I suffer to think of the people to whom I gave my heart, I see that those who touch my heart failed to arouse my body, and those who arouse my body failed to touch my heart.”

This passage comes from Maria’s diary, in which she records her experiences throughout the narrative. After suffering heartbreak a couple of times because of thoughtless boyfriends and the machinations of cruel girlfriends, Maria goes through a time of experimentation, including sexual intercourse. She does not understand why the experience of sex never seems to equal the romantic ideal of love. Maria responds to this curiosity with personal investigation, resulting in her having a greater depth of knowledge than the typical teenager about both men and sex.

“They returned to Rio, and within a day she had her passport (Brazil had really changed, Roger said, using a few words in Portuguese and a lot of gestures, which Maria took to mean ‘before it used to take ages’). With the help of Maílson, the security officer-cum-interpreter-cum-agent, any other important purchases were made (clothes, shoes, makeup, everything that a woman like her would want). On the eve of their departure for Europe, they went to a nightclub, and when Roger saw her dance, he felt pleased with his choice; he was clearly in the presence of a future great star of Cabaret Cologny, this lovely dark girl with her pale eyes and her hair as black as the wing of the graúna (the Brazilian bird often invoked by local authors to describe black hair). The work permit from the Swiss consulate was ready, so they packed their bags and, the following day, they were flying to the land of chocolate, clocks and cheese, with Maria secretly planning to make this man fall in love with her—after all, he wasn’t old, ugly or poor. What more could she want?”

Maria saves enough money by the time she is 22 for a one-week vacation to Rio de Janeiro, where she immediately attracts a great deal of attention, including that of a Swiss cabaret owner, Roger, who hires her to come to Geneva and dance at his club. Maílson, the hotel security officer, is Maria’s advisor and agent, for a substantial advance from Roger. Desiring to find a future full of excitement and riches, Maria decides she will seduce Roger and marry him. She discovers that there are many negative aspects to the cabaret job Roger did not mention, and he is not romantically inclined toward her. She finds herself living in a very restrictive environment, where interaction with men is forbidden and none of her coworkers are happy.

“I spent the day outside a funfair. Since I can’t afford to fritter my money away, I thought it best just to watch the other people. I stood for a long time by the roller coaster, and I noticed that most people get on it in search of excitement, but that once it starts, they’re terrified and want the car to stop.

What do they expect? Having chosen adventure, shouldn’t they be prepared to go the whole way? Or do they think that the intelligent thing to do would be to avoid the ups and down and spend all their time on a carousel, going round and round on the spot?

At the moment, I’m far too lonely to think about love, but I have to believe that it will happen, that I will find a job in that I am here because I chose this fate. The roller coaster is my life; life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it’s taking chances, falling over and getting up again; it’s mountaineering; it’s wanting to get to the top of yourself and to feel angry and dissatisfied when you don’t manage it.”

This is another excerpt from Maria’s diary, written after she was fired by Roger for missing a day’s work for a date with an Arabian man. As she waits to be contacted for work as a model, she walks about Geneva and studies the citizens. Here she is comparing herself to frightened people who only realize once they are riding the roller coaster that they should not have gotten on in the first place. This is her way of reaffirming that her life is uncertain, frightening, and difficult at the moment, but it is nothing more than she should have anticipated.

“Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she’d seen in films and read about in books. A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone’s mind is love. What nonsense! The person who wrote that clearly only knew one side of the coin.

Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person’s whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love could really transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly.”

These thoughts are going through Maria’s mind as she decides whether to accept the request from a wealthy Arabian man to go to his hotel for a sexual encounter. She had assumed he was interviewing her for a modeling job until he propositioned her with an offer of 1000 francs, about $600 American dollars. In that moment, her self-image is drastically altered as she asks to drink more wine before accepting his offer.

“I have discovered the reason why a man pays for a woman: he wants to be happy.

He wouldn’t pay a thousand francs just have an orgasm. He wants to be happy. I do too, everyone does, yet no one is. What have I got to lose if, for a while, I decide to become a…it’s a difficult word to think or even write…but let’s be blunt…What have I got to lose if I decide to become a prostitute for a while?

Honor. Dignity. Self-respect. Although, when I think about it, I’ve never had any of those things. I didn’t ask to be born, I’ve never found anyone to love me, I’ve always made the wrong decisions—now I’m letting life decide for me.”

The evening with the Arabian man made her realize how much money would be available to her if she decided to become a sex worker. This passage is from her diary as she reflects on the pros and cons of making the decision. Being alone with no one to offer her wisdom or to criticize what she is doing, Maria decides that, for a period of nine months, she will become a sex worker before returning to Brazil. This would fulfill the one year she had told her parents she would spend in Switzerland.

“She walks through the cold. She isn’t aware of the freezing temperatures, she doesn’t cry, she doesn’t think about the money she has earned, she is in kind of a trance. Some people were born to face life alone, and this is neither good nor bad, it is simply life. Maria is one of those people.

She begins to try and think about what has happened: she only started work today and yet she already considers herself a professional; it’s as if she started ages ago, as if she had done this all her life. She experiences a strange sense of pride; she’s glad she didn’t run away. Now she just has to decide whether or not to carry on. If she does carry on, then she will make sure she is the best, something she has never been before.” 

Maria signs on with a club called the Copacabana, which she selected because of its Brazilian name. With a little instruction from Milan, the owner, and advice from the other sex workers there, she secures her first two clients, having sexual encounters with them at their hotels. Walking home afterward, she examines her feelings and decides she will follow through with her decision to be a sex worker and learn to excel at that profession.

“In order to avoid being tempted by love, she kept her heart for her diary. She entered the Copacabana with only her body and her brain, which was growing sharper and more perceptive all the time. She had managed to persuade herself that there was some important reason why she’d come to Geneva and ended up on Rue de Berne, and that every time she borrowed a book from the library she was confirmed in her view that no one wrote properly about the eleven most important minutes of the day. Perhaps that was her destiny, however hard it might seem at the moment: to write a book, relating her story, her adventure.” 

These are Maria’s thoughts after she has worked for two months at the Copacabana and has received offers of matrimony and declarations of love from her clients. Though she is not prohibited from having outside relationships with her clients, her own previous romantic experiences have taught her that sexual escapades and true love are two distinctly different phenomena, and in her current line of work she will not find true love. The street she mentions, Rue de Berne, is the real-life Geneva location where one can find sex workers. Her reference to 11 minutes comes from her realization that, while she commits to an hour with each of her clients, sexual intercourse lasts 11 minutes on average. She marvels at the impact this brief period has on the lives of human beings.

“They set off along the road to Santiago, which first climbed and then descended down toward the river, then to the lake, then on to the mountains, to end in some distant place in Spain. They passed people going back to work after lunch, mother’s with their prams, tourists taking photographs of the splendid fountain in the middle of the lake, Muslim women and their head scarves, boys and girls out jogging, all of them pilgrims in search of that mythological city, Santiago de Compostela, which might not even exist, which might be a legend in which people need to believe in order to give meaning to their lives. Along this road walked by so many people, over so many years, went that man with his long hair, carrying a heavy bag full of brushes, paints, canvas and pencils, and that woman, slightly younger, with her bag full of books about farm management. It did not occur to either of them to ask why they were making that pilgrimage together, it was the most natural thing in the world; he knew everything about her, although she knew nothing about him.”

This passage is a description of that ongoing first encounter between Maria and Ralf. Maria had stepped into the cantina to ask about a sign identifying this street as “the road to Santiago Compostela.” Ralf overhears and explains to her that this was one of the routes Christian pilgrims traveled during the Dark Ages as a part of fulfilling their faith journeys. As the two of them walk along the road, Coelho describes it as being heavily traveled by all manner of folk, implying that the road is still a pathway for pilgrims today and, thus, implying that Maria and Ralf themselves are pilgrims.

“How pathetic. There she was with the little boy again, only he wasn’t asking her for a pencil now, just a little company. She looked at her own path, and, for the first time, she forgave herself: it hadn’t been her fault, but the fault of that insecure little boy, he had given up after the first attempt. They were children and that’s how children are—neither she nor the boy had been in the wrong, and it gave her a great sense of relief, made her feel better; she hadn’t betrayed the first opportunity that life presented her with. We all do the same thing: it’s part of the initiation of every human being and search of his or her other half; these things happen.”

These thoughts run through Maria’s mind after her first encounter with the famous painter Ralf Hart, who has a chance encounter with her in a cantina and persuades her to allow him to paint her into a mural he is doing of the citizens of Geneva. At length he recognizes her from having seen her at the Copacabana and wants to date her, which Maria initially refuses. Her reference to the boy wanting a pencil harkens back to her childhood when a boy she was attracted to asked her for a pencil and she failed to respond to him. The boy never spoke to her again and she perceives that experience to be the model for all her encounters with men she might love: her suitors ask for something, she turns them down, and they depart. From her first encounter with Ralf, however, she adores him.

“Why didn’t he say anything else to me, apart from, ‘I’m here as a customer?’ It would have been so easy for him to say: ‘I missed you’ or ‘I really enjoyed the afternoon we spent together.’ I would respond in the same way (I’m a professional), but he should understand my insecurities, because I am a woman, I’m fragile, and when I’m in that place, I’m a different person.

He is a man. He’s an artist. He should know that the great aim of every human being is to understand the meaning of total love. Love is not to be found in someone else, but in ourselves; we simply awaken it. But in order to do that, we need the other person. The universe only makes sense when we have someone to share our feelings with.

He says he’s tired of sex. So am I, and yet neither of us really knows what that means. We’re allowing one of the most important things in life to die—he should have saved me, I should have saved him, but he left me no choice.”

Though Maria is drawn to Ralf and cannot stop thinking about him, through the rest of the narrative she consistently attempts to talk herself out of letting him into her heart, believing she will inevitably lose him. This passage comes from her diary entry the evening after Ralf comes to the Copacabana hoping to pay for time with Maria. She rebuffed him. Maria is at once thrilled and hopeful that he will return and show interest in her and terrified for the same reason. She feels constrained by the procedures she must follow at the club, hoping he understands them and yearning desperately to be with him.

“‘Do you want me as a professional?’

‘I want you however you want to be wanted.’

No, he couldn’t have said that, because that was precisely what she wanted to hear. The earthquake, the volcano, the storm returned. It was going to be impossible to escape her own trap, she would lose this man without really having him.

‘You know what I mean, Maria. Teach me. Perhaps that will save me, perhaps it will save you and bring us both back to life. You’re right, I’m only six years older than you, and yet I’ve lived enough for several lives. Our experiences are entirely different, but we are both desperate people; the only thing that brings us any peace is being together.’

Why was he saying these things? It wasn’t possible, yet it was true. They’d only met once before and yet they already needed each other. Imagine what would happen if they continued seeing each other; it would be disastrous!”

This conversation takes place three days after Ralf’s first appearance at the club. He returns, offers to pay for her time for the rest of the night, and takes her to his home. They have a wide-ranging, honest conversation about their desires, though Maria never expresses the powerful desire she has for him. The reference to the earthquake, volcano, and storm reflect back on Maria’s description of the emotions Ralf evokes in her. They are also a subtle reference to the Hebrew Bible passage found in I Kings 19:11-13, in which the prophet Elijah is hiding in a cave waiting for a word from the Creator while outside a fire, earthquake, and tornado pass by. Coelho’s implication is that Maria is hiding and Ralf is trying to summon her out of her emotional cave.

“I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and I realize I didn’t go into that café by chance; really important meetings are planned by souls long before the bodies see each other.

Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach your limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meetings are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes directions.

Everyone knows how to love because we all are born with that gift. Some people have a natural talent for it, but the majority of us have to re-learn, to remember how to love, and everyone, without exception, needs to burn on the bonfire of past emotions, to relive certain joys and griefs, certain ups and downs, until they can see the connecting thread that exists behind each new encounter; because there is a connecting thread.

And then, our bodies learned to speak the language of the soul, known as sex, that is what I can give to the man who gave me back my soul, even though he has no idea how important he is to my life. That is what he asked me for and that is what he will have; I want him to be very happy.”

This passage comes from Maria’s diary as she reflects on the passion she feels for Ralf, which is tempered by her belief that he will eventually decide that, as a sex worker and small-town foreigner, Maria is not the ideal person for him. Though she does believe they were fated to come together, she believes her role is to reawaken his interest in sexual activities, which disappeared before she came into his life. Maria’s observation about souls determining to come together before their human possessors are ever born is one of the mystical notions that are common in Coelho’s writings, revealing his interest in many different spiritual concepts, even though he is an observant Catholic.

“I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, passion and adventure that life can give me. The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I’m a housewife and a prostitute, both of us living in the same body and doing battle with each other.

The meeting of these two women is a game with serious risks. A divine dance. When we meet, we are two divine energies, two universes colliding. If the meeting is not carried out with due reverence, one universe destroys the other.”

In this quote from Maria’s diary, she acknowledges both aspects of herself and the lifetime of internal struggle she has been experiencing. She believes this conflict exists in everyone, that people have both an adventurous, passionate side and a mundane, routine side. For most people, she ventures, one side or the other prevails. However, Maria hints that it is possible, if carefully handled, for the two sides to mutually express themselves in an individual, which she refers to as a “divine dance” (151). Her observations here mirror the description of the goddess Ishtar, whom Coelho quotes at the beginning of the book and near its conclusion.

“‘Anyone who is observant, who discovers the person I’ve always dreamed of, knows that sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn’t sex, but the passion with which it is practiced. When the passion is intense, then sex joins in to complete the dance, but is never the principal aim.’

‘You’re talking about love like a teacher.’

Maria went on talking, because this was her best defense her way of saying everything without committing herself to anything.

‘Anyone who is in love is making love the whole time, even when they’re not. When two bodies meet, it’s just the cup overflowing. They can stay together for hours, even days. They begin the dance one day and finish it the next, or—such as the pleasure they experienced—they may never finish it. No eleven minutes for them.”

This conversation takes place between Ralf and Maria the second time he contracts to take her home with him from Copacabana. In an intense experiment, Maria and Ralf sit in the dark close to one another without speaking, moving, or touching. This event is quite similar to many of the meditations and shamanistic rituals taught by Carlos Castaneda, the spiritualist of whom Coelho was a follower. After their time of silence, Maria explains the emotional and spiritual impact of two individuals experiencing great passion without acting upon it, after which she simply rises and leaves Ralf’s presence. She still has not expressed her overwhelming affection for him.

“If you live your life intensely, you experience pleasure all the time and don’t feel the need for sex. When you have sex, it’s out of a sense of abundance, because the glass of wine is so full that it overflows naturally, because it is never because it is inevitable, because you are responding to the call of life, because at that moment, and only at that moment, you have allowed yourself to lose control.”

Writing in her diary, Maria meditates on the purpose of sex in an individual’s life. She observes that most people perceive sexuality as distinct from other elements of life. Maria has come to believe that sex in all its manifestations is an integral part of life and that it is the ultimate expression of love, one that emerges spontaneously when couples are existing together in a loving relationship. That does not mean, she expresses, that those involved in sex with one another are necessarily having the same experience.

“Millions of couples out there practiced the art of sadomasochism every day, without even realizing 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 realizing that all it would take was a single gesture, a final goodbye, to free them from that oppression.”

This passage follows Maria’s in-depth encounter with a practitioner of sadomasochism. Coelho here expresses the notion that conflicted relationships in which there is continual domination, recrimination, and unhappiness are virtually living out a sadomasochistic partnership without realizing it and without expressing the pain in their relationship sexually. He ventures the possibility that such couples could overcome the pain and stuckness of their relationships if they acted out their roles with BDSM sexuality.

“After all, we are human beings, we are born full of guilt; we feel terrified when happiness becomes a real possibility; and we die wanting to punish everyone else because we feel impotent, ill-used and unhappy. To pay for one’s sins and be able to punish the sinners, wouldn’t that be delicious? Oh, yes, wonderful.”

This quote is part of Ralf’s explanation to Maria of why he turned away from BDSM sexuality. He expresses the thought that ultimately it is self-defeating to focus on pain and disharmony in one’s life, even if it is also the gateway to great sexual pleasure. He views BDSM as being a distraction from “real life” (194) which he says limits human possibility. As he is saying these things, he demands Maria walk along a rocky beach with unprotected feet, causing her real pain. He wants her to understand that the ultimate meaning of life is beyond role playing and intentional suffering.

“‘You experienced pain yesterday and you discovered that it led to pleasure. You experienced it today and found peace. That’s why I’m telling you: don’t get used to it, because it’s very easy to become habituated; it’s a powerful drug. It’s in our daily lives, in our hidden suffering, in the sacrifices we make, blaming love for the destruction of our dreams. Pain is frightening when it shows its real face, but it’s seductive when it comes disguised as a sacrifice or self-denial. Or cowardice. However much we may reject it, we human beings always find a way of being in pain, of flirting with it and making it part of our lives.’

‘I don’t believe that. No one wants to suffer.’

‘If you think you can live without suffering, that’s a great step forward but don’t imagine the other people understand you. True, no one wants to suffer, and yet nearly everyone seeks out pain and sacrifice, and then they feel justified, pure, deserving of the respect of their children, husbands, neighbors, God. Don’t let’s think about that now; all you need to know is that what makes the world go round is not the search for pleasure, but the renunciation of all that is important.”

After her painful walk on the stones, Ralf takes Maria back to his home, where they continue their conversation about suffering. Ralf points out that suffering and pain are intoxicating, that most people use their personal pain to shape their beliefs about their own sacrifices and anguish. The alternative, he says, is practiced by a great many fewer people, who renounce suffering for happiness. While one can renounce suffering, Ralf says humans should renounce their ongoing quest for greater pleasure instead.

“I love this man sitting before me now, because I do not possess him and he does not possess me. We are free in our mutual surrender; I need to repeat this dozens, hundreds, millions of times, until I finally believed my own words.

She thinks about the other prostitutes who work with her. She thinks about her mother and her friends. They all believe that a man feels desire for only eleven minutes a day, and that they’ll pay a fortune for it. That’s not true; a man is also a woman; he wants to find someone, to give meaning to his life.”

Through her experiences as a sex worker and also her observations of the relationships she hears about constantly, Maria has developed a number of keen insights into the actual emotional realities that undergird the interactions between genders in all relationships, particularly in sexual relationships. As she restates here, she believes no one actually loses another person because no one actually ever possesses another person. She has also come to believe that men, while often maligned as simply desiring sexual relationships with women, actually want the same sort of profound, lasting, true love that women are cognizant of desiring. Relationships, she believes, define and add meaning to one’s life.

“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 are, the businessman, 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 back to me. If I stay another day, I’ll be here for another year, and if I stay another year, I’ll never leave.”

Maria speaks these words to her boss, Milan, at the Copacabana as she explains to him why she is resigning with two weeks to go before her flight to Brazil. Her resignation comes without warning after the epiphany she experienced while standing on the busy streets in Geneva and recognizing that the sex work she was doing was destructive to her mental well-being. Milan does not disagree with her but wants her to leave quickly without sharing her insights with the other sex workers, who might realize that Maria’s insight applies to each of them as well.

“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 has 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.”

Coelho here describes Maria on her last day in Geneva as she struggles with whether to keep her date with Ralf, who knows nothing of her intention to fly to Brazil. She fears that, if she sees Ralf that evening, she will lose her resolve to board the plane tomorrow. Her ambivalence is based upon two realities: she had accomplished everything she set out to do in Geneva, including leaving her job as a sex worker after only nine months and having accumulated enough money to purchase a farm for her family in Brazil; she is hopelessly in love with Ralf and fears that she will be unable to leave if he asks her not to go.

“She could stay; she had nothing more to lose, only an illusion. She remembered the poem: [sic] a time to weep, and a time to laugh.

But there was another line too: ‘a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing.’ She made the coffee, shut the kitchen door and phoned for a taxi. She summoned all her willpower, which had carried her so far, and which was the source of the energy for her ‘light,’ which had told her the exact time to leave, which was protecting her and making her treasure forever the memory of that night. She got dressed, picked up her suitcases and left, hoping against hope that he would wake up and ask her to stay. But he didn’t wake up.”

Maria shows up at Ralf’s door the night before her flight with two suitcases and tells him she is leaving for Brazil the next day. Swept up with emotion, their relationship is finally consummated. The next morning, Maria begins to recite to herself the biblical poem about the various seasons of human life, affirming that the time has come for her to leave. Ralf sleeps as she departs, wishing desperately that he would awaken. Even after she leaves, Maria continues to hope that he will show up at the airport and dissuade her from flying away, though he does not. After a four-hour wait, she flies to Paris, from which she will fly to Brazil.

“I saw you reading a magazine at Geneva airport. I could have come over, but I’m such an incurable romantic. I thought it would be best to catch the next shuttle to Paris, wander about the airport here for three hours, consult the arrival screen over and over, buy some flowers, say the words that Rick says to his beloved in Casablanca and see the look of surprise on your face. And to be utterly sure that this is what you wanted, that you were expecting me, that all the determination and willpower in the world would not be enough to prevent love from changing the rules of the game for one moment to the next. It’s really easy being as romantic as people in the movies, don’t you think?”

Here Ralf speaks, having surprised Maria by showing up at the airport in Paris and greeting her as she disembarked from her first flight. His monologue reveals the powerful affection he feels for Maria. Their reuniting is essentially the end of the narrative, which Maria says she hopes might be told with the opening “once upon a time,” (269) which indicates that for her their coming together is like a fairy tale with a happy ending. Earlier in the chapter, Coelho had posited the reality through Maria’s thoughts that there is no completely happy ending. Though he does not look forward in time to tell the reader what happens to Maria and Ralf, in his Afterword, Coelho indicates the person upon whom the character of Maria was based did end up living in Switzerland with her husband and their two daughters.