Eleven Minutes Read online

  He seemed pleased and looked at his own watch (possibly Swiss), and agreed on the time.

  She did not go to sleep straight away. She dreamed that it was all a dream. Then she woke up and saw that it wasn't: there was the dress draped over the chair in her modest room, the beautiful shoes and that rendezvous on the beach.

  From Maria's diary, on the day that she met the Swiss man:

  Everything tells me that I am about to make a wrong decision, but making mistakes is just part of life. What does the world want of me? Does it want me to take no risks, to go back where I came from because I didn't have the courage to say "yes" to life?

  I made my first mistake when I was eleven years old, when that boy asked me if I could lend him a pencil; since then, I've realized that sometimes you get no second chance and that it's best to accept the gifts the world offers you. Of course it's risky, but is the risk any greater than the chance of the bus that took forty-eight hours to bring me here having an accident? If I must be faithful to someone or something, then I have, first of all, to be faithful to myself. If I'm looking for true love, I first have to get the mediocre loves out of my system. The little experience of life I've had has taught me that no one owns anything, that everything is an illusion--and that applies to material as well as spiritual things. Anyone who has lost something they thought was theirs forever (as has happened often enough to me already) finally comes to realize that nothing really belongs to them.

  And if nothing belongs to me, then there's no point wasting my time looking after things that aren't mine; it's best to live as if today were the first (or last) day of my life.

  The next day, together with Mailson, the interpreter-cum-security officer and now, according to him, her agent, she said that she would accept the Swiss man's offer, as long as she had a document provided by the Swiss consulate. The foreigner, who seemed accustomed to such demands, said that this was something he wanted too, since, if she was to work in his country, she needed a piece of paper proving that no one there could do the job she was proposing to do--and this was not particularly difficult, given that Swiss women had no particular talent for the samba. Together they went to the city center, and the security officer-cum-interpreter-cum-agent demanded a cash advance as soon as the contract was signed, thirty percent of the five hundred dollars she received.

  "That's a week's payment in advance. One week, you understand? You'll be earning five hundred dollars a week from now on, but with no deductions, because I only get a commission on the first payment."

  Up until then, travel and the idea of going far away had just been a dream, and dreaming is very pleasant as long as you are not forced to put your dreams into practice. That way, we avoid all the risks, frustrations and difficulties, and when we are old, we can always blame other people--preferably our parents, our spouses or our children--for our failure to realize our dreams.

  Suddenly, there was the opportunity she had been so eagerly awaiting, but which she had hoped would never come! How could she possibly deal with the challenges and the dangers of a life she did not know? How could she leave behind everything she was used to? Why had the Virgin decided to go this far?

  Maria consoled herself with the thought that she could change her mind at any moment; it was all just a silly game, something different to tell her friends about when she went back home. After all, she lived more than a thousand kilometers from there and she now had three hundred and fifty dollars in her purse, so if, tomorrow, she decided to pack her bags and run away, there was no way they would ever be able to track her down again.

  In the afternoon following their visit to the consulate, she decided to go for a walk on her own by the sea, where she looked at the children, the volleyball players, the beggars, the drunks, the sellers of traditional Brazilian artifacts (made in China), the people jogging and exercising as a way of fending off old age, the foreign tourists, the mothers with their children, and the pensioners playing cards at the far end of the promenade. She had come to Rio de Janeiro, she had been to a five-star restaurant and to a consulate, she had met a foreigner, she had an agent, she had been given a present of a dress and a pair of shoes that no one, absolutely no one, back home could ever have afforded.

  And now what?

  She looked out to sea: her geography lessons told her that if she set off in a straight line, she would reach Africa, with its lions and jungles full of gorillas. However, if she headed in a slightly more northerly direction, she would end up in the enchanted kingdom known as Europe, with its Eiffel Tower, EuroDisney and Leaning Tower of Pizza. What did she have to lose? Like every Brazilian girl, she had learned to samba even before she could say "Mama"; she could always come back if she didn't like it, and she had already learned that opportunities are made to be seized.

  She had spent a lot of her life saying "no" to things to which she would have liked to say "yes," determined to try only those experiences she could control--certain affairs she had had with men, for example. Now she was facing the unknown, as unknown as this sea had once been to the navigators who crossed it, or so she had been told in history classes. She could always say "no," but would she then spend the rest of her life brooding over it, as she still did over the memory of the little boy who had once asked to borrow a pencil and had then disappeared--her first love? She could always say "no," but why not try saying "yes" this time?

  For one very simple reason: she was a girl from the backlands of Brazil, with no experience of life apart from a good school, a vast knowledge of TV soaps and the certainty that she was beautiful. That wasn't enough with which to face the world.

  She saw a group of people laughing and looking at the sea, afraid to go in. Two days ago, she had felt the same thing, but now she was no longer afraid; she went into the water whenever she wanted, as if she had been born there. Wouldn't it be the same in Europe?

  She made a silent prayer and again asked the Virgin Mary's advice, and seconds later, she seemed perfectly at ease with her decision to go ahead, because she felt protected. She could always come back, but she would not necessarily get another chance of a trip like this. It was worth taking the risk, as long as the dream survived the forty-eight-hour journey back home in a bus with no air conditioning, and as long as the Swiss man didn't change his mind.

  She was in such good spirits that when he invited her out to supper again, she wanted to appear alluring and took his hand in hers, but he immediately pulled away, and Maria realized--with a mixture of fear and relief--that he was serious about what he said.

  "Samba star!" said the man. "Lovely Brazilian samba star! Travel next week!"

  This was all well and good, but "travel next week" was out of the question. Maria explained that she couldn't take a decision without first consulting her family. The Swiss man was furious and showed her a copy of the signed contract, and for the first time she felt afraid.

  "Contract!" he said.

  Even though she was determined to go home, she decided to consult her agent Mailson first; after all, he was being paid to advise her.

  Mailson, however, seemed more concerned with seducing a German tourist who had just arrived at the hotel and who was sunbathing topless on the beach, convinced that Brazil was the most liberal country in the world (having failed to notice that she was the only woman on the beach with her breasts exposed and that everyone was eyeing her rather uneasily). It was very hard to get him to pay attention to what she was saying.

  "But what if I change my mind?" insisted Maria.

  "I don't know what's in the contract, but I suppose he might have you arrested."

  "He'd never be able to find me!"

  "Exactly. So why worry?"

  The Swiss man, on the other hand, having spent five hundred dollars, as well as paying for a pair of shoes, a dress, two suppers and various fees for the paperwork at the consulate, was beginning to get worried, and so, since Maria kept insisting on the need to talk to her family, he decided to buy two plane tickets and go with her to the
place where she had been born--as long as it could all be resolved in forty-eight hours and they could still travel to Europe the following week, as agreed. With a smile here and a smile there, she was beginning to understand that this was all in the documents she had signed and that, when it came to seductions, feelings and contracts, one should never play around.

  It was a surprise and a source of pride to the small town to see its lovely daughter Maria arrive accompanied by a foreigner who wanted to make her a big star in Europe. The whole neighborhood knew, and her old schoolfriends asked: "How did it happen?"

  "I was just lucky."

  They wanted to know if such things were always happening in Rio de Janeiro, because they had seen similar scenarios in TV soaps. Maria would not be pinned down, wanting to place a high value on her personal experience and thus convince her friends that she was someone special.

  She and the man went to her house where he handed round leaflets, with Brasil spelled with a "z," and the contract, while Maria explained that she had an agent now and intended following a career as an actress. Her mother, seeing the diminutive bikinis worn by the girls in the photos that the foreigner was showing her, immediately gave them back and preferred to ask no questions; all that mattered was that her daughter should be happy and rich, or unhappy, but at least rich.

  "What's his name?"

  "Roger."

  "Rogerio! I had a cousin called Rogerio!"

  The man smiled and clapped, and they all realized that he hadn't understood a word. Maria's father said:

  "He's about the same age as me."

  Her mother told him not to interfere with their daughter's happiness. Since all seamstresses talk a great deal to their customers and acquire a great deal of knowledge about marriage and love, her advice to Maria was this:

  "My dear, it's better to be unhappy with a rich man than happy with a poor man, and over there you'll have far more chance of becoming an unhappy rich woman. Besides, if it doesn't work out, you can just get on the bus and come home."

  Maria might be a girl from the backlands, but she was more intelligent than her mother or her future husband imagined, and she said, simply to be provocative:

  "Mama, there isn't a bus from Europe to Brazil. Besides, I want a career as a performer, I'm not looking for marriage."

  Her mother gave her a look of near despair.

  "If you can go there, you can always come back. Being a performer, an actress, is fine for a young woman, but it only lasts as long as your looks, and they start to fade when you're about thirty. So make the most of things now. Find someone who's honest and loving, and marry him. Love isn't that important. I didn't love your father at first, but money buys everything, even true love. And look at your father, he's not even rich!"

  It was bad advice from a friend, but good advice from a mother. Forty-eight hours later, Maria was back in Rio, though not without first having made a visit, alone, to her old place of work in order to hand in her resignation and to hear the owner of the shop say:

  "Yes, I'd heard that a big French impresario wanted to take you off to Paris. I can't stop you going in pursuit of your happiness, but I want you to know something before you leave."

  He took a medal on a chain out of his pocket.

  "It's the Miraculous Medal of Our Lady of the Graces. She has a church in Paris, so go there and pray for her protection. Look, there are some words engraved around the Virgin."

  Maria read: "Hail Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who turn to you. Amen."

  "Remember to say those words at least once a day. And..."

  He hesitated, but it was getting late.

  "...if one day you come back, I'll be waiting for you. I missed my chance to tell you something very simple: I love you. It may be too late now, but I wanted you to know."

  Missed chances. She had learned very early on what that meant. "I love you," though, were three words she had often heard during her twenty-two years, and it seemed to her that they were now completely devoid of meaning, because they had never turned into anything serious or deep, never translated into a lasting relationship. Maria thanked him for his words, noted them in her memory (one never knows what life may have in store for us, and it's always good to know where the emergency exit is), gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek and left without so much as a backward glance.

  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 Mailson, the security officer-cum-interpreter-cum-agent, any other important purchases were made (clothes, shoes, makeup, everything that a woman like her could 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 hair as black as the wing of the grauna (the Brazilian bird often evoked 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?

  She arrived feeling exhausted and, while still in the airport, her heart contracted with fear: she realized that she was completely dependent on the man at her side--she had no knowledge of the country, the language or the cold. Roger's behavior changed as the hours passed; he no longer made any attempt to be pleasant, and although he had never tried to kiss her or to fondle her breasts, the look in his eyes grew more and more distant. He installed her in a small hotel, introducing her to another young Brazilian woman, a sad creature called Vivian, who would be in charge of preparing her for the work.

  Vivian looked her coolly up and down, without the least show of sympathy for someone who had clearly never been abroad before. Instead of asking her how she was feeling, she got straight down to business.

  "Don't delude yourself. He flies off to Brazil whenever one of his dancers gets married, something which seems to be happening more and more frequently. He knows what you want, and I assume you do too: you're probably looking for one of three things--adventure, money or a husband."

  How did she know? Was everyone looking for the same thing? Or could Vivian read other people's thoughts?

  "All the girls here are looking for one of those three things," Vivian went on, and Maria was convinced that she really could read her thoughts. "As for adventure, it's too cold to do anything and, besides, you won't earn enough to go off travelling. And as for money, once the cost of room and board has been deducted, you'll have to work for nearly a whole year just to pay for your flight back home."

  "But..."

  "I know, that isn't what you agreed. But the truth is that, like everyone else, you forgot to ask. If you had been more careful, if you had read the contract you signed, you would know exactly what you were getting yourself into, because the Swiss don't lie, they just rely on silence to help them."

  Maria felt the ground shifting beneath her.

  "And as for a husband, every time a girl gets married, that represents a great financial loss for Roger, so we're forbidden to talk to the customers. If your interests lie in that direction, you'll have to run great risks. This isn't a pick-up place, like in Rue de Berne."

  Rue de Berne?

  "Men come here with their wives, and the few tourists who turn up get one whiff of the family atmosphere and go looking for women elsewhere. I presume you know how to dance; well, if you can sing as well, your salary will increase, but so will the other girls' envy, so I'd suggest that, even if you're the best singer in Brazil, forget all about it and don't even try. Above all, don't use the phone. You'll spend everything you earn on it, and that won't be much."

  "He promised me five hundred dollars a week!"

  "Oh yeah."

  Fr
om Maria's diary, during her second week in Switzerland:

  I went to the nightclub and met the dance director who comes from somewhere called Morocco, and I had to learn every step of what he--who has never set foot in Brazil--thinks is the samba. I didn't even have time to recover from the long flight, I had to start smiling and dancing on the very first night. There are six of us, and not one of us is happy and none of us knows what we're doing here. The customers drink and applaud, blow kisses and privately make obscene gestures, but that's as far as it goes.

  I got paid yesterday, barely a tenth of what we agreed, the rest, according to the contract, will be used to pay for my flight and my stay here. According to Vivian's calculations, that will take a year, which means that during that time there's no escape.

  And what's the point of escaping anyway? I've only just arrived. I haven't seen anything yet. What's so awful about having to dance seven nights a week? I used to do that for pleasure, now I do it for money and fame; my legs don't ache, the only difficult thing is maintaining that fixed smile.

  I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It's all a question of how I view my life.

  Maria chose to be an adventurer in search of treasure--she put aside her feelings, she stopped crying every night, and she forgot all about the person she used to be; she discovered that she had enough willpower to pretend that she had just been born and so had no reason to miss anyone. Feelings could wait, now what she needed to do was to earn some money, get to know the country and return home victorious.