Eleven Minutes. Пауло Коэльо

said Maria, I want the street in Geneva. The man looked her up and down, then walked off without a word, convinced that he was being filmed by one of those TV programmes that delight in making fools of people. Maria studied the map for fifteen minutes – it’s not a very big city – and finally found the place she was looking for.

      Her invisible friend, who had remained silent while she was studying the map, was now trying to reason with her; it wasn’t a question of morality, but of setting off down a road of no return.

      Maria said that if she could earn enough money to go back home, then she could earn enough to get out of any situation. Besides, none of the people she passed had actually chosen what they wanted to do. That was just a fact of life.

      ‘We live in a vale of tears,’ she said to her invisible friend. ‘We can have all the dreams we like, but life is hard, implacable, sad. What are you trying to say: that people will condemn me? No one will ever know – this is just one phase of my life.’

      With a sad, sweet smile, the invisible friend disappeared.

      Maria went to the funfair and bought a ticket for the roller coaster; she screamed along with everyone else, knowing that there was no real danger and that it was all just a game. She ate in a Japanese restaurant, even though she didn’t understand quite what she was eating, knowing only that it was very expensive and feeling in a mood to indulge herself in every luxury. She was happy, she didn’t need to wait for a phone call now or to watch every centime she spent.

      Later that day, she left a message with the agency to thank them and to tell them that the meeting had gone well. If they were genuine, they would ask about the photos. If they were procurers of women, they would arrange more meetings.

      She walked across the bridge back to her little room and decided that, however much money and however many future plans she had, she would definitely not buy a television: she needed to think, to use all her time for thinking.

      From Maria’s diary that night (with a note in the margin saying: ‘Not sure’):

      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 to have an orgasm. He wants to be happy. I do too, everyone does, and 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?

      Honour. 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 agency phoned the next day and asked about the photos and when the fashion show was being held, since they got a percentage of every job. Maria, realising that they knew nothing about what had happened, told them that the Arab gentleman would be in touch with them.

      She went to the library and asked for some books about sex. If she was seriously considering the possibility of working – just for a year, she had told herself – in an area about which she knew nothing, the first thing she needed to know was how to behave, how to give pleasure and receive money in return.

      She was most disappointed when the librarian told her that, since the library was a government-funded institution, they only had a few technical works. Maria read the index of one of these books and immediately returned it: they said nothing about happiness, they talked only about dull things such as erection, penetration, impotence, precautions…She did for a moment consider borrowing The Psychology of Frigidity in Women, since, in her own case, although she very much enjoyed being possessed and penetrated by a man, she only ever reached orgasm through masturbation.

      She wasn’t there in search of pleasure, however, but work. She thanked the librarian, and went to a shop where she made her first investment in that possible career looming on the horizon – clothes which she considered to be sexy enough to arouse men’s desire. Then she went straight to the place she had found on the map. Rue de Berne. At the top of the street was a church (oddly enough, very near the Japanese restaurant where she had had supper the night before), then some shops selling cheap watches and clocks, and, at the far end, were the clubs she had heard about, all of them closed at that hour of the day. She went for another walk around the lake, then – without a tremor of embarrassment – bought five pornographic magazines in order to study the kind of thing she would have to do, waited for darkness to fall and then went back to Rue de Berne. There she chose at random a bar with the alluringly Brazilian name of ‘Copacabana’.

      She hadn’t decided anything, she told herself. It was just an experiment. She hadn’t felt so well or so free in all the time she had been in Switzerland.

      ‘I’m looking for work,’ she told the owner, who was washing glasses behind the bar. The place consisted of a series of tables, a few sofas around the walls and, in one corner, a kind of dance floor. ‘Nothing doing. If you want to work here legally you have to have a work permit.’

      Maria showed him hers and the man’s mood seemed to improve.

      ‘Got any experience?’