Eleven Minutes

The following evening, Maria is once again with Ralf in his home, sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace drinking wine. She has decided to give herself to him, yet she “had resolved never to reveal her feelings” (153), so she decides not to tell him she loves him. At the same time, she desperately wants to arouse his affection for her. They play a fantasy game in which they pretend to be strangers who meet at a train station, each expressing to the other what they would think and say. Coelho writes, “Ralf looked at her. Maria felt him undressing her and she enjoyed being desired like that—with no contact, as if she were in a restaurant or standing in a queue at the cinema” (154).

As their fantasy game plays out, they not only discuss their feelings and the elusive nature of true intimacy through sexuality, but they also begin to discuss Plato’s myth that humans were once single, joined creatures, who were cut in half by Zeus to diminish their strength. Ralf says:

And he cut the creature in two with a lightning bolt, thus creating man and woman. This greatly increased the population of the world, and, at the same time, disoriented and weakened its inhabitants, because now they had to search for their lost half and embraced it and, in that embrace, regain their former strength, their ability to avoid betrayal and the stamina to walk for long periods of time and to withstand hard work. That embrace in which the two bodies re-fuse to become one again is what we call sex (157-58).

They sit on the floor staring at one another, experiencing extreme desire, upon which they do not act. Eventually, Maria rises, speaks philosophically about what is happening to them, confesses her love for Ralf, and leaves.

In her diary the next morning, Maria writes that Ralf symbolically opened a door and came in to see her. He is not like a thief, she says, but rather like a bridegroom. She says the intensity of their desire is such that some might be driven away but it is bringing the two of them closer.

This chapter focuses on the working relationships of the 38 women who are sex workers staging at the Copacabana. Coelho describes the average duration of a woman’s professional life in the club, which ranges from six months to three years. In that time, the women typically become wives, kept mistresses, or cease to attract clients. He describes the honor code among the sex workers and Milan’s uncannily accurate discretion in deciding who can patronize the club and who cannot.

Maria has entrenched herself as a professional, successful sex worker, who always has her nose in a book, not about romance but about finance or farm management. The other workers tend to be jealous of her. For her part, though she has continued to plan for her return to Brazil, she cannot get Ralf Hart out of her thoughts. She develops methods for tricking herself out of thinking about Ralf, which work to a certain degree: “Maria would stop what she was doing, smile up at the sky and give thanks for being alive and to be expecting nothing from the man she loved” (171). She wonders if she has chased him away by confessing her love for him and tries not to worry about never seeing him again. She leans on her platitude that no one can own another person, thus no one can really lose another person.

Coelho devotes this chapter to an intense exploration of the theory, history, and practice of sadomasochism (BDSM). He does this by describing an extended sexual experience between Maria and Terence, the British music executive who flies into Geneva precisely for this reason. With a great degree of detail, the author follows Terence’s routine of plying Maria with vodka, humiliating her, and employing many common BDSM props. For her part, Maria had understood from their previous encounter that she is to alternate between being dominant and being dominated. More curious than fearful, Maria endures the experience. She is portrayed as receiving something of an awakening to the close connection between pleasure and pain, which she perceives as something she would like to explore further, saying, “When I experienced humiliation and total submission, I was free. I don’t know if I’m Ill, if it was all a dream, or if it only happens once. I know that I can perfectly well live without it, but I would like to do it again, to repeat the experience, to go still further” (189). Again, describing the event in her diary, Maria writes, “The art of sex is the art of controlled abandon” (190).

When Ralf shows up at the Copacabana the following night, Maria makes him take her to a real restaurant rather than an imaginary train station for pizza. Her intention is to discuss with him what happened to her with Terence the previous night. When she asks Ralf if he knows about BDSM, he tells her he does. They take a taxi to the shore of the lake in the center of the town and Ralf makes her walk without shoes on the rough stones along the shore. She wonders, “Why was it that in God’s holy world men were only interested in showing her pain. Sacred pain, pain with pleasure, pain with explanations or without, but always pain, pain, pain, pain...” (196).

Maria discovers that Ralf had previously been involved with sadomasochism. He tells her if she chooses to be involved in that sort of life, he will not be involved with her anymore. As she walks on the sharp, hard stones, the pain of the experience and the coldness of the night transform her perception, taking her to a place of serenity. Ralf covers her with his coat, and she realizes she had passed out.

Maria wakes to find herself in Ralf’s house. She insists that they sit downstairs in his library, surrounded by books and sitting by the fire. He lectures her on the different types of pain she had experienced in the last two days and warns her not to allow herself to become addicted to pain, saying people use pain to justify the good things in life they do not feel they deserve. Ralf says, “pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only joy: love” (201).

Because she had initially expressed to Ralf a desire to know the history of sex work, he had researched it and discovered not one but two histories of sex workers. He shares both with Maria. She grows irritated with the first, which records the history of sex work as a business venture, saying sex workers were a part of “the oldest profession” (200). Maria is deeply moved and begins to sob, however, when Ralf relates the history of religious sex workers. He expresses that the days of sacred sex workers have disappeared.

Maria asks him if he will come to the Copacabana the next day, and he agrees. Afterward, she writes in her diary that she hates being a sex worker. She expresses the unhappiness of her coworkers and their clients and the growing difficulty she has in pretending the life she lives is acceptable to her.