Eleven Minutes

by Paulo Coelho

  "Artists have been making sculptures and paintings and writing books for more than three thousand years. In just the same way, throughout all that time, prostitutes have carried on their work as if nothing very much ever changes. Would you like to know details?"

  Maria nodded. She needed time in order to understand about pain, although she was starting to feel as if something very bad had left her body during that walk in the park.

  "Prostitutes appear in classical texts, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in Sumerian writings, in the Old and New Testament. But the profession only started to become organized in the sixth century B.C., when a Greek legislator, Solon, set up state-controlled brothels and began imposing taxes on 'the skin trade.' Athenian businessmen were pleased because what was once prohibited became legal. The prostitutes, on the other hand, started to be classified according to how much tax they paid.

  "The cheapest were the pornai, slaves who belonged to the owners of the establishment. Next came the peripatetica, who picked up her clients in the street. Lastly, the most expensive and highest quality, was the hetaera, the female companion, who accompanied businessmen on their trips, dined in chic restaurants, controlled her own money, gave advice and meddled in the political life of the city. As you see, what happened then still happens now.

  "In the Middle Ages, because of sexually transmitted diseases..."

  Silence, fear of catching a cold, the heat of the fire--necessary now to warm her body and her soul.... Maria didn't want to hear any more history, it gave her a sense that the world had stopped, that everything was being endlessly repeated, and that mankind would never give sex the respect it deserved.

  "You don't seem very interested."

  She pulled herself together. After all, he was the man to whom she had decided to give her heart, although now she wasn't so sure.

  "I'm not interested in what I know about; it just makes me sad. You said there was another history."

  "The other history is exactly the opposite: sacred prostitution."

  She had suddenly emerged from her somnolent state and was listening to him intently. Sacred prostitution? Earning money from sex and yet still able to approach God?

  "The Greek historian, Herodotus, wrote of Babylonia: 'They have a strange custom here, by which every woman born in Sumeria is obliged, at least once in her lifetime, to go to the temple of the goddess Ishtar and give her body to a stranger, as a symbol of hospitality and for a symbolic price.'"

  She would ask him about that goddess later; perhaps she would help her to recover something she had lost, although just what that was she did not know.

  "The influence of the goddess Ishtar spread throughout the Middle East, as far as Sardinia, Sicily and the Mediterranean ports. Later, during the Roman Empire, another goddess, Vesta, demanded total virginity or total surrender. In order to keep the sacred fire burning, the women serving her temple were responsible for initiating young men and kings on the path of sexuality--they sang erotic hymns, entered trance-like states and gave their ecstasy to the universe in a kind of communion with the divinity."

  Ralf Hart showed her a photocopy of some ancient lyrics, with a translation in German at the foot of the page. He read slowly, translating each line as he went:

  "When I am sitting at the door of a tavern,

  I, Ishtar, the goddess,

  Am prostitute, mother, wife, divinity.

  I am what people call life,

  Although you call it death.

  I am what people call Law,

  Although you call it Delinquency.

  I am what you seek

  And what you find.

  I am what you scattered

  And the pieces you now gather up."

  Maria was sobbing softly, and Ralf Hart laughed; his vital energy was returning, his "light" was beginning to shine again. It was best to continue the history, to show her the drawings, to make her feel loved.

  "No one knows why sacred prostitution disappeared, since it had lasted not centuries, perhaps, but for at least two millennia. Maybe it was disease or because society changed its rules when it changed religions. Anyway, it no longer exists, and will never exist again; nowadays, men control the world, and the term serves only to create a stigma, and any woman who steps out of line is automatically dubbed a prostitute."

  "Could you come to the Copacabana tomorrow?"

  Ralf didn't understand why she was asking this, but he agreed at once.

  From Maria's diary, after the night she walked barefoot in the Jardin Anglais in Geneva:

  I don't care whether it was once sacred or not, I HATE WHAT I DO. It's destroying my soul, making me lose touch with myself, teaching me that pain is a reward, that money buys everything and justifies everything.

  No one around me is happy; the clients know they are paying for something that should be free, and that's depressing. The women know that they have to sell something which they would like to give out of pleasure and affection, and that is destructive. I've struggled long and hard before writing this, before accepting how unhappy and dissatisfied I am--I needed and I still need to hold out for a few more weeks.

  But I cannot simply do nothing, pretend that everything is normal, that it's just a stage, a phase of my life. I want to forget it, I need to love--that's all, I need to love.

  Life is too short, or too long, for me to allow myself the luxury of living it so badly.

  It isn't his house. It isn't her house. It isn't Brazil or Switzerland. It's a hotel, which could be anywhere in the world, furnished, like all hotel rooms, in a way that tries to create a familiar atmosphere, but which only makes it seem all the more impersonal.

  It isn't the hotel with the lovely view of the lake and the memory of pain, suffering and ecstasy; it looks out onto the road to Santiago, a route of pilgrimage not penance, a place where people meet in the cafes along the road, discover each other's "light," talk, become friends, fall in love. It's raining, and at this time of night, no one is walking there, although they have for years, decades, centuries--perhaps the road needs to breathe, to rest from the many steps that trudge along it every day.

  Turn out the light. Close the curtains.

  She asks him to take his clothes off and she does the same. Darkness is never absolute, and as soon as her eyes become accustomed to it, she can see the man's silhouette, outlined against the faintest of lights coming from who knows where. The last time they met for this purpose, she had left only part of her body naked.

  She takes two carefully folded handkerchiefs, which have been washed and rinsed several times to get rid of the slightest trace of perfume or soap. She goes over to him and asks him to blindfold himself. He hesitates for a moment, and makes some remark about various hells he has been through before. She says it's nothing to do with that, she just needs total darkness; now it is her turn to teach him something, just as yesterday he taught her about pain. He gives in and puts on the blindfold. She does the same; now there is not a glimmer of light, they are in absolute darkness, and they have to hold hands in order to reach the bed.

  "No, we mustn't lie down. Let's sit as we always do, face to face, only a little closer, so that my knees touch your knees."

  She has always wanted to do this, but she never had what she most needed: time. Not with her first boyfriend, or with the man who penetrated her for the first time. Not with the Arab who paid her a thousand francs, perhaps hoping for more than she was able to give him, although a thousand francs wouldn't be enough for her to buy what she wanted. Not with the many men who had passed through her body, who have come and gone between her legs, sometimes thinking about themselves, sometimes thinking about her too, sometimes harboring romantic dreams, sometimes instinctively repeating certain words because they have been told that that is what men do, and that if they don't, they are not real men.

  She thinks of her diary. She has had enough, she wants the remaining weeks to pass quickly, and that is why she is giving herself to this man, because the light of her own lo
ve lies hidden there. Original sin was not the apple that Eve ate, it was her belief that Adam needed to share precisely the thing she had tasted. Eve was afraid to follow her path without someone to help her, and so she wanted to share what she was feeling.

  Certain things cannot be shared. Nor can we be afraid of the oceans into which we plunge of our own free will; fear cramps everyone's style. Man goes through hell in order to understand this. Love one another, but let's not try to possess one another.

  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 believe 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 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.

  Does her mother behave just as she does and pretend to have an orgasm with her father? Or in the interior of Brazil, is it still forbidden for a woman to take pleasure in sex? She knows so little of life and love, and now--with her eyes blindfolded and with all the time in the world, she is discovering the origin of everything, and everything begins where and how she would like it to have begun.

  Touch. Forget prostitutes, clients, her mother and her father, now she is in total darkness. She has spent the whole afternoon wondering what she could give to a man who had restored her dignity and made her understand that the search for happiness is more important than the need for pain.

  I would like to give him the happiness of teaching me something new, just as yesterday he taught me about suffering, street prostitutes and sacred prostitutes. I saw how much he enjoys teaching me things, so let him teach me, guide me. I would like to know how one reaches the body, without going via the soul, penetration, orgasm.

  She holds out her hand and asks him to do the same. She whispers a few words, saying that tonight, in this no-man's-land, she would like him to discover her skin, the boundary between her and the world. She asks him to touch her, to feel her with his hands, because bodies always understand each other, even when souls do not. He begins touching her, and she touches him too, and, as if by prior agreement, they both avoid the parts of the body where sexual energy surfaces most rapidly.

  His fingers touch her face, and she can smell just a hint of ink on them, a smell that will stay there forever, even if he washes his hands thousands and millions of times, a smell which was there when he was born, when he saw his first tree, his first house, and decided to draw them in his dreams. He must be able to smell something on her hands too, but she doesn't know what, and doesn't want to ask, because at that moment everything is body, and the rest is silence.

  She caresses and is caressed. She could stay like this all night, because it is so pleasurable and won't necessarily end in sex, and at that moment, precisely because there is no obligation to have sex, she feels hot between her legs and knows that she has become wet. When he touches her there, he will discover this, and she doesn't know if this is good or bad, this is just how her body is reacting, and she doesn't intend telling him to go here or there, more slowly or more quickly. His hands are touching her armpits now, the hairs on her arms stand on end, and she feels like pushing his hands away, but it feels good, although perhaps it is pain she is feeling. She does the same to him and notices that the skin in his armpits has a different texture, perhaps because of the deodorant they both use, but what is she thinking of? She mustn't think. She must touch, that is all.

  His fingers trace circles around her breast, like an animal watching. She wants them to move more quickly, to touch her nipples, because her thoughts are moving faster than his hands, but, perhaps knowing this, he provokes, lingers, takes an age to get there. Her nipples are hard now, he plays with them a little, and that causes more goose pimples, causes her to become hotter and wetter. Now he is moving across her belly, then down to her legs, her feet, he strokes his hands up and down her inner thigh, he feels the heat, but does not approach, his touch is soft, light, and the lighter it is the more intoxicating.

  She does the same, her hands almost floating over his skin, touching only the hairs on his legs, and she too feels the heat when she approaches his genitals. Suddenly, it is as if she had mysteriously recovered her virginity, as if she were discovering a man's body for the first time. She touches his penis. It is not as hard as she imagined, and yet she is so wet, how unfair, but maybe a man needs more time, who knows.

  And she begins to stroke it as only virgins know how, because prostitutes have long since forgotten. The man reacts, his penis begins to grow in her hands, and she slowly increases the pressure, knowing now where she should touch, more at the bottom than at the top, she must wrap her fingers around it, push the skin back, towards his body. Now he is excited, very excited, he touches the lips of her vagina, still very softly, and she feels like asking him to be more forceful, to put his fingers right inside. But he doesn't do that, he moistens the clitoris with a little of the liquid pouring from her womb, and again makes the same circular movements he made on her nipples. This man touches her exactly as she would touch herself.

  One of his hands goes back to her breast; it feels so good, she wishes he would put his arms around her now. But, no, they are discovering the body, they have time, they need a lot of time. They could make love now; it would be the most natural thing in the world, and it might be good, but all this is so new, she needs to control herself, she does not want to spoil everything. She remembers the wine they drank on that first night, how they sipped it slowly, savoring each mouthful, how she felt it warming her and how it made her see the world differently and left her more at ease and more in touch with life.

  She wants to drink that man too, and then she can forget forever the cheap wine that you gulp down and that makes you feel drunk, but always leaves you with a headache and an empty space in your soul.

  She stops, slowly entwines her fingers with his, she hears a moan and would like to moan too, but she stops herself, she feels heat spreading throughout her body; the same thing must be happening to him. Without an orgasm, the energy disperses, travels to the brain, not letting her think of anything but going all the way, but this is what she wants, to stop, to stop halfway, to spread the pleasure through her whole body, to allow it to invade her mind, renewing her commitment and her desire, restoring her virginity.

  She gently removes the blindfold from her own eyes and removes his too. She turns on the bedside lamp. Both are naked; they do not smile, they simply look at each other. I am love, I am music, she thinks. Let's dance.

  But she doesn't say anything: they talk about something trivial, about when they will next meet, she suggests a date, perhaps in two days' time. He says he would like to invite her to an exhibition, but she hesitates. That would mean getting to know his world, his friends, and what would they say, what would they think.

  She says no, but he realizes that she really wants to say yes, and so he insists, using a few foolish arguments, but which are all part of the dance they are dancing now, and in the end she agrees, because that is what she would like. They arrange where to meet--in the same cafe where they met that first day? No, she says, Brazilians are very superstitious, and you must never meet in the same place where you first met, because that might close a cycle and bring everything to an end.

  He says that he's glad she doesn't want to close that particular cycle. They decide to meet at a church from where you can see the whole city, and which is on the road to Santiago, part of the mysterious pilgrimage that the two of them have been on ever since they met.

  From Maria's diary, on the eve of buying her ticket back to Brazil:

  Once upon a time, there was a bird. He was adorned with two perfect wings and with glossy, colorful, marvelous feathers. In short, he was a creature made to fly about freely in the sky, bringing jo
y to everyone who saw him.

  One day, a woman saw this bird and fell in love with him. She watched his flight, her mouth wide in amazement, her heart pounding, her eyes shining with excitement. She invited the bird to fly with her, and the two travelled across the sky in perfect harmony. She admired and venerated and celebrated that bird.

  But then she thought: He might want to visit far-off mountains! And she was afraid, afraid that she would never feel the same way about any other bird. And she felt envy, envy for the bird's ability to fly.

  And she felt alone.

  And she thought: "I'm going to set a trap. The next time the bird appears, he will never leave again."

  The bird, who was also in love, returned the following day, fell into the trap and was put in a cage.

  She looked at the bird every day. There he was, the object of her passion, and she showed him to her friends, who said: "Now you have everything you could possibly want." However, a strange transformation began to take place: now that she had the bird and no longer needed to woo him, she began to lose interest. The bird, unable to fly and express the true meaning of his life, began to waste away and his feathers to lose their gloss; he grew ugly; and the woman no longer paid him any attention, except by feeding him and cleaning out his cage.

  One day, the bird died. The woman felt terribly sad and spent all her time thinking about him. But she did not remember the cage, she thought only of the day when she had seen him for the first time, flying contentedly amongst the clouds.