Read Online Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho - Free Book Online Page B

over to them, as if they were at a party where everyone has known
     each other for ages and as if they were just taking time out to have a little fun after a hard day at work. Every time a
     man found a partner, Maria gave a sigh of relief, even though she was now feeling much more comfortable. Perhaps it was because it was Switzerland, perhaps it was because, sooner or later, she would find adventure, money or a husband, as she
     had always dreamed she would. Perhaps - she suddenly realised
     - it was because it was the first time in many weeks that she had been out at night and to a place where there was music playing and where she could, now and then, hear someone
     speaking Portuguese. She was having fun with the other girls around her, laughing, drinking fruit juice cocktails, talking brightly.
    None of them had come up to her to say hello or to wish
     her success in her new profession, but that was perfectly normal; after all, she was a rival, a competitor, competing for the same trophy. Instead of feeling depressed, she felt
     proud - she was fighting for herself, she wasn't some helpless person. She could, if she wanted to, open the door
     and leave that place for good, but she would always know that she had at least had the courage to come that far, to
     negotiate and discuss things about which she had never in her life even dared to think. She wasn't a victim of fate, she
    
     kept telling herself: she was running her own risks, pushing beyond her own limits, experiencing things which, one day, in the silence of her heart, in the tedium of old age, she would remember almost with nostalgia - however absurd that might seem.
    She was sure that no one would approach her, and tomorrow
     it would all seem like some mad dream that she would never dare to repeat, for she had just realised that being paid a
     thousand francs for one night only happens once; perhaps she would be better off buying a plane ticket back to Brazil. To make the time pass more quickly, she began to work out how
     much each of the other girls would earn: if they went out
     three times a night, they would earn, for every four hours of work, the equivalent of what it would have taken her two
     months to earn at the shop.
    Was that a lot? She had earned a thousand francs for
     one night, but perhaps that had just been beginner's luck. At any rate, an ordinary prostitute could earn more, much
     more than she would ever earn teaching French back home. And all they had to do was spend some time in a bar, dance, spread their legs and that was that. They didn't even have to talk.
    Money was one motivation, she thought, but was that all?
    Or did the people there, the customers and the women, also
     enjoy themselves in some way? Was the world so very different from what she had been taught in school? If you used a
     condom, there was no risk. Nor was there any risk of being recognised by anyone; the only people who visit Geneva - she had been told once in her French class - were
     people who liked going to banks. The majority of
     Brazilians, however, enjoy shopping, preferably in Miami or in Paris.
    Three hundred Swiss francs a day, five days a week. A fortune! Why did those women keep working there when they could earn enough in a month to go back home and buy a new
     house for their mother? Or had they only been working there a short time?
    Or - and Maria felt afraid of her own question - did they enjoy it?
    Again she wished she could have a proper drink - the champagne had helped a lot the previous night.
    'Would you like a drink?'
    Before her stood a man in his thirties, wearing the uniform of some airline.
    The world went into slow motion, and Maria had a sense of stepping out of her own body and observing herself from the outside. Deeply embarrassed, but struggling to control her blushes, she nodded and smiled, knowing that from that moment
     on her life had changed forever.
    A fruit juice cocktail, a bit of talk, what are you doing here, it's cold,