The reply had been instant, and Maria was shocked. Was she the only person in the world who didn't know everything? What kind of world was this?

'I've confronted my demons and my dark side,' Ralf went on. 'I've been to the very depths and tried everything, not just in that area, but in many others too. On the last night we met, however, I went beyond my limits through desire, not pain. I plunged into the depths of my soul and I know that I still want good things, many good things from this life.'

He wanted to say: 'One of those good things is you, so, please, don't go down that path.'

But he didn't have the courage; instead, he called a taxi and asked the driver to take them to the lake sh.o.r.e, where, an eternity before, they had walked together on the day they first met. Maria understood the request and said nothing; her instinct told her that she had a lot to lose, although her mind was still drunk on what had happened the night before.She only awoke from her pa.s.sive state when they reached the gardens beside the lake; although it was stil summer, it was already starting to get very cold at night.

208 'What are we doing here?' she asked, as they got out of the taxi. 'It's windy. I might catch a cold.'

'I've been thinking about what you said at the train station, about suffering and pleasure. Take your shoes off.' She remembered that once, one of her clients had asked the same thing, and had been aroused simply by looking at her feet.

Would Adventure never leave her in peace?

'I'll catch a cold.'

'Do as I say,' he insisted. 'You won't catch a cold if we're quick. Believe in me, as I believe in you.'

For some reason, Maria realised that he was trying to help her; perhaps because he himself had once drunk of some very bitter water and was afraid that she was running the same risk.

She didn't want to be helped; she was happy with her new world, in which she was learning that suffering wasn't a problem any more. Then she thought of Brazil, of the impossibility of finding a partner with whom to share that different universe, and since Brazil was the most important thing in her life, she took off her shoes.

The ground was covered in small stones that immediately tore her stockings, but that didn't matter, she could buy some more.

'Take off your jacket.'

She could have said 'no', but, since last night, she had gotten used to the joy of saying 'yes' to everything that came her way. She took off her jacket, and her body, still warm, took a while to react, then gradually the cold began to get to her.

She can talk and walk at the same time.'

209 'I can't walk here, the ground's covered in stones.'

'Exactly. I want you to feel these stones, I want them to hurt you and bruise you, because, just as I did, you have started to a.s.sociate suffering with pleasure, and I need to tear that out of your soul.'

Maria felt like saying: 'There's no need, I like it.'

Instead, she began walking slowly along, and the soles of her feet began to burn with the cold and the sharp edges of the stones.'One of my exhibitions took me to j.a.pan, just when I was immersed in what you called "pain, suffering and pleasure".

At the time, I thought there was no way back, that I would go deeper and deeper down, until there was nothing left in my life but the desire to punish and be punished.

'After all, we are human beings, we are born full of guilt; we feel terrified when happiness becomes a real possibility; and we die wanting to punish everyone else because we feel impotent, ill-used and unhappy. To pay for one's sins and be able to punish the sinners, wouldn't that be delicious? Oh, yes, wonderful.'

Maria was still walking, the pain and the cold were making it hard for her to concentrate on what he was saying, but she was doing her best.

'I noticed the marks on your wrists today.'

The handcuffs. She had put on several bracelets to disguise the marks, but the expert eye knows what to look for.

'Now, if your recent experiences are leading you to take that step, I won't stop you, but you should know that none of it has anything to do with real life.'

210 'Take what step?'

'Into pain and pleasure, sadism and masochism. Call it what you like, but if you're sure that's the right path for you, I will be sad, I'll remember that feeling of desire, our meetings, our walk along the road to Santiago, your light. I will treasure the pen you gave me, and every time I light the fire, I will remember you. But I will never again come looking for you.'

Maria felt afraid; she felt it was time to recant, to tell him the truth, to stop pretending that she knew more than he did.

'What I experienced recently - last night, in fact - was something I've never experienced before. And it frightens me to think that I could only find myself at the very limits of degradation.'

It was becoming difficult to speak - her teeth were chattering and her feet were really hurting.

'My exhibition was held in a region called k.u.mano, and one of the people who came to see it was a woodcutter,' Ralf went on, as if he hadn't heard what she had said. 'He didn't like my pictures, but he was able to see, through the paintings, what I Was experiencing and feeling. The following day, hecame to my hotel and asked me if I was happy; If I was, I should continue doing what I liked.

If I wasn't, I should go and spend a few days with him.

'He made me walk on stones, just as I am making you do today. He made me feel the cold. He forced me to understand the beauty of pain, except that the pain was imposed by nature, not by man. He called this shu-gen-do, a very ancient practice apparently.

211 'He told me that I was someone who wasn't afraid of pain, and that was good, because in order to master the soul, one must also learn to master the body. He told me, too, that I was using pain in the wrong way, and that was very bad.

'This uneducated woodcutter thought he knew me better than I did myself, and that annoyed me, but at the same time, I felt proud to think that my paintings were capable of expressing exactly what I was feeling.'

Maria was aware of a sharp stone cutting into her foot, but she could barely feel it for the cold, her body was growing numb, and she could only just follow what Ralf Hart was saying. Why was it that in G.o.d'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 ...

Her cut foot stumbled on another stone; she smothered a cry and continued on. At first, she had managed to maintain her integrity, her self-control, what he called her 'light'. Now, though, she was walking very slowly, with both her stomach and her mind churning: she felt as if she were about to throw up. She considered stopping, because none of this made any sense, but she didn't.

And she didn't stop out of respect for herself; she could stand that barefoot walk as long as she had to, because it wouldn't last all her life. And suddenly another thought crossed her mind: what if she couldn't go to the Copacabana tomorrow night because she had injured feet, or because of a fever brought on by the flu that would 212 doubtless install itself in her overexposed body? She thought of the customers who would be expecting her, of Milan who so trusted her, of the money she wouldn't earn, of the farm, of her proud parents. But the suffering soon drove out all such thoughts, and she kept placing one foot in front of the other, longing for Ralf Hart to recognise the effort shewas making and to tell her she could stop and put her shoes back on again.

He seemed entirely indifferent, distant, as if this were the only way of freeing her from something she didn't as yet really know about, something she found very seductive, but which would leave far deeper marks than any handcuffs.

Although she knew he was trying to help her, and however hard she tried to go forward and show him the light of her willpower, the pain would not allow her any thoughts, n.o.ble or profane; it was just pain, rilling everything, frightening her and forcing her to think that she did have limits and that she wasn't going to make it. But she took one step.

And another.

The pain seemed about to invade her soul now and undermine her spiritually, because it's one thing to put on a bout of theatre in a five-star hotel, naked, with vodka and caviar inside you and a whip between your legs, but it's quite another to be cold and barefoot, with stones laceratng your feet. She was disoriented, she couldn't think of a Single thing to say to Ralf Hart; all that existed in her lverse were those small, sharp stones that formed the Path between the trees.

213 Then, just when she thought she was about to give up, she was filled by a strange feeling: she had reached her limit, and beyond it was an empty s.p.a.ce, in which she seemed to float above herself, unaware of what she was feeling. Was this what the penitents had experienced? At the far extremity of pain, she had discovered a door into a different level of consciousness, and there was no room now for anything but implacable nature and her own invincible self.

Everything around her became a dream: the ill-lit garden, the dark lake, the man walking beside her, saying nothing, the occasional couple out for a stroll, who failed to notice that she was barefoot and having difficulty walking. She didn't know if it was the cold or the pain, but she suddenly lost all sense of her own body and entered a state in which there was no desire and no fear, only a mysterious - how could she describe it? - a mysterious peace. The pain barrier was not a barrier for her; she could go beyond it.

She thought of all the people enduring unasked-for suffering and there she was, bringing suffering upon herself, but that didn't matter any more, she had crossed thefrontiers of the body, and now there was only soul, 'light', a kind of void, which someone, some day, called Paradise.

There are certain sufferings which can only be forgotten once we have succeeded in floating above our own pain.

The next thing she knew, Ralf was picking her up ana putting his jacket around her shoulders. She must have fainted from the cold, but she didn't care; she was happY' she hadn't been afraid - she had come through. She had not humbled herself before him.

214 The minutes became hours, she must have gone to sleep in his arms, because when she woke up, although it was still dark, she was in a room with a TV in one corner, and nothing else. White, empty.

Ralf appeared with a cup of hot chocolate.

'Good,' he said. 'You got to the place you needed to get to.'

'I don't want hot chocolate, I want wine. And I want to go downstairs to our place by the fire, with books all around us.'

She had said 'our place'. That wasn't what she had planned.

She looked at her feet; apart from a small cut, there were just a few red marks, which would disappear in a few hours' time. With some difficulty, she went downstairs, without really looking around her. She went and sat down on the rug by the fire - she had discovered that she always sit good there, as if that really was her 'place' in the house.

The woodcutter told me that whenever you do some amount of physical exercise, when you demand the maximum from your body, the mind gains a strange spiritual strength, which has to do with the "light" I saw in you. What did you feel?'

felt that pain is woman's friend.'

215 'That is the danger.'

'I also felt that pain has its limits.'

'That is the salvation. Don't forget that.'

Maria's mind was still confused; she had experienced that'peace' when she had gone beyond her own limits. He had shown her a different kind of suffering that had also given her a strange pleasure.

Ralf picked up a large file and opened it up in front of her. It contained drawings.

'The history of prost.i.tution. That's what you asked me for when we met.'

Yes, she had, but it had only been a way of making conversation, of trying to appear interesting. It was of no importance now.

'All this time, I've been sailing in uncharted waters. I didn't think there was a history, I thought it was just the oldest profession in the world, as people say. But there is a history, or, rather, two histories.'

'And what are these drawings?'

Ralf Hart looked slightly disappointed at her apparent lack of interest in what he had said, but quickly set aside these feelings and went on.

'They're the things I jotted down as I was reading, researching, learning.'

'Let's talk about that another day. I don't want to change the subject today. I need to understand about pain.

'You experienced pain yesterday and you discovered that it led to pleasure. You experienced it today and found peace. That's why I'm telling you: don't get used to it 216 because it's very easy to become habituated; it's a very powerful drug. It's in our daily lives, in our hidden suffering, in the sacrifices we make, blaming love for the destruction of our dreams. Pain is frightening when it shows its teal face, but it's seductive when it comes disguised as sacrifice or self-denial. Or cowardice. However much we may reject it, we human beings always find a way of being with pain, of flirting with it and making it part of our lives.'

'I don't believe that. No one wants to suffer.' 'If you think you can live without suffering, that's a great step forward, but don't imagine that other people will understand you. True, no one wants to suffer, and yet nearly everyone seeks out pain and sacrifice, and then they feel justified, pure, deserving of the respect of their children, husbands, neighbours, G.o.d. Don't let's think about that now; all you need to know is that what makes the world go round is not the search for pleasure, but the renunciation of all that is important.'Does a soldier go to war in order to kill the enemy? No, he goes in order to die for his country. Does a wife want to show her husband how happy she is? No, she wants him to see how devoted she is, how she suffers in order to make him happy. Does the husband go to work thinking he will find personal fulfilment there? No, he is giving his sweat and tears for the good of the family. And so it goes on: sons give up their dreams to please their parents, parents give up their lives in order to please their children; pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only love.'

217 'Stop.'

Ralf stopped. It was the right moment to change the subject, and he started showing her drawing after drawing. At first, it all seemed rather confusing: there were a few outlines of people, but also scrawls and scribbles, geometric shapes and colours. Gradually, though, she began to understand what he was saying, because each word he spoke was accompanied by a gesture of the hand, and each phrase placed her in the world which, up until then, she had always denied she was part of - telling herself that it was just one stage in her life, a way of earning money, nothing more.

'Yes, I discovered that there is not just one history of prost.i.tution, but two. The first one you know all too well, because it is your history too: a pretty young girl, for reasons which she has chosen or which have chosen her, decides that the only way she can survive is by selling her body. Some end up ruling nations, as Messalina did in Rome, others become legendary figures, like Madame du Barry, still others chase after adventure and misfortune, like the spy, Mata Hari. But the majority never have their moment of glory, are never faced by a great challenge: they will always be young girls from the interior in search of fame, a husband, adventure, but who end up discovering quite a different reality, into which they plunge for a time, and to which they become accustomed, always believing that they are in control and ultimately unable to do anything else.

'Artists have been making sculptures and paintings and writing books for more than three thousand years. In just 218 the same way, throughout all that time, prost.i.tutes 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.

'Prost.i.tutes appear in cla.s.sical texts, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in Sumerian writings, in the Old and New Testament. But the profession only started to become organised in the sixth century bc, 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 prost.i.tutes, on the other hand, started to be cla.s.sified according to how much tax they paid.

'The cheapest were the p.o.r.nai, 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, dlned 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 s.e.xually transmitted diseases ...'

fear of catching a cold, the heat of the fire cessary now to warm her body and her soul ...

Maria didn't want to hear any more history, it gave her a sense 219 that the world had stopped, that everything was being endlessly repeated, and that mankind would never give s.e.x 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 prost.i.tution.'

She had suddenly emerged from her somnolent state and was listening to him intently. Sacred prost.i.tution? Earning money from s.e.x and yet still able to approach G.o.d?

'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 tothe temple of the G.o.ddess Ishtar and give her body to a stranger, as a symbol of hospitality and for a symbolic price."'

She would ask him about that G.o.ddess 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 G.o.ddess Ishtar spread throughout the Middle East, as far as Sardinia, Sicily and the Mediterranean ports. Later, during the Roman Empire' another G.o.ddess, Vesta, demanded total virginity or total surrender. In order to keep the sacred fire burning, the women serving her temple were responsible for initiating 220 young men and kings on the path of s.e.xuality - they sang rotic 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 G.o.ddess, Am prost.i.tute, 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 a8ain. It was best to continue the history, to show her the drawings, to make her feel loved.

No one knows why sacred prost.i.tution disappeared, lnce it had lasted not centuries, perhaps, but for at least 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 221 control the world, and the term serves only to create a stigma, and any woman who steps out of line is automaticallydubbed a prost.i.tute.'

'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 allot myself the luxury of living it so badly.

222 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.