Work started as it always did. The Thai women all sat together, the Colombians adopted their usual air of knowing everything, the three Brazilians (including her) looked absently about them, as if nothing could ever surprise or interest them. Apart from them, there was an Austrian, twoGermans, and the rest were tall, pretty women with pale eyes who came from the former Eastern Bloc countries and who always seemed to find husbands more quickly than the others. The men began to arrive - Russian, Swiss, German, all of them busy executives, well able to afford the services of the most expensive prost.i.tutes in one of the most expensive cities in the world. Some came over to her table, but she kept her eye on Milan, who shook his head. Maria was pleased; tonight, she wouldn't have to open her legs, put up with smells or take showers in sometimes chilly bathrooms; all she had to do was to teach a man grown weary of s.e.x how to make love. And when she thought about it, not every woman would have been creative enough to come up with that story about the exchange of gifts.

At the same time, she was wondering: Why is it that, having experienced everything, these men want to go right 154 back to the start? Not that this was her concern; as long as they paid well, she was there to serve them.

A man came in, younger than Ralf Hart; he was goodlooking, with dark hair, perfect teeth, and wearing what looked like a Mao jacket - no tie, just a high collar and, underneath, an impeccable white shirt. He went up to the bar, where both he and Milan turned to look at Maria; then he came over.

'Would you like a drink?'

She saw Milan nod, and so invited the man to sit down at her table. She ordered a fruit juice c.o.c.ktail and waited for him to ask her to dance. Then the man introduced himself: 'My name is Terence, and I work for a record company in England. Since I a.s.sume I'm in a place where I can trust the personnel, I take it this will remain entirely between you and me.'

Maria was about to start talking about Brazil, but he interrupted her: 'Milan says you understand what I want.'

'I've no idea what you want, but I know my job.'

They did not follow the usual ritual; he paid the bill, took her arm and they got into a taxi, where he gave her a thousand francs. For a moment, she remembered the Arab man with whom she had gone to the restaurant full of famous paintings; it was the first time she had received the same amount of money, and instead of making her feel glad, it made her feel nervous.

The taxi stopped outside one of the most expensive hotelsin the city. The man greeted the porter and seemed 155 totally at ease in the place. They went straight up to his room, a suite with a view over the river. He opened a bottle of wine - possibly a rare vintage - and offered her a gla.s.s.

Maria watched him while he drank; what did a rich, good-looking man like him want with a prost.i.tute? Since he barely spoke, she too remained largely silent, trying to work out what would make a special client happy. She knew that she should not take the initiative, but once the process had begun, she needed to be able to follow his lead as quickly as possible; after all, it wasn't every night that she earned a thousand francs.

'We've got plenty of time,' Terence said. 'All the time in the world. You can sleep here if you like.'

Her feelings of insecurity returned. The man did not seem in the least intimidated, and, unlike her other customers, he spoke very calmly. He knew what he wanted; he put on the perfect piece of music, at the perfect volume, in the perfect room, with the perfect window, which looked out onto the lake of a perfect city. His suit was welltailored, his suitcase was there in the corner, very small, as if he always travelled light, or as if he had come to Geneva just for that one night.

'I'll sleep at home,' Maria said.

The man opposite her changed completely. An icy glint came into his. .h.i.therto gentlemanly eyes.

'Sit there,' he said, indicating a chair by the desk.

It was an order! A real order. Maria obeyed and, oddly enough, she felt excited.

156 'Sit properly. Back straight, like a lady. If you don't, I'll punish you.'

Punish her! Special client! In a flash, she understood everything, took the thousand francs out of her bag and put it down on the desk.

'I know what you want,' she said, looking deep into those cold, blue eyes. 'And I won't do it.'

The man seemed to return to his normal self and he could see that she was telling the truth.

'Have a drink of wine,' he said. 'I won't force you to do anything. You can either stay a little longer, if you like, or you can leave.'That made her feel better.

'I have a job. I have a boss who protects and trusts me. I'd be grateful if you didn't say anything to him.'

Maria said this without a hint of pleading or self-pity in her voice; it was simply how things were.

Terence was once again the man she had first met neither gentle nor harsh, just someone who, unlike her other clients, gave the impression that he knew what he wanted. He seemed to emerge from a trance, from a play that had scarcely begun.

Was it worth leaving now and never finding out the truth about this 'special client'?

'What exactly did you want?'

'You know what I want. Pain. Suffering. And a great deal of pleasure.'

157 'Pain and suffering don't normally go with pleasure,'

Maria thought. And yet she desperately wanted to believe that they did, and thus make a positive out of her many negative experiences.

He took her by the hand and led her over to the window: on the other side of the lake they could see a cathedral spire. Maria remembered pa.s.sing it when she had walked the road to Santiago with Ralf Hart.

'You see the river, the lake, the houses and the church?

Well, it was all pretty much the same five hundred years ago, except that the city was deserted.

A strange disease had spread throughout Europe, and no one knew why so many people were dying. They began to call the disease the Black Death - sent by G.o.d because of mankind's sins.

'Then a group of people decided to sacrifice themselves for the sake of humanity. They offered the thing they most feared: physical pain. They began to spend days and nights walking across these bridges, along these streets, beating their own bodies with whips and chains. They were suffering in the name of G.o.d and praising G.o.d with their pain. They soon realised that they were happier doing this than baking bread, working in the fields or feeding their animals. Pain was no longer a cause of suffering, but a source of pleasure because they were redeeming humanity from its sins. Pain became joy, the meaning of life, pleasure.'

His eyes grew cold again. He picked up the money she had put down on the desk, separated out one hundred and fifty francs and put those in her bag.

158'Don't worry about your boss. Here's his commission, and I promise I won't say anything. You can leave now.' She grabbed the money back.

'No!'

It was the wine, the Arab man in the restaurant, the woman with the sad smile, the idea that she would never ever return to this wretched place, the fear of a new love that was coming to her in the shape of a man, the letters to her mother telling of a wonderful life full of job opportunities, the boy from her childhood who had asked her for a pencil, the struggles with herself, the guilt, the curiosity, the money, the search to discover her own limits, and all the missed chances and opportunities. Another Maria was there now: she was no longer offering gifts, she was offering herself up as a sacrifice.

'I'm not afraid any more. Let's carry on. If necessary, you can punish me for my rebelliousness. I've lied and betrayed and maligned the very person who protected and loved me.'

She was entering into the spirit of the game. She was saying the right things.

'Kneel down!' said Terence in a low, chilling voice.

Maria obeyed. She had never been treated this way, and she didn't know if it was good or bad, only that she wanted to go forward; she deserved to be humiliated for all she had done in her life. She was entering a role, becoming a different person, a woman she did not know at all.

'You will be punished because you are useless, because you don't know the rules and because you know nothing about s.e.x, life or love.'

159 While he was speaking, Terence was transformed into two very different men. The one who was calmly explaining the rules to her and the one who made her feel like the most miserable wretch in the world.

'Do you know why I am doing this? Because there is no greater pleasure than that of initiating someone into an unknown world. Taking someone's virginity - the virginity not of their body, but of their soul, you understand.'

She understood.

'Today you can ask questions, but the next time, when the theatre curtain goes up, the play will begin and cannot bestopped. If it does stop, it is because our souls are incompatible. Remember: it is a play. You must be the person you have never had the courage to be. Gradually, you will discover that you are that person, but until you can see this clearly, you must pretend and invent.'

'What if I can't stand the pain?'

'There is no pain, only something that transforms itself into delight and mystery. It forms part of the play to say: "Don't treat me like that, you're really hurting me." As is: "Stop, I can't take any more!" In order to avoid danger ...' He broke off at this point and said: 'Keep your head down; don't look at me!'

Maria, kneeling, lowered her head and stared at the floor.

'... in order to avoid this relationship causing any serious physical harm, we have two code words. If one of us says "yellow", that means that the violence should be decreased slightly. If one of us says "red", it must be stopped at once.'

160 'You said "one of us" ...'

'We take turns. One cannot exist without the other; no one can know how to humiliate another person if they themselves have not experienced humiliation.'

These were terrible words, from a world she did not know, full of shadow, slime and putrefaction. Nevertheless, she wanted to go on - her body was trembling with fear and excitement.

Terence placed his hand on her head with unexpected tenderness.

'That's all.'

He asked her to get up, not particularly kindly, but not with the same brusque aggression he had shown before. Still trembling, Maria put on her jacket. Terence noticed the state she was in.

'Have a cigarette before you go.'

'Nothing happened.'

'It doesn't need to. It will start to happen in your soul, and the next time we meet, you will be ready.'

'Was tonight worth one thousand francs?'

He didn't reply. He too lit a cigarette and they finished the wine, listening to the perfect music, savouring the silence together, until the moment came to say something, and when it did, Maria was surprised by her own words.

'I don't understand why I want to step into this slime.''One thousand francs.'

'No, that's not the reason.'

Terence seemed pleased with this response.

'I've asked myself the same thing. The Marquis de Sade 161 said that the most important experiences a man can have are those that take him to the very limit; that is the only way we learn, because it requires all our courage. When a boss humiliates an employee, or a man humiliates his wife, he is merely being cowardly or taking his revenge on life, they are people who have never dared to look into the depths of their soul, never attempted to know the origin of that desire to unleash the wild beast, or to understand that s.e.x, pain and love are all extreme experiences.

'Only those who know those frontiers know life; everything else is just pa.s.sing the time, repeating the same tasks, growing old and dying without ever having discovered what we are doing here.'

In the street again, in the cold again, and again that desire to walk. The man was wrong, it wasn't necessary to know your own demons in order to find G.o.d. She pa.s.sed a group of students coming out of a bar; they were all happy and slightly tipsy, they were all good-looking and bursting with health; soon they would finish university and start what people call 'real life'. Work, marriage, children, television, bitterness, old age, the sense of having lost many things, frustrations, illness, disability, dependence on others, loneliness, death.

What was happening? She too was looking for the peace in which to live her 'real life'; the time spent in Switzerland, doing something she had never dreamed of doing, was just a difficult phase, the kind of thing everyone goes through at some time or another. During this difficult 162 phase, she frequented the Copacabana, went with men for money, played the Innocent Girl, the Femme Fatale and the Understanding Mother, depending on the client. But it was just a job, which she did with total professionalism - for the sake of the tips - and minimum interest - for fear she might get used to it. She had spent the last nine months controlling the world around her, and shortly before she was due to go back to her own country, she was finding that shewas capable of loving without demanding anything in return and of suffering for no reason. It was as if life had chosen this strange, sordid way of teaching her something about her own mysteries, her light and her darkness.

From Maria's diary on the night following her first meeting with Terence: He quoted the Marquis de Sade, of whom I know nothing, apart from the word 'sadism'.

It's true that we only know each other when we come up against our own limits, but it's wrong too, because it isn't necessary to know everything about ourselves; human beings weren't made solely to go in search of wisdom, but also to plough the land, wait for rain, plant the wheat, harvest the grain, make the bread.

I am two women: one wants to have all the joy, pa.s.sion and adventure that life can give me.

The other wants to be a slave to routine, to family life, to the things that can be planned and achieved. I'm a 163 housewife and a prost.i.tute, both of us living in the same body and doing battle with each other.

The meeting of these two women is a game with serious risks. A divine dance. When we meet, we are two divine energies, two universes colliding. If the meeting is not carried out with due reverence, one universe destroys the other.

164 She was back in Ralf Hart's living room, with the fire, the bottle of wine, the two of them sitting on the floor, and everything she had experienced the previous night with the English executive just a dream or a nightmare - depending on how she was feeling. Now she was searching once more for her reason for living, or, rather, for the kind of utter surrender by which a person offers his or her heart and asks for nothing in return.

She had grown a lot while waiting for this moment. She had finally discovered that real love has nothing to do with what she imagined, that is, with a chain of events provoked by the energy engendered by love - courtship, engagement, marriage, children, waiting, cooking, the amus.e.m.e.nt park on Sundays, more waiting, getting old together, an end to the waiting, and then, in its place, comes your husband's retirement, illnesses, the feeling that it is far too late to live outyour dream together.

She looked at the man to whom she had decided to give herself, and to whom she had resolved never to reveal her feelings, because what she was feeling now was far from taking any definite form, not even physical form. He seemed more at ease, as if he were embarking on an interesting period of his life. He was smiling and telling her 165 about his recent visit to Munich to meet an important museum director.

'He asked if the painting about the faces of Geneva was ready yet. I said I had just met one of the princ.i.p.al people I would like to paint, a woman who was full of light. But I don't want to talk about me, I want to embrace you. I desire you.'

Desire. Desire? Desire! That was the point of departure this evening, because it was something she knew extremely well!

For example, you awaken desire by not immediately handing over the object of that desire.

'All right, then, desire me. That's what we're doing right now. You are less than a yard away from me, you went to a nightclub, paid for my services, and you know you have the right to touch me. But you don't dare. Look at me. Look at me and imagine that perhaps I don't want you to look at me. Imagine what's hidden beneath my clothes.'

She always wore black to work, and she couldn't understand why the other girls at the Copacabana tried to look provocative in their low-cut dresses and garish colours. It seemed to her that it was more exciting for a man if she dressed like any other woman he might meet at the office, on the train or in the house of one of his wife's friends.

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.

'We're in a train station,' Maria went on. 'I'm standing next to you, waiting for a train, but you don't know me.

166 My eyes meet yours, by chance, and I don't look away. You don't know what I'm trying to say, because, although you're an intelligent man, capable of seeing the "light" in other people, you are not sensitive enough to see what that light is illuminating.'

She had learned about 'theatre'. She had wanted toforget the face of that English executive as quickly as possible, but there he was, guiding her imagination.

'My eyes are fixed on yours, and I might be wondering to myself: "Do I know him from somewhere?" Or I might just be distracted. Or I might be afraid of appearing unfriendly; perhaps you do know me, and so I give you the benefit of the doubt for a few seconds, until it becomes clear either that you really do know me or that it's a case of mistaken ident.i.ty.

'But I might also be wanting the simplest thing in the world: to find a man. I might be trying to escape an unhappy love affair. I might be hoping to avenge myself for a recent betrayal and have gone to the train station looking for a stranger. I might want to be your prost.i.tute just for one night, to do something different in my otherwise boring life.

I might even be a real prost.i.tute on the look-out for work.'

A brief silence; Maria had grown distracted. She was back in that hotel room, remembering the humiliation - 'yellow', red , pain and a great deal of pleasure. That encounter had burnt her soul in a way she did not like at all.

Ralf noticed and tried to take her back to the train station.

167 'In this meeting, do you desire me too?'

'I don't know. We don't talk. You don't know.'

She grows distracted again. The 'theatre' idea is proving really very helpful; it draws out the real person and drives away the many false people who live inside us.

'The fact is that I don't look away, and you don't know what to do. Should you approach? Will you be rejected? Will I call the guard? Or invite you for a coffee perhaps?'

'I'm on my way back from Munich,' Ralf Hart said, and his voice sounds different, as if they really were meeting for the first time. 'I'm thinking about a collection of paintings on the many personalities of s.e.x, the many masks that people wear in order never to experience a real encounter.'

He knew about the 'theatre'. Milan had said that he too was a 'special client'. An alarm bell rang, but she needed time to think.

'The director of the museum said to me: what are you going to base your work on? I said: On women who feel free enough to earn their living making love. He said: That won't work; we call such women "prost.i.tutes". I said: Fine, they are prost.i.tutes; I'm going to study their history and createsomething more intellectual, more to the taste of the families who visit your museum. It's all a question of culture, you see. Of finding a palatable way of presenting something that is otherwise very hard to take.

'The director insisted: But s.e.x is no longer a taboo. It's been so over-exploited that it's difficult to produce any new work on the subject. I said: Do you know where s.e.xual desire comes from? From our instinct, said the director. Yes, 168 I said, from our instinct, but everyone knows that. How can you make a beautiful exhibition if all we are talking about is science? I want to talk about how man explains that attraction, the way, let's say, a philosopher would explain it. The director asked me to give him an example. I said that if, when I caught the train back home, a woman looked at me, I would go over and speak to her; I would say that, since we were strangers, we had the freedom to do anything we wanted, to live out all our fantasies, and then go home to our wife or husband and never meet again.

And then, in the train station, I see you.'