Eleven Minutes

In this chapter, without announcing her intentions, Maria begins her preparations for leaving Geneva. First, she purchases a plane ticket for Brazil scheduled two weeks ahead of time. She tours the city to take a last look at her favorite locations. Going back to the library, she encounters the librarian, who decided to acquire some books on sex after Maria inquired.

Maria is ambiguous in her decision to leave. At first, she feels she should not wait, and she should fly to Brazil immediately. She feels the temptation to remain as well, thinking she needs to earn more money before she goes and recognizing that she is truly very much like everyone she sees around herself:

Of course, everyone spoke ill of her profession, but, basically it was all a question of selling her time, like everyone else. Doing things she didn’t want to do, like everyone else. Putting up with horrible people, like everyone else. Handing over her precious body and her precious soul in the name of the future that never arrived, like everyone else. Saying that she still didn’t have enough, like everyone else (224-25).

With this thought, she decides it is time to leave Geneva.

In this brief chapter, Maria returns to the Copacabana to tell Milan she is leaving. She encounters her closest colleague, the Filipino sex worker Nyah, who is speaking with an Asian client who has an antique sex toy. Maria’s interest in the toy causes Nyah to fear she is trying to steal her client, whom she tries to hustle out of the club.

Milan tells Maria that Terence is coming that evening. She tells him she is through with the club because she recognizes that if she stays any longer, she will never leave.

In her diary that evening, she writes about accidentally attending a Protestant worship service in which the minister preached about longing for that which was absent. He had compared all people to the ancient pilgrimages and refugees, all yearning to return to what and whom they lost. Maria thanks him, recognizing she is one of the pilgrims.

This chapter follows Maria as she closes down her apartment and removes her money from the Swiss bank. Ambivalent as always, she wonders if she is making the right decision. The author writes, “The only thing she could do now was to shed a few tears, feeling rather afraid of herself, an intelligent young woman, who had everything going for her, but who tended to make the wrong decisions. She just hoped this time she was right” (236).

Readers will deduce at the beginning of this chapter that Maria has decided to meet Ralf at the church as they had agreed. She prays she will not lose her resolve if Ralf tries to persuade her not to leave. Ralf meets her there. As they walk out of the church they embrace:

They left the church hand-in-hand, as if they were two lovers meeting again after a long time. They kissed in public, and a few people shot them scandalized looks; but they both smiled at the unease they were causing and at the desires they were provoking by their scandalous behavior, because they knew that, in fact, those people wished they could be doing the same thing. That was the real scandal (238).

Ralf takes her for coffee and then to his exhibition. He offers to see her that night at the club, but she asks instead to go to supper, to which he agrees.

She decides to say goodbye to the librarian. The woman, upon seeing Maria, immediately begins telling her about the sexual problems she experienced with her husband while he was living. The two have a strangely ironic conversation in which the librarian, Heidi, who read a book on female anatomy, explains in detail how Maria can experience an orgasm. Maria tries to ask Heidi a couple of personal questions, but Heidi changes the subject. They bid each other farewell.

In the first section of this chapter Coelho again departs from the Maria-focused third person point of view to share the history of the librarian Heidi. Heidi feels regret the instant Maria walks away because she did not respond to Maria’s questions, in particular as to whether she had ever had an affair. Heidi reviews her sexual history. She relates that, once taking a train, she had been forced by an avalanche to wait in a station and there met a man who was also delayed. After a lengthy conversation, they ended up together in a Geneva hotel where they had a fling that was the most sexually satisfying experience in Heidi’s life. Ironically, Heidi perceives Maria to be an innocent country girl who believes in unfailing true love.

The second section of the chapter comes from Maria’s diary. It begins with Maria showing up at Ralf’s house with two suitcases. They immediately have a sexual experience, after which Maria tells Ralf she is leaving the next day for Brazil. He asks her not to go. They have a lengthy conversation in the kitchen, where they end up making love again. Without identifying that it is from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes (3:2-8), Ralf reads Maria the famous poem that begins “A time to be born, a time to die…” (263). Coelho describes their sexual experience in complete detail.

This final chapter of the book begins with Maria, who is deeply in love with Ralf, waking before he does, dressing and calling a taxi to take her to the airport. She must wait four hours on her flight, a connector to Paris. She imagines continually that Ralf will show up and persuade her not to leave. She tries to comfort herself with the recognitions that romantic movies do not depict the mundane rituals and heartbreak that are the inevitable results of permanent relationships:

‘Films never tell you what happens next,’ she thought, trying to console herself. Marriage, cooking, children, ever more infrequent sex, the discovery of the first note from his mistress, the decision to confront him, his promise that it will never happen again, the second note from another mistress, another confrontation and this time the threat to leave him […] No, films never show that. They finish before the real world begins. It’s best not to think too much about it (266-67).

As she disembarks from her connecting flight in Paris, she hears Ralf’s voice call out the famous line from the movie Casablanca, “We’ll always have Paris” (268). He explains that he was watching her in Geneva and decided it would be more dramatic if he flew ahead of her to Paris and waited for her with flowers. Though Coelho does not say what happens to the couple beyond this scene, Maria has made it clear she hoped more than anything that Ralf would appear and ask her not to leave.

Coelho initiates his personal comments by saying, “It took me a long time to discover the sacred nature of sex” (271). He explains that he drew the book title from the Irving Wallace book The Seven Minutes, a reference to the average amount of time Wallace assumed most people devote to sexual intimacy. Coelho believed that it should be expanded to 11 minutes.

The author describes the process that led him to writing a book about sexuality from the vantage point of sex workers. He acknowledges that the real character known as Maria in the book now lives in Lausanne, Switzerland, with her husband and two daughters.