Free Eleven Minutes by Paulo Coelho Page A

survive.
    However important Maria thought love was, she did not
     forget the advice she was given on her first night and did her best to confine love to the pages of her diary. Apart from that, she tried desperately to be the best, to earn a lot of money in as short a time as possible, to think very little and to find a good reason for doing what she was doing.
    That was the most difficult part: what was the real reason?
    She was doing it because she needed to. This wasn't quite
     true - everyone needs to earn money, but not everyone chooses to live on the margins of society. She was doing it because
     she wanted to experience something new. No, that wasn't true either; the world was full of new experiences - like skiing
     or going sailing on Lake Geneva, for example - but she had never been interested. She was doing it because she had nothing to lose, because her life was one of constant, day-to-day frustration.
    No, none of these answers was true, so it was best to
     forget all about it and simply deal with whatever lay along her particular path. She had a lot in common with the other prostitutes, and with all the other women she had known in
     her life, whose greatest dream was to get married and have a secure life. Those who didn't think like this either had a
     husband (almost a third of her colleagues were married)
    or were recently divorced. Because of that, and in order to understand herself, she tried - as tactfully as possible - to understand why her colleagues had chosen this profession.
    She heard nothing new, but she made a list of their responses. They said they had to help out their husband
     (wasn't he jealous? What if one of her husband's friends came to the club one night? But Maria didn't dare to ask these questions), that they wanted to buy a house for their mother
     (her own excuse, apparently so noble, and the most common one), to earn enough money for their fare home (Colombians, Thais, Peruvians, Brazilians all loved this reason, even
     though they had earned enough money several times over and
     had immediately spent it, afraid to realise their dream), to have fun (this didn't really tally with the atmosphere in the club, and always rang false), they couldn't find any other
     kind of work (this wasn't a good reason either, Switzerland was full of jobs for cleaners, drivers and cooks).
    None of them came up with any valid reason, and so she stopped trying to explain her particular Universe.
    She saw that the owner, Milan, was quite right: no one ever again offered her a thousand Swiss francs for the privilege of spending a few hours with her. On the other
     hand, no one ever complained when she asked for three hundred and fifty francs, as if they already knew or only asked in order to humiliate her, or wanted to avoid any unpleasant surprises.
    One of the girls said:
    'Prostitution isn't like other businesses: beginners earn more and the more experienced earn less. Always pretend you're a beginner.'
    Maria still didn't know who the 'special clients' were;
    they had only been mentioned on the first night and no one ever spoke of them. Gradually, she picked up the most important tricks of the trade, like never asking personal questions, smiling a lot and talking as little as possible, never arranging to meet anyone outside the club. The most important piece of advice, however, came from a Filipino woman called Nyah:
    'When your client comes, you must always groan as if you
     were having an orgasm too. That guarantees customer loyalty.'
    'But why? They're just paying for their own satisfaction.'
    'No, that's where you're wrong. A man doesn't prove he's a man by getting an erection. He's only a real man if he can
     pleasure a woman. And if he can pleasure a prostitute, he'll think he's the best lover on the block.'
    And so six months passed: Maria learned all the necessary lessons, for example, how the Copacabana worked. Since it was one of the most expensive places in Rue de Berne, the
     clientele was