the emergency exit is), gave him a chaste kiss on the cheek and left without so much as a backward glance.
They returned to Rio, and within a day she had her passport (Brazil had really changed, Roger said, using a few words in Portuguese and a lot of gestures, which Maria took to mean ‘before it used to take ages’). With the help of Maílson, the security officer-cum-interpreter-cum-agent, any other important purchases were made (clothes, shoes, make-up, everything that a woman like her could want). On the eve of their departure for Europe, they went to a nightclub, and when Roger saw her dance, he felt pleased with his choice; he was clearly in the presence of a future great star of Cabaret Cologny, this lovely dark girl with her pale eyes and hair as black as the wing of the graúna (the Brazilian bird often evoked by local authors to describe black hair). The work permit from the Swiss consulate was ready, so they packed their bags and, the following day, they were flying to the land of chocolate, clocks and cheese, with Maria secretly planning to make this man fall in love with her – after all, he wasn’t old, ugly or poor. What more could she want?
She arrived feeling exhausted and, while still in the airport, her heart contracted with fear: she realised that she was completely dependent on the man at her side – she had no knowledge of the country, the language or the cold. Roger’s behaviour changed as the hours passed; he no longer made any attempt to be pleasant, and although he had never tried to kiss her or to fondle her breasts, the look in his eyes grew more and more distant. He installed her in a small hotel, introducing her to another young Brazilian woman, a sad creature called Vivian, who would be in charge of preparing her for the work.
Vivian looked her coolly up and down, without the least show of sympathy for someone who had clearly never been abroad before. Instead of asking her how she was feeling, she got straight down to business.
‘Don’t delude yourself. He flies off to Brazil whenever one of his dancers gets married, something which seems to be happening more and more frequently. He knows what you want, and I assume you do too: you’re probably looking for one of three things – adventure, money or a husband.’
How did she know? Was everyone looking for the same thing? Or could Vivian read other people’s thoughts?
‘All the girls here are looking for one of those three things,’ Vivian went on, and Maria was convinced that she really could read her thoughts. ‘As for adventure, it’s too cold to do anything and, besides, you won’t earn enough to go off travelling. And as for money, once the cost of room and board has been deducted, you’ll have to work for nearly a whole year just to pay for your flight back home.’
‘But…’
‘I know, that isn’t what you agreed. But the truth is that, like everyone else, you forgot to ask. If you had been more careful, if you had read the contract you signed, you would know exactly what you were getting yourself into, because the Swiss don’t lie, they just rely on silence to help them.’
Maria felt the ground shifting beneath her.
‘And as for a husband, every time a girl gets married, that represents a great financial loss for Roger, so we’re forbidden to talk to the customers. If your interests lie in that direction, you’ll have to run great risks. This isn’t a pick-up place, like in Rue de Berne.’
Rue de Berne?
‘Men come here with their wives, and the few tourists who turn up get one whiff of the family atmosphere and go looking for women elsewhere. I presume you know how to dance; well, if you can sing as well, your salary will increase, but so will the other girls’ envy, so I’d suggest that, even if you’re the best singer in Brazil, forget all about it and don’t even try. Above all, don’t use the phone. You’ll spend everything you earn on it, and that won’t be much.’
‘He promised me five hundred dollars a week!’
‘Oh yeah.’
From Maria’s diary, during her second week in Switzerland:
I went to the nightclub and met the dance director who comes from somewhere called Morocco, and I had to learn every step of what he – who has never set foot in Brazil – thinks is the samba. I didn’t even have time to recover from the long flight, I had to start smiling and dancing on the very first night. There are six of us, and not one of us is happy and none of us knows what we’re doing here. The customers drink and applaud, blow kisses and privately make obscene gestures, but that’s as far as it goes.
I got paid yesterday, barely a tenth of what we agreed, the rest, according to the contract, will be used to pay for my flight and my stay here. According to Vivian’s calculations, that will take a year, which means that during that time there’s no escape.
And what’s the point of escaping anyway? I’ve only just arrived. I haven’t seen anything yet. What’s so awful about having to dance seven nights a week? I used to do that for pleasure, now I do it for money and fame; my legs don’t ache, the only difficult thing is maintaining that fixed smile.
I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life.
Maria chose to be an adventurer in search of treasure – she put aside her feelings, she stopped crying every night, and she forgot all about the person she used to be; she discovered that she had enough willpower to pretend that she had just been born and so had no reason to miss anyone. Feelings could wait, now what she needed to do was to earn some money, get to know the country and return home victorious.
Besides, everything around her was very like Brazil in general and her own small town in particular: the women spoke Portuguese, complained about men, talked loudly, moaned about their working hours, turned up late at the club, defied the boss, thought themselves the most beautiful women in the world, and told stories about their Prince Charmings, who were usually living miles away or were married or had no money and so sponged off them. Contrary to what she had imagined from the leaflets Roger had brought with him, the club was exactly as Vivian had said it was: it had a family atmosphere. The girls – described on their work permits as ‘samba dancers’ – were not allowed to accept invitations or to go out with the customers. If they were caught receiving a note with someone’s telephone number on it, they were suspended from work for two whole weeks. Maria, who had expected something livelier and more exciting, gradually allowed herself to succumb to sadness and boredom.
During the first two weeks, she barely left the boarding house where she was living, especially when she discovered that no one spoke her language, even if she said everything VE-RY SLOW-LY. She was also surprised to learn that, unlike in her own country, the city in which she was living had two different names – it was Genève to those who lived there and Genebra to Brazilians.
Finally, in the long, tedious hours spent in her small, TV-less room, she concluded:
(a) she would never find what she was looking for if she couldn’t express herself. In order to do that, she needed to learn the local language.
(b) since all her colleagues were looking for the same thing, she needed to be different. For that particular problem, she as yet lacked both a solution or a method.
From Maria’s diary, four weeks after arriving in Genève/Genebra:
I’ve already been here an eternity, I don’t speak the language, I spend all day listening to music on the radio, looking round my room, thinking about Brazil, longing for work to begin and, when I’m working, longing to get back to the boarding house. In other words, I’m living the future not the present.
One day, at some distant future date, I’ll get my ticket home, and I can go back to Brazil, marry the owner of the draper’s shop and listen to the malicious comments of those friends who, never having taken any risks themselves, can only see other people’s failures. No, I can’t go back like that. I’d