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?

I '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:

/ 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 VERY SLOWLY. 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 Geneve to those who lived there and Genebra to Brazilians.

Finally, in the long, tedious hours spent in her small, TVless 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 Geneve/Gene bra:

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 rather throw myself out of the plane as it's crossing the ocean.

Since you can't open the windows in the plane (I had never expected that. What a shame not to be able to breathe in the pure air!), I will die here. But before I die, I want to fight for life. If I can walk on my own, I can go wherever I like.

The following day, she enrolled in a French course that was run in the mornings, and there she met people of all creeds, beliefs and ages, men wearing brightly coloured clothes and lots of gold bracelets, women who always wore a headscarf, children who learned more quickly than the grown-ups, when it should have been the other way round, since grown-ups have more experience. She felt proud when she found out that everyone knew about her country Carnival, the samba, football, and the most famous person in the world, Pele. At first, she wanted to be nice and so tried to correct their pronunciation (it's Pele! Pel£!), but after a while, she gave up, since they also insisted on calling her Maritf, with that mania foreigners have for changing all foreign names and believing that they are always right.

In the afternoons, so as to practise the language, she took her first steps around this city of two names. She discovered some delicious chocolate, a cheese she had never eaten before, a huge fountain in the middle of the lake, snow (which no one back home had ever touched), storks, and restaurants with fireplaces (although she never went inside, just seeing the fire blazing away gave her a pleasant feeling of wellbeing). She was also surprised to find that not all the shop signs advertised clocks; there were banks too, although she couldn't quite understand why there were so many for so few inhabitants, and why she rarely saw anyone inside them. She decided, however, not to ask any questions. After three months of keeping a tight rein on herself at work, her Brazilian blood - as sensual and sexual as everyone thinks - made its voice heard; she fell in love with an Arab who was studying French with her on the same course. The affair lasted three weeks until, one night, she decided to take time off and go and visit a mountain on the outskirts of Geneva; this provoked a summons to Roger's office as soon as she arrived at work the following day.

No sooner had she opened the door than she was summarily dismissed for setting a bad example to the other girls working there. A hysterical Roger said that, yet again, he had been let down, that Brazilian women couldn't be trusted (oh dear, this mania for making generalisations about everything). She tried telling him that she had had a very high fever brought on by the sudden change in climate, but the man would not be persuaded and even claimed that he would have to go straight back to Brazil in order to find a replacement, and that he would have been far better off putting on a show using Yugoslav music and Yugoslav dancers who were far prettier and far more reliable.

Maria might be young but she was no fool, especially once her Arab lover had told her that Swiss employment laws were very strict and, since the nightclub kept back a large part of her salary, she could easily allege that she was being used for slave labour.

She went back to Roger's office, this time speaking reasonable French, which now included the word 'lawyer'. She left with a few insults and five thousand dollars in compensation - a sum of money beyond her wildest dreams - and all because of that magic word 'lawyer'. Now she was free to spend time with her Arab lover, buy a few presents, take some photos of the snow, and go back home in triumph. The first thing she did was telephone her mother's neighbour to say that she was happy, had a brilliant career ahead of her and that there was no need for her family to worry. Then, since she had to leave the room in the boarding house that Roger had arranged for her, she had no alternative but to go to her Arab boyfriend, swear undying love, convert to his religion and marry him, even if she had to wear one of those strange headscarves; after all, as everyone knew, all Arabs were extremely wealthy and that was enough.

The Arab, however, was already far away, possibly in Arabia, a country Maria had never even heard of, and, deep down, she gave thanks to the Virgin Mary because she had not been obliged to betray her religion. She now had a reasonable grasp of spoken French, enough money for her return ticket, a work permit as a 'samba dancer' and a current visa; so, knowing that she could always go back and marry her former boss, she decided to try to earn money with her looks.

In Brazil she had read a book about a shepherd who, in searching for his treasure, encounters various difficulties, and these difficulties help him to get what he wants; she was in exactly the same position. She was aware now that the reason she had been dismissed was so that she could find her true destiny, as a model.

She rented a small room (with no television, but she had to live frugally until she began earning lots of money), and the following day, started doing the rounds of the agencies. They all told her that she needed to get some professional photos taken, but this, after all, was an investment in her career - dreams don't come cheap. She spent a large part of her money on an excellent photographer, who spoke little, but was extremely demanding: he had a vast selection of clothes in his studio and she posed for him in various outfits, sober and extravagant, and even in a bikini of which the only person she knew in Rio de Janeiro, the security officer-cum-interpreter-cum-former agent, Mailson, would have been proud. She asked for several extra copies and sent them off to her family with a letter saying how happy she was in Switzerland. They would all think she was rich and the owner of an enviable wardrobe, and that she had been transformed into her town's most illustrious daughter. If all went to plan (and she had read enough books on 'positive thinking' to be convinced that victory was assured), she would be greeted by a brass band on her return home and would try to persuade the mayor to have a square named after her.

Since she had no permanent address, she bought a mobile phone, the sort that use pre-paid phone cards, and in the days that followed, she waited for job offers. She ate in Chinese restaurants (which were the cheapest) and, to pass the time, she studied furiously.

But time dragged, and the telephone didn't ring. To her surprise, no one bothered her when she went for walks by the lake, apart from a few drug-pushers who always hung around in the same place, underneath one of the bridges that connect the lovely old public gardens to the newer part of the city. She began to doubt her looks, until an excolleague, whom she bumped into by chance in a cafe, told her that it wasn't her fault, it was the fault of the Swiss, who hate to bother anyone, and of other foreigners, who were all afraid of being arrested for 'sexual harassment' - a concept invented to make women everywhere feel worse about themselves.

From Maria's diary, one night when she lacked the courage to go out, to live or to continue waiting for the phone call that never came:

spend today outside a funfair. Since I can't afford to fritter my money away, I thought it best just to watch other people. I stood for a long time by the roller coaster, and I noticed that most people get on it in search of excitement, but that once it starts, they are terrified and want the cars to stop.

What do they expect? Having chosen adventure, shouldn't they be prepared to go the whole way? Or do they think that the intelligent thing to do would be to avoid the ups and downs and spend all their time on a carousel, going round and round on the spot?

At the moment, I'm far too lonely to think about love, but I have to believe that it will happen, that I will find a job and that I am here because I chose this fate. The roller coaster is my life; life is a fast, dizzying game; life is a parachute jump; it's taking chances, falling over and getting up again; it's mountaineering; it's wanting to get to the very top of yourself and to feel angry and dissatisfied when you don't manage it.

It isn't easy being far from my family and from the language in which I can express all my feelings and emotions, but, from now on, whenever I feel depressed, I will remember that funfair. If I had fallen asleep and suddenly woken up on a roller coaster, what would I feel?

Well, I would feel trapped and sick, terrified of every bend, wanting to get off. However, if I believe that the track is my destiny and that God is in charge of the machine, then the nightmare becomes something thrilling. It becomes exactly what it is, a roller coaster, a safe, reliable toy, which will eventually stop, but, while the journey lasts, I must look at the surrounding landscape and whoop with excitement.

Although she was capable of writing very wise thoughts, she was quite incapable of following her own advice; her periods of depression became more frequent and the phone still refused to ring. To distract herself during these empty hours, and in order to practise her French, she began buying magazines about celebrities, but realised at once that she was spending too much money, and so she looked for the nearest lending library. The woman in charge told her that they didn't lend out magazines, but that she could suggest a few books that would help improve her French.

'I haven't got time to read books.'

'What do you mean you haven't got time? What are you doing?'

'Lots of things: studying French, writing a diary, and ...'

'And what?'

She was about to say 'waiting for the phone to ring', but she thought it best to say nothing.

'My dear, you're still very young, you've got your whole life ahead of you. Read. Forget everything you've been told about books and just read.'

'I've read loads of books.'

Suddenly, Maria remembered what Mailson the security officer had told her about 'vibes'. The librarian before her seemed a very sweet, sensitive person, someone who might be able to help her if all else failed. She needed to win her over; her instinct was telling her that this woman could become her friend. She quickly changed tack.

'But I'd like to read more. Could you help me choose some books?'

The woman brought her The Little Prince. She started leafing through it that same night, saw the drawings on the first page of what seemed to be a hat, but which, according to the author, all children would instantly recognise as a snake with an elephant inside it. 'Well, I don't think I can ever have been a child, then,' she thought. 'To me, it looks more like a hat.' In the absence of any television to watch, she accompanied the prince on his journeys, feeling sad whenever the word 'love' appeared, for she had forbidden herself to think about the subject at the risk of feeling suicidal. However, apart from the painful, romantic scenes between a prince, a fox and a rose, the book was really interesting, and she didn't keep checking every five minutes that the battery in her mobile phone was still fully charged (she was terrified of missing her big chance purely out of carelessness).

Maria became a regular visitor to the library, where she would chat to the woman, who seemed as lonely as she was, ask her to suggest more books and discuss life and authors -

until her money had nearly run out. Another two weeks and she would not even have enough left to buy her ticket back to Brazil.

And, since life always waits for some crisis to occur before revealing itself at its most brilliant, the phone finally rang.

Three months after discovering the word 'lawyer' and after two months of living on the compensation she had received, someone from a model agency asked if Senhora Maria was still at this number. The reply was a cool, long-rehearsed 'yes', so as not to appear too eager. She learned that an Arab gentleman, who worked in the fashion industry in his country, had been very taken by her photos and wanted to invite her to take part in a fashion show. Maria remembered her recent disappointments, but also the money that she so desperately needed.

They arranged to meet in a very chic restaurant. She found herself with an elegant man, older and more charming than Roger, who asked her:

'Do you know who painted that picture over there? It's a Miro. Have you heard of Joan Miro?'

Maria said nothing, as if she were concentrating on the food, rather different from that in the Chinese restaurants where she normally ate. Meanwhile, she made a mental note: on her next visit to the library, she would have to ask for a book about Miro.

But the Arab was saying:

'This was the table where Fellini always sat. Do you know his films at all?'

She said she adored them. The man began asking more probing questions and Maria, knowing that she would fail the test, decided to be straight with him:

'I'm not going to spend the evening pretending to you. I can just about tell the difference between Coca-Cola and Pepsi, but that's about it. I thought we came here to discuss a fashion show.'

He seemed to appreciate her frankness.

'We'll do that when we have our after-supper drink.'

There was a pause, while they looked at each other, each trying to imagine what the other was thinking.

'You're very pretty,' said the man. 'If you come up and have a drink with me in my hotel room, I'll give you a thousand francs.'

Maria understood at once. Was it the fault of the model agency? Was it her fault? Should she have found out more about the nature of this supper? It wasn't the agency's fault, or hers, or the man's: this was simply how things worked. Suddenly she missed her hometown, missed Brazil, missed her mother's arms. She remembered Mailson, on the beach, when he had mentioned a fee of three hundred dollars;

at the time, she had thought it funny, much more than she would have expected to receive for spending the night with a man. However, at that moment, she realised that she had no one, absolutely no one in the world she could talk to; she was alone in a strange city, a relatively experienced twenty-two-year-old, but none of her experience could help her to decide what would be the best response.

'Could you pour me some more wine, please.'

The Arab man filled her glass, and her thoughts travelled faster than the Little Prince on his travels to all those planets. She had come in search of adventure, money and possibly a husband; she had known that she would end up getting proposals such as this, because she was no innocent and was used to the ways of men. She still believed in model agencies, stardom, a rich husband, a family, children, grandchildren, nice clothes, a triumphant return to the place where she was born. She dreamed of overcoming all difficulties purely by dint of her own intelligence, charm and willpower.

But reality had just fallen in on her. To the man's surprise, she began to cry. He did not know what to do, caught between his fear of causing a scandal and his instinctive desire to protect her. He called the waiter over in order to ask for the bill, but Maria stopped him.

'No, don't do that. Pour me some more wine and just let me cry for a while.'

And Maria thought about the little boy who had asked to borrow a pencil, about the young man who had kissed her and how she had kept her mouth closed, about her excitement at seeing Rio for the first time, about the men who had used her and given nothing back, about the passions and loves lost along the way. Despite her apparent freedom, her life consisted of endless hours spent waiting for a miracle, for true love, for an adventure with the same romantic ending she had seen in films and read about in books. A writer once said that it is not time that changes man, nor knowledge; the only thing that can change someone's mind is love. What nonsense!

The person who wrote that clearly knew only one side of the coin.

Love was undoubtedly one of the things capable of changing a person's whole life, from one moment to the next. But there was the other side of the coin, the second thing that could make a human being take a totally different course from the one he or she had planned; and that was called despair. Yes, perhaps love really could transform someone, but despair did the job more quickly. What should she do? Should she run back to Brazil, become a teacher of French and marry her former boss? Should she take a small step forward; after all, it was only one night, in a city where she knew no one and no one knew her. Would that one night and that easy money mean that she would inevitably carry on until she reached a point in the road where there was no turning back? What was happening here - a great opportunity or a test set her by the Virgin Mary?

The Arab was looking around at the paintings by Joan Miro, at the place where Fellini used to have lunch, at the girl who took the coats and at the other customers arriving and leaving.

'Didn't you realise?'

'More wine, please,' said Maria, still in tears.

She was praying that the waiter would not come over and realise what was going on, and the waiter, who was watching it all from a distance, out of the corner of his eye, was praying that the man and the girl would hurry up and pay the bill, because the restaurant was full and there were people waiting.

At last, after what seemed an eternity, she spoke:

'Did you say a thousand francs for one drink?'

Maria was surprised by her own tone of voice.

'Yes,' said the man, regretting having suggested it in the first place. 'But I really wouldn't want...'

'Pay the bill and let's go and have that drink at your hotel.'

Again, she seemed like a stranger to herself. Up until then, she had been a nice, cheerful, well-brought-up girl, and she would never have spoken like that to a stranger. But that girl, it seemed to her, had died forever: before her lay another existence, in which drinks cost one thousand francs or, to use a more universal currency, about six hundred dollars.

And everything happened as expected: she went to the Arab's hotel, drank champagne, got herself almost completely drunk, opened her legs, waited for him to have an orgasm (it didn't even occur to her to pretend to have one too), washed herself in the marble bathroom, picked up the money, and allowed herself the luxury of a taxi home. She fell into bed and slept dreamlessly all night.

From Maria's diary, the next day:

I remember everything, although not the moment when I made the decision. Oddly enough, I have no sense of guilt. I used to think of girls who went to bed with men for money as people who had no other choice, and now I see that it isn't like that. I could have said 'yes' or 'no'; no one was forcing me to accept anything.

walk about the streets and look at all the people, and I wonder if they chose their lives? Or were they, like me, 'chosen' by fate? The housewife who dreamed of becoming a model, the banker who wanted to be a musician, the dentist who felt he should write a book and devote himself to literature, the girl who would have loved to be a TV star, but who found herself instead working at the checkout in a supermarket.

I don't feel in the least bit sorry for myself. I am still not a victim, because I could have left that restaurant with my dignity intact and my purse empty. I could have given that man sitting opposite me a lesson in morality or tried to make him see that before him sat a princess who should be wooed not bought. I could have responded in all kinds of ways, but - like most people - I let fate choose which route I should take.

I'm not the only one, even though my fate may put me outside the law and outside society. In the search for happiness, however, we are all equal: none of us is happy - not the banker/musician, the dentist/writer, the checkout girl/actress, or the housewife/model.

So that was how it worked. As easy as that. There she was in a strange city where she knew no one, but what had been a torment to her yesterday, today gave her a tremendous sense of freedom, because she didn't need to explain herself to anyone.

She decided that, for the first time in many years, she would devote the entire day to thinking about herself. Up until then, she had always been preoccupied with what other people were thinking: her mother, her schoolfriends, her father, the people at the model agencies, the French teacher, the waiter, the librarian, complete strangers in the street.

In fact, no one was thinking anything, certainly not about her, a poor foreigner, who, if she disappeared tomorrow, wouldn't even be missed by the police.

Fine. She went out early, had breakfast in her usual cafe, went for a stroll around the lake and saw a demonstration held by refugees. A woman out walking a small dog told her that they were Kurds, and Maria, instead of pretending that she knew the answer in order to prove that she was more cultivated and intelligent than people might think, asked:

'Where do Kurds come from?'

To her surprise, the woman didn't know. That's what the world is like: people talk as if they knew everything, but if you dare to ask a question, they don't know anything. She went into an Internet cafe and discovered that the Kurds came from Kurdistan, a non-existent country, now divided between Turkey and Iraq. She went back to the lake in search of the woman and her dog, but she had gone, possibly because the dog had got fed up after half an hour of staring at a group of human beings with banners, headscarves, music and strange cries.

'I'm just like that woman really. Or rather, that's what I used to be like: someone pretending to know everything, hidden away in my own silence, until that Arab guy got on my nerves, and I finally had the courage to say that the only thing I knew was how to tell the difference between two soft drinks. Was he shocked? Did he change his mind about me? Of course not. He must have been amazed at my honesty. Whenever I try to appear more intelligent than I am, I always lose out. Well, enough is enough!'

She thought of the model agency. Did they know what the Arab guy really wanted - in which case she had, yet again, been taken for a fool - or had they genuinely thought he was going to find work for her in his country?

Whatever the truth of the matter, Maria felt less alone on that grey morning in Geneva, with the temperature close to zero, the Kurds demonstrating, the trams arriving punctually at each stop, the shops setting out their jewellery in the windows again, the banks opening, the beggars sleeping, the Swiss going to work. She was less alone because by her side was another woman, invisible perhaps to passers-by. She had never noticed her presence before, but there she was.

She smiled at the invisible woman beside her who looked like the Virgin Mary, Jesus's mother. The woman smiled back and told her to be careful, things were not as simple as she imagined. Maria ignored the advice and replied that she was a grown-up, responsible for her own decisions, and she couldn't believe that there was some cosmic conspiracy being hatched against her. She had learned that there were people prepared to pay one thousand Swiss francs for one night, for half an hour between her legs, and all she had to decide over the next few days was whether to take her thousand Swiss francs and buy a plane ticket back to the town where she had been born, or to stay a little longer, and earn enough to be able to buy her parents a house, some lovely clothes for herself and tickets to all the places she had dreamed of visiting one day.

The invisible woman at her side said again that things weren't that simple, but Maria, although glad of this unexpected company, asked her not to interrupt her thoughts, because she needed to make some important decisions.

She began to analyse, more carefully this time, the possibility of going back to Brazil. Her schoolfriends, who had never left the town they were born in, would all say that she had been fired from the job, that she had never had the talent to be an international star. Her mother would be sad never to have received her promised monthly sum of money, although Maria, in her letters, had assured her that the post office must be stealing it. Her father would, forever after, look at her with that 'I told you so' expression on his face; she would go back to working in the shop, selling fabrics, and she would marry the owner - she who had travelled in a plane, eaten Swiss cheese, learned French and walked in the snow.

On the other hand, there were those drinks that had earned her one thousand Swiss francs. It might not last very long - after all, beauty changes as swiftly as the wind - but in a year, she could earn enough money to get back on her feet and return to the world, this time on her own terms. The only real problem was that she didn't know what to do, how to start. She remembered from her days at the 'family nightclub'

where she had first worked that a girl had mentioned somewhere called Rue de Berne - in fact, it had been one of the first things she had said, even before she had shown her where to put her suitcases.

She went over to one of the large panels that can be found everywhere in Geneva, that most tourist-friendly of cities, which cannot bear to see tourists getting lost. For this reason the panels have advertisements on one side and maps on the other.

A man was standing there, and she asked him if he knew where Rue de Berne was. He looked at her, intrigued, and asked if it was the street she was looking for or the road that went to Berne, the capital of Switzerland. No, said Maria, I want the street in Geneva. The man looked her up and down, then walked off without a word, convinced that he was being filmed by one of those TV programmes that delight in making fools of people. Maria studied the map for fifteen minutes - it's not a very big city - and finally found the place she was looking for.

Her invisible friend, who had remained silent while she was studying the map, was now trying to reason with her; it wasn't a question of morality, but of setting off down a road of no return.

Maria said that if she could earn enough money to go back home, then she could earn enough to get out of any situation. Besides, none of the people she passed had actually chosen what they wanted to do. That was just a fact of life.

'We live in a vale of tears,' she said to her invisible friend. 'We can have all the dreams we like, but life is hard, implacable, sad. What are you trying to say: that people will condemn me? No one will ever know - this is just one phase of my life.'

With a sad, sweet smile, the invisible friend disappeared. Maria went to the funfair and bought a ticket for the roller coaster; she screamed along with everyone else, knowing that there was no real danger and that it was all just a game. She ate in a Japanese restaurant, even though she didn't understand quite what she was eating, knowing only that it was very expensive and feeling in a mood to indulge herself in every luxury. She was happy, she didn't need to wait for a phone call now or to watch every centime she spent.

Later that day, she left a message with the agency to thank them and to tell them that the meeting had gone well.

If they were genuine, they would ask about the photos. If they were procurers of women, they would arrange more meetings.

She walked across the bridge back to her little room and decided that, however much money and however many future plans she had, she would definitely not buy a television: she needed to think, to use all her time for thinking.

From Maria's diary that night (with a note in the margin saying: 'Not sure'):

I have discovered the reason why a man pays for a woman:

he wants to be happy.

He wouldn't pay a thousand francs just to have an orgasm.

He wants to be happy. I do too, everyone does, and yet no one is. What have I got to lose if, for a while, I decide to become a ... it's a difficult word to think or even write ... but let's be blunt ... what have I got to lose if I decide to become a prostitute for a while?

Honour. Dignity. Self-respect. Although, when I think about it, I've never had any of those things. I didn't ask to be born, I've never found anyone to love me, I've always made the wrong decisions - now I'm letting life decide for me.

The agency phoned the next day and asked about the photos and when the fashion show was being held, since they got a percentage of every job. Maria, realising that they knew nothing about what had happened, told them that the Arab gentleman would be in touch with them.

She went to the library and asked for some books about sex. If she was seriously considering the possibility of working - just for a year, she had told herself - in an area about which she knew nothing, the first thing she needed to know was how to behave, how to give pleasure and receive money in return.

She was most disappointed when the librarian told her that, since the library was a government-funded institution, they only had a few technical works. Maria read the index of one of these books and immediately returned it: they said nothing about happiness, they talked only about dull things such as erection, penetration, impotence, precautions ... She did for a moment consider borrowing The Psychology of Frigidity in Women, since, in her own case, although she very much enjoyed being possessed and penetrated by a man, she only ever reached orgasm through masturbation.

She wasn't there in search of pleasure, however, but work. She thanked the librarian, and went to a shop where she made her first investment in that possible career looming on the horizon - clothes which she considered to be sexy enough to arouse men's desire. Then she went straight to the place she had found on the map. Rue de Berne. At the top of the street was a church (oddly enough, very near the Japanese restaurant where she had had supper the night before), then some shops selling cheap watches and clocks, and, at the far end, were the clubs she had heard about, all of them closed at that hour of the day. She went for another walk around the lake, then - without a tremor of embarrassment - bought five pornographic magazines in order to study the kind of thing she would have to do, waited for darkness to fall and then went back to Rue de Berne. There she chose at random a bar with the alluringly Brazilian name of 'Copacabana'.

She hadn't decided anything, she told herself. It was just an experiment. She hadn't felt so well or so free in all the time she had been in Switzerland.

'I'm looking for work,' she told the owner, who was washing glasses behind the bar. The place consisted of a series of tables, a few sofas around the walls and, in one corner, a kind of dance floor. 'Nothing doing. If you want to work here legally you have to have a work permit.'

Maria showed him hers and the man's mood seemed to improve.

'Got any experience?'

She didn't know what to say: if she said yes, he would ask her where she had worked before. If she said no, he might turn her down.

'I'm writing a book.'

The idea had come out of nowhere, as if an invisible voice had come to her aid. She saw that the man knew she was lying, but was pretending to believe her.

'Before you make any decision, talk to some of the other girls. We get at least six Brazilian women in every night, that way you can find out exactly what to expect.'

Maria was about to say that she didn't need any advice from anyone and that, besides, she hadn't come to a decision just yet, but the man had already moved off to the other side of the bar, leaving her on her own, without even a glass of water to drink.

The women started to arrive, and the owner called over some of the Brazilians and asked them to talk to the new arrival. None of them seemed very willing; fear of competition, Maria assumed. The sound system was turned on and a few Brazilian songs were played (well, the place was called 'Copacabana'); then some Asiatic-looking women came in, along with others who seemed to have come straight from the snowy, romantic mountains around Geneva. She had been standing there for nearly two hours, with nothing to drink and just a few cigarettes, filled by a growing sense that she was definitely making the wrong decision - the words 'what am I doing here?' kept repeating over and over in her head - and feeling increasingly irritated by the complete lack of interest on the part of both the owner and the other women, when, finally, one of the Brazilian girls came over to her.

'What made you choose this place?'

Maria could have resorted to that story about writing a book, or she could, as she had with the Kurds, with Miro and with Fellini, simply tell the truth.

'To be perfectly honest, I don't know where to start or if I want to start.'

The other woman seemed surprised by such a frank, direct answer. She took a sip of what looked like whisky, listened to the Brazilian song they were playing, made some comment about missing her home, then said that there wouldn't be many customers that night because a big international conference being held near Geneva had been cancelled. In the end, when she saw that Maria still hadn't left, she said:

'Look, it's very simple, you just have to stick to three basic rules. First: never fall in love with anyone you work with or have sex with. Second: don't believe any promises and always get paid up front. Third: don't use drugs.'

There was a pause.

'And start now. If you go home tonight without having got your first client, you'll have second thoughts about it and you won't have the courage to come back.'

Maria had gone there more for a consultation, to get some feedback on her chances of finding a temporary job. She found herself confronted by the feeling that so often pushes people into making hasty decisions - despair.

'All right. I'll start tonight.'

She didn't mention that she had, in fact, started yesterday. The woman went up to the owner, whom she called Milan, and he came over to talk to Maria.

'Have you got nice underwear on?'

No one - her boyfriends, the Arab, her girlfriends, far less a stranger - had ever asked her that question. But that Was what life was like in that place: straight to the point.

'I'm wearing pale blue pants. And no bra,' she added provocatively. But all she got was a reprimand.

'Tomorrow, wear black pants, bra and stockings. Taking off your clothes is all part of the ritual.'

Without more ado, and on the assumption now that he was talking to someone who was about to start work, Milan introduced her to the rest of the ritual: the Copacabana should be a pleasant place to spend time, not a brothel. The men came into that bar wanting to believe that they would find a lady on her own. If anyone came over to her table and wasn't intercepted en route (because some clients were 'exclusive to certain girls'), he would probably say:

'Would you like a drink?'

To which Maria could say yes or no. She was free to choose the company she kept, although it wasn't advisable to say 'no' more than once a night. If she answered in the affirmative, she should ask for a fruit juice cocktail, which just happened to be the most expensive drink on the drinks list. Absolutely no alcohol or letting the customer choose for her.

Then, she should accept any invitation to dance. Most of the clientele were familiar faces and, apart from the 'special clients', about whom he did not go into any further detail, none of them represented any danger. The police and the Department of Health demanded monthly blood samples, to check that they weren't carrying any sexually transmitted diseases. The use of condoms was obligatory, although there was no way of checking if this rule was or wasn't being followed. She should never, on any account, cause any kind of scandal - Milan was a respectable married man, concerned for his reputation and the good name of his club.

He continued explaining the ritual: after dancing, they would return to the table, and the customer, as if he were saying something highly original, would invite her to go back to his hotel with him. The normal price was three hundred and fifty francs, of which fifty francs went to Milan, for the hire of the table (a trick to avoid any future legal complications and accusations of exploiting sex for financial gain).

Maria tried to say:

'But I earned a thousand francs for ...'

The owner made as if to move off, but the other Brazilian woman, who was listening in to the conversation, said:

'She's just joking.'

And turning to Maria, she said in clear, loud Portuguese:

'This is the most expensive place in Geneva. Never do that again. He knows what the going rate is and he knows that no one pays a thousand francs to go to bed with anyone, except, of course, the “special clients”, but only if you get lucky and you have the right qualifications.'

Milan's eyes - later, Maria found out that he was a Yugoslav who had been living there for twenty years - left no room for doubt.

'The price is three hundred and fifty francs.'

'Right,' said a humbled Maria.

First, he had asked about the colour of her underwear, now he was deciding how much her body was worth.

But she had no time to think, the man was still issuing instructions: she must never accept invitations to anyone's house or to a hotel that had less than five stars. If the client had nowhere to take her, she was to go to a hotel located five blocks from there, and should always take a taxi so that the women who worked in the other clubs in Rue de Berne didn't get to know her face. Maria didn't believe this last reason; she thought that the real reason was that she might get an offer of better working conditions in another club. She kept her thoughts to herself, however; arguing about the price was bad enough.

'I'll say this again: just like policemen in the movies, never drink while on duty. I'll leave you now, it'll start getting busy soon.'

'Say thank you,' said the other Brazilian woman in Portuguese.

Maria thanked him. The man smiled, but he had not yet finished his list of recommendations:

'I forgot something: the time between ordering a drink and leaving the club should never, under any circumstances, exceed forty-five minutes - and in Switzerland, with clocks all over the place, even Yugoslavs and Brazilians must learn to be punctual. Just remember, I'm feeding my children on your commission.' She would remember.

He gave her a glass of sparkling mineral water with a slice of lemon in it - a drink that could easily pass for a gin and tonic - and asked her to wait. Gradually the club began to fill up; men came in, looked around, sat down on their own, and immediately one of the women would go over to them, as if they were at a party where everyone has known each other for ages and as if they were just taking time out to have a little fun after a hard day at work. Every time a man found a partner, Maria gave a sigh of relief, even though she was now feeling much more comfortable. Perhaps it was because it was Switzerland, perhaps it was because, sooner or later, she would find adventure, money or a husband, as she had always dreamed she would. Perhaps - she suddenly realised - it was because it was the first time in many weeks that she had been out at night and to a place where there was music playing and where she could, now and then, hear someone speaking Portuguese. She was having fun with the other girls around her, laughing, drinking fruit juice cocktails, talking brightly.

None of them had come up to her to say hello or to wish her success in her new profession, but that was perfectly normal; after all, she was a rival, a competitor, competing for the same trophy. Instead of feeling depressed, she felt proud - she was fighting for herself, she wasn't some helpless person. She could, if she wanted to, open the door and leave that place for good, but she would always know that she had at least had the courage to come that far, to negotiate and discuss things about which she had never in her life even dared to think. She wasn't a victim of fate, she kept telling herself: she was running her own risks, pushing beyond her own limits, experiencing things which, one day, in the silence of her heart, in the tedium of old age, she would remember almost with nostalgia - however absurd that might seem.

She was sure that no one would approach her, and tomorrow it would all seem like some mad dream that she would never dare to repeat, for she had just realised that being paid a thousand francs for one night only happens once; perhaps she would be better off buying a plane ticket back to Brazil. To make the time pass more quickly, she began to work out how much each of the other girls would earn: if they went out three times a night, they would earn, for every four hours of work, the equivalent of what it would have taken her two months to earn at the shop.

Was that a lot? She had earned a thousand francs for one night, but perhaps that had just been beginner's luck. At any rate, an ordinary prostitute could earn more, much more than she would ever earn teaching French back home. And all they had to do was spend some time in a bar, dance, spread their legs and that was that. They didn't even have to talk.

Money was one motivation, she thought, but was that all?

Or did the people there, the customers and the women, also enjoy themselves in some way? Was the world so very different from what she had been taught in school? If you used a condom, there was no risk. Nor was there any risk of being recognised by anyone; the only people who visit Geneva - she had been told once in her French class - were people who liked going to banks. The majority of Brazilians, however, enjoy shopping, preferably in Miami or in Paris.

Three hundred Swiss francs a day, five days a week. A fortune! Why did those women keep working there when they could earn enough in a month to go back home and buy a new house for their mother? Or had they only been working there a short time?

Or - and Maria felt afraid of her own question - did they enjoy it?

Again she wished she could have a proper drink - the champagne had helped a lot the previous night.

'Would you like a drink?'

Before her stood a man in his thirties, wearing the uniform of some airline.

The world went into slow motion, and Maria had a sense of stepping out of her own body and observing herself from the outside. Deeply embarrassed, but struggling to control her blushes, she nodded and smiled, knowing that from that moment on her life had changed forever.

A fruit juice cocktail, a bit of talk, what are you doing here, it's cold, isn't it? I like this music, oh, I prefer Abba myself, the Swiss are a chilly lot, are you from Brazil? Tell me about your country. Well, there's Carnival. You Brazilian women are really pretty, you know.

Smile and accept the compliment, perhaps with a slightly shy look. Back to the dance floor, but all the time keeping an eye on Milan, who sometimes scratches his head and taps his wristwatch. The smell of the man's cologne;

she realises quickly that she will have to get used to all kinds of smells. At least this is perfume. They dance very close. Another fruit juice cocktail, time is passing, didn't Milan say forty-five minutes maximum? She looks at her watch, he asks if she's expecting someone, she says a few friends of hers will be arriving in about an hour, he invites her back to his hotel. Hotel room, three hundred and fifty francs, a shower after sex (intrigued, the man remarked that no one had ever done that before). It's not Maria, it's some other person who's inside her body, who feels nothing, who mechanically goes through the motions of a ritual. She's an actress. Milan has taught her everything, even how to say goodbye to the client, she thanks him, he too feels awkward and sleepy.