He eventually got up the courage to ask about the suitcases.

'I'm flying back to Brazil tomorrow at midday.'

A woman knows when a man is important to her. Are men capable of that kind of realisation? Or would I have to say:

I love you', 'I'd like to stay here with you', 'ask me to stay'.

'Don't go.' Yes, he had understood that he could say that to me.

I have to. I made a promise.'

Because, if I hadn't, he might think that this was all going to last forever. And it wasn't; it was part of the dream of a young woman from the interior of a far-off country, who goes to the big city (well, not that big really), encounters all kinds of difficulties, but finds the man who loves her. So this was the happy ending to all the difficult times I had been through, and whenever I remembered my life in Europe, I would end with the story of a man passionately in love with me, and who would always be mine, because I had visited his soul.

Ah, Ralf, you have no idea how much I love you. I think that perhaps we always fall in love the very first instant we see the man of our dreams, even though, at the time, reason may be telling us otherwise, and we may fight against that instinct, hoping against hope that we won't win, until there comes a point when we allow ourselves to be vanquished by our feelings. That happened on the night when I walked barefoot in the park, cold and in pain, but knowing how much you loved me.

Yes, I love you very much, as I have never loved another man, and that is precisely why I am leaving, because, if I stayed, the dream would become reality, the desire to possess, to want your life to be mine ... in short, all the things that transform love into slavery. It's best left like this - a dream. We have to be careful what we take from a country, or from life.

'You didn't have an orgasm,' he said, trying to change the subject, to be careful and not to force the situation. He was afraid of losing me, and was thinking that he still had all night to make me change my mind.

(No, I didn't, but I had an enormous amount of pleasure.'

'But it would have been better if you'd had an orgasm too.'

I could have pretended, just to please you, but you don't deserve that. Ralf Hart, you are a man in the most beautiful, intense sense of the word. You've supported me and helped me, you've let me support and help you, without there being any humiliation on either side. Yes, it would have been good to have an orgasm, but I didn't. But I loved the cold floor, your warm body, the force with which you entered me.

I went to take back my library books today, and the librarian asked if I talked to my partner about sex. I felt like saying: Which partner? What sort of sex do you mean? But she didn't deserve that; she's always been so sweet to me.

'I've really only had two partners since I came to Geneva: one who awoke the worst in me, because I let him and even begged him to. The other one, you, who made me feel part of the world again. I would like to be able to teach you where to touch my body, how much pressure to apply, for how long, and I know you would take this not as a criticism, but as another way to improve communication between our souls. The art of love is like your painting, it requires technique, patience, and, above all, practice by the couple. It requires boldness, the courage to go beyond what people conventionally call “making love”.'

The teacher in me was back, and I didn't want that, but Ralf knew how to take control of the situation. Instead of agreeing with me, he lit his third cigarette in less than half an hour and said:

'Firstly, you're staying here tonight.' It wasn't a request, it was an order.

'Secondly, we're going to make love again, but with less anxiety this time and more desire. And finally, I'd like you to understand men better too.'

Understand men better? I spent every night with them, whites, blacks, Asians, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Buddhists. Didn't Ralfknow that?

I felt lighter; I was so pleased that the conversation had shifted into being a discussion. At one point, I even considered asking God's forgiveness and breaking my promise. But reality returned, telling me to remember to preserve my dream intact and not to fall into destiny's traps.

'Yes, to understand men better,' said Ralf again, seeing the doubtful look on my face. 'You talk about your female sexuality, about helping me to find my way around your body, to be patient, to take time. I agree, but has it occurred to you that we're different, at least in matters of time? You should complain to God about that.

'When we met, I asked you to teach me about sex, because I had lost all my sexual desire. Do you know why? Because after a certain age, every sexual relationship I had ended in tedium and frustration, because I realised how difficult it was to give the women I loved the same amount of pleasure they gave me.'

I didn't like the sound of 'the women I loved', but I feigned indifference and lit a cigarette.

I didn't have the courage to ask: show me your body. But when I met you, I saw your light, and I loved you at once, and I thought that, at this stage in my life, I had nothing to lose by being honest with myself and with the woman I wanted to have by my side.'

My cigarette tasted delicious, and I would have liked him to offer me some wine, but I didn't want to break the thread of the conversation.

'Why is it that men only think about sex, instead of doing as you did with me and finding out how I feeir 'Who said we only think about sex? On the contrary, we spend years of our life trying to convince ourselves that sex is actually important to us. We learn about love from prostitutes or virgins; we tell our stories to whoever will listen; when we are older, we parade about with much younger lovers, just to prove to others that we really are what women expect us to be.

'But do you know something? That's simply not true. We understand nothing. We think that sex and ejaculation are the same thing and, as you just said, they're not. We don't learn because we haven't the courage to say to the woman: show me your body. We don't learn because the woman doesn't have the courage to say: this is what I like. We are stuck with our primitive survival instincts, and that's that. Absurd though it may seem, do you know what is more important than sex for a man?'

I thought it might be money or power, but I said nothing.

'Sport. Because a man can understand another man's body.

We can see that sport is a dialogue between two bodies that understand each other.'

'You're mad.'

'Maybe. But it makes sense. Have you ever stopped to think about the feelings of the men you've been to bed with?'

'Yes, I have. They were all insecure. They were all afraid.'

'Worse than afraid, they were vulnerable. They didn't really know what they were doing, they only knew what society, friends and women themselves had told them was important. Sex, sex, sex, that's the basis of life, scream the advertisements, other people, films, books. No one knows what they're talking about. Since instinct is stronger than all of us, all they know is that it has to be done. And that's that.'

Enough. I had tried to give him lessons in sex in order to protect myself, now he was doing the same, and however wise our words - because each of us was always trying to impress the other - this was so stupid and so unworthy of our relationship! I drew him to me because - regardless of what he had to say or of what I thought about myself - life had taught me many things. In the beginning, everything was love and surrender. But then the serpent appeared and said to Eve: what you surrendered, you will lose.

That is how it was with me - I was driven out of paradise when I was still at school, and ever since then, I have been trying to find a way of telling the serpent he was wrong, that living was more important than keeping things to yourself. But the serpent was right and I was wrong.

I knelt down and gradually took off his clothes, and I saw his penis there, sleeping and unresponsive. This didn't seem to bother him, and I kissed the inner part of his legs, starting at his feet. His penis slowly began to respond, and I touched it, then put it in my mouth and - unhurriedly, so that he wouldn't interpret this as: 'right, get ready for action!' - I kissed it with all the tenderness of someone who expects nothing in return, and for precisely that reason I got everything I wanted. I saw that he was getting excited, and he began to touch my nipples, circling them with his fingers as he had on that night of total darkness, making me want to have him again between my legs or in my mouth or whatever way he wanted to possess me.

He didn't take off my jacket; he had me lie face forwards, with the upper part of my body bent over the table, and my feet still on the floor. He penetrated me slowly and unhurriedly this time, no longer afraid of losing me, because, deep down, he too had realised that this was a dream and that it would always be a dream, and would never become reality.

At the same time as I felt him inside me, I was aware of his hand on my breasts, my buttocks, touching me as only a woman knows how. Then I knew that we were made for each other, because he could be a woman, as he was now, and I could be a man, as when we talked or when we initiated that joint search for the two lost souls, the two missing fragments needed to complete the universe.

As he simultaneously penetrated and touched me, I felt that he was doing this not only to me, but to the whole universe. We had time, tenderness and mutual knowledge. Yes, it had been good to arrive carrying two suitcases, ready to leave, and to be immediately thrown to the floor and penetrated with a kind of fearful urgency; but it was good too knowing that the night would never end and that there, on the kitchen table, orgasm wasn't a goal in itself, but the beginning of that encounter.

He stopped moving inside me while his fingers worked quickly and I had one, two, three orgasms in a row. I felt like pushing him away, for the pain of pleasure is so intense that it hurts, but I resisted; I accepted that this was how it was, that I could withstand another orgasm or another two, or even more ...

... and suddenly, a kind of light exploded inside me. I was no longer myself, but a being infinitely superior to everything I knew. When his hand took me to my fourth orgasm, I entered a place where everything seemed at peace, and with my fifth orgasm I knew God. Then I felt him beginning to move inside me again, although his hand had still not stopped, and I said 'Oh God', and surrendered to whatever came next, Heaven or Hell.

It was Heaven. 1 was the earth, the mountains, the tigers, the rivers that flowed into the lakes, the lakes that became the sea. He was thrusting faster and faster now, and the pain was mingled with pleasure, and I could have said: 'I can't take any more', but that would have been unfair, because, by then, he and I were one person.

I allowed him to penetrate me for as long as it took; his nails were now digging into my buttocks, and there I was face down on the kitchen table, thinking that there wasn't a better place in the world to make love. Again the creak of the table, his breathing growing ever faster, his nails bruising me, my sex beating hard against his, flesh against flesh, bone against bone, and I was about to have another orgasm, and so was he, and none of this, absolutely none of this was a LIE!

'Come on!'

He knew what he was saying, and I knew that this was the moment; I felt my whole body soften, I ceased to be myself- I was no longer listening, seeing or tasting anything - I was merely feeling.

'Come on!'

And I came at the same moment he came. It wasn't eleven minutes, it was an eternity, it was as if we had both left our bodies and were walking joyfully through the gardens of paradise in understanding and friendship. I was woman and man, he was man and woman. I don't know how long it lasted, but everything seemed to be silent, at prayer, as if the universe and life had ceased to exist and become transformed into something sacred, nameless and timeless.

But time returned, I heard his shouts and I shouted with him, the table legs beat on the floor, and it didn't occur to either of us to wonder what the rest of the world might be thinking.

And suddenly he withdrew from me and laughed; I felt my vagina contract, and I turned to him and I laughed too, and we embraced as if it were the first time we had made love in our entire lives.

'Bless me,' he said.

I blessed him, not really knowing what I was doing. I asked him to do the same, and he did, saying, 'blessed be this woman, who has loved much'. They were beautiful words, and we embraced again and stayed there, unable to understand how eleven minutes could carry a man and a woman so far. Neither of us was tired. We went into the living room, he put on a record and did exactly as I had hoped: he lit the fire and poured me some wine. Then he opened a book and read:

A time to be born, and a time to die; A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal;

A time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh;

A time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; A time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew;

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate;

A time of war, and a time of peace.

This sounded like a farewell, but it was the loveliest farewell I would ever experience in my life.

I embraced him and he embraced me, and we lay down on the carpet beside the fire. I was still filled by a sense of plenitude, as if I had always been a wise, happy, fulfilled woman.

'What made you fall in love with a prostitute?'

I didn't understand it myself at the time. But I've thought about it since, and I think it was because, knowing that your body would never be mine alone, I had to concentrate on conquering your soul.'

'Weren't you jealous?"

'You can't say to the spring: “Come now and last as long as possible.“ You can only say: ”Come and bless me with your hope, and stay as long as you can.”'

Words lost on the wind. But I needed to hear them, and he needed to say them. I fell asleep, although I don't know when. I dreamed, not of a situation or of a person, but of a perfume that flooded the air.

When Maria opened her eyes, a few rays of sun were coming in through the open blinds.

'I've made love with him twice,' she thought, looking at the man asleep by her side. 'And yet it's as if we had always been together, and he had always known my life, my soul, my body, my light, my pain.'

She got up to go to the kitchen and make some coffee. That was when she saw the two suitcases in the hall and she remembered everything: her promise, the prayer she had said in the church, her life, the dream that insisted on becoming reality and losing its charm, the perfect man, the love in which body and soul were one and the same and in which pleasure and orgasm were different things.

She could stay; she had nothing more to lose, only an illusion. She remembered the poem: a time to weep, and a time to laugh.

But there was another line too: 'a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing'. She made the coffee, shut the kitchen door and phoned for a taxi. She summoned all her willpower, which had carried her so far, and which was the source of energy for her 'light', which had told her the exact time to leave, which was protecting her and making her treasure forever the memory of that night. She got dressed, picked up her suitcases and left, hoping against hope that he would wake up and ask her to stay.

But he didn't wake up. While she was waiting for the taxi outside, a gypsy was passing, carrying bouquets of flowers.

'Would you like to buy one?'

Maria bought one; it was the sign that autumn had arrived and summer had been left behind. It would be a long time now before the cafe tables were out on the pavements in Geneva and the parks were full once more of people strolling about and sunbathing. It didn't matter; she was leaving because she had chosen to leave, and there was no reason for regrets.

She got to the airport, drank another cup of coffee and waited four hours for her flight to Paris, thinking all the time that he would arrive at any moment, because at some point before they fell asleep, she had told him the time of her flight. That's how it always happened in films: at the last moment, when the woman is just about to board the plane, the man races up to her, puts his arms around her and kisses her, and brings her back to his world, beneath the smiling, indulgent gaze of the flight staff. The words 'The End'

appear on the screen, and the audience knows that, from then on, they will live happily ever after.

'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 a threat to leave him, this time the man reacts less vehemently and merely tells her that he loves her. The third note from a third mistress, and the decision to say nothing, to pretend that she knows nothing, because he might tell her that he doesn't love her any more and that she's free to leave.

No, films never show that. They finish before the real world begins. It's best not to think too much about it. She read one, two, three magazines. In the end, they announced her flight, after almost an eternity in that airport lounge, and she got on the plane. She still imagined the famous scene in which, as she fastens her seatbelt, she feels a hand on her shoulder, turns round and there he is, smiling at her.

Nothing happened.

She slept on the short flight between Geneva and Paris.

She hadn't had time to think about what she would tell them at home, what story she would invent, but her parents would probably just be happy to have their daughter back, and to have a farm and a comfortable old age ahead of them.

She woke up with the jolt of the plane landing. It taxied for a long time, and the flight attendant came to tell her that she would have to change terminals, because the flight to Brazil left from Terminal F and she was in Terminal C. But there was no need to worry; there were no delays, and she still had plenty of time, and if she wasn't sure where to go, the ground staff would help her.

While the passenger loading bridge was being put in place, she wondered if it would be worth spending a day in Paris, just to take some photographs and be able to tell people that she had been there. She needed time to think, to be alone with herself, to bury her memories of last night deep down inside her, so that she could use them whenever she needed to feel alive. Yes, a day in Paris was an excellent idea; she asked the flight attendant when the next flight to Brazil was, if she decided not to leave that day.

The flight attendant asked to see her ticket and said that, unfortunately, it didn't allow for that kind of stopover. Maria consoled herself with the thought that visiting such a beautiful city all on her own would only depress her. She was still managing to cling on to her sang-froid, to her willpower, and didn't want to ruin it all by seeing a beautiful view and missing someone intensely.

She got off the plane and went through the security checks; her luggage would go straight on to the next plane, so she didn't have to bother with that. The doors opened, the passengers emerged and embraced whoever was waiting for them, wife, mother, children. Maria pretended not to notice, at the same time pondering her own loneliness, except that this time she had a secret, a dream, which would make her solitude less bitter, and life would be easier.

'We'll always have Paris.'

The voice didn't belong to a tourist guide or to a taxi driver. Her legs shook when she heard it.

'We'll always have Paris?'

'It's a quote from one of my favourite films. Would you like to see the Eiffel Tower?'

Oh, yes, she would, she would love to. Ralf was holding a bunch of roses, and his eyes were full of light, the light she had seen on that first day, when he was painting her while the cold wind outside had made her feel awkward to be sitting there.

'How did you manage to get here before me?' she asked, merely to disguise her amazement; she wasn't in the least interested in the answer, but she needed a breathing space.

'I saw you reading a magazine at Geneva airport. I could have come over, but I'm such an incurable romantic that I thought it would be best to catch the next shuttle to Paris, wander about the airport here for three hours, consult the arrivals screen over and over, buy some flowers, say the words that Rick says to his beloved in Casablanca and see the look of surprise on your face. And to be utterly sure that this was what you wanted, that you were expecting me, that all the determination and willpower in the world would not be enough to prevent love from changing the rules of the game from one moment to the next. It's really easy being as romantic as people in the movies, don't you think?'

She had no idea whether it was easy or difficult, and she didn't honestly care, even though she had only just met this man, even though they had made love for the first time only a few hours before, even though she had only been introduced to his friends the previous evening, even though he had been a regular at the nightclub where she had worked, even though he had been married twice. These were not exactly impeccable credentials. On the other hand, she now had enough money to buy a farm, she had her youth ahead of her, a great deal of experience of life and a great independence of soul. Nevertheless, as always happened when fate chose for her, she thought, once again, that she would take the risk.

She kissed him, utterly indifferent now to what happens after the words 'The End' appear on the cinema screen.

But if, one day, someone should decide to tell her story, she would ask them to begin it just as all the fairy tales begin:

Once upon a time ...