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Disillusioned with the “terrible thing” called love at a young age, Maria lives on, hoping against hope, to find true love someday. In shifting her home from the remote interiors of Brazil to the crowded streets of Rue de Berne in Geneva, she swings between bouts of fate and fatality ( which on the surface would characterize her as being self-willed and destined at the same time).
Earning her dignity (read living) as a sex worker in Copacabana, Maria is gradually bewitched with her fascinating world of sex. Whether making interesting observations on her profession and the male psyche vis-à-vis sex or justifying her destiny to be in Geneva for future financial security, Maria begins to comprehend that there is something essential and spontaneous missing in her life. Deprived of any spiritual growth, and bogged down with loneliness, she constantly feels the need for it as revealed to the readers in her diary jottings. It is now a question of the survival of her soul. And this is only possible through love, she realises.
Enter Ralf Hart and Maria’s sojourn takes a new turn. The talented painter has seen it all in life and now he spots the “inner light” in Maria. And it is for the protagonist to discover the same. In other words, the author hints subtly that the pilgrim’s progress has begun.
She encounters pleasure and pain in this difficult path that will ultimately lead her to her true self. For her “special client”, Terence, the experience of pleasure through pain results in a simplistic salvation. He makes Maria enact this idea but salvation is still a far cry for her. And it is only through the tool of love which she bestows upon Ralf, (who is a perfect foil to Terence) that she enjoys her redemption.
Freedom - this was the “treasure” that the “adventurer” in Maria was seeking for. Now that Ralf has captivated her soul, the union of bodies, for Maria, would take place “out of a sense of abundance, because the glass of wine is so full that it overflows naturally…because you are responding to the call of life…” It is “only at that moment” when “you have allowed yourself to lose control” that “eleven minutes” seems like “an eternity”. Paulo Coelho’s book reminds us of The Extasie in which John Donne wrote,
Loves mysteries in soules doe grow,
But yet the body is his booke.
The fairy-tale ending is almost rhythmic to the fairy-tale beginning of the book. But it is difficult to forget that innumerable other sex workers who “with one foot in a fairy tale” still have “the other in the abyss”.
It is, however, the daring theme that lingers in our mind. The essence of life and its woes is beautifully documented by the author captivating our attention to the point of alienating us from the world around us. And his style is undoubtedly poetic enriched by a deep sense of a spiritual abode. The incorporation of the Brazilian superstitions gives an unique local flavour to this riveting love story that is embellished with universal relevance and significance. United by their “sacred, nameless and timeless” love, one feels that Ralf and Maria’s walk along the Road to Santiago is almost a continuing process.
Finally, the novel leaves us a bit disturbed but with profound insight into the essence and essentials of what we call Life.
Satarupa Ray
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