Winning the Game and Other Stories (2 page)

Having all this, you'll say I could only be a happy man. And I would be a truly happy man if behind my back they weren't saying I'm a dummy. I defend myself by saying it doesn't matter if others say you are a piece of shit, because you're only a piece of shit if you yourself think you're a piece of shit. But that phrase, which seems to have been inspired in one of those tenets found in so many of those brainless manuals that teach the credulous to develop their self-esteem and get ahead in life, is another of my tricks. I suffer, repeat, suffer when they call me a dummy behind my back. And they do that because I'm new rich and didn't know (in the past) how to use silverware correctly, didn't know (in the past) the difference between baroque music and twelve-tone music, didn't know (in the past) the difference between Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Beaujolais, useless knowledge that buffs the lackluster lives of the old rich. Repression, that's something I understand.

Ghostwriter took three months to finish the book. They say there are authors who take four, five, ten years to write a two-hundred-page book. Ten years have three thousand six hundred and fifty days. It would be enough for the bum to write twenty miserable words a day to have at the end of ten years the seventy-three thousand words for a book of two hundred pages.
The Forger
was made up of six hundred pages; Ghostwriter had worked hard. In summary, the story went like this: The forger, at the request of a dishonest publisher, forges a book of memoirs as if they were by Machado de Assis; the memoirs are published, everyone takes them to be real, critics go wild, the book becomes a best seller, it's all people talk about. But in the end the forger, whether from repentance or to get revenge on the publisher, the readers, and the critics, denounces the hoax, leaving everyone looking like fools.

I made six copies and sent them to six publishers. Only one answered, asking if I couldn't cut the parts of the book that spoke of the life of Machado de Assis, claiming they were unnecessary and the cuts wouldn't harm the book, that six hundred pages was a lot, that publishing houses in general were going through a difficult period because of the financial crisis, etc. The guys just didn't want to invest in a brick by some unknown author. Pretexts, that's something I understand.

I paid for a private edition. Wasn't that what all those boring prolix writers did? Nobody reads a six-hundred-page book, but its size is impressive. I didn't spare costs. I paid an expert to write the jacket flaps, my photo for the book was done by the best professional available, the cover was created by the best artist in the field. I ordered only a thousand copies printed and told the publisher to distribute five hundred. I thought, when I received the first copy with my name on the colorful cover, this piece of shit is worth as much as my tooth implants. Seeing things the way they are, that's something I understand.

For a month, nothing happened. But then the critic for a weekly magazine discovered me, said I was the greatest literary newcomer in recent years, and the five hundred copies sitting on the back shelves in bookstores sold out in a day. The publisher brought out a new printing of ten thousand copies, and another, then another. I was famous, overnight. I gave interviews to all the papers. I gave interviews on television. People asked for my autograph. My book was discussed at dinners. Who was the dummy now? Revenge, that's something I understand.

Tomás Antônio: I'm going to go on calling you that. I need to talk to you, personally. Set a time and place. Ghostwriter.

Did that surprise me? No. I was prepared for something of the kind. I had predicted that the wretched poor devil, semi-tubercular and suffering from the blunder he'd committed by selling me a book that everyone considered a masterpiece, would look me up to settle accounts.

Ghostwriter: Meet me in Nossa Senhora da Paz square, Thursday at five o'clock. You've seen my picture in the papers. I'll be sitting on one of the benches, waiting. Tomás Antônio.

That day, twenty minutes before the appointed time, I got to the square and sat on a bench near the entrance. From where I sat I had a perfect view of everyone who arrived. A guy came in carrying a newspaper, a couple came in, then a beggar, another guy in a beret, a nanny with a child, another nanny, another beggar. Time was passing and none of the people arriving came in my direction.

“Good afternoon.”

The woman had appeared suddenly and stood there beside the bench, extending her hand.

“Good afternoon,” I replied, shaking her hand.

“May I sit down?”

“Of course. I didn't see you come into the square.”

“I was already here when you arrived. Sitting on that bench over there.”

“Stupid of me not to think of it, that you might show up early. Are you Ghostwriter?”

“Yes.”

“M. J. Ramos?”

“Maria José.”

She spoke shyly, seemingly constrained.

“Sit down. Can you prove it?”

“That's easy. I have the whole book in my head. I'm going to tell you how I wrote it.”

Cutting what she said, fifteen minutes later I said, “That's enough, I believe you. What is it you want?”

She fell silent. She must have been about thirty, delicate legs and brown eyes. She was wearing a skirt and blouse, unfashionable shoes with low heels and was carrying a small plastic purse. Her teeth were yellow from smoke.

“I feel—”

“Nonsense. You can speak.”

“I need an operation.”

“You or your mother?”

“Me.”

“How much?”

“Well, there's the doctor, the hospitalization … I don't have any health insurance …”

“What type of operation?”

“I'd rather not say. But I've already scheduled the operation. I knew I could count on you.”

A con job, that's something I understand.

“Okay, I have a proposal for you. I'll give you some dough today for your urgent expenses. I'll deposit in a bank account of your choosing all the money the book has brought in so far and will bring in later, for the rest of my life. Give me the number of your account.”

“You know it; you've already made deposits to it. I shouldn't ask for anything else. A deal's a deal.”

“Don't worry about it. You deserve much more.”

I signed a check and gave it to her. “This is just the first payment.”

“I don't need this much,” she said, putting the check in her purse. “And I don't want anything more.”

“With what's left, buy yourself some clothes. Would you like a lift? Where do you live?”

“It's out of your way. Jacarepaguá.”

“I'll take you.”

It was getting dark when we got the car. We took Avenida Niemeyer. When I was a nobody, I used to dream about having a car to drive around the Barra. Now that I lived in the Barra, driving on that avenue was a nuisance. She sat mutely beside me. What could be going through her head? That I was street smart and had tumbled to her story about an operation, but that the scam she had pulled on me wasn't enough to repair the error she had committed by selling me the book? Or maybe that I was a generous guy who had put an end to her difficulties? Or—?

“How many commissioned books have you written?”

“This was the first. I mean, I've always written since I was a girl, but I tore them up.”

“The first? We could write another. What do you think?”

“I don't know. I don't want to do it anymore.”

“Regrets?”

“Something like that.”

The houses were becoming less frequent, and we drove along a dark deserted highway. I pondered about a way to solve my perplexity once and for all. In case of doubt, don't hesitate. That's how you make money. I could grab her by the neck, strangle her and dump her body by the beach. But that wasn't how I did business. Buying and selling, that's something I understand.

“Look,” I said, “I can't let you go without settling our matter.”

“I thought we'd already done that.”

In the dark Maria José wasn't so plain. For some moments I imagined what she would look like in Gisela's clothes. There are those who say that to be elegant a woman has to have slim legs.

“We won't settle the matter just yet. I'm going to tell you how the story can have a happy ending.”

I spoke for half an hour. She listened in silence.

“Well?” I asked.

“I never could have expected that you—that someone would propose that to me … I never—When I was a girl, boys didn't look at me, later, men didn't look at me … You just met me today, how is it that—”

“Symbiosis,” I said.

She lit a cigarette, and examined my eyes by the light from the match.

“I know you'll be patient and delicate with me. Symbiosis,” she said.

“Then we agree. One question: were you really going to have an operation? A man and a woman have to trust one another.”

I heard her answer, and the answer wasn't very important.

It's complicated having two mistresses. Logistical problems. Not forgetting the woman you married, she has to enter into the things you do with the others, and those things are many: there's the distribution of endearments and laughter, you can't do without that, and then there's the buying of jewels, which is easy, it's enough for a jewel to be very expensive for it to be appreciated, and there's the buying of clothes, which is very complicated—some like to show their legs, others like to show their breasts—and there are visits to friends, which is even more convoluted; certain friends can't meet certain other friends, and then there are trips, it always happens that all three like the same city that you hate, and the premiere on Friday of the musical all of them want to go to, and there's the confidential and embarrassing visit to the gynecologist that you can't get out of, and there's the painter and the carpenter and the electrician, women love remodeling, and there's the decorator and the relatives, I shudder just thinking of the relatives, and even if you manage to set up all these things in perfect order, like a tile roof or the scales of a fish, so as to let the water flow without making puddles or getting swept into the whirlpool, you're going to have to program your life the way a general plans a war.

I came to an agreement with Gisela; I don't like to see anyone suffer.

Maria José stopped smoking and her teeth are no longer so yellow.

The new book is almost completely written. It's going to be even better than the first.

Success, that's something I understand.

FLUTTERING LOCKS OF REDDISH HAIR
whipped by the wind and rain, smooth and radiant skin, she is Botticelli's Venus walking down the street. (The one in the Uffizi, born from a seashell, not the one in the Staatliche Museen, with a black background, which is similar but has dry hair arranged around the head, descending evenly down the body.)

Don't think that I boast any extraordinary perspicacity, but the fact is that if the woman I observe is as motionless as a statue, I can still tell the rhythm of her steps when she moves. I understand not only muscles, but also skeletons and, according to the symmetry of the bone structure, can predict the articulation of the ankles, knees, and ilium, which determine the rhythm of the body's movement.

Venus walks unbothered by the rain, sometimes turning her head toward the sky to wet her face even more, and I can say without the slightest poetic stuffiness that it's the walk of a goddess.

I have to create an elaborate strategy to get close to her and achieve what I need, a difficult task, as women, at first contact, feel repulsion towards me.

I follow her to where she lives. I watch the building for several days. Venus likes to walk in the streets and to sit in the square near her home, reading. But she stops all the time, looks at people, especially children, or else feeds the pigeons, which in a way disappoints me; pigeons, like rats, roaches, ants and termites, don't need any help. They'll be around after bacteria finally put an end to us.

Looking at her from a distance, I am more and more impressed by the harmony of her body, the perfect balance among the parts that make up her wholeness—the extension of the members in relation to the vertical dimension of the thorax; the length of her neck in relation to the face and head; the narrowness of her waist in combination with the firmness of the buttocks and chest. I need to approach this woman as soon as possible. I'm racing against time.

On a day with heavy rain, I sit beside her under the downpour, on a bench in the square. I have to find out right away if she likes to talk.

“Too bad the rain doesn't allow reading today,” I say.

She doesn't answer.

“That's why you didn't bring a book.”

She pretends not to hear.

I insist: “He makes the sun shine on the good and the bad, and sends the rain on the just and the unjust.”

The woman then stares at me quickly, but I keep my gaze on her forehead.

“Are you talking to me?”

“God makes it rain on the just and the—” (My eyes on her forehead.)

“Ah, you were speaking of God.”

She gets up. Standing, she knows she's in a favorable position to thwart the advances of an intruder.

“Don't take it wrong. I saw that you must be one of those evangelicals looking to save souls for Jesus, but don't waste your time; I'm a lost cause.”

I follow her as she walks slowly away.

“I'm not a Protestant pastor. In fact, I doubt you can guess what I do.”

“I'm very good at that. But I don't have time today; I have to get to an art exhibit.”

Her voice displays less displeasure. She possesses the virtue of curiosity, which is very good for me. And another essential quality as well: she likes to talk. That's even better.

I offer to accompany her and, after a slight hesitation, she agrees. We walk, with her a short distance away from me as if we weren't together. I try to be as inconspicuous as possible.

At the exhibit there is a single attendant, sitting at a table, filing her nails. Negrinha, my current lover, says that women who file their nails in public have trouble thinking, and filing their nails helps them reflect better, like those women who reason more clearly while removing blackheads from their nose in front of the mirror.

While I look at the paintings with studied indifference, I say to her, “Avant-garde from the last century, spontaneous abstract vestiges, subconscious, sub-Kadinski; I prefer a Shakespearean sonnet.”

She doesn't reply.

“I'm trying to impress you.”

“It wasn't enough, but mentioning poetry helped a little. I'd like to understand poetry.”

Poetry isn't to be understood; poetry is no pharmaceutical instruction sheet. I'm not going to tell her that, not for the time being.

“How about getting an espresso?” she asks.

I look for a place where we can sit. Being taller than I, Venus makes my hump look larger when we're standing side by side.

“Now I'm going to find out what you do,” she says, appearing to be amused by the situation. “You do something, don't you? Don't tell me, let me guess. Well, we already know you're not a Protestant pastor, and you're not a teacher; teachers have dirty fingernails. Lawyers wear ties. Not a stock broker, obviously not. Maybe a systems analyst, that hunched-over position in front of the computer … Uh … Sorry.”

If I had looked in her eyes, what would I have seen when she referred to the spinal column of a guy bent over in front of the computer? Horror, pity, scorn? Now do you understand why I avoid, in the initial contacts, reading their eyes? True, I might have seen only curiosity, but I prefer not to risk glimpsing something that could undermine my audacity.

“And you, do you know what I do?”

“Clean nails without polish. You like to read on a park bench. You like getting wet in the rain. You have one foot larger than the other. You want to understand about poetry. You're lazy. Disturbing signs.”

“Does it show?”

“You could be a photographer's model.”

“Does it show?”

“Or an idle, frustrated housewife who goes to a fitness center where she does dance, stretching, bodybuilding, specific exercises to strengthen the gluteus. The, the—”

“The ass. Is that the word you're looking for? What about the ass?”

“After the breasts, it's the part of the body most exposed to danger,” I add.

I'm a bit surprised at her naturalness in using that vulgar word in a conversation with someone she doesn't know, despite the fact that I know from long experience that no one employs euphemisms with hunchbacks. Or other niceties: it's common for people to belch and fart absentmindedly in my presence.

“Does it show?” she repeats.

“Or else it's none of that, and you have a bookbinding workshop in your house.”

“You didn't answer. Does it show?”

“What?”

“That I have one foot larger than the other?”

“Show me the palm of your hand. I see you're planning a trip. There's a person that has you concerned.”

“Right again. What's the trick?”

“Everyone has one foot larger than the other, is planning a trip, has somebody who makes life difficult for them.”

“It's my right foot.”

She extends her leg, shows her foot. She's wearing a flat leather shoe styled like a sneaker.

“But, anyway, what's my profession?”

“Bookbinding. A woman who works with books has special charm.”

“There you're wrong. I don't do anything. But you got one part right. I'm lazy. Is that one of my disturbing signs?”

“It's the main one,” I reply. “A famous poet felt laziness to be a delicious state, a sensation that relegated poetry, ambition, and love to a secondary plane. The other unique sign is enjoying reading on a park bench. And finally, liking to get wet in the rain.”

I don't tell her that lazy people suffer from the instinctive impulse to achieve something but don't know what. The fact of Venus being lazy was, to me, great luck. All the women I've seduced were lazy, dreaming of doing or learning something. But, especially, they enjoyed talking—speaking and listening—which in reality was what was most important. I'll get back to that.

“You're a professor of some kind; your clean fingernails threw me off.”

“You can call me professor.”

“All right, professor. And what about you? What're you going to call me? Lazy girl?”

“I already have a name for you. Venus.”

“Venus? Horrible.”

“Your Venus is the one by Botticelli.”

“The painting? I can't remember what it's like anymore.”

“Just take a look in the mirror.”

“Silly flattery. Why is liking to get wet in the rain a disturbing sign?”

“That's something I'm not going to tell you today.”

“Here's the book. I couldn't read it in the rain,” she says, taking a book from the pocket of her raincoat. “Ciao.”

It was only then that I saw her blue eyes: neutral. She had already become accustomed to my appearance and, perhaps, managed to see that my face wasn't as ugly as my body.

That was our first meeting. Venus's liking poetry was going to help me, but if she appreciated music, or theater, or cinema, or the plastic arts it wouldn't change my strategy at all. Negrinha only liked music and wasn't a lot of trouble, as she liked to talk, especially to complain about the man who lived with her before me, who only spoke of practical things—short-, medium- and long-range plans, schedules, notes in appointment books, errands, cost-benefit analysis of expenses, whether for a trip or buying a garlic press, and when she wanted to talk about some other topic, he simply didn't hear.

Besides being a good listener, I can say interesting things, trivia from almanacs as well as more profound things that I've learned from books. I've spent my life reading and becoming informed. While others were kicking balls around, dancing, dating, strolling, driving cars or motorcycles, I was at home convalescing from failed operations and reading. I've learned a lot; I've deduced, thought, verified, discovered. I've become a bit prolix, it's true. But I grew, during my martyrdom of shadows, by studying and planning how to reach my objectives.

A guy who's had twenty operations on his spine, one failure after the other, has to have, among his major virtues, that of persistence. I discover, through the doorman of the building where she lives, that Agnes is the name by which Venus is known in the world of mortals. I leave an envelope with a note for her at the reception desk in her building.

The note:
I suspect that you've read little poetry. You read the books in the park and skip pages. They must be short stories; no one reads poems that way. Lazy people like to read short stories; they finish one story on page twenty, then skip to the one on page forty, and in the end they read only part of the book. You need to read the poets, even if it's only in the manner of that crazy writer for whom books of poetry deserve to be read only a single time and then destroyed so that dead poets can yield way to the living ones and not leave them petrified. I can make you understand poetry, but you'll have to read the books I indicate. You need me, more than you need your mother or your Pomeranian. Here's my telephone number. P.S.: You're right; it's better to be named Agnes than Venus. Signed: The Professor.

To make a simpleton understand poetry! But she liked that literary genre, so the topic of our conversations would therefore be poetry. The things a hunchback is capable of doing to make a woman fall in love with him.

When I'm looking for a new girlfriend, the old one is discarded; I need to concentrate on the main objective. It was time to say good-bye to Negrinha.

Astutely, I write some obvious love poems to Agnes and leave them, on purpose, in the printer tray on the computer table, a place that Negrinha always pries into. She's all the time going through my things; she's very jealous.

Negrinha becomes furious when she discovers the poems. She curses me, utters hard words, which I answer gently. She beats against my chest and my hump, says that she loves me, that she hates me, while I respond with soft words. I read somewhere or other that in a separation it's the one who doesn't love that says affectionate things.

Truthfully, I was very interested in Negrinha until she fell in love with me. But I am not and never was in love with her, or with any other woman I've been involved with. I'm a hunchback: I don't need to fall in love with a woman, I need for some woman to fall in love with me—and then another woman, then another. I remember the pleasant moments I spent with Negrinha, in bed, talking, listening to music, and mixing our saliva. They say that this transparent liquid secreted by the salivary glands is tasteless and serves merely to fluidify food and facilitate ingestion and digestion, which only proves that people lack the sensitivity to perceive the taste of even their own saliva, and, worse yet, the necessary gustative subtlety to take delight in the taste of another person's saliva. When they mix, the two salivas acquire an ineffable flavor, comparable only to the nectar of mythology—an enzymatic mystery, like others in our body.

I'm sad at having made Negrinha suffer. But I'm a hunchback. Goodbye, Negrinha, your saliva was delectable and your green eyes possessed a luminous beauty.

It takes Agnes a week to reply to my letter.

Her note:
I do need my Pomeranian, but I don't need my mother, maybe her checkbook. I'm going to stop by there.

When Agnes arrives, I'm already prepared to receive her. How does a hunchback prepare to receive a beautiful woman who must be arduously induced to give herself to him? By making plans beforehand—all the contingencies, as is the essence of planning; remaining calm, as we must when we receive the surgeon or the plumber come to fix the toilet in the bathroom; wearing loose clothing and sticking out the chest; remaining alert so that our face always appears benign and our gaze permanently gentle. A distracted hunchback, even if not Quasimodesque but having a good-looking face, as in my case, always exhibits a sinister mien.

Agnes comes in and observes the living room with a keen feminine eye. I've been living here for only a year; I move constantly, and my living room, despite being elegantly furnished, has something vaguely incomplete about it, as if it lacked light fixtures, furniture with no function, and other useless ornaments that result from the prolonged occupation of domestic spaces. The fine wooden bookcases—which hold my books,
CDS
, and
DVDS
of film, music, opera, and the plastic arts and always go with me when I change residences—are modular and easily disassembled.