The Winner Stands Alone

by Paulo Coelho; Margaret Jull Costa

  Then he phones someone and asks for the number of a hotel room. He repeats it out loud, looking at her.

  It was just as she imagined—a hotel room.

  He switches off his phone.

  “When you leave here, go straight to this suite at the Hilton. That’s where Hamid Hussein’s clothes are on display. You’ve been invited to tonight’s party in Cap d’Antibes.”

  It wasn’t at all as she imagined. The part was hers. And she would be going to a party in Cap d’Antibes, a party in Cap d’Antibes!

  He turns to the Star.

  “What do you think?”

  “I think we should hear what she has to say.”

  Gibson nods and makes a gesture meaning “Tell us a little about yourself.” Gabriela starts with the drama course she took and the advertisements she’s appeared in. She notices that the two men are no longer listening. They must have heard the same story thousands of times. And yet she can’t stop, she’s talking faster and faster, feeling that she has nothing more to say and that this chance of a lifetime depends on finding just the right word, which she is patently failing to do. She takes a deep breath and tries to appear at ease; she wants to seem witty and so she makes a joke, but she’s incapable of departing from the script her agent taught her to follow in such interviews.

  After two minutes, Gibson interrupts her.

  “That’s great, but we know all that from your CV. Why don’t you talk about you?”

  Some inner barrier suddenly crumbles. Instead of panicking, her voice grows calmer and steadier.

  “I’m just one of millions of people in the world who have always dreamed of being on a yacht like this, looking at the sea, and talking about the possibility of working with at least one of you gentlemen. And you both know that. I doubt there’s anything else I might say that will change anything very much. Am I single? Yes. But as is the case with all single women, there’s a man back home who’s madly in love with me and is waiting for me in Chicago right now, hoping that things here will all go horribly wrong.”

  Both men laugh, and she relaxes a little more.

  “I want to get as far as I can, although I know I’m almost at the limit of what’s possible, given that in the world of movies, my age is already against me. I know there are lots of people out there with as much or more talent than me, but I was chosen—why I don’t know—and I’ve decided to run with it. This might be my last chance, and perhaps the fact that I’m saying this now will decrease my value, but I have no choice. All my life, I’ve imagined a moment like this: doing an audition, getting chosen, and being able to work with real professionals. It’s finally happened. If it goes no further than this meeting and I return home empty-handed, at least I know I got here because of two qualities: integrity and perseverance.

  “I’m my own best friend and my own worst enemy. Before coming here, I was thinking that I didn’t deserve it, that I wouldn’t be able to meet your expectations, and that you had probably chosen the wrong candidate. At the same time, my heart was telling me that I was being rewarded because I hadn’t given up and had fought to the end.”

  She looks away and suddenly feels an intense desire to cry, but controls herself because that might be seen as emotional blackmail. The Star’s mellow voice breaks the silence.

  “There are honest people in the movie world, people who value professionalism, just as there are in any industry. That’s why I’ve got where I am today, and the same with our director here. I’ve been through exactly what you’re going through now. We know how you feel.”

  Her whole life passes before her eyes. All the years of seeking without finding, of knocking on doors that wouldn’t open, of asking and never getting an answer and being met with blank indifference, as if she didn’t exist. All the nos she had heard when no one even seemed to notice she was alive and at least deserved a response.

  “I mustn’t cry.”

  She thinks about all the people who have told her over the years that she’s chasing an impossible dream and who, if this turned out right, would be sure to say: “I always knew you had talent!” Her lips start to tremble. It’s as if all these thoughts were suddenly flowing out of her heart. She’s glad to have had the guts to show that she’s human and frail and that being chosen has made a huge difference to her soul. If Gibson were now to change his mind about her, she could take the launch back to shore with no regrets. At the moment of battle, she had shown real courage.

  She depends on other people. It’s taken her a long time to learn this lesson, but she’s finally accepted that it’s true. She knows people who are proud of their emotional independence, although the truth is they’re as fragile as she is and weep in private and never ask for help. They believe in the unwritten rule that says, “The world is for the strong” and “Only the fittest survive.” If that were true, human beings would never have survived because, as a species, we require care and protection for several years. Her father once told her that we only acquire some ability to survive alone by the age of nine, whereas a giraffe takes a mere five hours and a bee achieves independence in less than five minutes.

  “What are you thinking?” asks the Star.

  “That I don’t need to pretend I’m strong, which is an enormous relief. I used to have a lot of problems with relationships because I thought I knew better than anyone else how to get where I wanted. All my boyfriends hated me for this, and I couldn’t understand why. Once, though, when I was on tour with a play, I came down with the most terrible flu and couldn’t leave my room, even though I was terrified that someone else would take my part. I couldn’t eat, I was delirious with fever, and eventually they called a doctor, who ordered me home. I thought I had lost both my job and the respect of my colleagues. But that wasn’t the case at all: they showered me with flowers and phone calls. They all wanted to know how I was. Suddenly, I realized that the people I believed to be my rivals, competing for the same place in the spotlight, were really concerned about me. One of the other actresses sent me a card on which she’d written the words of a doctor who went abroad to work in some far-off country. He wrote:

  “‘We’ve all heard about an illness in Central Africa called sleeping sickness. What we should also know is that a similar disease exists that attacks the soul. It’s very dangerous because the early stages often go unnoticed. At the first sign of indifference or lack of enthusiasm, take note! The only preventive against this disease is the realization that the soul suffers, suffers greatly, when we force it to live superficially. The soul loves all things beautiful and deep.’”

  WORDS. THE STAR THINKS OF his favorite line from a poem, one that he learned when still at school, and which frightens him more and more as time passes: “You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard.” Choosing is perhaps the most difficult thing any human being has to do. As the actress tells her story, he sees his own experiences being reflected back at him.

  He remembers his first big chance, which he won thanks to his talent as a theater actor. He remembers how his life changed from one minute to the next, and the fame that overtook him so fast that he didn’t really have time to adapt and ended up accepting invitations to places he shouldn’t have gone to and rejecting meetings with people who would have helped him go much further in his career. Then there was the money he earned, which wasn’t actually that much, but which gave him a sense that he could do anything; there were the expensive presents, the forays into an unfamiliar world, the private planes, the five-star restaurants, and the hotel suites that resembled the palatial rooms of kings and queens as imagined by a child. There were the first reviews, full of respect and praise and words that touched his heart and soul; there were the letters that flooded in from around the world and which he used to answer individually, even arranging to meet some of the women who sent him their photos, until he realized that he simply couldn’t keep up that pace, and his agent terrified him by warning him that he could easily become the victim o
f some entrapment. Nevertheless, even now he still gets a special pleasure out of meeting the fans who have followed every step of his career, who create Web pages devoted to his work, distribute little magazines describing everything that’s going on in his life—the positive things, that is—and defend him against any attacks in the press, when some performance of his doesn’t receive the praise it deserves.

  And with the passing years, what had once seemed a miracle or the luckiest of chances and which he had always promised himself he would never become enslaved by, has gradually become his sole reason to go on living. Then he looks ahead and feels a twinge of anxiety that it all might end one day. There were always younger actors prepared to accept less money in exchange for more work and more visibility. He’s noticed that people talk only about the great film that propelled him to fame and which everyone knows about, even though he’s made another ninety-nine films since that no one really remembers.

  The financial conditions are no longer the same either because he made the initial mistake of thinking he would always have work and forced his agent to keep his fee very high. As a result, he got fewer and fewer offers, even though now he charges only half his normal fee to appear in a film. Feelings of despair are beginning to stir in a world which, up until then, had been made up entirely of the hope that he would get ever farther, ever higher, and ever more quickly. He cannot allow himself to lose his value just like that, and so now, whenever a script arrives, regardless of its quality, he has to say that he really loves the part they’re offering him and that he is willing to do it even if they’re unable to offer him his usual fee. The producers pretend to believe him, and his agent pretends that he’s managed to pull the wool over their eyes, but he knows that his “product” needs to keep being seen at festivals like this one, always busy, always polite, always slightly distant, as movie legends should be.

  His press officer has suggested that he should be photographed kissing a famous actress so that the resulting photo can appear on the cover of one of the scandal rags. They’ve already been in contact with the actress in question, who is also in need of a little extra publicity, so now it’s simply a matter of choosing the right moment during tonight’s gala supper. The clinch should appear spontaneous, although they’ll have to be sure there’s a photographer nearby, without, of course, seeming to be aware that they’re being watched. Later on, when the photos are published, they’ll hit the headlines again, denying any love interest and declaring that the photo was an invasion of privacy; lawyers will start legal proceedings against the magazines, and the press officers of both parties will do their best to keep the affair alive for as long as possible.

  Despite his many years of work and despite being internationally famous, his situation is not so very different from that of this young actress.

  You would have to give up all else, I alone would expect to be your sole and exclusive standard.

  GIBSON INTERRUPTS THE THIRTY-SECOND SILENCE that has fallen upon this perfect scene: the yacht, the sun, the iced drinks, the cries of the seagulls, the cooling breeze.

  “I assume you’d like to know about the role you’ll be playing because the title of the film could change between now and its première. Well, you’ll be playing opposite him.”

  And he indicates the Star.

  “That is, you’ll be playing one of the principal roles. Your next question, logically enough, must be: why me and not some big-name movie star?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Money. For the script I’ve been asked to direct, and which will be the first film produced by Hamid Hussein, we have a very limited budget, half of which will go on promotion rather than on the final product. So we need a big name to pull in the crowds and a complete unknown, who’ll be cheap, but will get lots of media attention. This isn’t anything new. Ever since the movie industry became a force in the world, the studios have always done this in order to keep alive the idea that fame and money are synonymous. I remember, when I was a boy, seeing those great Hollywood mansions and thinking that all actors must earn a fortune.

  “Well, it’s a lie. There are maybe ten or perhaps twenty stars worldwide who can honestly say that they do earn a fortune, the rest live on appearances: in a house rented by the studio, wearing clothes and jewelry lent by couturiers and jewelers, driving cars on short-term loan from companies who want their name to be associated with the high life. The studio pays for all that glamour, and the actors earn very little. This isn’t the case of our friend here, of course, but it will be with you.”

  THE STAR DOESN’T KNOW IF Gibson is being sincere and if he really does include him among the major stars, or if he’s just being sarcastic. Not that it matters, just as long as they sign the contract, the producer doesn’t change his mind at the last minute, the screenwriters manage to deliver the script on time, they keep strictly to the budget, and an excellent PR campaign is set in motion. He’s seen hundreds of projects come to nothing; that’s just a fact of life. However, his last film went almost unnoticed by the public, and he desperately needs a runaway success. And Gibson is in a position to produce just that.

  “I accept,” says the young woman.

  “We’ll discuss everything with your agent. You’ll sign an exclusive contract with us. For the first film, you’ll earn five thousand dollars a month for a year, and you’ll have to attend parties and be promoted by our PR department, go wherever we send you and say what we want you to and not what you think. Is that clear?”

  Gabriela nods. What could she say? A secretary in Europe could earn five thousand dollars a month, but it was either take it or leave it, and she doesn’t want to appear even a tiny bit hesitant. She understands the rules of the game.

  “So,” Gibson says, “you’ll be living like a millionairess and behaving like a big star, but always remember: none of that is true. If all goes well, we’ll increase your salary to ten thousand dollars for the next film. Then we’ll talk again because you’ll probably be thinking: ‘One day, I’ll get my revenge.’ Naturally, your agent has heard our terms and knows what to expect. Or perhaps you didn’t realize that.”

  “It doesn’t matter, and I have no intention of seeking revenge.”

  Gibson pretends not to have heard.

  “I didn’t call you here to talk about your test: it was great, the best I’ve seen in a long time. The casting director thought the same. I called you here to make sure you understand, from the start, just what you’re getting into. After their first film, when they feel like the world is at their feet, a lot of actresses or actors want to change the rules. But they’ve signed contracts and know that’s impossible. Then they fall into a kind of black depression, go into auto-destruct mode, that kind of thing. So our policy now is to set out plainly how it’s going to be. If you’re successful, you’ll have to learn to live with two women: one of them will be adored by people around the world, while the other will be constantly aware that she has no power at all.

  “So, before you go to the Hilton to collect your clothes for the night, think long and hard about the consequences. When you enter that hotel suite, you’ll find four copies of a vast contract waiting for you. Before you sign it, the world is yours and you can do what you like with your life, but the moment you sign, you’re no longer the mistress of anything. We will control everything from the way you cut your hair to where you eat, even if you’re not hungry. Obviously you can use your new-won fame to earn money from advertising, which is why people accept these conditions.”

  The two men get up. Gibson asks the Star:

  “Do you think you’ll enjoy acting with her?”

  “She’ll be great. She showed real feeling in a situation where most people are simply trying to look competent.”

  “Oh, and, by the way, don’t go thinking this yacht is mine,” says Gibson, after calling someone to accompany her to the launch that will return her to shore.

  She gets the message.

  3:44 P.M.

  “Let’s go u
p to the terrace and have a coffee,” says Ewa.

  “But the show starts in only an hour from now, and you know what the traffic’s like.”

  “There’s still time for a cup of coffee.”

  They go up the stairs, turn right, and walk to the end of the corridor. The security guard there knows them already and barely acknowledges them. They walk past glass cases full of jewelry studded with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, and emerge into the sunlight on the first-floor terrace. The same very famous jewelry firm hires the area every year to receive friends, celebrities, and journalists. It’s furnished in the very best of taste, and there’s always a table groaning with a constantly replenished supply of delicacies. They sit down at a table shaded by a parasol. A waiter comes over, and they order a sparkling mineral water and an espresso. The waiter asks if they would like something from the buffet, but they decline, saying that they’ve already eaten. In less than two minutes, he’s back with their order.

  “Is everything all right?” he asks.

  “Yes, thank you, excellent.”

  “No,” thinks Ewa, “things couldn’t be worse, although at least the coffee’s good.”

  Hamid knows that something strange is going on with his wife, but prefers to leave that conversation for another time. He doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to risk hearing something along the lines of “I’m leaving you.” He is disciplined enough to control his feelings.

  At one of the other tables sits one of the most famous designers in the world, with his camera beside him. He’s staring into space, as if hoping to make it clear that he doesn’t want to be disturbed. No one approaches him, and whenever some ill-advised person attempts to do so, the hotel’s PR lady, a pleasant woman in her fifties, asks them politely to leave him alone; he needs a respite from the constant barrage of models, journalists, clients, and impresarios.