The Winner Stands Alone

by Paulo Coelho; Margaret Jull Costa

  “And then along comes someone like me, with a good script and enough money, plus I want them to be in my film. They accept and have enough talent to play the parts I give them and enough intelligence to know that even if the film doesn’t turn out to be a huge success, at least they will still have a presence on the screen and be seen to be working as mature actresses, and who knows, that might spark the interest of another producer.”

  Igor is also aware that the girls are listening to their conversation.

  “Perhaps we should go for a walk,” he says quietly. “There’s no privacy here. I know a place where we can be alone and watch the sun go down; it’s beautiful.”

  That’s precisely what she needs at this moment—an invitation to go for a walk! To see the sunset, even though it’ll be quite some time before the sun goes down! He’s not one of those vulgar types who says: “Let’s go up to my room for a moment, I need to change my shoes” and “Nothing will happen, I promise,” and who, once they’re in his room, will say as he tries to make a grab for her: “I have contacts and I know just the people you need to talk to.”

  To be honest, she wouldn’t mind being kissed by this seemingly charming man. She knows absolutely nothing about him, of course, but the elegance with which he’s seducing her is something she won’t forget in a long time.

  They get up from the table, and he asks for the drinks to be put on his tab (so, she thinks, he’s staying at the Martinez!). When they reach the Boulevard de la Croisette, he suggests they turn to the left.

  “There are fewer people in that direction; besides, the view should be even better, with the sun setting behind the hills.”

  “Igor, who are you?”

  “A good question,” he says. “I’d like to know the answer to that one myself.”

  Another point in his favor. He doesn’t immediately launch into some spiel about how rich and intelligent and talented he is. He simply wants to watch the sunset with her, that’s all. They walk to the end of the beach in silence, passing all kinds of different people—older couples who seem to inhabit another world, quite oblivious to the Festival; young people on roller skates, wearing tight clothes and listening to iPods; street vendors with their merchandise set out on a mat, the ends of which have string looped through them so that at the first sign of a policeman, they can transform their “shop window” into a bag; there’s even an area that seems to have been cordoned off by the police for some reason—after all, it’s only a bench. She notices that her companion keeps looking behind him, as if he were expecting someone, but he’s probably just spotted an acquaintance.

  They walk along a pier where the boats partially conceal the beach from view, and they finally find an isolated spot. They sit down on a comfortable bench with a backrest. They’re completely alone. Well, why would anyone else come to a place where there’s nothing to do? She’s in an excellent mood.

  “It’s lovely here! Do you know why God decided to rest on the seventh day?”

  Igor doesn’t understand the question, but she proceeds to explain anyway:

  “Because on the seventh day, before he’d finished work and left the world in a perfect state for human beings, a group of producers from Hollywood came over to him and said: ‘Don’t you worry about the rest! We’ll take care of providing the Technicolor sunset, the special storm effects, the perfect lighting, and the right sound equipment so that whenever Man hears the waves, he’ll think it’s the real sea!’”

  She laughs to herself. The man beside her is looking more serious now.

  “You asked me who I am,” he says.

  “I’ve no idea who you are, but you obviously know the city well. And I have to say, it was real luck meeting you like that. In just one day, I’ve experienced, hope, despair, loneliness, and the pleasure of finding a new companion. That’s a lot of emotions.”

  He takes something out of his pocket; it looks like a wooden tube less than six inches long.

  “The world’s a dangerous place,” he says. “It doesn’t matter where you are, you’re always at risk of being approached by people who have no scruples about attacking, destroying, killing. And we never learn how to defend ourselves. We’re all in the hands of those more powerful than us.”

  “You’re right. I suppose that wooden tube is your way of fending them off.”

  He twists the upper part of the tube. As delicately as a painter putting the final touch to a masterpiece, he removes the lid. It isn’t in fact a lid, but the head of what looks like a long nail. The sun glitters on the metal blade.

  “You wouldn’t get through airport security carrying that in your case,” she says, and laughs.

  “No, I wouldn’t.”

  Maureen feels that she’s with a man who is polite, handsome, doubtless wealthy, but who is also capable of protecting her from all dangers. She has no idea what the crime statistics are for Cannes, but it’s as well to think of everything. That’s what men are for: to think of everything.

  “Of course, you need to know exactly how to use it. It may be made of steel, but because it’s so thin it’s also very fragile and too small to cause any real damage. If you don’t use it with great precision, it won’t work.”

  He places the blade level with Maureen’s ear. Her initial reaction is one of fear, soon replaced by excitement.

  “This would be one of the ideal places, for example. Any higher, and the cranial bones would block the blow, any lower, and the vein in the neck would be cut; the person might die, but would also be able to fight back. If he was armed, he could shoot me, especially at such close range.”

  The blade slides slowly down her body. It passes over her breast, and Maureen realizes that he’s trying both to shock and to arouse her.

  “I had no idea someone working in telecommunications could know so much about killing, but from what you say, killing someone with that blade is quite a complicated business.”

  This is her way of saying: “I’m interested in what you’re telling me. I find you really fascinating. But please, just take my hand and let’s go and watch the sunset together.”

  The blade slides over her breast, but does not stop there. Nevertheless, it’s enough to make her feel aroused. It stops just under her arm.

  “Here I’m on a level with your heart. It’s protected by a natural barrier, the rib cage. In a fight, it would be impossible to injure someone with this blade. It would almost certainly hit a rib, and even if it did penetrate the body, the wound wouldn’t bleed enough to weaken your enemy. He might not even feel the blow. But right here, it would be fatal.”

  What is she doing in this isolated spot with a complete stranger talking about such a macabre subject? Just then, she feels a kind of electric shock that leaves her paralyzed. His hand has driven the blade inside her body. She feels at first as if she were suffocating and tries to breathe, but then immediately loses consciousness.

  Igor puts his arms around her, as he had with his first victim. This time, though, he positions her body so that she remains sitting. He then puts on some gloves and makes her head drop forward onto her chest.

  If anyone ventures into that corner of the beach, all they will see is a woman sleeping, exhausted perhaps from chasing after producers and distributors at the Festival.

  THE BOY LURKING BEHIND THE old warehouse—where he often hides so as to masturbate while he watches canoodling couples—is now furiously phoning the police. He saw everything. At first, he thought it was some kind of joke, but the man really did stick that blade into the woman! He’ll have to wait for the police to arrive before leaving his hiding place. That madman could return at any moment and then he would be lost.

  IGOR THROWS THE BLADE INTO the sea and walks back to the hotel. This time, his victim had chosen death. When she joined him, he’d been sitting alone on the terrace, wondering what to do next and thinking about the past. He never imagined she would agree to go for a walk to such an isolated spot with a complete stranger, but she did. She could have run away w
hen he started showing her the different places where the blade would cause a mortal wound, but she didn’t.

  A police car passes, driving along the side of the road closed to the public. He decides to watch where it goes and, to his surprise, he sees it drive onto the pier where no one seems to go during the Festival period. It had been as empty that morning as it had this afternoon, even though it was the best place from which to see the sunset. A few seconds later, an ambulance passes with its deafening siren blaring and its lights flashing. It, too, heads for the pier.

  He keeps walking, sure of one thing: someone must have witnessed the murder. But how would that someone describe him? A man with grayish hair, wearing jeans, a white shirt, and a black jacket. That possible witness would help the police make an Identi-Kit picture, a process that would not only take time, but lead them to the conclusion that there are tens or maybe thousands of men who look just like him.

  Ever since he tried to give himself up to that policeman and was sent back to his hotel, he has felt sure that no one would be able to interrupt his mission. The doubts he feels now are of a different nature: is Ewa worth the sacrifices he’s offering up to the universe? When he arrived in Cannes, he had felt sure she was; now, though, something else is filling his soul: the spirit of the little street vendor with her dark eyebrows and innocent smile.

  “We are all part of the divine spark,” she seems to be saying. “We all have a purpose in creation and that purpose is called Love. That love, however, shouldn’t be concentrated in just one person, it should be scattered throughout the world, waiting to be discovered. Wake up to that love. What is gone cannot return. What is about to arrive needs to be recognized.”

  He struggles against the idea that perhaps we only discover that a plan is wrong when we take it to its ultimate consequences, or when all-merciful God leads us in another direction.

  He looks at his watch: he still has another twelve hours in Cannes, time enough before he gets on the plane with the woman he loves and goes back to…

  …goes back to what? To his work in Moscow after everything he has experienced, suffered, thought, planned? Or to find rebirth through his victims and choose absolute freedom and discover the person he didn’t know he was, and from then on do all the things he had dreamed of doing when he was still with Ewa?

  4:34 P.M.

  Jasmine is sitting staring out at the sea while she smokes a cigarette and thinks of nothing. At such moments, she feels a deep connection with the infinite, as if it were not she who was there, but something more powerful, something capable of extraordinary things.

  SHE REMEMBERS AN OLD STORY she once read.

  Nasrudin appeared at court wearing a magnificent turban and asking for money for charity.

  “You come here asking for money and yet you’re wearing an extremely expensive turban on your head. How much did that extraordinary thing cost?” asked the sultan.

  “It was a gift from someone very rich. And it’s worth, I believe, five hundred gold coins,” replied the wise Sufi.

  The sultan’s minister muttered: “That’s impossible. No turban could possibly be worth that much.”

  Nasrudin insisted:

  “I didn’t come here only to beg, I also came to do business. I know that only a true sovereign would be capable of buying this turban for six hundred gold coins so that I could give the surplus to the poor.”

  The sultan was flattered and paid what Nasrudin asked. On the way out, Nasrudin said to the minister:

  “You may know the value of a turban, but I know how far a man’s vanity will take him.”

  And that’s what the world around her is like. She has nothing against her profession, she doesn’t judge people by their desires, but she knows what’s really important in life and wants to keep her feet on the ground, even though there are temptations at every turn.

  Someone opens the door and says there’s just half an hour before the show begins. The worst part of the day, the long period of tedium that precedes any fashion show, is coming to an end. The other girls put down their iPods and their phones; the makeup artists do any necessary retouching; the hairdressers comb back into place any stray locks.

  Jasmine sits in front of the dressing room mirror and lets them get on with their work.

  “Don’t be nervous just because it’s Cannes,” says the makeup artist.

  “I’m not nervous.”

  Why should she be? On the contrary, whenever she steps onto a catwalk, she feels a kind of ecstasy, a surge of adrenaline. The makeup artist seems in a mood to talk, and tells her about the many celebrity wrinkles she has smoothed, suggests a new face cream, says she’s tired of her job, asks if Jasmine has a spare ticket to a party that night. Jasmine listens to all this with infinite patience. In her mind she’s back in the streets of Antwerp on the day she decided to get in touch with the two photographers who had approached her earlier. She had met with a slight initial difficulty, but it had all worked out in the end.

  As it would today and as it had then, when—along with her mother, who, eager for her daughter to recover from her depression as quickly as possible, had agreed to go with her—she rang the bell of the first photographer, the one who had stopped her in the street. The door opened to reveal a small room with a transparent table covered in photographic negatives, another table, on which sat a computer, and a kind of drawing board piled with papers. With the photographer was a woman of about forty, who looked at her long and hard, before smiling and introducing herself as the events coordinator. Then the four of them sat down.

  “I’m sure your daughter has a great future as a model,” said the woman.

  “Oh, I’m just here to keep her company,” said Jasmine’s mother. “If you have anything to say, speak directly to her.”

  The woman, slightly taken aback, paused for a few seconds, then picked up a card and started noting down details and measurements, saying:

  “Of course, Cristina isn’t a good name for a model. It’s too ordinary. The first thing we need to do is to change that.”

  “There’s another reason why Cristina isn’t a good name,” Jasmine was thinking. Because it belonged to a girl who had ceased to exist when she witnessed a murder and denied what her eyes now refused to forget. When she decided to change everything, she began with the name she’d been called ever since she was a child. She needed to change everything, absolutely everything. She had her answer ready.

  “My professional name is Jasmine Tiger—a combination of sweetness and danger.”

  The woman seemed to like the name.

  “A career in modeling isn’t an easy one, and you’re lucky to have been picked out to take the first step. Obviously, there are a lot of things to sort out, but we’re here to help you get to where you want to be. We take photos of you and send them to the appropriate agencies. You’ll also need a composite.”

  She waited for Cristina to ask: “What’s a composite?” But no question came. Again the woman was temporarily thrown.

  “A composite, as I’m sure you know, is a sheet of paper with, on the one side, your best photo and your measurements, and, on the other, more photos in different poses, for example, in a bikini, dressed as a student, perhaps one of just your face, another that shows you wearing more makeup, so that they won’t necessarily exclude you if they want someone older. Your bust…”

  Another pause.

  “…your bust is perhaps a little large for a model.”

  She turned to the photographer.

  “We need to disguise that. Make a note.”

  The photographer duly made a note. Cristina—who was rapidly becoming Jasmine Tiger—was thinking: “But when they meet me, they’ll see I’ve got a bigger bust than they were expecting!”

  The woman picked up a handsome leather briefcase and took out a list.

  “We’ll need to call a makeup artist and a hairdresser. You haven’t any experience on a catwalk, have you?”

  “None.”

  “Well, yo
u don’t stride down a catwalk as if you were walking down the street. If you did, you’d stumble because you’d be moving too fast or else trip over your high heels. You have to place one foot in front of the other, like a cat. You mustn’t smile too much either. Even more important is posture.”

  She ticked off three things on the list.

  “And you’ll have to hire some clothes.”

  Another tick.

  “And I think that’s all for now.”

  She again put her hand inside the elegant briefcase and took out a calculator. She went down the list, tapped in a few numbers, then added them up. No one else in the room dared utter a word.

  “That will be around two thousand euros, I think. We won’t include the photos because Yasser”—she turned to the photographer—“is very expensive, but he’s prepared to do the work for free, as long as you give him permission to use the material. We can have the makeup artist and the hairdresser here tomorrow morning and I’ll get in touch with the people who run the course to see if there’s a vacancy. I’m sure there will be, just as I’m sure that by investing in yourself, you’re creating new possibilities for your future and will soon recover any initial expenses.”

  “Are you saying I have to pay?”

  Again the “events coordinator” seemed taken aback. Usually, the girls who came to see her were so mad keen to realize the dream of a whole generation—being considered one of the sexiest women in the world—that they never asked indelicate questions like that.

  “Listen, Cristina…”

  “Jasmine. The moment I walked through that door, I became Jasmine.”

  The photographer’s mobile phone rang. He took it out of his pocket and moved away to the far end of the room, which had, until then, been in darkness. When he drew one of the curtains, Jasmine saw a wall draped with a black cloth, tripods mounted with flashes, boxes with blinking lights, and several spotlights suspended from the ceiling.