The Winner Stands Alone

by Paulo Coelho; Margaret Jull Costa

  The dress was all wrong. The woman and the androgyne are starting to get worried. The woman asks for two or three other dresses to be brought because Gabriela will be going up the steps with the Star, who is dressed and ready.

  Going up the steps with the Star! She must be dreaming!

  They decide on a long gold dress that clings to the body and has a neckline that plunges to the waist. At breast-height, a gold chain keeps the opening from getting any wider than the human imagination can bear.

  The woman is very nervous. The androgyne goes out and returns with a seamstress, who makes the necessary alterations to the hem. If Gabriela could say anything at that moment, it would be to ask them to stop. Sewing the dress while she is actually wearing it means that her fate is also being sewn up and interrupted. But this is no time for superstitions, and many famous actresses must face the same situation every day without anything bad ever happening to them.

  A third person arrives, carrying an enormous suitcase, goes over to one corner of the vast room, and starts dismantling the case, which is, in fact, a kind of portable makeup studio, including a mirror surrounded by lights. The androgyne is kneeling before her, like a repentant Mary Magdalene, trying shoe after shoe on her foot.

  She’s Cinderella and will shortly meet her Prince and go up the steps with him!

  “Those are good,” says the woman.

  The androgyne starts putting the other shoes back in their boxes.

  “OK, take it off. We’ll put the final touches to the dress while you’re having your hair and makeup done.”

  Gabriela feels relieved that they will no longer be sewing the dress while it is on her body. Her destiny opens up again.

  Wearing only a pair of panties, she is led to the bathroom. A portable kit for washing and drying hair has already been installed there, and a shaven-headed man is waiting. He asks her to sit down and lean her head back into a kind of steel basin. He uses a hose attached to the tap to wash her hair, and, like everyone else, he’s extremely agitated. He complains about the noise from outside; he needs quiet if he’s to do a decent job, but no one pays any attention. Besides, he never has enough time; everything’s always done in such a rush.

  “No one understands the enormous responsibility resting on my shoulders,” he says.

  He’s not talking to her, but to himself. He goes on:

  “When you go up the steps, they’re not looking at you, you know. They’re looking at my work, at my makeup and at my hairstyling. You’re just the canvas on which I paint or draw, the clay out of which I shape my sculptures. If I make a mistake, what will other people say? I could lose my job.”

  Gabriela feels offended, but she’s obviously going to have to get used to this kind of thing. That’s what the world of glamour is like. Later on, when she really is someone, she’ll choose kind, polite people to work with her. For now, she focuses on her main virtue: patience.

  The conversation is interrupted by the roar of the hair dryer, similar to that of a plane taking off. And he was the one complaining about the noise outside!

  He rather roughly primps her hair into shape and asks her to move straight over to the portable makeup studio. His mood changes completely: he stands in silence, contemplating her face in the mirror, as if he were in a trance. He paces back and forth, using the dryer and the brush much as Michelangelo used hammer and chisel on his sculpture of David. And she tries to keep looking straight ahead and remember some lines written by a Portuguese poet:

  The mirror reflects perfectly; it makes no mistakes because it doesn’t think. To think is to make mistakes.

  The androgyne and the woman return. In only twenty minutes the limousine will arrive to take her to the Martinez to pick up the Star. There’s nowhere to park there, so they have to be right on time. The hairdresser mutters to himself, as if he were a misunderstood artist, but he knows he has to meet those deadlines. He starts working on her face as if he were Michelangelo painting the Sistine Chapel.

  A limousine! The steps! The Star!

  The mirror reflects perfectly; it makes no mistakes because it doesn’t think.

  She mustn’t think either, because, if she does, she’ll be infected by the prevailing anxiety and bad temper; those negative vibes will come back. She would love to know just what it is, this hotel suite packed with all these different things, but she must behave as if she were used to frequenting such places. Beneath the severe gaze of the woman and the distracted gaze of the androgyne, Michelangelo is putting the finishing touches to her makeup. Gabriela then stands up and is swiftly dressed and shod. Everything is in place, thank God.

  From somewhere in the room, they grab a small leather Hamid Hussein bag. The androgyne opens it, removes some of the paper stuffing, studies the result with the same distracted air, and, when it appears to meet with his approval, hands it to her.

  The woman gives her four copies of a huge contract, with small red markers along the edge, bearing the words: “Sign here.”

  “You can either sign without reading it or take it home, phone your lawyer, and say you need more time to think before deciding. You’ll go up those steps regardless because it’s too late to change anything now. However, if this contract isn’t back here tomorrow morning, you just have to return the dress and that will be that.”

  She remembers her agent’s words: accept everything. Gabriela takes the pen the woman is holding out to her, turns to the pages with the markers, and signs everything. She has nothing to lose. If there are any unfair clauses, she can probably go to the courts later on and say she was pressured into signing. First, though, she has to do what she has always dreamed of doing.

  The woman takes the signed contract from her and vanishes without saying goodbye. Michelangelo is once again dismantling the makeup table, immersed in his own little world in which injustice rules, and in which his work is never recognized, where he never has enough time to do a proper job, and where, if anything goes wrong, the fault will be entirely his. The androgyne asks her to follow him to the door of the suite; he consults his watch—which, Gabriela notices, bears a death’s head—and speaks to her for the first time since they have met.

  “We’ve got another three minutes. You can’t go down now and be seen by other people. And I have to go with you to the limousine.”

  The tension returns. She’s no longer thinking about the limousine, about the Star, or going up those steps; she’s afraid. She needs to talk.

  “What’s this suite for? Why are there all these things in it?”

  “There’s even a safari to Kenya,” says the androgyne, pointing to one corner. She hadn’t noticed the discreet advertising banner for an airline and a small pile of envelopes on the table. “It’s free, like everything else in here, apart from the clothes and the accessories in the Temple.”

  Coffee machines, electronic gadgets, clothes, handbags, watches, jewelry, and a trip to Kenya.

  All of it absolutely free?

  “I know what you’re thinking,” says the androgyne in that voice which is neither male nor female, but the voice of some interplanetary being. “But it is all free, or, rather, given in fair exchange because nothing in this world is free. This is one of the many ‘Gift Rooms’ you get in Cannes during the Festival. The chosen few come in here and take whatever they want; they’re people who will be seen around wearing a shirt designed by A or some glasses by B, they’ll receive important guests in their home and, when the Festival’s over, go into their kitchen and prepare some coffee with a brand-new coffee machine. They’ll carry around their laptop in a bag made by C, recommend friends to use moisturizers by D, which are just about to be launched on the market, and they’ll feel important doing that because it means they’ll own something exclusive, which hasn’t yet reached the specialist shops. They’ll wear E’s jewelry to the swimming pool and be photographed wearing a belt by F, neither of which are yet available to the public. When these products do come on the market, the Superclass will already have done
their advertising for them, not because they want to, but because they’re the only ones who can. Then mere mortals will spend all their savings on buying the same products. What could be easier, sweetheart? The manufacturers invest in some free samples, and the chosen few are transformed into walking advertisements. But don’t get too excited. You haven’t reached those heights yet.”

  “But what has the safari to Kenya got to do with all that?”

  “What better publicity than a middle-aged couple arriving back all excited from their ‘jungle adventure’ with loads of pictures in their camera, and recommending everyone else to go on the same exclusive holiday? All their friends will want to experience the same thing. As I say, nothing in this world is free. By the way, the three minutes are up, so we’d better go.”

  A white Maybach is waiting for them. The chauffeur, in gloves and cap, opens the door. The androgyne gives her final instructions:

  “Forget about the film, that isn’t why you’re going up the steps. When you get to the top of the steps, greet the Festival director and the mayor, and then, as soon as you enter the Palais des Congrès, head for the restroom on the first floor. Go to the end of that corridor, turn left, and leave by a side door. Someone will be waiting for you there; they know how you’ll be dressed and will do some more work on your makeup and your hair, and then you can have a moment’s rest on the terrace. I’ll meet you there and take you to the gala supper.”

  “Won’t the director and the producers be annoyed?”

  The androgyne shrugs and goes back into the hotel with that strange swaying gait. The film is not of the slightest importance. What matters is la montée des marches, going up the red-carpeted steps to the Palais and along the ultimate corridor of fame, the place where all the celebrities in the worlds of cinema, the arts, and the high life are photographed, and their photos then distributed by news agencies to the four corners of the world to be published in magazines from west to east and from north to south.

  “Is the air-conditioning all right for you, madame?”

  She nods to the chauffeur.

  “If you want anything to drink, there’s a bottle of iced champagne in the cabinet to your left.”

  Gabriela opens the cabinet and gets out a glass; then, holding the bottle well away from her dress, she pops the cork and pours herself a glass of champagne which she downs in one and immediately refills. Outside, curious onlookers are trying to see who is inside the vast car with the smoked windows that is driving along the cordoned-off lane. Soon, she and the Star will be together, the beginning not just of a new career, but of an incredible, beautiful, intense love story.

  She’s a romantic and proud of it.

  She remembers that she left her clothes and her handbag in the Gift Room. She doesn’t have the key to the apartment she’s renting. She has nowhere to go when the night is over. If she ever writes a book about her life, how could she possibly tell the story of that particular day: waking up with a hangover, unemployed and in a bad mood, in an apartment with clothes and mattresses scattered all over the floor, and six hours later being driven along in a limousine, ready to walk along the red carpet in front of a crowd of journalists, beside one of the most desirable men in the world.

  Her hands are trembling. She considers drinking another glass of champagne, but decides not to risk turning up drunk on the steps of fame.

  “Relax, Gabriela. Don’t forget who you are. Don’t get carried away by everything that’s happening now. Be realistic.”

  She repeats these words over and over as they approach the Martinez. Whether she likes it or not, she can never go back to being the person she was before. There is no way out, except the one the androgyne told her about and which leads to a still higher mountain.

  4:52 P.M.

  Even the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, was tested as Igor is being tested now: being tempted by the Devil. And he needs to cling on tooth and nail to his faith if he’s not to weaken in the mission with which he has been charged.

  The Devil is asking him to stop, to forgive, to abandon his task. The Devil is a top-class professional and knows how to fill the weak with alarming feelings such as fear, anxiety, impotence, and despair.

  When it comes to tempting the strong, he uses more sophisticated lures: good intentions. It’s exactly what he did with Jesus when he found him wandering in the wilderness. Why, he asked, didn’t he command that the stones be made bread, so that he could satisfy not only his own hunger, but that of all the other people begging him for food? Jesus, however, acted with the wisdom one would expect of the Son of God. He replied that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word from God’s mouth.

  Besides, what exactly were good intentions, virtue, and integrity? The people who built the Nazi concentration camps thought they were showing integrity by obeying government orders. The doctors who certified as insane any intellectuals opposed to the Soviet regime and had them banished to Siberia were convinced that Communism was a fair system. Soldiers who go to war may kill in the name of an ideal they don’t properly understand, but they, too, are full of good intentions, virtue, and integrity.

  No, that’s not true. If sin achieves something good, it is a virtue, and if virtue is deployed to cause evil, it is a sin.

  IN HIS CASE, THE EVIL One is trying to use forgiveness as a way to trouble his soul. He says: “You’re not the only person to have been through this. Lots of people have been abandoned by the person they most loved, and yet managed to turn bitterness into happiness. Imagine the families of the people whom you have caused to depart this life; they’ll be filled with rancor and hatred and a desire for revenge. Is that how you intend to improve the world? Is that what you want to give to the woman you love?”

  Igor, however, is wiser than the temptations that seem to be possessing his soul. If he can hold out a little longer, that voice will grow tired and disappear. He thinks this largely because one of the people he sent to Paradise is becoming an ever more constant presence in his life. The girl with the dark eyebrows is telling him that everything is fine, and that there’s a great difference between forgiving and forgetting. He has no hatred in his heart, and he’s not doing this to have his revenge on the world.

  The Devil may insist all he likes, but he must stand firm and remember why he’s here.

  HE GOES INTO THE FIRST pizzeria he sees, and orders a pizza margharita and a Coke. It’s best to eat now because he won’t be able to—he never can—eat properly over supper with a lot of other people round the table. Everyone feels obliged to keep up an animated but relaxed conversation, and someone always seems to interrupt him just as he’s about to take a bite of the delicious food in front of him.

  His usual way of avoiding this is to bombard his companions at table with questions, then leave them to come up with intelligent responses while he eats his meal in peace. Tonight, though, he will feel disinclined to be helpful and sociable. He will be unpleasant and distant. He can always claim not to speak their language.

  He knows that in the next few hours, Temptation will prove stronger than ever, telling him to stop and give it all up. He doesn’t want to stop, though; his objective is still to complete his mission, even if the reason for that mission is changing.

  He has no idea if three violent deaths in one day would be considered normal in Cannes; if it is, the police won’t suspect that anything unusual is happening. They’ll continue their bureaucratic procedures and he’ll be able to fly off as planned in the early hours of tomorrow. He doesn’t know either if he has been identified: there was that couple who passed him and the girl this morning, there was one of the dead man’s bodyguards, and the person who witnessed the other woman’s murder.

  Temptation is now changing its tactics: it wants to frighten him, just as it does with the weak. It would seem that the Devil has no idea what he has been through nor that he has emerged a much stronger man from the test fate has set him.

  He picks up his mobile phone and sends another text.
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br />   He imagines Ewa’s reaction when she receives it. Something tells him that she will feel a mixture of fear and pleasure. He is sure that she deeply regrets the step she took two years ago—leaving everything behind her, including her clothes and jewelry, and asking her lawyer to get in touch with him regarding divorce proceedings. The grounds: incompatibility. As if interesting people will ever necessarily think exactly the same way or have many things in common. It was clearly a lie: she had fallen in love with someone else.

  Passion. Which of us can honestly say that, after more than five years of marriage, we haven’t felt a desire to find another companion? Which of us can honestly say that we haven’t been unfaithful at least once in our life, even if only in our imagination? And how many men and women have left home because of that, then discovered that passion doesn’t last and gone back to their true partners? A little mature reflection and everything is forgotten. That’s absolutely normal, part of human biology.

  He has had to learn this very slowly. At first, he instructed his lawyers to proceed with the utmost rigor. If she wanted to leave him, then she would have to give up all claim to the fortune they had accumulated together over nearly twenty years, every penny of it. He got drunk for a whole week while he waited for her response. He didn’t care about the money; he was doing it because he wanted her back, and that was the only way he knew of putting pressure on her.

  Ewa, however, was a person of integrity. Her lawyers accepted his conditions.

  It was only when the press got hold of the case that he found out about his ex-wife’s new partner. One of the most successful couturiers in the world, someone who, like him, had built himself up from nothing; a man, like him, in his forties, and known, like him, for his lack of arrogance and his hard work.

  He couldn’t understand what had happened. Shortly before Ewa left for a fashion show in London, they had spent a rare romantic holiday alone in Madrid. They had traveled there in the company jet and were staying in a hotel with every possible comfort, but they had decided to rediscover the world together. They didn’t book tables at expensive restaurants, they stood in long queues outside museums, they took taxis rather than chauffeured limousines, they walked for miles and got thoroughly lost. They ate a lot and drank even more, and would arrive back at the hotel exhausted and contented, and make love every night as they used to do.