The Winner Stands Alone

by Paulo Coelho; Margaret Jull Costa

  Nevertheless, after a period during which the two parties barely spoke, they had become friendly again, and whenever they asked him for a favor—getting a university place for their daughter or tickets for concerts that their “clients” wanted to attend—Igor always did all he could to help them. After all, regardless of their motives, they were the only people who had believed in his dreams. Ewa—whenever he thought of her now, Igor felt intensely irritated—used to say that they had played on her husband’s innocence to launder money earned from arms trafficking, as if that made any difference. It wasn’t as if he’d been involved in the actual buying or selling of arms, and besides, in any business deal, both parties need to make a profit.

  And everyone has their ups and downs. Some of his former backers had spent time in prison, but he had never abandoned them, even though he no longer needed their help. A man’s dignity isn’t measured by the people he has around him when he’s at the peak of his success, but by his ability not to forget those who helped him when his need was greatest. Whether those hands were drenched in blood or sweat was irrelevant: if you were clinging on to the edge of a precipice, you wouldn’t care who it was hauling you up to safety.

  A sense of gratitude is important; no one gets very far if he forgets those who were with him in his hour of need. Not that you have to be constantly thinking about who helped or was helped. God has his eyes fixed on his sons and daughters and rewards only those who behave in accordance with the blessings that were bestowed on them.

  And so when he wanted to buy some curare, he knew where to go, although he had to pay an absurd price for a substance that is relatively commonplace in the jungles of South America.

  HE REACHES THE HOTEL LOBBY. The party is more than half an hour away by car, and it would be very hard to find a taxi if he just stood out in the street. He long ago learned that the first thing you do when you arrive at a hotel is give a large tip to the concierge without asking anything in exchange; all successful businessmen do this, and they never have any trouble getting reservations at the best restaurants, or tickets for shows, or information about certain areas of the city that don’t appear in the guidebooks, and which prefer not to shock the middle classes.

  With a smile, he asks for and gets a taxi right there and then, while another guest beside him is complaining about the problems he’s having finding transport. Gratitude, necessity, and the right contacts. You can get anything you want with those three things, even a silver envelope with the seductive words “For you” written in fine calligraphy. He had held off using it until the very end because if Ewa had failed to understand the other messages, this—the most sophisticated of all—would leave no room for doubt.

  His old friends had come up trumps. They had offered to let him have it for nothing, but he had preferred to pay. He had enough money and didn’t like to be in anyone’s debt.

  He hadn’t asked too many questions about how it was made; he only knew that it was a very complicated process and that the person who created the hermetically sealed envelope had to wear gloves and a gas mask. The high price he had paid for the envelope was quite justified since it had to be handled very carefully indeed, even though the product itself wasn’t that hard to get hold of: it’s commonly used in steel tempering and in the production of paper, clothes, and plastic. It has a rather frightening name, hydrogen cyanide, but smells of almonds and looks perfectly harmless.

  He stops thinking about who sealed the envelope and begins to imagine the person who will open it—holding it quite close to the face, as is normal. On the white card inside is a printed message in French:

  “Katyusha, je t’aime.”

  “Katyusha? Who’s that?” the person will ask, noticing that the card is covered in a kind of dust. Once in contact with the air, the dust will become a gas, and a strong smell of almonds will fill the room.

  The person will be surprised and think: “Whoever sent it might have chosen a nicer smell.” It must be an advertisement for perfume. He or she will remove the card and turn it this way and that, and the gas given off by the dust will start to spread ever more quickly.

  “It must be some kind of joke.”

  That will be their last conscious thought. Leaving the card on the table at the door, they’ll go into the bathroom to take a shower or to finish applying makeup or to adjust their tie.

  They’ll notice then that their heart is racing. They won’t immediately connect this with the perfume filling the room; after all, they have no enemies, only competitors and adversaries. Before they even reach the bathroom, they will notice that they can no longer stand and they’ll sit down on the edge of the bed. The next symptoms will be an unbearable headache and difficulty in breathing, followed by a desire to vomit. However, there will be no time for that; they will rapidly lose consciousness, still without making any connection between their physical state and the contents of the envelope.

  In a matter of minutes—he had asked for the product to be as concentrated a possible—the lungs will stop working, the body will go into convulsions, the heart will stop pumping blood, and death will follow.

  Painless. Merciful. Humane.

  Igor gets into the taxi and gives the address: Hotel du Cap, Eden Roc, Cap d’Antibes.

  Tonight’s gala supper.

  7:40 P.M.

  The androgyne—wearing a black shirt, white bow tie, and a kind of Indian tunic over the same tight trousers that draw attention to his scrawny legs—tells her that they could be arriving at either a very good moment or a very bad one.

  “The traffic’s better than I expected. We’ll be one of the first to enter Eden Roc.”

  Gabriela, who, by now, has had her hair and makeup retouched yet again—this time by a makeup artist who seemed totally bored by her work—doesn’t understand what this means.

  “Given all the traffic holdups, isn’t it best to be early? How could that be bad?”

  The androgyne gives a deep sigh before replying, as if he were having to explain the obvious to someone who doesn’t even know the most elementary rules of the world of glamour.

  “It could be good because you’ll be alone in the corridor…”

  The androgyne looks at her, sees the blank expression on her face, utters another deep sigh, then says:

  “No one walks straight into this kind of party through a door. You always have to go down a corridor first. On one side are the photographers and on the other is a wall bearing the logo of the party’s sponsor. Haven’t you ever seen photos in celebrity magazines? Haven’t you ever noticed that the celebrities are always standing in front of a logo as they smile for the cameras?”

  Celebrity. The arrogant androgyne has let slip the wrong word. He has unwittingly admitted that Gabriela is also a celebrity. Gabriela savors this victory in silence, although she’s grown-up enough to know that she still has a very long way to go.

  “And what’s so bad about arriving on time?”

  Another sigh.

  “The photographers themselves might not have arrived yet, but let’s hope I’m mistaken, that way I can hand out a few of these flyers.”

  “About me?”

  “You surely don’t imagine that everyone knows who you are, do you? Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart. No, I’ll have to go on ahead of you and give this wretched bit of paper to each photographer and tell them that the big star of Gibson’s next film is about to arrive and that they should have their cameras ready. I’ll signal to them as soon as you appear in the corridor.

  “I won’t be nice to them though. I mean, they’re used to being treated as what they are, creatures on the lowest rung of power. I’ll say I’m doing them a big favor, and they won’t want to risk missing a chance and getting fired because there’s no shortage of people in the world with a camera and an Internet connection, and who are mad keen to post something on the Web that everyone else has missed. I reckon that, in future, given the way circulation figures are going, newspapers will rely entirely on the services of a
nonymous photographers as a way of keeping down their costs.”

  He wants to show off his knowledge of the media, but the young woman beside him isn’t interested. She picks up one of the bits of paper and starts reading.

  “Who’s Lisa Winner?”

  “That’s you. We’ve changed your name. Or rather, the name had been chosen even before you were selected. From now on, that’s what you’re called. Gabriela is too Italian, whereas Lisa could be any nationality. Market research shows that the general public find surnames with between four and six letters easiest to remember: Taylor. Burton. Davis. Woods. Hilton. Shall I go on?”

  “No, thanks. I can see you know your market, but now I need to find out who I am—according to my new biography.”

  She makes no attempt to hide the irony in her voice. She was growing in confidence and beginning to behave like a real star. She starts reading: a major discovery chosen from among more than a thousand applicants to work on the first production by famous couturier and entrepreneur Hamid Hussein, etc. etc.

  “The flyers were printed over a month ago,” says the androgyne, tipping the scales back in his favor. “It was written by the group’s marketing team, and they’re always spot-on. Listen: ‘She worked as a model and studied drama.’ That’s you, isn’t it?”

  “So I was chosen more for my biography than for the quality of my audition.”

  “No, it means that everyone there had the same biography.”

  “Look, shall we just stop making jibes at each other and try to be a little more human and friendly?”

  “Here? In Cannes? Forget it. There’s no such thing as friends, only self-interest. There are no human beings, just crazy machines who mow down everything in their path in order to get where they want or else end up plowing into a lamppost.”

  Despite this response, Gabriela feels she was right and that her companion’s animosity is beginning to melt.

  “Look at this,” he goes on. “‘For years, she refused to work in the cinema, feeling that the theater was the best way to express her talent.’ That gives you a lot of bonus points; it shows you’re a person with integrity, who only accepted the role in the film because you really loved it, even though you’d been invited to do plays by Shakespeare, Beckett, or Genet, or whoever.”

  He’s obviously very well-read, this androgyne. Everyone’s heard of Shakespeare, but fewer people know about Beckett and Genet.

  Gabriela—or Lisa—agrees. The car arrives, and there, once more, are the inevitable security guards in black suits, white shirts, and black ties, all clutching tiny radios as if they were real policemen (or perhaps that’s the collective dream of all security guards). One of them waves the driver on because it’s too early.

  The androgyne—having weighed up the risks and decided that early is, in fact, best—jumps out of the limousine and goes over to one of the guards, a man twice his size. Gabriela tries to distract herself and think of other things.

  “What sort of car is this?” she asks the chauffeur.

  “A Maybach 57S,” he replies. He has a German accent. “A real work of art, the perfect machine, the ultimate in luxury. It was built…”

  But she’s no longer listening. She can see the androgyne talking to the huge security guard. The man appears to ignore him and makes a gesture indicating that he should get into the car and stop holding up the traffic. The androgyne—a mere mosquito to the security guard’s elephant—turns on his heel and walks back to the car.

  He opens the door and tells Gabriela to get out; they’re going in anyway.

  Gabriela fears the worst, that there’ll be an almighty row. She walks with the mosquito past the elephant, who says: “Hey, you can’t go in there!,” but they both keep straight on. Other voices shout: “Have a little respect for the rules! We haven’t opened the door yet!” She doesn’t have the courage to look back and imagines that the herd must be hot on their heels ready to trample them at any moment.

  But nothing happens, even though the androgyne isn’t walking any faster, perhaps out of respect for her long dress. They’re passing through an immaculate garden now; the horizon is tinged with pink and blue; the sun is sinking.

  The androgyne is enjoying this new victory.

  “They’re all very macho until you face up to them, but you just have to raise your voice, look them straight in the eye, and keep walking, and they won’t come after you. I have the invitations and that’s all I need. They may be big those guys, but they’re not stupid, and they know that only someone important would speak to them as I did.”

  He concludes with surprising humility:

  “I’ve got used to pretending to be important.”

  They reach the hotel, which is totally removed from the hustle and bustle of Cannes and suitable only for those guests who don’t need to keep going back and forth along the Boulevard. The androgyne asks Gabriela/Lisa to go to the bar and order two glasses of champagne; this will indicate that she’s not alone. No talking to strangers. Nothing vulgar, please. He’ll go and see how the land lies and distribute the flyers.

  “I’m only doing this for form’s sake really. No one will publish your photo, but this is what I’m paid to do. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “But didn’t you just say that the photographers…”

  He has reverted to his former arrogant self. Before Gabriela can hit back, though, he has vanished.

  THERE ARE NO EMPTY TABLES; the place is packed with men in dinner jackets and women in long dresses. They’re all talking in low voices, those who are talking, for most have their eyes fixed on the sea that can be seen through the large windows. Even though this is their first time in such a place, a palpable, unmistakable feeling hovers over all these celebrated heads: a profound sense of tedium.

  They have all attended hundreds, possibly thousands of parties like this. Once, they would have felt the excitement of the unknown, of possibly meeting a new love, of making important professional contacts; but now that they have reached the top of their careers, there are no more challenges; all that’s left to do is to compare one yacht with another, one jewel with your neighbor’s jewel, the people who are sitting at the tables nearest the window with those who are farther off—a sure sign of the former’s superiority. Yes, this is the end of the line: tedium and endless comparisons. After decades of struggling to get where they are, there seems to be nothing left, not even the pleasure of having watched one more sunset in one more beautiful place.

  What are they thinking, those rich, silent women, so distant from their husbands?

  They’re thinking about age.

  They need to go back to see their plastic surgeon and redo what time is relentlessly undoing. Gabriela knows that one day this will happen to her as well, and suddenly—perhaps because of all the emotions of a day that is ending so very differently from the way it began—she can feel those negative thoughts returning.

  Again there’s that feeling of terror mingled with joy. Again the feeling that, despite the long struggle, she doesn’t deserve what’s happening to her; she’s just a girl who’s worked hard at her job, but who’s still ill-prepared for life. She doesn’t know the rules; she’s going further than good sense dictates; this world doesn’t belong to her and she’ll never be a part of it. She feels helpless and can’t remember now why she came to Europe; after all, it’s not so dreadful being an actress in small-town America, doing exactly what she likes and not what other people make her do. She wants to be happy, and she’s not entirely sure she’s on the right path.

  “Stop it! Stop thinking like that!”

  She can’t do any yoga exercises here, so she tries to concentrate on the sea and on the blue and pink sky. She has been given a golden opportunity; she needs to overcome her feelings of revulsion and to talk more to the androgyne in the few free moments they have before the “corridor.” She mustn’t make any mistakes; she has been lucky and she must make the most of it. She opens her handbag to take out her lipstick and touch up her
lips, but all she sees inside is a lot of crumpled paper. She had been back to the Gift Room with the bored makeup artist, and had again forgotten to collect her things, but even if she had remembered, where would she have put them?

  That handbag is an excellent metaphor for her current experience: lovely outside and completely empty inside.

  She must control herself.

  “The sun has just sunk below the horizon and will be reborn tomorrow with the same force. I need to be reborn now. The fact that I’ve dreamed of this moment so many times ought to have prepared me, made me more confident. I believe in miracles and I’m being blessed by God, who listened to my prayers. I must remember what the director used to say to me before each rehearsal: ‘Even if you’re doing the same thing over and over, you need to discover something new, fantastic, and unbelievable that went unnoticed the time before.’”

  ENTER A HANDSOME MAN OF about forty, with graying hair and dressed in an impeccable dinner jacket handmade by some master tailor. He looks as if he were about to come over to her, but immediately notices the second glass of champagne and heads off to the other end of the bar. She would have liked to talk to him; the androgyne is taking such a long time. But she remembers his stern words:

  “Nothing vulgar.”

  And it would indeed be reprehensible, inappropriate, embarrassing to see a young woman, all alone in the bar of a five-star hotel, go over to an older customer. What would people think?

  She drinks her champagne and orders another glass. If the androgyne has disappeared for good, she has no way of paying the bill, but who cares? Her doubts and insecurities are disappearing as she drinks, and now she’s afraid that she might not be able to get into the party and fulfill her commitments.