Winning the Game and Other Stories

arts and trades

YOU RUIN YOUR TEETH WHEN YOU’RE A KID, but later after you make a lot of money you find a dentist who fixes your mouth. That’s what happened with me; I implanted every tooth in my mouth, a marvel of odontological engineering. I’m full of teeth that don’t fall out or decay, but when I laugh in front of a mirror I miss my old mouth; my lips open now in a way I don’t like. In any case, I don’t lack for teeth and I can champ down on women and steaks. I used to live in a lousy housing project and catch the train, squeezed in like sardines in a can. Today I live in a beautiful mansion in a gated community in the Barra, I have two cars and two drivers. I used to have one leg shorter than the other and didn’t even know it. I would go out with waitresses in luncheonettes, maids, factory workers, some of them illiterate. Money got me legs of the same length, gave me a wife from a good family, ruined but with all sorts of diplomas, gave me a mistress, without a diploma but who knows how to wear elegant clothes and put on a show when she crosses a ballroom. Money, that’s something I understand.

I didn’t go to college either. I don’t even have high school. Or elementary school, to tell the truth. That’s been a concern of mine, the only thing money hasn’t solved. If you’re rich and don’t have a diploma, people think you’re stupid. If you’re poor and don’t have a diploma, people say you didn’t go to school, don’t have even a primary education, but you learned to read the best authors on your own, and you’re a very smart guy. That’s what they said about me when I was poor. When I became rich they began spreading it around that I was a dummy who bought books by the yard, a complete lie. I should have bought a degree as an economist as soon as I started making money. Now I can’t do that anymore, people would know, the rich are always in the spotlight. Opportunity, that’s something I understand.

Then I read in the newspaper:

Become a respected writer admired by your friends and neighbors, your family, your girlfriend. I will write for you the book you choose. Poetry, novels, short stories, essays, biographies. Absolute confidentiality. Send reply to Ghostwriter, Box 333 507.

Rio de Janeiro.

I had already seen a similar ad, by a guy offering to write masters’ and doctoral theses for goof-off unscrupulous students. That day I told my wife, “I feel like writing a book, a novel. After all, if I learned how to read on my own, I can learn how to write on my own.”

“You know what you want,” she replied.

The next day I said the same thing to my mistress. “I think it’s a good idea,” she answered, “being a writer is so chic.”

I went to the post office and rented a box. I didn’t want to have any contact with Ghostwriter. If the book he wrote for me was good, I’d publish it and Ghostwriter would end up finding out who I was. But if it was bad, I’d toss it in the trash and the writer I was renting wouldn’t need to know my identity.

Ghostwriter: I read your ad. I’m interested. I want a novel of at least two hundred pages, in the style of Machado de Assis. I’ll pay whatever’s necessary. Give me the name of your bank and your account number so I can deposit the first installment, ten percent of the total amount. I’ll pay the rest in installments of thirty percent after delivery of seventy or more pages at a time.

Reply to Tomás Antônio, Box 432 521.

I made money in business by buying and selling things. That’s the way to get rich. Buying and selling. Making money, that’s something I understand. My driver is named Gaspar; my wife’s is named Evanildo. My cook can make any dish, however sophisticated. By paying three times as much I was able to lure her away from one of those society types who are still brave enough to host dinners to make the social columns. When I give a dinner I also put it in the social column. I’ve been told that’s not done anymore, that the trick is to keep a low profile here and enjoy the money abroad, away from the eyes of the envious. But then what good does it do to have the best mansion and the best cook, and the best teeth and the best clothes, and the best paintings on the wall if not to show to others? Let the envious turn green with displeasure and stew in their woe. At a dinner I gave at my house I heard a guy who was there for show whisper to the woman beside him at the table, who had also been invited just to be seen, “The money is changing hands.” That’s what he said: the money is changing hands. He, the old rich, was referring to me, the new rich. The old rich don’t want money to change hands, but how can money not change hands if those parasites don’t work? The difference between the old rich and the new rich is that the old rich, those who haven’t been ruined by their hedonistic idleness, have had money longer and are misers. But it’s true that both the old and the new stuff their bellies with free caviar in other people’s homes. Anything that’s expensive is always good, even when it’s bad, that’s the golden rule of consumptiveness. Ostentation, that’s something I understand.

Tomás Antônio: The bank is Bradesco, agency 163, account number 11 429 654-9. Name: M.J. Ramos. My fee for the book, ten thousand reais. Ghostwriter.

Ten thousand, the price of a run-of-the-mill Volkswagen. My book was going to be a piece of shit. But I deposited the ten percent in Ghostwriter’s account.

“Are you going to write your book on a computer?” Gisela asked. I haven’t spoken of Gisela, my mistress. A rich guy has to have a mistress, for relief from bourgeois routine. A poor guy should also have a mistress, obviously, if he can; it’s good for the health and makes poverty more pleasant. Wives are always a drag, both in books and real life, and a mistress makes you be more patient with her, the wife. Marriage is boring. A person’s house can be something insipid, most people’s houses are insipid, but they always want to transform them into showcases. People stick themselves inside the showcase, along with their knickknacks. Part of the showcase is nice teeth, good clothes and good shoes, manicured nails, a slim silhouette, domestic appliances, wedding rings, perfume, voice modulation and an imposing vocabulary, a face free of warts (did I mention I had a wart removed from my face?), and the more ornate the showcase, the greater our happiness. Exhibitionism, that’s something I understand.

But I was speaking of my mistress, Gisela. First, some advice for young adventuresses: if you want to find a lover, choose a man who’s new rich. They’re much more generous. Don’t think I suffer retrospective envy from having been poor when I was young. Nothing like it. It’s because the old rich don’t like money to change hands. I mean, it can change hands but only between their old-rich hands. But let’s get back to Gisela.

“Yes,” I answered, “I’m writing it on a computer. Isn’t that what all the idiots who follow fads are doing?” Actually, just to show off, I had bought the best computer on the market, with all the peripherals, multifunctions, nets, shifts, alts, ROM, RAM, the works. I had another one, state of the art, but it was my secretary who used it. But let’s get back to Gisela. A good mistress, like my Gisela, has to be pretty; has to have all her teeth; has to weigh twenty pounds less than her height in centimeters (as long as she’s not a dwarf, of course); has to speak English and French; has to like cinema; has to have small feet; has to have small breasts (but her breasts, when bare under her silk blouse, must move erect when she walks without swinging, because an elegant woman doesn’t swing her hips when she moves her legs); has to have large, firm thighs; has to have a small, tight ass; has to have a lot of hair on her head; has to eat with her mouth closed; has to have long fingers; has to have large eyes; and has to like you. And all she has to give you is love. And all you have to give her is love and money. The more of both, the better. Everyone likes to receive presents, even the voodoo worshippers know that and lavish their priest with rum and flour. But don’t give your mistress cheap presents. If she says she prefers a rose to a jewel, she’s an impostor; women like powerful men. Money being spent profligately on a woman is the most impressive exhibition of power that a man can do for her. The prodigal male expresses for the woman benefitting from his lavishness the same venerable power that the kidnapper, the torturer, and the executioner represent to their victims. But there are cases where the guy, without being filthy rich or having life-and-death power, can exercise a certain control, insignificant to be sure, over women: they’re the guys who possess a lot of charm, a lot of talent, or a lot of fame. But between a sensitive poet and a pompous landlord, women always choose the latter.

Besides a dummy, they say I’m a cynic, a misogynist, a hedonist, and a materialist. Misogynist? I don’t disdain women, and I have no aversion to them. Misogynist and dummy is too much.

I received the first thirty pages from Ghostwriter.

The title of the novel was The Forger. Forger? What an unfortunate title. Was Ghostwriter putting me on? I took the pages Ghostwriter sent me and typed them into the computer. My character, the counterfeiter, is forging a book of memoirs, an autobiography. He’s a meticulous specialist, striving for months to imitate the handwriting of the guy to whom he’ll attribute authorship of the document he’s forging, the capital u that looks like an m, the capital c similar to an l, etc., etc. The sheets of paper he plans to use in his scheme are already old, but he discovers a complicated process to age them even further, artificially. Here’s a small excerpt: Certain that he had succeeded in reproducing the handwriting perfectly, he sat down to begin the work. “I was born and raised in the Livramento favela, in Rio de Janeiro. My mother died when I was a child. My father remarried but died two years later. I was raised by my stepmother, a washerwoman.”

Raised by his washerwoman stepmother? Reading the first few pages wasn’t enough to tell much. The story was nothing new, I think I’d already read something similar. But we readers know that a bad story well written can mean a good book, just like a good story poorly written means a bad book. The story was a bit confusing, but it wasn’t badly written.

Ghostwriter: I received the first pages of the novel. You must remember that I asked for a novel in the style of Machado de Assis, and what you sent me has nothing of Machado de Assis. Can you change it? Tomás Antônio.

“Are you worried about something?” Gisela asked.

“I’m not happy with the story I’m writing.”

“Why don’t you write about my life? Want me to tell you about my life?”

“The less we know about each other’s lives, the better,” I answered.

“You weren’t the first, you know.”

“Yes, I know, I wasn’t the first.”

“Or the second.”

“Yeah, yeah, or the second.”

“You want to know your number?”

“Yeah, yeah, I want to know my number.”

“Eight, you’re number eight.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m number eight.”

“Stop saying yeah, yeah.”

I forgot to say that mistresses are for seeing now and then. Otherwise they become as boring as wives. That was the second day in a row I’d seen Gisela. Two days in a row is too much. At most, mistresses should be seen every other day.

“My mother died when I was a child. My father remarried but died soon afterwards. I was raised by my stepmother,” Gisela said.

“Incredible,” I said. “In my novel the character’s mother also died when he was young and the father married again and he was raised by his stepmother. Was your mother a washerwoman?”

“Are you crazy? Imagine, my stepmother a washerwoman! She came from a very good family, I’m from a very good family, my grandfather was the Baron of Laranjeiras.”

“I’ve heard of the baron of Limeira …”

Gisela sulked. She removed my face from her leg, saying, “I don’t like for you to bite me.” But no pout can resist a jewel. I always keep a jewel in reserve for such occasions, a pair of earrings, a ring, a bracelet. I gave her a diamond ring. Actually, Gisela likes for me to bite her leg.

Tomás Antônio: The forger is forging an autobiography of Machado de Assis. Just as you didn’t notice, the reader won’t perceive it until well into the novel. The text is a lot of work. I had to research the technical processes for aging paper and am having to read all the biographies of Machado de Assis. The story of the forgery and the autobiography, apocryphal but highly accurate in its references to Machado’s life, serve as a framework for each other. A framing device, understand? I’m going to have more work than I thought. Could we increase my fee to twenty thousand? Ghostwriter.

A framing device? Was the guy trying to impress me with that theoretical claptrap? He must be a literature major. I agreed to the increase he was asking for. Intuition, that’s something I understand.

Have I already spoken of my secretary? A good secretary has to have the qualities of a good dog: loyalty and gratitude. God in heaven and you on earth. The secretary can’t see you naked, can’t see you frightened, can’t see you pick your teeth. And periodically you have to pat her on the back, the way they do with seals. No reprimands, just incentives. Some idiot told me one day that if you have the right machines you don’t need a secretary. One more American stupidity. Nothing can take the place of a good secretary, nothing is better than a good secretary, not even a person’s mother. Her name was Esmeralda. Nothing could be done about that. Dadá, Esmer, Meralda were all worse. I suggested, Adlaremse, a tongue twister but refined. Esmeralda didn’t like it. If she doesn’t like it, I don’t like it either. Esmeralda is a wonder, she looks over contracts with the lawyers, I never know when she’s got her period, she’s never had a toothache, she takes care of my banking transactions, I only have to tell her buy, sell.

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.