Rubem Fonseca: Winning the Game and Other Stories

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.

Читать дальше