Rubem Fonseca: Winning the Game and Other Stories

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.