Winning the Game and Other Stories Read Free

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.
    â€œGood afternoon.”
    The woman had appeared suddenly and stood there beside the bench, extending her hand.
    â€œGood afternoon,” I replied, shaking her hand.
    â€œMay I sit down?”
    â€œOf course. I didn’t see you come into the square.”
    â€œI was already here when you arrived. Sitting on that bench over there.”
    â€œStupid of me not to think of it, that you might show up early. Are you