The Winner Stands Alone

The androgyne shrugs and goes back into the hotel with that strange swaying gait. The film is not of the slightest importance. What matters is la montee des marches, going up the red-carpeted steps to the Palais and along the ultimate corridor of fame, the place where all the celebrities in the worlds of cinema, the arts, and the high life are photographed, and their photos then distributed by news agencies to the four corners of the world to be published in magazines from west to east and from north to south.

"Is the air-conditioning all right for you, madame?"

She nods to the chauffeur.

"If you want anything to drink, there's a bottle of iced champagne in the cabinet to your left."

Gabriela opens the cabinet and gets out a glass; then, holding the bottle well away from her dress, she pops the cork and pours herself a glass of champagne which she downs in one and immediately refills. Outside, curious onlookers are trying to see who is inside the vast car with the smoked windows that is driving along the cordoned-off lane. Soon, she and the Star will be together, the beginning not just of a new career, but of an incredible, beautiful, intense love story.

She's a romantic and proud of it.

She remembers that she left her clothes and her handbag in the Gift Room. She doesn't have the key to the apartment she's renting. She has nowhere to go when the night is over. If she ever writes a book about her life, how could she possibly tell the story of that particular day: waking up with a hangover, unemployed and in a bad mood, in an apartment with clothes and mattresses scattered all over the floor, and six hours later being driven along in a limousine, ready to walk along the red carpet in front of a crowd of journalists, beside one of the most desirable men in the world.

Her hands are trembling. She considers drinking another glass of champagne, but decides not to risk turning up drunk on the steps of fame.

"Relax, Gabriela. Don't forget who you are. Don't get carried away by everything that's happening now. Be realistic."

She repeats these words over and over as they approach the Martinez. Whether she likes it or not, she can never go back to being the person she was before. There is no way out, except the one the androgyne told her about and which leads to a still higher mountain.

4:52 P.M.

Even the King of Kings, Jesus Christ, was tested as Igor is being tested now: being tempted by the Devil. And he needs to cling on tooth and nail to his faith if he's not to weaken in the mission with which he has been charged.

The Devil is asking him to stop, to forgive, to abandon his task. The Devil is a top-class professional and knows how to fill the weak with alarming feelings such as fear, anxiety, impotence, and despair.

When it comes to tempting the strong, he uses more sophisticated lures: good intentions. It's exactly what he did with Jesus when he found him wandering in the wilderness. Why, he asked, didn't he command that the stones be made bread, so that he could satisfy not only his own hunger, but that of all the other people begging him for food? Jesus, however, acted with the wisdom one would expect of the Son of God. He replied that man does not live on bread alone, but on every word from God's mouth.

Besides, what exactly were good intentions, virtue, and integrity? The people who built the Nazi concentration camps thought they were showing integrity by obeying government orders. The doctors who certified as insane any intellectuals opposed to the Soviet regime and had them banished to Siberia were convinced that Communism was a fair system. Soldiers who go to war may kill in the name of an ideal they don't properly understand, but they, too, are full of good intentions, virtue, and integrity.

No, that's not true. If sin achieves something good, it is a virtue, and if virtue is deployed to cause evil, it is a sin.

IN HIS CASE, THE EVIL One is trying to use forgiveness as a way to trouble his soul. He says: "You're not the only person to have been through this. Lots of people have been abandoned by the person they most loved, and yet managed to turn bitterness into happiness. Imagine the families of the people whom you have caused to depart this life; they'll be filled with rancor and hatred and a desire for revenge. Is that how you intend to improve the world? Is that what you want to give to the woman you love?"

Igor, however, is wiser than the temptations that seem to be possessing his soul. If he can hold out a little longer, that voice will grow tired and disappear. He thinks this largely because one of the people he sent to Paradise is becoming an ever more constant presence in his life. The girl with the dark eyebrows is telling him that everything is fine, and that there's a great difference between forgiving and forgetting. He has no hatred in his heart, and he's not doing this to have his revenge on the world.

The Devil may insist all he likes, but he must stand firm and remember why he's here.

HE GOES INTO THE FIRST pizzeria he sees, and orders a pizza margharita and a Coke. It's best to eat now because he won't be able to--he never can--eat properly over supper with a lot of other people round the table. Everyone feels obliged to keep up an animated but relaxed conversation, and someone always seems to interrupt him just as he's about to take a bite of the delicious food in front of him.

His usual way of avoiding this is to bombard his companions at table with questions, then leave them to come up with intelligent responses while he eats his meal in peace. Tonight, though, he will feel disinclined to be helpful and sociable. He will be unpleasant and distant. He can always claim not to speak their language.

He knows that in the next few hours, Temptation will prove stronger than ever, telling him to stop and give it all up. He doesn't want to stop, though; his objective is still to complete his mission, even if the reason for that mission is changing.

He has no idea if three violent deaths in one day would be considered normal in Cannes; if it is, the police won't suspect that anything unusual is happening. They'll continue their bureaucratic procedures and he'll be able to fly off as planned in the early hours of tomorrow. He doesn't know either if he has been identified: there was that couple who passed him and the girl this morning, there was one of the dead man's bodyguards, and the person who witnessed the other woman's murder.

Temptation is now changing its tactics: it wants to frighten him, just as it does with the weak. It would seem that the Devil has no idea what he has been through nor that he has emerged a much stronger man from the test fate has set him.

He picks up his mobile phone and sends another text.

He imagines Ewa's reaction when she receives it. Something tells him that she will feel a mixture of fear and pleasure. He is sure that she deeply regrets the step she took two years ago--leaving everything behind her, including her clothes and jewelry, and asking her lawyer to get in touch with him regarding divorce proceedings. The grounds: incompatibility. As if interesting people will ever necessarily think exactly the same way or have many things in common. It was clearly a lie: she had fallen in love with someone else.

Passion. Which of us can honestly say that, after more than five years of marriage, we haven't felt a desire to find another companion? Which of us can honestly say that we haven't been unfaithful at least once in our life, even if only in our imagination? And how many men and women have left home because of that, then discovered that passion doesn't last and gone back to their true partners? A little mature reflection and everything is forgotten. That's absolutely normal, part of human biology.

He has had to learn this very slowly. At first, he instructed his lawyers to proceed with the utmost rigor. If she wanted to leave him, then she would have to give up all claim to the fortune they had accumulated together over nearly twenty years, every penny of it. He got drunk for a whole week while he waited for her response. He didn't care about the money; he was doing it because he wanted her back, and that was the only way he knew of putting pressure on her.

Ewa, however, was a person of integrity. Her lawyers accepted his conditions.

It was only when the press got hold of the case that he found out about his ex-wife's new partner. One of the most successful couturiers in the world, someone who, like him, had built himself up from nothing; a man, like him, in his forties, and known, like him, for his lack of arrogance and his hard work.