People ask me, still, who won.

They ask it in a jokey way at dinners and they are always a little disappointed by the answer, which is that the question is wrong, and that it is wrong in a specific and instructive way: it assumes that what happened was a contest with a shared prize, and it was not.

He was playing for a family and a legacy and a name.

I was, without knowing it for a long time, playing for the ability to stop watching.