Leonard Michaels - The Collected Stories

The next morning, Nachman went to the post office. He asked about an envelope addressed to Prince Ali Massid. The clerk was unable to find it, and called for the supervisor. Nachman told the supervisor about the envelope. The supervisor said he would initiate a search. Nachman returned the next day. There was no envelope. There was nothing the next day, either.

Nachman went regularly to the post office in the weeks that followed. He asked Norbert to go with him a few times. Norbert trudged sullenly at Nachman’s side. There was hardly any conversation. Once, Nachman said in a soft voice, “Did you really need that tattoo?”

“Did Ali really need a paper?” said Norbert. He sounded unhappy.

Eventually, Norbert stopped going to the post office, and Nachman went less and less frequently. Then he, too, stopped. But over the years, he continued to remember Ali’s handsome face and Sweeny’s beseeching expression, and he remembered the supervisor who had looked at him suspiciously and asked with a skeptical tone, “You’re sure you mailed it?” Nachman wasn’t sure, even now, but then he hardly remembered having written the paper, not one word.

PEOPLE CALLED NACHMAN NACHMAN, as if he were a historical figure. He couldn’t remember anyone ever using his first name, not even his mother. Maybe there were some kids in elementary school, but that was long ago. Now that he was a professor of mathematics, forty-eight years old, the name was famous among mathematicians. “Nachman,” they said, and that’s all, as if to use his title would diminish him. Having never been called by his first name, Nachman felt he’d never had a childhood, and he sometimes thought he was compensating for it by going to the races. It was a kind of playing, the only kind he knew — playing the horses.

Being a mathematician, naturally Nachman had a system for betting, but he considered it sufficient to believe his system worked. He never tested it scientifically. He was confident of its power. It even frightened him a little to think he could name the winning horse almost anytime. Occasionally, after reading the Daily Racing Form and tip sheets, Nachman felt tempted to name the winner — but only out of curiosity — and he’d been right often enough to believe he could be right almost always. He had no intention of exerting himself further, and actually applying his knowledge.

After looking at the forms, Nachman always walked to the ring where he studied the horses being displayed just before the race. In his eyes there was nothing more beautiful than a racehorse. The line of its neck and rump, the colors of its coat, the elegance of its slender ankles, and the light flashing along its muscles as it moved, and simply the way it moved. This collection of living elements, this singular and splendid life, this was a racehorse. Nachman knew the names of hundreds of racehorses, and he could tell you the statistics associated with their careers.

He loved everything about an afternoon at the track, from the display of the horses to the sight of them walking to the gate and then the race itself. It was a grand ritual, and it stirred the deepest sense of gratification in Nachman. He loved the trumpet, the sound of the announcer’s voice, the people in the stands, and even how they lined up at the betting windows.

As for Nachman’s system, it had simply come to mind one day. He wasn’t trying to invent a system. It had presented itself to him. This isn’t remarkable, he thought. Ideas come and go. The mind is an independent operator. But peculiar to Nachman’s mind was its recognition of problems, and its systematic attack on the unknown. Whether he liked it or not, his mind had produced a system. It was a matter of statistics, which were supplied by the Racing Form and various tip sheets. The statistics were based on different sorts of measurements, but Nachman didn’t need a computer to reconcile one set of statistics with another. He didn’t even need pencil and paper. His eyes took in the numbers, his mind adjusted the averages, and the winner emerged — almost always, it seemed, if he bothered to think about it and do the calculations.

You could say, “Nachman, if you have a system and you don’t use it, you’re betting against yourself.” He would agree. But there would be no pleasure, no drama, no excitement in the betting. The races would be just a way to make money. Nachman cared little about money. His university salary was more than he could use. He also made money when he traveled and gave lectures. An unmarried man who lived alone, with no expensive tastes, Nachman had enough money.

He went to the races and, unthinkingly, placed his bets like someone without a system, giving himself only as much chance of winning as anyone else. Sometimes he won, sometimes he lost. This is how it should be, he thought, and he cheered and shouted with everyone else, the regular people. It was Nachman’s deepest pleasure to feel like everyone else, regular, not like a freak, a mental monster, who, because of his mechanical gift for numbers, could know the winners before almost every race.

It was also Nachman’s pleasure to say hello to people who recognized him as a regular at the track. He knew few of their names, but he recognized their faces and they recognized him, which made him feel at home. A black man named Horace sometimes called out to him: “Hey, Nachman, how you doing?” or “Hey, Nachman, that’s a snazzy tie.” Once, Horace bought Nachman a drink between races. There wasn’t much to talk about, but the company feeling was good. “Let me get the next one,” said Nachman. He found out that Horace was a deacon, and his church was in Hollywood. He invited Nachman to attend some Sunday, and Nachman said, “I’d like that. Thank you.” Soon afterward they separated and were lost to each other in the crowd.

When a race began, Nachman was thrilled by the sight of the horses lunging out of the gate, then flowing along the rail at the far turn, and then the sight of them coming around the turn in his direction, a flurry of churning legs, hooves pounding the track, jockeys bent low to the horses’ necks, whispering to them like lovers.

Since Nachman believed he could know which horse was likely to win, it took a little bit from the thrill. If you told Nachman, “You could enjoy the full thrill if you didn’t let yourself read the Racing Form and tip sheets. Then you wouldn’t know anything,” Nachman would agree. He would even confess that he felt hypocritical, pretending that he didn’t know more than the next guy. But Nachman was fascinated by the Form and tip sheets. The information, the innocent scholarship, the whole idea of such literature was fascinating to Nachman. It intrigued him that you could publish a tremendous amount of statistical information about the horses and yet not reveal the name of the horse that would almost always win the race.

People believed too many indeterminable factors enter into a horse race. Nachman was aware of this belief, and he also knew that skeptical philosophers, including the genius Hume, said the same thing as people who bet on horse races. Regardless of statistics, the future is a mystery. You can’t even be sure the sun will rise tomorrow. Nachman wished it were true. He was confident that it was mainly untrue.

A jockey could ride badly, or a horse could get sick, or a race could even be fixed, but it was mainly untrue that the winner couldn’t be predicted much of the time, if not always. Nachman wasn’t a man who turned his back on truth, but he only played the horses, betting intuitively, making his choices by the look of a horse, the reputation of the jockey, the prevailing odds, and other considerations, what Nachman called “deep imponderables.” What a horse eats, for example, can affect performance, and who knows if a horse feels depressed? In short, Nachman had respect for the unknown. But he’d been born with a mind, and it had a great potential to know the truth. The truth was that many races were over before they started.