Josep Pla - Life Embitters

And the true rentier has no vices, apart from concealed charity. The more concealed his charity, the greater the praise in the obituary. So then, how does one explain the profusion of roulette tables in this country? I think it can only be explained in terms of a pact reached by rentiers on behalf of tourists. They reckon that admiration should be expressed through acts. The tourist has to bear the brunt so rentiers can have a clean, tidy town, a perfect police force, a good public image, and hot and cold water at a reasonable price. It’s a fine idea. The rentier declares energetically, “If they admire us, let them pay!”

And the tourist responds wistfully, after leaving his life savings on the roulette table, with a conviction that sounds deep because it is so strained, “How intelligent you are!”

This strange double game explains the glories of this city and the envy it arouses. It’s hard to think of a country with locals who are so law-abiding, so low-key in their habits and so righteous in their ideas. Dividends insist on morality because it is the backbone of the social order. Everybody knows this, day after day it is voiced in official statements; doubt is out of the question. In parallel an opposite reality asserts itself: the roulette wheel on every street corner that tests the resistance of the family institution to which the wretched tourists belong. And everybody plays his role wonderfully. Rentiers understate their positive situation and the enthusiasm aroused by their incurable pessimism. Bankrupted tourists loudly sing the praises of the excesses of a pleasant, hospitable country that enables them to enjoy nature and social life.

And such is life, á niçoise .

Gamblers can’t be fobbed off. The spectacle of the sea’s gleaming white horses, the majestic palm trees, the warm sun exuding blissful joy, the well-dressed ladies, are all first-rate. But nothing really compares with the climate for baccarat, the atmosphere around the roulette wheel or the vista of a green beige table. To visit Nice and not wonder at these marvels is like going to Rome and not seeing the Pope. I have often settled down in a corner of the Municipal Casino and observed how people, eyes bulging and hearts thudding, come and go in that cage of fortune. The gargoyles of the gaming tables! A spectacular show.

It’s strange: anyone standing in front of a gaming table automatically ages ten years. If the person is small, he becomes a doll; if he is tall, he turns into a giant. If his nose is largish, it grows into a big schnozzle; if it’s snub, it turns into a chickpea. Your vision of people ineluctably becomes a complete caricature. How horrible we all are — really! The green beige seems to appeal to the least lovely part of our nature. The blemish expands uncontrollably and our whole body is transformed. Gambling infects our weak point. No doubt about it: we men and women are much more despicable than we seem. Roulette is proof, without a ball ever swerving from its true role, namely, to provide the bank with its five and half percent. A lateral argument provides additional evidence.

Given this progressive disfiguring of humankind, it is hardly odd if the first-order races have made sport compulsory and that this measure finds vociferous, intelligent supporters everywhere.

However, has it made any difference? It would be risky to say it had. In olden times sport, like poetry, was the preserve of the nobility. Nowadays the bulk of the bourgeoisie devotes hours each week to sport. Some sporting activities have even reached the more undernourished layers of our society. A new kind of citizen has been spawned who can fly through the air, leap from one mountain to another, and scrutinize the mysteries at the bottom of the sea. The offspring of this new kind of life, even as children, act like people who’ve retired from sport. Standing by the long, luminous sweep of the Baie des Anges — the name of Nice’s bay — their parents present a profile of undoubted sporting beauty. To my mind a sporting man, in his cyclist’s pants, knitted t-shirt, and spiked shoes could be a fully fledged Apollo; I likewise believe that this sporting gentleman, dressed like an ordinary mortal, opposite a roulette wheel, is as much a caricature as a poet at a poetry festival. And, indeed, wasn’t Apollo plotting to kill off such romantic, blood-tingling activities?

Sport would be a wonderful thing if it didn’t so damage the stomach and the mind. No sportsman has a proper appetite. There’s no sporting type who doesn’t have manias of the highest order. Sport is in the hands of doctors and health specialists whose professional business is the torture of humanity. Sport is led by doctors and hygienists when it should really be led by chefs. The purpose of sport is to create hunger and ensure that, when faced by a dozen oysters, the human species will tear its hair out and flagellate itself. These remarks of mine are old-fashioned and traditional, but I don’t believe they could be more reasonable or more right than they are. One should reject as fake all other interpretations of sport, especially scientific, sociological, or aesthetic interpretations. I know that the future of wise men in this era belongs to clouds of unknowing and silent shadows. It makes no difference. When all is said and done, before the touchstone of human physical guile, namely, a gaming table, the people who perform most brilliantly are those who can prove, quite genuinely, that they have eaten oysters by the dozen and snails by the hundred.

Leading intellectuals, after studying the different shapes of the human species, have boldly concluded that there’s nothing like being rich if you want to be ugly. It’s an amenable verdict many would willingly accept. It is, above all, a comforting conclusion. They even say that all the inventions the bourgeoisie dreams up to transform the human body into something irresistibly sweet and tempting are only clear proof of the deficiencies of that class, but these studies do have a terrible defect — they are scientific. These conclusions are lacking. Studying the shape of humanity within a public university is at the very least to follow an antiquated method. They should take the trouble to come as far as the Municipal Casino and take an unbiased look. Anatole France, who made this pilgrimage and who acquired some experience, boasted that he mistook marchionesses for bawds and vice versa. Such confusion is easily explained — no doubt about that. The fact is that in terms of three or four things — beauty, money, cruelty, and frailty — a motley human mixture is easily engineered. Finery, masks, and differences fall away. Everyone is, more or less, made of the same clay. Men and women, we are equally and fatefully deformed, lumpy and hollow-cheeked. We are ugly, unremittingly ugly …

Fortunately, now and then, never in excess, we are pleasant enough …

In Hyères, Cannes, Nice, and at many points of the Côte d’Azur something is still remiss in the way in which they interpret municipal politics and bureaucracy. It would be futile to place high hopes in the principality of Monaco where one scents the purist fragrance of a sacred union. There are no parties, no debates, no different ways of seeing things. The country’s physics are plain enough: there is roulette in Monaco. Every time the ball rolls, it produces five and a half per cent. This money must be distributed. A genuine prince oversees the bookkeeping. A small Council of Ministers looks after the bureaucracy. Roulette provides enough for the Monegasques not to pay taxes, do military service or, in a word, suffer any of the burdens that belonging to a community usually entails. Roulette pays the bureaucrat, the police force, the firemen, and park attendants. To ensure he doesn’t doze on the job, the prince is obliged to employ an expert. Administrators control the profits from gaming with immaculate honesty. Mothers and fathers bring their children up painstakingly in the hope they can make them resourceful croupiers. The weapons deployed by this aristocracy are roulette rakes and baccarat cards.