Josep Pla - Life Embitters

I don’t know if you know the country, it is quite wonderful. The principality is located on the back of a mountain that advances into the sea, leaving in its wake two bays as natural as a couple of seashells: W. Monaco is in the west bay, Monte Carlo in the east. An underground tunnel links the principality’s two towns. It is a very uneven configuration. From the sea, the principality seems to be on a very steep incline. Houses rise above one another, decked out in white. In the foreground palm trees and gardens hide buildings and palaces. Beyond them an Italianate terrace of houses — large stretches of wall, small green windows, and simple, pretty roofs — acts like a fan. The mountain plunges precipitously into whiteness. It is a mountain with dramatic rocks: fluorescent and purple, yellow and gray. At dusk, these rocks’ reflections in the becalmed sea give the water the most wonderful postcard hues. There are no strident notes. The houses are mirrored in the water and the palm trees and blossoming agave sway in the soft wind. In the long term, this gaming room silence nurtures enervating feverishness and a curious thirst for the impossible. To amuse the people who don’t require this kind of complex aphrodisiac in order to live, they should temper the silence with some sort of entertainment. One ought, for example, be able to hear a distant explosion. Then ordinary folk could remark, concealing their horror: “Another gambler must have committed suicide.”

Currently everything is a little too innocuous from a cinematic point of view. That’s an old, clichéd adjective but it is exactly right: this is a cinematic country. Magnificent gardens above a balustrade, mansions well located in their own moonlight, vistas contrived for a very special honeymoon. In my time cinema was like that and films were sublime. I imagine they still are. These luscious memories have left you a set of hidden images that spring into life at the sight of these postcards. The country appeals because it has been filmed so often.

Parallel to this conventional life is the everyday life of the locals who now live off roulette, in the same way they previously lived off fishing and in more ancient times off pirating and adventure. The people of the sea of Genoa have a long history and a passionate love of freedom. The Monegasques are the last representatives of a past that has gone forever. Even today they can afford the luxury of not paying rates or taxes, of not doing military service, of not pleasing everyone, and doing whatever they feel like. They are among the happy, blissful few left on this earth. They make you envious, but we should be frank: they deserve it. They have worked out how to evolve quickly and have tried not to upset anyone: perfect pirates or honest merchants in the days of medieval cut-and-thrust, patient, humble fishermen under absolute monarchies, and with the gradual spread of enlightenment and welfare, they have finally become the honest exploiters of human frailty.

The casino in Monte Carlo is a very important, strikingly serious institution. Few official buildings in Europe are as magnificent. As a building of its kind it is unique. People are used to losing their money in ramshackle wooden and iron buildings propped up by cardboard columns. The casino has marble columns; its rooms are severe and imposing in the best bourgeois traditions. You are inside now. A huge, opaque room opens up before you. Twelve large tables enter your purview: six roulette and six baccarat. Each is surrounded by a buzz that is drowned by the cheeky clatter of the chips and the hopping of that devilish little ball. Everybody is speaking in hushed tones as if they were embarrassed. If you are alert, now and then you will hear a sigh escape that someone was unable to suppress. It’s one way of showing you have arrived. The first hundred francs are the worst.

First surprise: women are undoubtedly in the majority. Generally they are quite mature women with a sternly respectable demeanor. Almost all play scientifically, that is, clutching a card and a pencil. They conduct complicated, cabalistic exercises on paper. Once that’s completed they lay their bet with deep conviction and a confidence that is disconcerting. It is amazing how many people think that losing at roulette is down to the player’s lack of ability. People imagine that the mysteries of chance can be tamed by studying higher mathematics, calculating probabilities, or sharpening one’s natural wit. Everyone has their formula, their brilliant trick to guarantee a win. Ninety-five percent of the people crowding into Monte Carlo are in the grip of the most amusing superstitions. People often defend their childish beliefs stubbornly and take stands that are grotesque in the extreme.

“Now it will be the red five,” you hear them whisper, in front of you, with professorial, academic circumspection.

It’s a black seven. Brief consternation. The gambler consults her papers. Adds up, takes away, multiplies, subtracts, square roots. Roulette is a mathematical progression. Pascal, ladies and gentlemen, the distinguished Reverend Pascal, knew about all that. The time comes to make a decision. They adopt a serious, elegant pose.

“It will be the red twenty-four. It can’t fail …”

It’s a zero as round as a watermelon. The cycle of movements is repeated indefinitely. Chance slithers like a snake. They don’t get a single one right. Pockets spew out papers covered in figures and projections. Hands quiver. Noses elongate absurdly. Sad eyes look at the croupier as if to say: “What did I do to be treated so badly?”

The ball jumps joyfully over metal. The yellow, green, red, white chips soften in the diffuse, matte light. The croupier solemnly tweaks his mustache. Jam seems to be trickling down the long faces of the gamblers. There is a dull buzz, like an angry bumblebee’s, in the large room. Chance under pressure stutters like a distant engine. Painted in nineteenth-century style, the ceiling is an allegory with rather faded nymphs representing Agriculture, Industry, Commerce, Science, and the Arts. A severe matriarch, seated on a cloud — plump bosom and bottom — presides over the symbolic, Olympian dance. This matriarch represents natural order in the style of liberal, evolutionary philosophy. She is Mrs Stuart Mill. The croupier is still twirling his mustache. The ball leaps over the metal. The men with the rakes stand to attention, waiting for the moment to make their move. Finally, the scientific gambler wearily leaves the table with a bitter, knowing expression, grasping papers and projections.

This roulette wheel is fixed , she thinks.

In Barcelona our chemistry lecturer who was naïve enough to predict the color of the reaction in process frequently put his foot in it. If he said green, it would inevitably come out white or black. The students gave him standing ovations.

“It was slightly black,” the poor man would say, trembling like a tree leaf. “Next year, God willing, it will work out better …”

So too hopes the roulette player and in general the savvy gambler. “Next year, God willing, it will work out better. This year it was slightly black. I can’t complain,” says the gambler who inevitably loses. If the world is six million years old, this show has been running for six thousand years — in round numbers. And won’t it run and run!

I’m reading a journal, sitting on a willow chair between two palm trees with the sun on my back.

“What are you reading? What are you reading?” asks a nosy Barcelonan I’ve met by chance.

“ La Revue de Monte Carlo? ”

“That must be full of saucy comedy?”

“Not at all! It is a scientific journal.”

And that’s the truth. Everybody who knows La Revue de Monte Carlo must have noticed the secondary title, according to which the publication is a scientific journal. It is printed under a dedication to Napoleon I, whose maxim is quoted: “Calculation will win the game.” A lovely, enthusiastic, optimistic maxim, worthy of a great general! A maxim to bear in mind when educating young people! It is from his Memoirs of Saint Helena and is one of those declarations that give testimony to the depth of thought of that hero who fought so many famous battles. Such a pity his dictum is expressed in the form of a prophecy.