Lawrence Osborne - The Ballad of a Small Player

I put down a hundred twenty thousand this time and won again. The bankers shot each other unsubtle looks and I played two hands of fifty thousand each. Stiff hands that in normal times would have to be played fearlessly. But I had neither fear nor the lack of fear. I was strung out in between. The first fifty-thousand-dollar hand was matched by the others, who were wealthier than they looked. No one could believe that a player would turn three naturals in a row.

It was like those famous streaks of red that are known at roulette tables. The ball falls on red for eleven times in a row and the punters, confronted with a twelfth spin, must decide whether there is a statistical law that favors a twelfth red or a black. But ah, there is no such thing as a statistical law when it comes to chance. A pair of dice can fall as two sixes ten times in a row and no law has been broken. If they rolled as sixes a hundred times in a row we’d be astonished — dismayed, even — but no law will have been turned upside down. There is nothing that says the roulette ball cannot fall on red seventeen times in a row (as it does sometimes) or fifty-two times.

I believe a wheel at the Monte Carlo casino in 1897 rolled eighteen reds in a row and a German gambler made a small fortune on the eighteenth because nobody else around him dared bet on red. That man held his nerve. I had now played fourteen naturals in a row, and like that streak of reds my streak of nines was simply coasting along in its aberrant groove. It was one of those things, and the trick was to not succumb to any surprise. I didn’t. I played the hand as if it were the first I had ever played. I turned the cards and asked the banker to bag the chips I had won. There was nothing to it, and the spectators went silent in recognition of its inevitability.

Instead of playing the whole amount I’d taken out with me, I cashed in the chips I’d won and placed the united amount in my suitcase. I went upstairs to the lobby of the Landmark hotel and had a pot of tea, opening the case for a moment to look at the rows of banknotes wrapped in rubber bands. It was now about eight o’clock and I was still feeling feverish. Indeed, these attacks of fever were beginning to increase in frequency. I wondered if the Paiza was open at such an early hour. I walked there without any haste and was told that the pits were open twenty-four hours. Therefore, if I wanted to make some bets I could certainly do so, and for any amount I wanted. There was no question of their not remembering me from the previous time. I was shown to one of their private rooms and served another breakfast. I made four bets and an hour later I had won a few million more. The cash filled four cases and I walked out with them as casually as a wealthy housewife walking out of Bloomingdale’s with her shopping.

A car was waiting for me at the doors and they wished me a hasty return with at least some show of genuine hospitality. I went back to the Lisboa and stashed the cases next to the others.

It was now obvious to me that my sport and pastime was going through cyclical patterns that were deeper than the usual ups and downs that a player must expect to endure. Bouts of indulgence and triumph were followed by periods of satiation, self-disgust, a determination to desist that had nothing to do with the feelings one experiences during losses. These latter periods of abeyance were getting longer, so that I didn’t at all mind cruising from day to day without any visit to the tables at all, and while I lay in my pompous Lisboa bed surrounded by scarlet and gold I read the financial papers with an eye to investing the millions of kwai I had earned.

Investing , however, is a big word. I had never had any ideas about that before. I had fully expected to go to seed, and decline in the way that men going to seed decline, day by day, a slow declension marked by ever-diminishing wealth. Winning over and over had seemed like a realistic prospect, and when I won or lost before I had savored both in different ways. Now, of course, everything had changed. The winnings had piled up and they were rapidly approaching the point at which they would render the whole exercise pointless, if the point of it was to win money. Moreover, my health was clearly going into a decline that I could not explain. Fevers, chills, insatiable hunger, none of which had any obvious cause. I reasoned to myself that these were purely psychological, but even if they were psychological, that did not make them any less real. I was sure that I was entering a mental breakdown of some kind, but no two mental breakdowns are ever the same. To the person suffering one, the breakdown always seems slightly unreal. It feels inexplicable.

I speculated on what I could do now if I decided to give up the baccarat lifestyle (for that is what it is) and devote myself to deep-sea fishing, Ming antiques, or Chinese-style ballroom dancing, not to mention real estate and travel. I wondered if I could haul the entire stash of cash across the border using a paid smuggling service, the existence of which was taken as certain in gaming circles. Could I get to Shenzen or even Kunming and disappear all over again, this time loaded with a considerable fortune? Could I stage my own disappearance with enough subtlety that it would ensure that I was left alone to start a new life? But where would I go?

There was Dao-Ming, of course. It had begun to occur to me that I was happiest with her on her island and that I could go back to it and to her. It would not matter if we did nothing for the rest of our lives, just lived in that small house and ate clams every night and made do. It would not be bad; it would be better than anything else. It was possible that I would become like her, a ghost with a place to haunt.

But I knew that it would not happen. I had to turn to other ideas. I thought, in all seriousness, of buying a hotel in Sichuan and becoming one of those absent owners who rake in the profits from a mini golf course while living in a villa by the coast staffed with teenage girls. But it would never happen. And then there was the idea of moving on to another Asian fleshpot. These are the places where Western men come to die. They are our fleshy death-pots. But first there was the here and now. One morning there was a commotion outside my door and when I went out to investigate I was immediately surrounded by a crowd of local journalists, one of whom had a camera and a boom. They had obviously been waiting there all night, perhaps with their ears pressed to my door.

“Lord Doyle!” they cried, scrambling to their feet and following me down the corridor toward the elevators.

“Lord Doyle,” a young woman cried in particular. Attractive, Chinese, bangs, high heels, notepad.

“I am not Lord Doyle.”

“Oh, Lord Doyle, can we—”

They blocked the elevators and the cameras rolled.

Lord Doyle, an English gentleman of means, yesterday won seventeen million Hong Kong dollars at the Macau casinos. Gamblers from all over the city clamored to meet him. What is his secret? How does he play? Is he calm or passionate? He speaks Chinese!

“How old are you, Lord Doyle? Can you do math?”

I held a hand up to block the lens.

“You’re potty,” I said. “I’m not Lord Doyle. There is no Lord Doyle.”

“Lord Doyle, are you a Sagittarius?”

“Who told you I was a Sagittarius?”

“So you are Lord Doyle!”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I am Mr. Doyle.”

They all laughed uproariously.

“Lord Doyle, are you a lucky man? Do you pray? Do you eat chicken? Is your mother a Protestant?”

“You can’t film me!”

And indeed that was a dangerous thing.

“Are you superstitious? Tell us about the number nine. Do you organize your life around the number nine?”