Брайс Куртенэ - The Power of One

‘And Peekay,’ he said finally.

I felt weak in the legs and it took all my strength of will not to start crying on the spot. I had made it. I was the sixth part of Sinjun’s People.

Atherton, Cunning-Spider, Pissy Johnson, Hymie and I celebrated by feasting on Perk’s pies, cream buns and Pepsi-Cola all that afternoon before Atherton, Cunning-Spider and Pissy Johnson had to leave for the four o’clock roll call. Sinjun’s People were not required to attend roll call and as they left playfully cursing us, we looked suitably upset though secretly we felt enormously privileged.

Nine punters had won on the first bet sharing the thirty-pound pot between them. There were no winners on the second bet. Hymie himself had been the wild card, and while some of the punters might have selected him for inclusion in their first bet, none had thought to place him first or second in Levy’s Remarkable Multiple of One Hundred. The fact that my name had appeared most often in either the first or second slot meant that most of the bets were not even close. We had cleared one hundred and sixty pounds on the deal.

After the others had left for roll call I turned to Hymie. ‘Okay, smartarse, how did you do it?’ I said, delicately licking the excess cream squirting from the side of my last cream bun.

‘How did I do what?’ Hymie said dreamily, upending a Pepsi into his mouth in an attempt to hide his grin.

‘You know what I’m talking about! You knew from the betting that your chances of being selected in the number one spot were considered zero. Even I wouldn’t have put you there. With you in the number one spot we had to win the big money. How did you do it?’

He removed the Pepsi from his mouth and placed it on the floor beside him. ‘It was partly luck, but mostly my usual good judgement,’ he said in his unassuming way.

‘Christ you’re a humble bastard, Levy! Okay, tell me the good judgement part first.’

‘Well I guess we should have been happy with a sixty quid profit, with a reasonable chance of winning the big money as well. But there was still an element of luck involved. I had somehow to work out a way whereby the betting was completely honest, but the punter’s chance of winning was cut down and ours increased.’

‘You greedy bugger, Levy.’

‘No, not greedy, I just don’t like to gamble, but I do like to win and to win you have to make the odds negligible. Now, you take the horses. There are roughly fifteen horses in a race and over the whole of last year I analysed the results of every race run at Turfontein racecourse. In that entire time the first and second favourites won in correct sequence one hundred and four times in eight hundred and thirty-two races, that means the bookmaker has eight chances of winning to one of losing. That’s good, but not good enough.’

‘Yeah, sure, but we had sixty quid marked off for a profit anyway. That’s a damn good week’s work.’

‘I know, but the whole thing lacked intellectual excitement. It didn’t depend on my wits.’

‘Hymie, you can’t have it both ways. You want a totally safe scam but you still want to get an intellectual kick from winning.’

‘That’s what I’ve told you before. With a Jew making money for its own sake, it is a matter of intellectual survival.’

‘Okay, I accept that; so tell me, man, how did you fix it?’

‘Fix it!’ Hymie exploded. ‘Are you calling me a cheat?’

His outburst was totally unexpected and I was shocked. ‘Ferchrissake, Hymie, you know what I mean,’ I said quickly, trying to hide my embarrassment.

Hymie sighed, ‘In the end it’s always the same, the gentile believes the dirty Jew is cheating, that’s right isn’t it?’

‘Bullshit, Hymie! That’s not what I meant, I’m truly sorry. You know how I feel about you.’

Hymie held my gaze for a long time. ‘Yeah, I do,’ he said with a grin, ‘but thanks for saying it anyway.’

‘Well go on,’ I said, greatly relieved and anxious to leave the incident and continue the conversation.

Hymie continued. ‘It does rather seem like a fix, doesn’t it? But all I did was tamper a little with human nature.’

‘You’ll have to explain that.’

‘Well, when you told me about your interview with Singe ’n Burn… how he had questioned you about your boxing.’

‘I don’t understand. What had that to do with setting up the multiple of one hundred bet?’

‘Well, you know my theory of a winner. Find one winner and you can build everything around him? Well, you’ve always been my one winner and with the strong likelihood of your placing in the number one slot for Sinjun’s People, Levy’s Remarkable Multiple of One Hundred would have been much too risky. It meant the punter had only to get one more correct name to win.’

‘But I told you the boxing issue might have eliminated me all together.’

‘Not a chance, old buddy! There was never any chance that you wouldn’t be chosen, but I was willing to bet that Singe ’n Burn wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to give you your first tutorial.’

‘My first tutorial?’

‘Christ, Peekay, sometimes you’re thick. Singe ’n Burn is a self-confessed liberal thinker, deeply suspicious of the obsessive personality. That’s the whole point of his Renaissance man, moderation in all things even in moderation. He was signalling his disapproval by placing you in sixth possie.’

‘Jesus, Hymie, you took the trouble to think all that out?’

‘Thinking is never any trouble, you should try it sometime.’ He grinned suddenly, ‘Besides, I might have been wrong, Singe ’n Burn might have just dropped you one slot and you’d still be up there in one of the top two positions. I had to put us completely out of danger. I had to get myself chosen, not just chosen, but elected to the number one slot. You see, even if you were in the number two position and as a rank outsider, a non-contender, I was in the number one slot, that would make it impossible for anyone to get a correct sequence. Nobody in his right mind would combine a hundred to one shot in with a certainty when both places counted together for the win.’

‘You’ve got me. How the hell did you make it happen?’

‘Well, I’d figured out how Singe ’n Burn was going to react with you and when you know the man you know the thought process. The opposite to an obsessive personality, in this case yours about boxing, is a well-adjusted one. The epitome of a well-adjusted personality is modesty and a willingness to sacrifice your own ambition for the greater good of the whole. What was it that Christ said? “No greater love hath a man than he lay down his life for a friend”.’ Hymie gave a little laugh, ‘So when Singe ’n Burn discovered personal sacrifice together with generosity of spirit to be a fundamental part of my character, I knew I had the number one possie in the bag.’

‘And just how did you prove this to him? I mean, those two personality traits are not exactly obvious in you,’ I added with a tinge of sarcasm.

Hymie turned to me, an embarrassed look on his face. ‘I don’t think you’re going to like this next bit much. We were talking about the importance of friendship and I brought up my friendship with you. Singe ’n Burn then asked me about your obsession with boxing.’ He paused, ‘Are you sure you want me to go on?’

‘I think I know where this is leading, but I can’t stop it now, go on.’

‘Well, I told him about your childhood, your last boarding school, the prison, although I promise I didn’t tell him about the Tadpole Angel, just Geel Piet and the boxing, just some of the stuff you told me.’

‘Jesus, Hymie, that was confidential.’

‘Yeah, I know, I mean I knew it was, but you’d never actually told me not to tell anyone.’ Hymie paused, ‘Christ, Peekay, you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of.’