Ingo Schulze - New Lives

Our curiosity annoyed the waiters’ hypersensitive organs of perception. Just a fleeting glance or a careless gesture brought them bounding over, to no purpose of course, since our glasses were appropriately full, the ashtrays empty, both raisin and olive bread in plentiful supply, and they had only just now crumbed the tablecloth.

Isn’t there some form of meditation by which you cleanse your soul with a sequence of the most exquisite dishes? Rich people live healthy lives, Vera says.

At this point I thought that I might pull a fast one on the baron and be able to cheat him. Because the eighteen hundred francs that I gladly placed on the silver tray could not be taken away from us, either by him or the casino.

How naive of me! As if there were any emotion, any thought that was not included in the baron’s calculations. The more abundant, the more contradictory my own responses might be, the more successful his lessons proved to be. Presumably if Barrista had this letter in hand, he would first point out by way of critique that I’ve already mentioned prices three times.

Unfortunately Vera and I messed up at the end. My paying in cash had itself caused bewilderment, but our departure proved so abrupt that our personal waiters, who had intended to pull our chairs back, just raised their hands in reproachful disappointment.

Once in the casino we soon found ourselves standing at the first roulette table. I would have liked to have gone to work right away, but had not yet bought my jetons. I asked Vera what number she guessed would be next, and chose “eighteen” for myself. There was no reason to pick eighteen. It isn’t one of my favorite numbers. “Eighteen,” I repeated — and didn’t understand what the croupier announced in French. Vera looked at me in shock. Eighteen.

How was I supposed to interpret this oracle: “This is your lucky day!” or “That was your one and only chance!”?

Instead of the six thousand francs I had planned to bet today, I exchanged only fifty-five hundred with the cashier — and smiled at my own faintheartedness.

A guard at the entrance to the rear rooms made us hesitant. But we showed our gold hotel cards, waited for him to bow, and crossed the invisible border to the salon privé.

Two places at Table 7 were open. The board promised an above-average variety. To win all you had to do was muster a little consistency. The red field lay directly before us.

I passed on the first few rounds, trying to get a feel for the game. Then I placed a hundred on the lower third 237—it had not appeared for four times in a row. I lost and doubled my bet. Perhaps the most beautiful jetons are the greenish mother-of-pearl hundreds. The others at the table, all older gentlemen, bet on numbers. I won. A pink five hundred, an orange two hundred, and a green hundred were added to my bet; I was ahead five hundred francs after three turns of the wheel. “It’s working,” I whispered.

Vera played the thirds, the rows, the red, the odds. She didn’t always keep good track — the ball landed on fifteen and seven twice. The thirds alternated in an almost regular sequence.

Suddenly Vera wanted to leave; 20 percent profit was more than enough for her. I said that I couldn’t develop a method, a system, if she kept betting such sums simply at random. Maybe, she conjectured, my real task was to find my own rules. I had made a promise, I said testily. After that I lost four times in a row.

One glance at our cash on hand, and my courage failed me. Instead of doubling my sixteen hundred, I risked only a thousand — and lost. I bet fifteen hundred. It was already my last chance. So, I thought, that’s how fast it all went.

Vera stood up. We said our good-byes while the ball was still spinning in its bowl. I watched Vera go, she turned around, I waved, heard the ball bouncing, then its last click —the announced winner had several syllables. All I recall is that it was in the right third — victory! Victory! I was back in the running.

From that point on I played my apple green hundreds with childlike abandon, happy at last to be able to do or not do whatever I pleased. Success proved me right. My winnings grew steadily and always in the same way: as soon as a given third had not appeared four times in a row, I entered the fray: one hundred, two hundred, four hundred — and at the latest won with eight hundred.

I didn’t care if other people were speculating on the same third I was. Except that when a bet was larger than mine, I feared some alien gravity might spoil my luck.

Currency was constantly being changed into jetons. Anyone who left the table, left with nothing. I, on the other hand, had the feeling I was doing good work.

The only other player I admired was wearing neither tie nor bow tie and chewed the whole time on the stump of a cigarillo. I don’t know how big his stake was to begin with. After a half hour, however, there they lay before him: two big white ten thousands, those Lipizzaners among the jetons. I wanted so much to give him a nod of approval, but his eyes were relentlessly fixed on the green felt.

His counterpart was a freckled, unshaven gentleman, who sat at one corner and, tilting his head like a grade-school boy, jotted down each number in a plaid notebook. He calculated and calculated and looked up only to place one of his nominal bets — which he promptly lost.

The only person working harder than I was a delicate Frenchman, who was playing two tables at once and evidently trusted my choice of thirds. Our fate hung from the same thread — which for him, however, was no reason to return my smile. I soon realized how alone a person is, even in success.

I got too cocky twice and lost four lemon fifties on red, and lost again with an orange two hundred on passe. Have I already told you that at every spin I defended myself with a pink mother-of-pearl twenty on the zero? There wasn’t one zero, however, the whole evening. (The chambermaid doesn’t know if she should chase me off the balcony or not. She opened the door so that I can hear her vacuuming.)

Taking a cue from the man with the cigarillo, I awarded the croupiers an occasional lemon-or apple-colored chip. Shortly before one o’clock I totaled up the books: I had ten thousand francs in my pocket — winnings of forty-five hundred, plus a motley collection of other chips that came to twelve hundred, which suddenly meant nothing to me. I bet on red — and won, let the apples and lemons lie there, pocketed a blue mother-of-pearl thousand and all my oranges.

I had already whispered my bonsoir and started moving toward the cashier, when I noticed the cleavage on two women at the next table, and changed course.

I bent deep over both the ladies — and placed all my oranges on red. Seconds later I took another look down into the décolletage and raked in my winnings.

The cashier was cross-eyed, but that was the only irregularity. I strode out, bounding down the casino stairs and then up the stairway leading to the Hôtel de Paris, shouted, “Yes! I won!” and left it to Vera to sort out the bills on the bedspread. All in all, winnings of almost seven thousand francs.

It was when I woke up that I felt the angst. I know how silly it is to talk about angst. The fact that even if I had lost, I would have lost nothing, didn’t help. It was my own big mouth that was at fault. Without giving it a second thought, I had accepted the baron’s offer. But now I no longer comprehended where I had found the courage to bet a fifteen hundred francs. It seemed absurd ever to want to risk that much again.

Vera was not happy with me. Under a springtime sun, we trotted out into the bay and then up to the Grimaldis’ castle, missed the changing of the guard, did a circuit in the cathedral, and finally landed at the oceanographic museum. From its rooftop terrace we could watch the sailboats. But none of it proved a distraction. I tried thinking about soccer.