Juan José Saer - Scars

Marquitos asked me if I had read Dostoevsky’s The Gambler , and when I said I had he asked me what I thought of it. I told him I thought it was good. We finished eating and then went downtown in Marquitos’s car for a cup of coffee. It was a small car, sky blue. We had a coffee at the arcade bar, but now even Marquitos didn’t try to talk. He asked me if I wanted to go anywhere, and I said that if it was on his way to drop me off at the club. When we got there, Marquitos stopped and turned off the car. He said he wanted to se me in action and was coming in with me. I said he would get bored, and he answered that there wasn’t any chance it could be more boring than dinner, and then he got out. By the time I got to the foot of the stairs that lead to the game room, I was already sweating. I told Marquitos to wait for me near the table, and I went to the cage and exchanged one ten-thousand-peso bill for a yellow oval and five red rectangles. I put them in my shirt pocket and joined Marquitos. He didn’t even hear me walk up: his eyes were glued to the center of the table.

There wasn’t a single seat open, and the gamblers were pressed close around the table. I had to stand in the second row and watch the game over the shoulders of the guys who were standing behind the chairs. Marquitos was standing on his toes, balancing lightly, his eyes wide open. I asked him which way the last hand had turned out, and he said banco. So I reached over the shoulder of a guy standing behind the table and threw out the yellow oval to bet it on banco. Then I waited for the hand, and it turned out punto. Marquitos gave me a disheartened look. The next hand, I threw the five red rectangles on punto. Punto took it. I left the ten thousand on punto and the third hand turned out banco.

I got in line, then changed the second bill for two yellow ovals and went back to the table. Marquitos was staring at me. I pretended not to see him. I looked away. For a few seconds I knew he was looking at me, even though I was looking at the center of the table. Then he looked away, stood up on his toes again, and looked at the center of the table. I had the two yellow ovals in my right hand, pressed tight. They were damp. I was about to throw one on the table when I saw Marquitos opening a path between two guys who were standing next to the table, and then he disappeared. I turned my head around and saw that he had just sat down. His pale face had reddened, and I thought he looked slightly unhinged. I leaned in and asked him what he was doing.

I want to see it close up, he said.

Then I threw the two yellow ovals to punto. I went to the cage, changed the last ten-thousand-peso bill for a green rectangle with the numbers stamped in the center, in gold, and went back to the table and stood next to Marquitos, opening a path with my elbows through the guys who were standing behind him. I leaned in and asked Marquitos how he saw the thing.

Darkly, he said. His pale color had returned.

We didn’t speak again for at least fifteen minutes. I defended my green rectangle as best I could, but in they end they took it. With my last five thousand I looked for my pulse, but no matter how much I tried to empty my mind for a full, uninterrupted minute, nothing came to fill the space, and in the end I threw the yellow oval blindly. Nothing happened. They took it. Right then, Marquitos turned around and had me lean in. He asked me if I had finished, and I said yes. Then he asked if he could cash a check here. I told him he could. He got up, tilted the chair against the edge of the table, to reserve it, and followed me to the cage. I told the cashier that Marquitos wanted to cash a check. I introduced Marquitos and stepped away. Marquitos said two or three words to the cashier, leaned over the counter, filled out the check, and handed it to him. The cashier gave him ten green rectangles. Marquitos put them in his hip pocket, then looked at me and shook his head, indicating that I should follow him. We went back to the table, and he told me to sit down. His tone made it more like an order. He stood to my right. Then he dropped three green rectangles on the felt in front of me. I looked up and saw that he was staring at the table with a malevolent smirk, but his left leg was shaking, his heel tapping against the floor.

I asked him what he wanted me to play.

I don’t have any preference whatsoever, he said.

So I put the first rectangle on punto, and it turned out punto. I left the two rectangles on punto and they gave me back four. Marquitos leaned in and asked me if I saw how easy it was, and then he picked up the six green rectangles and put them in his pocket. Then he walked away from the table. I got up, tilted the chair to reserve it, and followed him. He was walking toward the cage. I caught up to him halfway there and asked what he was doing.

Cashing in, said Marquitos. He reached the cage, asked for his check back, and gave them ten green rectangles. Then he exchanged the last three rectangles for three ten-thousand-peso bills. He put away the check and handed me the bills.

These are yours, he said.

I took the bills and put them in my pocket. I asked Marquitos if he wanted to wait for me or if he was leaving, and he said he was leaving. I walked him out to the top of the stairs and watched him as he walked down. Then I shouted for him to hurry the mortgage along, and I went back to the table. A guy was sitting in the chair I had reserved, and I tapped him on his right shoulder with the tips of my fingers and he got up. I didn’t play a cent until my turn as the banco came around, and just as I was going to bet the first ten thousand on banco, the game ended. So I went home and went to sleep.

The thirty thousand from Marcos lasted me about eight days, so around the fifteenth I was tapped out. I had defended it well, but in the end they took it. I didn’t even manage to buy Delicia her primer, but we had plenty to eat, and every couple of days I would go to the central market and pick up two or three kilos of the late-season grapes, which are sweet and hard, and are even better because there won’t be any more until the next year. I picked at the bunches on the way home from the market and then put them in the freezer. Then I would shut myself in the study. On the fifteenth, at five in the afternoon, I finished my seventh essay. I decided to call Carlitos Tomatis and read it to him.

Then I decided to wait two or three more days, but on the seventeenth it was Tomatis who called me, asking if I had gotten the money for the mortgage yet. I told him firemen could show up and tear the house apart and they wouldn’t find a single cent in it. And that the mortgage would be paid out soon, on April fifth. Tomatis said that was a shame, and he was about to hang up when I told him I had finished my essay on Sivana and I wanted to read it to him.

One of these nights I’ll come by your house, then, Sergio, said Tomatis.

I’m almost never home at night, I said. The afternoons work for me.

He said that sounded perfect, that he would come by and see me some afternoon soon, and he hung up. I stayed at my desk until after dark, then I opened the window wide and turned off the light. I sat in the dark for hours, until Delicia knocked on the door and told me to come eat.

Between the fifteenth and the fifth of April I only went to the club twice, first the night of March twenty-second, after I sold my typewriter. I made a clean copy of my essay on Sivana, and then I went out and sold it. I had used the typewriter seven times in the last three or four years, once each time I finished an essay and typed it up. I would make three copies and file them in a red folder, which I had specially printed for law school. The folder had letterhead printed on the inside, on the right. It said, Mr. Sergio Escalante, Attorney. They gave me eighteen thousand for the typewriter, and it lasted two nights. After that there was nothing left to sell. We ate like birds, if at all. I spent hours at my desk, going over my comic book collection. Delicia would come in at five with the mate . Five on the dot. I don’t know how she managed to tell the time, because apart from my watch, which was always on my wrist, there wasn’t anything else in the house that did. I didn’t need to look at the time to know it was five when she would knock and then come in with the aluminum kettle and the mate gourd with its silver base. I knew it was exactly five. She didn’t show up a minute before or a minute after. No, she showed up at five exactly. I had once asked her to bring me a mate around five, that I liked to have some bitters around that time. And ever since then she had never gone one day without knocking on the door at five. By the twenty-fourth I didn’t have a cent left, so on the twenty-fifth I sold the watch. I didn’t even get a thousand pesos for it. With a few coins that I found at the bottom of a drawer in my wife’s bureau, which I hadn’t opened since the day she ate rat poison and fell down the stairs, I put together a thousand pesos, which I exchanged for two silver-plated circles that I lost immediately. After that, between March twenty-fourth and April fifth, the autumn came.