Short Fiction, Aleksandr Kuprin [the speed reading book txt] 📗

necessary for me to go to Paris and to wear out all the steps and thresholds of ministries and newspaper sanctums, in order to wall up the breach which you had made in my enterprise. An eye for an eye. Now you shall never see compassion from me⁠—but I can give you alms.”

And ever since the Spanish count, like a rooster whose tail feathers have been plucked, is constantly contemplating the retrieval of his fortune. The administration of the dive, at the generous dispensation of Blan, doles out to him twenty francs a day (approximately, seven roubles, in our reckoning). He has the right of entry to the Casino, and is even permitted to play. But whenever he loses his pitiful twenty francs, they are not taken from him; and whenever he wins, he is not paid. A more abominable hulk, or a greedier⁠—thus saith the legend⁠—none has ever beheld on the azure shores. And, at a modest estimate, there are some four thousand of such people knocking about in Monte Carlo.

Such was Blan’s grasp of human psychology. Every winner would return to him to win once more; and every loser, to win his money back again. Nor was he at all amiss in his cynical estimate of one of the basest of human passions. Rest in peace, thou gentle worker. For men are worthy of whatsoever treatment they deserve.

The details of organization of this business are simple, to the verge of laughter. Every croupier undergoes a schooling of two years’ instruction; for two years does he sit in the basements of the Casino and learn to send a little ball over a whirling disc; learning to remember faces and costumes, to speak all languages, and to wear clean linen. Their wives and daughters are provided for by the administration⁠—small tobacco and wine shops are opened for them. And thus these people are chained by unbreakable ties to the whirling plate and the little ball hopping upon it. And, truly⁠—where may one turn if he has been formerly a croupier, or a precinct inspector?

The talk of a croupier being able to put the ball in any one of the thirty-seven little cups is, I think, without foundation; but that he is able to drive the ball into a given sector is possible. Firstly, because human dexterity has no bounds (witness acrobats, aviators, sharpers), and secondly, because I have myself seen an inspector of the playing change, within one hour, three croupiers who had been losing one after the other.

These hundreds of people⁠—no, not even people, but only gamblers⁠—produce a pitiful and repulsive impression, huddled over the green cloth covered tables! Some forty or fifty men and women are sitting, jostling one another with elbows and hips; a second row has piled on them from behind, while still farther back is a crush, with grasping, perspiring, moist hands thrust over the heads of the foremost. In passing, a roué’s elbow strikes the cheek or bosom of some beautiful woman or girl. A mere trifle! No one pays any attention to this⁠ ⁠…

But then, how interesting a certain Russian countess was! She had a nervous tic of the eyes, and her hands trembled from age and the fever of gambling. Out of a white chamois bag, something like a pouch, she took out gold by the handful, and flung it on the cloth at random. The chief croupier, the one who set the device whirling⁠—a fat Frenchman, with an ugly red face⁠—purposely delayed the game and laughed straight in the face of the woman.

It must be said that she paid no attention to this, and, when she had lost everything, she ordered somebody to call her automobile and somebody else to pay for the two glasses of strong tea she had drunk, and departed. After all, it was handsomely done.

What a pity that Russian women, so tenderly and poetically drawn by Turgeniev, Tolstoy, and Nekrassov, should inevitably get into this accursed hole!

The entire French press is prostituted by the authorities of Monte Carlo with unusual adroitness and calmness. These honest journalists⁠—of whom only Count Henri de Rochefort is genuinely honest and incorruptible⁠—are deliberately paid not to write of the suicides that occur on this bare rock. The honest journalists, of course, begin to blackmail the gambling hell, and write exclusively of suicides until they receive thirty or forty thousand francs as quittance. That is all the administration needs. It does not at all value five-franc players⁠—rather, it lies in wait for millionaires. And it is quite evident that a sated blockhead, who had experienced during the twenty-five years of his hothouse existence almost everything that the imagination of man⁠—or, rather, of a flunkey⁠—may conceive: from hunting tigers to the sin of sodomy⁠—it is quite evident that such a charming youth would be inevitably drawn to experience strong sensations. And that is why the directors of the dive from time to time with great magnanimity, grant the opportunity of winning a few thousand francs to some nabob traveling incognito. It is evident, even to one blind, that this money is thrown out by the administration for the réclame, or, to put it more plainly, it is considered as pot boire, or pin money.⁠ ⁠…

My testimony is unprejudiced, because among my numerous vices one is missing⁠—a longing for cards. I was merely a dispassionate and an attentive observer. Unexpectedly, I won a few francs, but it was a disgusting and a dreary business.

The corrupting influence of Monte Carlo is to be felt everywhere upon the azure shores. And, looked at more attentively, one seems to have fallen into some plague-stricken spot, in the grip of an epidemic⁠—a place which it would be of great benefit to pour kerosene over and to burn down. In every bar, in every tobacco shop, in every hotel, stand machines for gambling⁠—resembling the cash registers in big stores. At the top are three colors: yellow, green, red; or else, three toy horses: a black, a bay, and a gray.