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

Some times, however, there are little cats, with three openings above them, as in a toy savings-bank, to drop in the coins. If you guess the color, you win. And the kind, simple hearted house-painters and stonecutters, car-conductors, porters, waiters, prostitutes, keep on, from morn till night, putting their hard earned sous into this insatiable maw. Of course, they do not understand that the machine has sixty-six and a fraction chances of winning, as against theirs. And these sixty-six percent are shared in this manner: the owner of the machine receives forty-four percent, while the keeper of the little inn gets twenty-two. It must be said that the innkeeper, whenever anyone wins, prefers to pay not in money, but in drinks⁠—sweet vermouth, or fiery absinthe.

As for the amateurs of more spicy gambling⁠—there are secret, shady haunts for them, all over the azure shore. One of these⁠—the most noteworthy⁠—has come into being in a small hamlet that goes by the name of Trinité, some twenty versts from Nice, among mountains over which runs a white paved road, built by Roman sovereigns, and rebuilt by Napoleon (Corniche). Wine and cold meats are “on the house.” The minimum stake is a franc (in Monte Carlo it is five francs). Anybody at all is admitted. None will be offended if, at the height of the game, one remove his coat and vest.

But then, it is assuredly an astonishing collection of human refuse that gathers here: croupiers, expelled from Monte Carlo for cheating, with something of the hangman in their faces, or of the catchpole, or of the billiard-marker; little old ladies, with noble profiles, who, as they get off the tram, hastily make the sign of the cross under cover of their mantles, and, if they catch sight of a hunchback, rush to touch his hump for luck; Russian sharpers, who have brought their modest savings, gleaned at St. Petersburg, to the azure shores, and inevitably lose everything (this is their common fate); international personages, to whom entry into Monte Carlo is forbidden, either for stealing somebody else’s stake, or for the unsuccessful extraction of a wallet from a stranger’s pocket; disguised police agents.⁠ ⁠… In a word, it is a cordial, gay, intimate gathering.⁠ ⁠…

However, one insane idea never forsakes any one of them: “The roulette has laws of its own!” It is only necessary to discover the key to them. And so these lunatics sit whole days through, combining numbers, multiplying them by one another, extracting their square roots. The administration looks upon them as harmless maniacs, and does not apply any measures of restriction to them.

True, a game in Trinité often winds up in a fracas, or a thrust of the knife into the abdomen, but nobody pays any attention to such trifles in Trinité.

And yet, after all, how interesting French manners are! Even in these dives our generous southern friends cannot do without a gesture.

General Goiron, just elected mayor of Nice, evinced a natural desire to demonstrate his civic rigor and administrative activity. Therefore, he ordered the closing of all gaming houses in Trinité⁠—and there are some ten or fifteen of them there. A raid was arranged. The gamblers scattered in terror, each one for himself. Monsieur Paul, organizer of the most important establishment, was also in flight, pursued by a police commissioner. And lo! the commissioner, as he runs, sprains his foot, or, perhaps, merely pretends having sprained it. Whereupon Monsieur Paul halts and with the magnanimity of an honest adversary, assists his pursuer to arise, puts him into a carriage, attends upon him precisely like a solicitous nurse, and brings him with pomp into the town. The next day between the two newspapers of Nice, who usually are not averse to sling a little mud at each other, a touching unison reigns. In one, there is a leader, whose theme is that French chivalry is not yet dead; while in the other is a feuilleton: “The Magnanimous Foes.”

And the day after in both newspapers there are two items, the same, almost word for word: “It is to be regretted that the struggle with the lust for gambling for money is beyond the strength of our police in Nice. Monsieur Paul has again opened his gaming house in Trinité, from ten until two in the afternoon, and from four until eight in the evening; here, also, is to be found a magnificent buffet, which Maître Paul, with that hospitality which is so natural to every Frenchman, places at the service of all visitors, entirely without charge. Smoking is permitted; the air is salubrious, and the landscape most beautiful, the best throughout the entire azure coast.”

No! Russian reporters, whom someone has dubbed “free lunch grafters,” will never attain the high culture of their confrères in the south!

Roach Hole

And really, neither I nor anybody else could ever meet, in a lifetime, a fellow queerer, quainter, and, at the same time, more touching. He was a man of small stature, as black as a black cockroach, with an enormous black beard; he was prematurely bald, but his eyes were glowing, beautiful, and somewhat unhealthy.

He was always full of protests, complaints, plans for inventions, letters to newspapers, letters of recommendation for servants, and so forth.

He would burst into our quarters⁠—a students’ garret, rented by Goliyashkin⁠—and would suddenly yell, all beside himself:

“It’s an outrage! How is it that nobody surmises that candle factories nowadays really represent something in the nature of a swindling American Trust: the stearine is mixed with kerosene! The wicks are saturated through and through with kerosene! It is therefore perfectly evident, even to a two year-old infant, that nowadays candles burn four times as fast as a normal candle should, and that, therefore, I am paying to a syndicate⁠—or how the devil do you call it?⁠—as much for one candle consumed as I ought to pay for four candles! And everybody knows this, and nobody protests!”

After a lapse of time he would again come running to us, and