They Were Counted (The Writing on the Wall: the Transylvanian Trilogy)

by Bánffy, Miklós

  Slowly some of the players pushed forward little piles of chips until there were some twelve thousand crowns on the table. The banker drew a nine.

  ‘The bank will be twenty-four!’ said Zeno. He pulled back the first pile of chips and built them into two neat stacks in front of him. Leaning forward, he shifted his cigar to the corner of his mouth and said: ‘Twenty-four, who wants it?’

  In front of Donci Illesvary only a solitary five hundred-crown piece remained, the forlorn relic of an evening of continual loss. Donci thought that if he won now he would break even; but if not, well, he could always touch his brother for another loan, as he had so often before. He knocked on the table to show that he would meet the stake.

  Zeno drew a nine, winning again, and Donci gestured to the Steward to bring him an IOU to sign.

  From then on the Ponte – those playing against the bank – placed ever smaller bets: eight thousand, five, three, and finally only one or two thousand, and that unwillingly, but they had to go on for it was considered dishonourable to withdraw from play just because a great gambler was on a winning streak. At a certain point they started putting up higher stakes again, for everyone felt that the run would soon come to an end. But it didn’t: Arzenovics won eighteen times in a row. Now the betting slowed down. Everyone had been bled white.

  ‘Pour faire marcher le jeu! – to keep the game going’, said Neszti Szent-Gyorgyi, and pushed two thousand-crown chips forward with his long well-groomed fingers. He was the only player. Zeno won again.

  ‘Nineteen times … I counted!’ said Pray nervously. ‘This man’ll kill us all!’ He was the only one to complain, though throughout the evening he had only occasionally risked a hundred-crown chip, and even that he had usually withdrawn before play started. He said this, however, because he liked to give the impression that he played just as high as the others and that he too had lost heavily.

  At this moment the party was joined by Fredi Wuelffenstein, who had been in one of the lower rooms. Despite the thick carpeting the sound of Fredi’s heavy tread on the stairs could be heard in the card-room. He walked like this because he believed it was how society people moved in England. He was drunk and his elbows were spread wide. He stopped behind the chair in which Laszlo was sitting.

  Arzenovics gathered his chips together. Once again he pushed a pile of them out in front of him and leaning forwards so that his handsome, rather flushed, face was fully in the light, said: ‘Four thousand, who wants it?’

  At this point Wuelffenstein pushed roughly at Laszlo’s shoulder and said: ‘Get up! I want to sit here!’ The words were an order, flung out arrogantly, without a ‘please’ or ‘by-your-leave’, as an ill-bred master might address his valet.

  Gyeroffy was enraged. How dare this man speak to me like that! he thought. Who on earth does he think he is? Nothing would have induced Laszlo to get up. Anything, anything but that! It flashed through his mind, however, that he only had the right to stay where he was if he were playing; otherwise etiquette demanded that he give up his place. Sliding his chair forward, he rapped on the table and said: ‘Banco!’

  Everyone looked up surprised, so unexpected was it that Laszlo, of all people, should enter the game … and for such high stakes. But that simple word banco inspired respect, even admiration. Even Wuelffenstein was brought to a halt.

  Arzenovics dealt. Laszlo neatly placed his two cards one on top of the other and waited until the banker spoke. When the latter said ‘Je donne!’ he flashed them quickly, as he had seen Count Neszti do so often, not spreading them slowly as did hesitant, inexperienced players. His score was six, and he therefore said coolly: ‘Non!’ Arzenovics had the same.

  ‘En cartes!’ said someone correctly but unnecessarily. Laszlo, as he had seen the others do, threw his cards nonchalantly and accurately into the wide leather receptacle in the centre of the table, that dish so oddly named the panier merely because in all forms of baccarat every expression had to be French. The cards were dealt again. Again it was the bank that won.

  ‘My credit, please!’ called Laszlo to the Steward, who quickly brought forward a tray of chips and a paper for Laszlo’s signature. He signed and pushed four thousand-crown chips across the table to Arzenovics.

  ‘Do you want your revenge? You have the right, droit de suite,’ said Zeno.

  ‘Well then, get up!’ said Wuelffenstein from behind him. ‘I told you already I want to sit here!’

  Gyeroffy glanced back over his shoulder; calmly, but between clenched teeth, he said: ‘I’ll stay where I am!’

  ‘But I asked before! You weren’t even in the game then! This place belongs to me!’

  ‘No one has the right to a seat until he has said Passe la main. That is the rule. You didn’t say it. Neither did Gyeroffy, but he entered the game before you.’

  Wuelffenstein did not reply for, as Neszti Szent-Gyorgyi spoke, he let the monocle drop from his eye and this, as everyone knew, was a final ruling that could not be contested. Fredi moved over to the other side of the room and sat down with an offended air. Laszlo, on the other hand was delighted to receive support from such an unexpected and exalted source. He decided to go on playing in spite of his previous intention to quit the game. He still had two five hundred-crown chips left from the five thousand float for which he had signed. With these he could call a bank from time to time and if only one turned up then he could repay the Steward at once and he would be no worse off. And if he lost he could always take the five thousand he owed from the seven thousand he had put aside when he had paid his debts at the time he came of age. It would be a blow but one that he could take without undue strain.

  Zeno lost the next coup and if Laszlo had quit then he would have won back all that he previously lost. This flashed through his mind, though not a sign could be told from his expression. He continued playing, his face as impassive as if he played every night of his life. The iron self-control that he had learned so painfully now stood him in good stead; not a twitch of an eyelid indicated either joy at winning or pain at losses he could not afford. He spoke calmly, casually, deliberately, and with a practised air.

  After a while he got the bank, though this was just the moment when luck seemed to pass to the ponte.

  ‘Contrepasse!’ said someone just as unnecessarily as before. Laszlo’s bank now won three times running and if he had stopped his total losses would only have been some five hundred crowns. He could easily have got up at this point, for the servants were already announcing that the carriages were at the door and no one would think any the worse of a player who quitted the table at that moment, even if he were on a winning streak. However Laszlo did nothing of the sort. He pushed two thousand-crown chips onto the table and immediately lost them. This left him with two thousand five hundred crowns. He went on. He placed bets, won, lost, won again and suddenly he was in luck to the point that he was twenty-five thousand crowns up. A few moments later he had lost it all. Still he did not stop, but sat where he was, playing, sometimes high, sometimes low. It was relaxing, agreeable, entertaining if not particularly exciting. The chips seemed to represent only numbers, not values. It was a game, nothing more. One pushed forward some brightly coloured chips and sometimes they stayed where they were and sometimes a great many were pushed back in front of one. Someone dealt. One lost, one won. The chips were moved to where they belonged, that was all. Another deal, another win, another loss. Why stop? If one was in luck the chips piled up in front of one; if out of luck one signed another chit. Everyone was equal, only luck decided the game. Rank was nothing, riches were meaningless. One won, one lost. The only thing that mattered was style. It was like a play in the theatre. Everyone’s part was already written for him and one only had to do what the author had decided. How agreeable it was! And almost for the first time in his life Laszlo felt that he was accepted by the others as an equal … without reservations.

  When Laszlo finally got up from the table – and he only did so because it was five o’clock in the mor
ning and everyone wanted to go home – he was fifteen hundred crowns down on the evening. He had lost all his winnings with the same lack of interest with which he had acquired them. He was happy and at ease, so much so that he would have sat on indefinitely, pushing out chips and raking them in. The idea that those little coloured discs represented more money than he could ever possible afford, seemed so unreal that it did not even occur to him. Correcting his IOU from five thousand crowns to fifteen hundred he left the room and walked slowly down the stairs.

  Outside the Casino the rain had stopped and a light frost covered the pavement with minute crystal needles that glimmered softly under his feet. Laszlo made his way home with a light step. He was filled with an unusual sense of freshness and, though the air was cold he took off his hat and walked bareheaded. The fumes of alcohol which had so befuddled him in the supper-room had evaporated long before and it was with a clear head and a newfound sense of freedom that he strolled homewards along the dark streets where occasional lamps and the faint glow of dawn in the sky barely outlined the surrounding buildings.

  Laszlo slept well into the afternoon. After dressing himself he tried to work on a musical score but he found it impossible to concentrate. His mind was elsewhere and the crotchets and quavers swam before his eyes. He could think of nothing but what had happened the previous evening. Finally he pushed the music away realizing that all such effort would be fruitless. It’s a day lost, he thought, but he would work again tomorrow.

  In the early evening he went back to the Casino to settle his debts and, as he was already in the club, he decided to dine there. As Laszlo entered the dining-room he could at once sense that something was different. A place was immediately found for him and he was eagerly asked to join some men already seated at a table. They greeted him warmly and asked his opinion in a way that had never happened before. When he spoke they listened and when they addressed him it was with a new air of attention, almost of respect. For the first time he felt appreciated, accepted. Of course they all knew that he had played high the previous night, and they knew, though Laszlo did not, what Count Neszti, in his nasal voice, had said of him before he too had put on his coat and gone home: ‘Young Gyeroffy plays well. Il a un excellent style! I have rarely seen such stylish performance from a beginner.’ Szent-Gyorgyi’s praise set the seal on Laszlo’s social success, but it was in reality only the official accolade, the public recognition, the putting into words what was now generally thought and accepted.

  The real truth was that Laszlo had shown himself to be a gambler as the others were, and in that world the gambler was the true master, the hero whom everyone respected. And how should it be otherwise? The man who can say the little word banco and thereby risk thousands of crowns … what gesture can be more lordly than that? Banco! Everything was in this one word – superiority, will power, calmness, the capacity to make a quick decision, courage and, of course, contempt for the vileness of mere money. And the more that this little word could be uttered with indifferent abandon, with carelessness and style, the more the speaker was obviously a superior being. Banco! If the player loses he pushes away his lost chips with a light wave of his hands and calls over his shoulder for a cigarette, or summons the waiter to bring him a glass of brandy as if nothing of the slightest importance had happened. It is the same if he wins, the same indifference, the same calm, no smiles, no bragging, no sign of pleasure, no unnecessary exclamations … only those ritual, liturgical phrases: ‘Je donne … Non … Faites vos jeux … Les cartes passent.’ And all these said with an expressionless, stony face, like a priest saying the mass: ‘Dominus vobiscum.’

  The gambler was also a lord in other ways. He lived well. It was of no importance if his dinner cost a hundred and twenty crowns and each bottle of claret another sixty or seventy. And what if he invited others to dine with him? What did the cost matter to a man who, an hour later, might win or lose tens of thousands of the same meaningless filthy lucre? And this every night of his life! Not even the richest of millionaires lived like a gambler. How long this might last was another matter; but while it did the gambler was the real king, and no one in the clubs was more admired and looked up to than he.

  Of course no one ever put such thoughts into words, but everyone felt them. Even the most crotchety of the old gentlemen who snoozed away every afternoon in the deepest of leather armchairs and who complained unceasingly of the ‘dreadful prodigality’ of modern youth, knew that the luxury of the clubs of those days – the excellent cooking, the service, the comfort to which they were all deeply attached – was only made possible by the high stakes played nightly in the gaming-rooms upstairs, and not at all by their own more modest games of whist or bezique.

  Laszlo felt completely at ease. He had never known such easy acceptance, such camaraderie, and at once ordered himself a bottle of champagne, which he would rarely have done at any other time. And he savoured with the expertise of an experienced bon viveur the goblet of Zalamery’s own special Armagnac when the latter, previously so standoffish and superior, suggested that Laszlo might like to try it and give his opinion. When later they all moved automatically upstairs he needed no coaxing to join in the game. It all seemed so natural, the only thing to do, and the fact that the Steward immediately brought out a chit for Laszlo to sign showed the others that he had already settled the previous night’s losses. This was immediately noticed – and enhanced his newly won reputation.

  It was these events which led to Laszlo’s appointment as elotancos – which, to everyone’s dismay was about to become vacant right in the middle of the Carnival season – for the post was only offered to a man whose social prestige was beyond reproach and who apparently had the means to afford it. The possession of means was vitally important for it cost the dance leader a great deal of money. He had to have a carriage always available, for he must always be the first to arrive. He had to be impeccably dressed for all occasions – and for this several well-cut dress suits and at least two changes of shirts every night were needed (for who could tolerate a dancer whose boiled shirt was limp with sweat?), buttonholes for picnics and private parties had to be bought daily and his hand had always to be in his pocket providing champagne and tips for the band-leaders and gypsy musicians. Laszlo might have thought twice about accepting the position if he had not become a regular gambler but, even though he was by no means always on a winning streak, and indeed his losses normally left him slightly out of pocket, money was no longer important to him. The few thousand crowns that he had kept in reserve so as not to have always to go running to his estate manager in the middle of winter each time that he might have need of something extra, were soon gone. He had formerly made the acquaintance of some complaisant money-lenders who now gave him credit because he had paid them off without bargaining when he came of age. Presumably they had somehow discovered what properties he owned and what his expectations were, for now that he needed money again they gave it to him without demur, though still charging exhorbitant rates of interest. When he won at cards he had plenty of money, and spent it freely, and when he lost he borrowed enough to pay his debts and leave him enough to carry on as before.

  Laszlo was a great success as dance leader for he was exceptionally good at the job. He could bring any party to life, invented new figures for the quadrille and even his innovations to the traditional movements of the cotillion, which many of the young people disliked, were so fresh and amusing that this old dance became the high spot of each evening. He introduced new csardases and the gypsies never played as well as they did for him. With deference and understanding he delighted all the dowagers, not only the prominent hostesses and great ladies whose balls were famous and with whom he spent every afternoon discussing the details of the evening’s entertainment, but also those forlorn mothers who wearily attended every dance in their efforts to marry off their not very attractive and often by no means well-dowered daughters. For these ladies, who were used to spending entire nights by the buffet in sad resignation
, or gently snoring in a quiet alcove, he had a special word of gentle encouragement which would send them back to the ballroom with head held high and a new lightness in their step. He was deservedly popular.

  Since the shooting party he had not seen Klara. He had been asked to Simonvasar for Christmas but he had not gone, feeling that his aunt had only invited him with reluctance. She had written ‘Come to us if you have nothing better to do …’ which did not seem encouraging, and he sensed that she had only sent the invitation as a matter of form. Also, he could not forget his own sense of outrage and his hurt feelings when she had so cruelly ordered him to leave by the next train. He had answered her letter casually, saying in a somewhat offhand manner that he would probably have to go back to Transylvania during the holidays as he had business to attend to. As it happened he had not gone anywhere, but had stayed in Budapest alone. He had regretted later that he had not accepted, but it had been too late to change his mind. And so Christmas Eve was spent in his sordid little apartment sitting alone at his window by a tiny tree he had bought, and thinking about all those other Christmases when he had been with his Kollonich cousins.