“What if I were crazy? It doesn’t matter as long as you permitted the bet.”
“That is true. I was not implying that it would be to our advantage if you bet everything. But I must say, it is. Are you prepared to lose everything?”
“That’s my business. Let’s say I am.”
The conversation with Mr. Souza took some time. The waitresses brought me some complimentary chocolates and I thought for a moment of Dao-Ming and her lovely offering at the Intercontinental. It was a full night and the rooms were smoky, loud, and claustrophobically tense. I heard imprecations and curses from inside the pits, and tightly clustered crowds shouting at a lucky hand. My skin grew cold and prickly. My tongue dried out. Insomnia and dehydration again. Yet again I was going to skin them alive, and if it happened that they skinned me it would be even better. Thus is the yin and yang of the punter’s pleasures. Skinning and being skinned are the same. You get to be sadist and masochist not just in the same day or night, but in the same moment. There is something lordly about it after all.
I was on my third glass when one of the gentlemen returned. His look was noticeably apprehensive and he cleared his throat behind a clenched fist before telling me that Mr. Souza had approved the bet.
“I hope, however, that I can persuade you not to make it, Lord Doyle. You have won an enormous amount of money at our tables and in my opinion you would do better to leave with it all now.”
“Leave? But I’m just getting started.”
“Forgive me, but you cannot be serious. There is only so much you can win from a casino. I would say that you must have reached that limit.”
“I don’t feel the same way at all. I feel like I am just setting out on my streak of luck.”
“Lord Doyle?”
“You know how extravagant we lords are.”
“I remember Mr. Souza saying something about that.”
“We are complete zanies.”
He stiffened.
“But Lord Doyle, you stand to lose every last kwai, every last dollar. In one bet. Is that rational?”
“What do I care if it’s rational? Nothing in life is rational. Life isn’t rational. It’s animal.”
“Oh?”
He looked highly concerned; his tone implied doubt.
“But Lord Doyle, we have to be rational sometimes.”
“Do we?”
I knocked back the last of the champagne.
“Is Grandma rational? Is Mr. Souza?”
“I couldn’t say. They try to be.”
“Is Guan Yin?”
“Please, keep your voice down. We can’t mention that name in a loud voice.”
“I have decided to be completely superstitious at last, to trust in the winds. I’ve made up my mind.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“Maybe you are. But then again you might win it all back. You must be at least slightly tempted by that outcome?”
“We’re only human.”
An unfortunate phrase, I thought.
I got up, shedding a flurry of ash crumbs around me.
“It wasn’t my idea to have one last hand. It was your idea.”
We moved in pantomime toward the private rooms where the safety-pin millionaires were suffering at the hands of the goddess who was not listening to them. My floor manager made signs to the dealers to stop their motions, and we inspected room after room until I had found the table I wanted. There were six players already there, and it was explained to them that I would be placing an astronomical bet on the table. The buzz went out at once and soon the table was full. I sat at one end and my chips were piled up in front of me. The others were high rollers in their own right, hard men from the southern cities, and there was no mawkish voyeurism in the way they eyed up my pile. They were simply calculating what might be raked in if that amount were put in play. At that moment, however, the second manager came quietly into the room and explained that the table was now closed to everyone except me. They got up, therefore, and filed out with a few incendiary words. The door was closed and the managers remained. I asked for another glass of bubbly and a bowl of nuts. The dealers asked me politely if I spoke Chinese, and I said I would prefer to game in Mandarin, if that was all right with them. We settled down and I noticed a subtle change in the air, as if the air-conditioning had been turned up or the filters enhanced. I felt a little giddy with the alcohol. The manager then leaned toward my ears.
“Lord Doyle, there is a gentleman who would like to play against you. His name is Mr. Cheng. He has asked us specifically. Would you accept?”
I turned and saw an ancient high roller in a Savile Row suit coming through the door with a handkerchief pressed for a moment against his mouth and a look of dour hunger in his eye. TB? He was about seventy, immensely wealthy from the looks of him, and he had come in quietly. He bowed to me and we shook hands. Mr. Cheng from Hong Kong, billions in the bank, and billions out of it, too. I said “Welcome” in Mandarin and he sat at the other end of the table, offloading a sack of chips onto the table’s surface and then locking his fingers together and flexing them. We exchanged some pleasantries. Mr. Cheng asked me if it was true that I’d stake my entire pile on a single bet.
“I only have one hand to play,” I said. “So I thought I might.”
“I might consider matching it.”
He had a face like rock, and it was disturbing to watch it move as he spoke.
“I would like that,” I replied.
“I have heard about you. They say you are lucky.”
“Everyone is lucky once.”
Mr. Cheng turned rhetorically to the others.
“The man has some wisdom!”
A hand of baccarat is so short, so abrupt, that the preliminaries are sometimes difficult to disengage from. When the bet is enormous, this is even more true. There is a need among both players and house staff to drag it out a little. So we smoked for a few minutes and Mr. Cheng asked me who I knew in Hong Kong. He was curious. Nobody? That seemed unlikely for a man in my position.
“I am rather shy and private,” I explained. “It doesn’t do for someone in my position, as you put it, to throw himself around too much.”
Mr. Cheng certainly understood that. Wealth brings its burdens as well as its pleasures. It is double-edged. He nodded and said that this was certainly correct; it was a malicious and gossipy city, like all cities, and one couldn’t be too careful.
“I think I have seen you around,” he smiled. “You lunch sometimes at the Intercontinental, don’t you?”
“Sometimes.”
“I have seen you there.”
The dealers prepared themselves and Mr. Cheng looked me over long and hard.
“I never forget a face,” he added wistfully.
“I like the view at the Intercontinental.”
The managers stepped forward discreetly.
“Are you betting the whole amount, Lord Doyle?”
“I am.”
Mr. Cheng divided his chips into two piles, an amount that put together would not be far off from mine. He then placed first one, then the other onto the table and announced that he was betting both on the banker. The cards were slicked out through the shoe, mine first (the highest bettor is always dealt first), and then Mr. Cheng placed a hand over his most leftward card. We waited, and I felt a concentration of perspiration materialize between my eyebrows. It hung there like a stud in a button and then, exposed to the air-conditioning, evaporated. The cards were turned and I had drawn a two and a nine. Modulo ten, that made one. The managers raised their eyebrows and then did not lower them as Mr. Cheng turned a hand of eight with a six and a two. The scores were called and the dealer then dealt me a third card, as was my right, and it happened to be an eight, that most fortunate of numbers in the Chinese universe.
This made Mr. Cheng laugh and he took a drag on the cigar lodged stiffly between the fingers of his right hand.
“Natural,” the dealer said loudly. “Congratulations,
Lord Doyle.”
“You got lucky there,” Cheng said quietly, and he said it with a graceful good nature that was apparently genuine. “You have my sincere congratulations.”
“Thank you. I would play you a second hand, but the management has decided against it.”
“So they told me. I cannot quite understand it.”
The chips formed piles like models of cities, and they were not raked together. Cheng didn’t even look at them. His eyes were moist and chilled, like oysters, and instead he sneered at the floor managers.
“They are chickens. Mr. Hui, you are chickens, are you not?”
The managers bowed stiffly.
“That’s how chickens bow. Look at them. Doyle, shall we go for a drink at least?”
The chips I had won were not gathered into a bag for me. The managers explained that I would be given a check downstairs instead; I could collect it whenever I wanted. They were frostily impressed, as people a little down the ladder often are when they see a flash of undeserved success. Why couldn’t it be us? they think to themselves. Why shouldn’t it be us? I said that this was considerate of them, and I went out with Mr. Cheng while the managers followed at a slight distance. We sauntered down the curved corridor and Cheng related to me all the times he had won big at this particular casino. A total of three times in eleven years, he admitted with a roll of the eyes and an expression of pained disgust. These people were crooks, pure and simple, exploiting the weaknesses of helpless addicts. The casino was like a hospital catering to heroin addicts. Inexcusable, if you looked at it sensibly. He waved a hand, as if killing something invisible to the naked eye. The displeasure of a billionaire who has lost one ten-thousandth of a percent of his fortune to crooks. He led me to a bar where aged Scotches filled the glass shelves, including one called Brora that my father used to drink and that was no longer made. We sat in leather chairs. Vivaldi, perfumes, the ease of gentlemen. He spoke softly so the staff wouldn’t hear, and he said, “You cleaned them out, you really did. Millions in one blow. They’ll be up to see you shortly.”
But no one came. They left us alone and we drank half a bottle of port. “You have to understand money,” Cheng said as soon as he was toasted. “It trickles through your fingers like sand, but you can keep that flow going if you resign yourself to the forces of chance.”
He had made his money as a slum landlord. It was a good living and it kept his wife in her baccarat addiction in the style to which she was accustomed. If he didn’t screw the miserable hordes lodged in his rat-infested apartment blocks, how would Mrs. Cheng be able to play the baccarat tables every night?
“Perhaps you’ve seen her around the casinos? They call her Grandma. It’s insulting, but she accepts the name. She’s been playing the tables longer than anyone here except Old Song. Have you seen Old Song?”
“I don’t think I have.”
“Been playing every day since 1947. My wife is more noticeable, however. To the point where everyone knows her.”
I kept my cool.
“I’ve seen her around,” I said.
“She’s a noted character at the Lisboa, the Greek Mythology, and the Landmark. Those are the three that she likes. The stupid woman never knows when to stop. She knows she has my account to tap into—and yes, I let her, I admit it—and so she goes mad every time she gets near the tables. She has no inner brake. She turns into a money-losing tornado. She’s a curse.”
I think that was the Chinese phrase: inner brake. Patsy (her real name) was a terror unleashed, but it was a quid pro quo between them, like allowing your wife to be an alcoholic. For a moment he pursed his lips.
“That bloody woman is ruining me! Half a million every night. She’s bleeding me dry, and it’s just because she thinks I have a mistress.”
“Well, do you have a mistress?”
“Of course I have a mistress. Do dogs have tails? But she takes advantage. I play myself, of course—but in moderation. I’m not using anyone except my tenants.”
He burst into melodious laughter that was, in some way, not melodious at all, and at the same moment, as if synchronized by horrifying correspondences, his skin broke into handsome rucks like a piece of stretched deer hide that has suddenly been relaxed.
“But that has nothing to do with Patsy. Patsy is in a class by herself. She’s a true thief. Patsy loots me.”
He suddenly leaned forward.
“You haven’t seen her here tonight, have you?”
“I’ve been by myself, as a matter of fact.”
“So much the better, so much the better. Preparing for your great coup! Magnificent sang-froid, if I may say. Not that this is surprising given your background. I have seen a few of your types in action and I have always been impressed by your coldness.”
I wondered how much his large pigeon-blood ring weighed, or how a man could even wear one. It was not very discreet of him. He drank his port lustily and the ring winked as his hand tilted. The cuffs were beautifully laundered.
“Money,” he sighed. “What a wonderful thing. When it starts flowing into you. What a wonderful feeling. It’s like drinking vat after vat of the best wine in the world and still feeling thirsty. That’s the secret, Doyle. To keep feeling thirsty. Once you stop feeling thirsty you no longer want to keep drinking the wine, and then you’re a monk, or dead. Which is worse? I’d rather be dead than a monk. My mother always wanted me to be a monk. When I made my first million she went to the temple and prayed for me. But I never found out what she prayed for.”
“For your soul, Mr. Cheng.”
“What a word! You are probably right, though. But I kept my soul. It’s my bloody wife who is losing it for me.”
“By the way,” he added after we had smoked our cigars in silence, “are you calling it a night? After your coup I suppose you must be. Always quit while you are ahead. But you know that already. That’s what Patsy can never remember.”
“I am quitting for the night.”
“Excellent idea. May I ask if you intend going back to your room?”
“I have no plans.”
He grew visibly apprehensive.
“Do you have a club you go to?”
I confessed I didn’t, because the Clube Militar wasn’t a club. It was now a restaurant.
“Well, I have a very nice club called the Toga Room. One of these nights—I assume you are tired now—you should come by and meet some of my friends.”
He handed me a card with the club’s details on it.
“The telephone numbers are strictly private and should not be given out to others. When you call, give them the password I’ve written on the back.”
I turned the card over: the word invidia.
“Jealousy,” I murmured.
“It’s a club for men, so you won’t find my wife there. And one word of advice, Doyle. If you meet my wife anywhere in the VIP rooms, do not under any circumstances agree to play with or against her. If you play with her she’ll steal everything one way or another; if you play against her she’ll lose, and it’s my money. Can I count on you?”
“Shall we shake on it?”
He laughed uneasily and held out his hand.
“Why not? I like you, Doyle.”
His deerskin face tilted back for a moment and the laugh was dry. The rich never believe it when one compliments them or expresses any affection for them. They know all the things about themselves that we don’t. And I suddenly thought: I made eleven million tonight.
“Come to the club, Doyle. Have you ever eaten pangolin?”
He leaned forward again and his breath was edged with Dow’s.
“It tastes like penguin and it keeps your hard-on hard. It’s the one thing I indulge in that my wife approves of. We can have it fried or boiled with plum sauce. You can have it any way you like. You can have it battered if you like.”
Seven suitcases of cash were sent up to my room in the morning, just as I had requested. I didn’t have a bank account and everything I earned
had to be converted into cash. Instinctively, however, the Chinese sympathized with this. Like many Asians, they feel more comfortable with cash than with abstractions. The notes were bundled into units of five thousand and packed into genuine leather cases with handsome locks. When Mr. Souza had left, after expressing his congratulations, I emptied them onto the bed and counted the packets carefully before putting them back into the cases exactly as they had been.
I now had eleven suitcases of hard cash stored in my room, and I no longer thought of leaving them with the management for safekeeping. The balance of power and trust between us had changed and I now thought that they were spying on me, keeping tabs on my winnings and—why not?—my movements. A casino never gives up its money willingly. But they were in a quandary. If they encouraged me to leave now, they stood no chance of ever recovering their losses. Under normal circumstances it would be in their interests to keep me there and to keep me playing. The theory would be that in the long term the odds would be stacked inexorably against me. But they had lost their nerve. They didn’t know what to do. If I stayed, I was also likely to be a big spender in the food outlets and elsewhere. I would at least be profitable for them in some way. And so a note came from Souza later that day: Please feel free to accept our offer of an upgrade to a suite on one of the higher floors. I accepted and the suitcases, along with my belongings, were transferred to a suite six floors above me. There was a kind of silence around me, and I no longer played music when I was by myself. It was enough to be alone with myself without interference, to sink like a stone into a mineshaft. I went through the casinos after midnight in my new suits as I had always done, and as I did so I felt the weight of the hotel’s security surveillance system pressing upon me from all sides. It was, of course, the ban that was in effect against me, and the hapless floor managers in every room had to make sure that I didn’t so much as sit at a table. They followed me around with an obsequiously firm hand, and whenever I stopped to watch the play they hovered around me without saying a word.
You can’t open the windows at the Lisboa, perhaps because they are afraid of suicides, with so many desperate bankrupts checked in every night—so I slept with the fan and the heating on, with the curtains drawn like a death chamber. Then when I had recovered a little from my strange and slowly aggravating feeling of illness, I went to war again. I took a bath and ate a light breakfast from room service, eggs and toast and tea. It was a little before six and I ordered a bottle of champagne to go with the eggs. I downed half the bottle, then dressed for the fray, though it would not be in the Lisboa. I felt a cold, stable hatred toward the world and toward myself as I went down the carpet-padded corridor with one of my cases filled with about five hundred thousand.
The Ballad of a Small Player Page 15