The hotel where the officers resided was owned by a certain Herr Brodnitzer, of a Silesian background; no one knew how he had ended up in the borderland. It was he who opened the casino. He hung a large notice in the window of the café. It announced that he had all sorts of games of chance, that a band would be “concertizing” every evening until morning, and that he had hired “renowned chanteuses.” The renewal of the premises began with concerts by the band—eight musicians hastily scraped together. Later on, the so-called Mariahilf Nightingale arrived, a blond girl from Bogumin. She sang waltzes by Lehár, plus the naughty ditty “When I wander through the gray dawn of a night of love,” as well as the encore: “Underneath my frock I wear pink and pleated undies.” Thus did Brodnitzer heighten the expectations of his clientele.
It turned out that along with the countless short and long card tables Brodnitzer had also set up a small roulette table in a shadowy curtained alcove. Captain Wagner told everyone about it, stoking enthusiasm. To these men, who had been serving on the border for many years (and many had never seen a roulette wheel), the tiny ball was one of those magical objects of the great world, something that helped a man to suddenly win beautiful women, expensive horses, splendid castles. Who could not be helped by the ball? They had all spent a wretched boyhood in parochial school, a harsh adolescence in military school, and cruel years in borderland service. They were waiting for the war. But instead, the army had partially mobilized against Serbia, then returned ingloriously to the usual expectation of routine promotions. Maneuvers, service, officers’ club, officers’ club, service, maneuvers! The first time they heard the clickety-click of the little ball they knew that fortune itself was turning among them, smiling on this man today and that man tomorrow. Sitting there were strange, pale, rich, mute gentlemen such as they had never seen before. One day Captain Wagner won five hundred crowns. The next day his debts were settled. This was the first month in a long time that he received his pay intact, a whole three thirds. Then again, Lieutenant Schnable and Lieutenant Gründler had each lost a hundred crowns. Tomorrow they could win a thousand!
When the white ball began to scurry, looking for all the world like a milky circle drawn along the periphery of black and red squares, when the black and red squares similarly blended into a single blurring round of indefinable colors, then the hearts of the officers trembled and a strange roar swept through their heads, as if a separate ball were rotating in each brain, and they saw only black and red, black and red. Their knees buckled even though they were seated. Their eyes desperately chased the ball they could not grab. Obeying its own laws, it finally began to reel, drunk from its dash, and, exhausted, collapsed in a numbered niche. They all moaned. Even the losers felt relieved. The next morning each man told another, and a great delirium overwhelmed them all. More and more officers flocked to the casino. Foreign civilians likewise came from inscrutable areas. It was they who heated up the game, filled the coffers, drew huge bills from wallets, gold ducats, watches, and chains from vest pockets, and rings from fingers. The hotel was booked solid. The sleepy droshkies, which had always waited at their stand, like mock-up vehicles in a waxworks, with the yawning drivers on the boxes and the scrawny jades in front—they too awoke, and lo and behold: the wheels were able to roll, the scrawny jades galloped with clattering hooves from the train depot to the hotel, from the hotel to the border, and back again to the little town. The morose shopkeepers smiled. The murky stores seemed to grow brighter, the displayed wares gaudier. Night after night, the Mariahilf Nightingale sang. And as if her warbling had wakened other sisters, new, made-up girls, never seen before, came to the café. The tables were pushed apart, and people danced to Lehár’s waltzes. The whole world had changed….
Yes, the whole world! In other places, men put up strange posters such as had never been seen here before. In all languages they exhorted the bristle workers to stop working. Bristle manufacturing is the only wretched industry in this region. The workers are poor peasants. Some of them survive by chopping wood in winter, by harvesting in autumn. In summer, they all have to go to the bristle factory. Others come from the Jewish lower classes. These Jews cannot do arithmetic and cannot do business, nor have they learned any trade. Far and wide, within a radius of some twenty leagues, there is no other factory.
The manufacture of bristles was governed by inconvenient and expensive regulations; the manufacturers did not like observing them. The workers had to be provided with masks against dust and germs, the workrooms had to be large and bright, the refuse had to be burned twice a day, and any workers who started coughing had to be replaced. For everyone whose job was to clean the bristles began spitting blood after a short time. The factory was an ancient tumbledown ruin with small windows and a defective slate roof; fenced in by a wildly rampant willow hedge, it stood in the middle of a broad, desolate square, where garbage had been dumped since time immemorial: dead cats and rats decomposed, metal utensils rusted away, smashed earthen pots lay next to tattered shoes. All around, fields stretched out, alive with the golden bounty of grain, athrob with the incessant chirping of crickets, and dark-green swamps constantly echoed with the cheery croaking of frogs. At the small gray factory windows, the workers sat, tirelessly combing the dense shrubs of the bristle dusters with large iron rakes and swallowing the dry cloudlets of dust to which every new cluster gave birth, and the iridescent summer flies danced outside the windows, white and colored butterflies flitted about, and through the big skylight came the victorious blaring of the larks. The workers, who had come from their free villages just a few short months ago, the villages where they had been born and bred in the sweet scent of hay, in the cold breath of snow, in the pungent smell of dung, in the shattering din of the birds, in the whole mercurial wealth of nature—these workers peered through the gray cloudlets of dust and saw swallows, butterflies, and dancing gnats and felt homesick. When the larks trilled, the workers grew dissatisfied. Earlier they had not known that the manufacturers were required by law to protect the workers’ health, that there was a parliament in the monarchy, that this parliament included deputies who were workers themselves. Strange men came, put up posters, held meetings, explained the constitution and the gaps in the constitution, read newspaper articles to them, and spoke in all tongues. They were louder than the larks and the frogs: the workers went on strike.
This was the first strike in this region. It frightened the civil authorities. For decades they had been accustomed to taking leisurely censuses, celebrating the Kaiser’s birthday, assisting with the annual military recruitments, and sending the same old reports to the governor’s office. Now and then they arrested russophile Ukrainians, an Orthodox priest, Jews caught smuggling tobacco, and spies. For centuries this region had cleaned bristles, sent them to the brush factories in Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia, and received finished brushes in return. For years the workers had coughed, spit blood, fallen ill, and died in the hospitals. But they never went on strike. Now the constabularies from miles around had to be called in and a report dispatched to the governor’s office. The governor’s office contacted the Army High Command. And the Army High Command notified the garrison commanders.
The junior officers imagined that “the people”—the lowest stratum of civilians, that is—wanted equality with officials, aristocrats, and industrialists. On no account should equality be granted if a revolution was to be averted. And they wanted no revolution; and so they had to shoot before it was too late. Major Zoglauer gave a short speech clarifying all these points: Of course, a war is much more pleasant. We’re not constabulary or police officers. But there is no war for now. Orders are orders. We might advance with lowered bayonets and command, “Fire!” Orders are orders! Meanwhile no one is prevented from visiting Brodnitzer’s casino and winning a lot of money.
One day Captain Wagner lost a lot of money. A foreign gentleman with a resonant name, formerly an active lancer and now a landowner in Silesia, won two evenings in a row, loaned some money to the captai
n, and was summoned home by telegram on the third day. The debt totaled two thousand crowns, a bagatelle for a cavalry officer; no bagatelle for a rifle captain! He could have approached Chojnicki if he had not already owed him three hundred.
Brodnitzer said, “Herr Captain, by all means use my name.”
“Yes,” said the captain. “Who’d loan me that much on your name?”
Brodnitzer mulled for a while. “Herr Kapturak.”
Kapturak appeared and said, “So it’s a sum of two thousand crowns. Till when?”
“Who knows?”
“A lot of money, Herr Captain!”
“I’ll pay it back,” replied Wagner.
“How, in what installments? You know that only one third of your pay can be garnisheed. And all the officers’ salaries are already committed. I see no possibility.”
“Herr Brodnitzer—” the captain began.
“Herr Brodnitzer,” Kapturak began, as if Brodnitzer were not present, “owes me a lot of money too. I could advance the desired sum if one of your fellow officers whose salary is not garnisheed could step in—for example, Lieutenant Trotta. He used to be in the cavalry; he owns a horse!”
“Fine,” said the captain. “I’ll talk to him.” And he woke up Lieutenant Trotta.
They stood in the long, dark, narrow corridor of the hotel. “Sign, quick!” whispered the captain. “They’re waiting over there. They can tell you don’t want to!”
Trotta signed.
“Come right down,” said Wagner. “I’ll wait for you.”
Carl Joseph halted at the small back door, where the permanent tenants of the hotel entered the café. This was his first look at Brodnitzer’s newly opened casino. This was his first look at any casino. A dark-green rib curtain surrounded the roulette table. Captain Wagner lifted the curtain and glided across into a different world. Carl Joseph heard the soft velvety hum of the ball. He did not have the nerve to raise the curtain any farther. At the other end of the café, by the street entrance, lay the platform, and on the platform stood the indefatigable Mariahilf Nightingale, warbling away. People gambled at the tables. The cards slapped down on the faux marble. The gamblers emitted unintelligible cries. They looked uniformed: all of them in white shirtsleeves, a sitting regiment of gamblers. Their jackets dangled from the backs of their chairs. Gently and ghostly, the empty jacket sleeves swayed at every movement of the gamblers. A dense thundercloud of smoke hovered over their heads. The tiny tips of cigarettes glowed reddish and silvery in the gray haze, constantly sending up new bluish fog to nourish the dense thundercloud. And under the visible cloud of smoke a second cloud seemed to be gathering, made up of noise, a roaring, tumbling, rumbling cloud. If you shut your eyes, you could believe that an enormous mob of dreadfully singing locusts had been released over the sitting people.
Captain Wagner, utterly transformed, came stepping through the curtain into the café. His eyes lay in violet caverns. Over his mouth the brown moustache hung bristly, its one half looking strangely shortened, and reddish stubble stood on his chin, a small lavish field of tiny lances.
“Where are you, Trotta?” cried the captain, although they were standing chest to chest. “I lost two hundred!” he bellowed. “That goddamn red! My luck’s run out on me at roulette. I’ll have to try something else!” And he dragged Trotta to the card table.
Kapturak and Brodnitzer got to their feet. “Did you win?” asked Kapturak, for he saw that the captain had lost.
“Lost, lost!” yelled the captain.
“Too bad, too bad,” said Kapturak. “Now just take me, for instance: how often have I won and lost! Listen, at times I’d already lost everything! And I won everything back. Don’t stick to the same game all the time. Just don’t stick to the same game all the time. That’s the main thing!”
Captain Wagner unhooked his tunic collar. The usual brownish red returned to his face. His moustache virtually adjusted itself. He slapped Trotta on the back. “You’ve never touched a card!”
Trotta watches Kapturak pull a virgin deck of glossy cards from his pocket and place it on the table gingerly, as if to avoid hurting the colorful face of the bottom card. He caresses the small pack with his deft fingers. The backs of the cards shine like small, smooth, dark-green mirrors. The ceiling lights float in the curving backs of the cards. A few cards rise on their own, stand vertical on their sharp edges, lie down alternately on their backs or bellies, gather into a small pile, which strips down with a gentle clatter, lets the black and red faces rush by like a brief, gaudy storm, closes again, falls on the table, divides into smaller heaps. Individual cards glide from these piles, shift gently into one another, each card covering half the back of the next, round themselves into a circle, recall a flat, strangely inverted artichoke, fly back into a row, and finally collect into the small pack. All cards heed the noiseless calls of the fingers. Captain Wagner follows this prelude with hungry eyes.
Ah, he loved the cards! Sometimes the ones he had called came to him and sometimes they fled him. He loved seeing his wild wishes galloping after the fleeing cards, eventually forcing them to double back. Sometimes, of course, the fleeing ones were faster, and the captain’s wishes had to turn back, worn out. Over the years the captain had devised a murky, utterly tangled war plan that ignored no method of forcing his luck: neither persuasion nor violence, neither surprise attack nor fervent begging nor love-crazy beckoning. Once, the poor captain, wishing for a heart, had to act desperate and secretly assure the evasive card that if it did not come soon, he would commit suicide that very night. Another time, he felt his prospects would improve if he remained aloof, feigning utter indifference to the ardently desired card. A third time, in order to win, he had to shuffle the cards himself, with his left hand—a skill he had finally mastered by dint of iron willpower and long practice. And a fourth time he found it more useful to sit on the right side of the croupier. In most cases, though, he had to combine all methods or switch them very quickly, so quickly that none of the other players might catch on. For that was crucial.
“Let’s change places,” the captain might, for example, say, quite innocuously. And if he believed he had spotted a smile of recognition in someone’s face, he would add with a laugh, “You’re wrong! I’m not superstitious! The light’s bothering me here!” You see, if the other players learned anything about the captain’s strategic ploys, their hands would betray his intentions to the cards. The cards would, so to speak, get wind of his guile and have time to flee. And so no sooner did the captain sit down at the table than he began working as zealously as an entire general staff. And while his brain pulled off this superhuman achievement, his heart was consumed by heat and frost, hope and pain, jubilation and bitterness. He fought, he battled, he agonized. He had gone to work on cunning war plans against the wiles of the ball within the first few days of the roulette game here. (But he knew very well that the ball was harder to defeat than the playing card.)
He nearly always played baccarat, though it was not only prohibited, it was also severely chastised. Yet what did he care about games in which you had to reflect and calculate—reflect and calculate in a rational manner—if his speculations already verged on the incalculable and inexplicable, exposing and often even overcoming them? No! He wanted to grapple hand-to-hand with the enigmas of fate and solve them! So he sat down to baccarat. And he did win. He had three nines and three eights in a row, while Trotta got nothing but knaves and kings, Kapturak fours and fives only twice. And now Captain Wagner forgot himself. Although one of his rules was never to so much as hint at his good luck, so that no one would be certain of it, he suddenly tripled his wager, for he hoped to wipe out his debt tonight. And now the disaster began. The captain lost, and Trotta did not stop losing. In the end, Kapturak won five hundred crowns. The captain had to sign a new IOU.
Wagner and Trotta stood up. They began mixing cognac with 180 Proof and then the latter with Okocim beer. Captain Wagner was ashamed of his defeat, just like a general retreating f
rom a lost battle to which he has invited a friend to share his victory. But the lieutenant shared the captain’s shame. And both knew they could not possibly look into one another’s eyes without alcohol. They nursed their drinks, taking small, regular sips.
“Your health!” said the captain.
“Your health!” said Trotta.
Each time they repeated these toasts, they exchanged encouraging glances, proving to each other that they were indifferent to their disaster. But suddenly it seemed to the lieutenant that the captain, his best friend, was the unhappiest man on earth, and Trotta began weeping bitterly.
“Why are you crying?” asked the captain. His own lips were already quivering.
“About you, about you!” said Trotta. “My poor friend!” And they lost themselves in partly wordless, partly verbose laments.
Captain Wagner recalled an old plan. It concerned Trotta’s horse, which the captain rode daily; having grown to love it, he had wanted to buy it for himself. It had then instantly occurred to him that if he had enough cash to buy the horse, he could, without a doubt, win a fortune at baccarat and own several horses. He then thought of getting the horse from the lieutenant, not paying for it, using it as collateral, gambling with the money, and then buying the horse back. Was that unfair? Whom would it hurt? How long would it take? Two hours of playing, and he would have everything! He was most certain to win if he sat down at the card table without fear, not calculating even slightly. Oh, if he could have gambled just once like a rich man of independent means! Just once! The captain cursed his pay. It was so paltry that it did not allow him to gamble “decently.”