Life Embitters (50 page)

The journal carries a highly turgid summary of the main articles published. A new world opens before your eyes. You are surprised misfortune is such a crucial aspect of mathematics. There’s a bit of everything: from
the note on the study of the main instances when gambling can be a reasonable activity and a learned account of the philosophy of gambling, via “The pre-science of natural developments usually attributed to chance” to “Differential gambling with progressions, repayments, and simple and multiple withdrawals on optimum transversals” and “The American multiplier within the reach of the average gambler and generally of every pocket.” I have merely copied a few rubrics, hoping that the reader will agree with me that this material is rather subtle and worthy of consideration in the academy. Reading the summary, as ignorant as the first man, I can only regret that in order win at roulette you need so much study and knowledge, and I wholeheartedly wish that a period of synthesis might predominate and come both to simplify and clarify the exuberant morass thrown up by these exercises in research. When everyone, poor and rich, foolish and wise, young and old, are in a more reasonable position of equality, there can be no doubt that the world, that now leaves much to be desired, will appear before our eyes in more appealing, attractive colors. We should work for equality in matters of culture and scientific thought.

You could diagnose the present state of the problem by exclaiming emphatically: lots of analysis and not much synthesis! Besides, there is another aspect to all this: researchers in the field daily give renewed proof of their selfless humanitarianism. Indeed, it is well known that the researchers with their admirable persistence are tearing away the veils of happenstance, demonstrating in unexpected ways their grip on Pythagorean knowledge
par excellence
, and yet they are still finding time to write journal articles. They know how to win and, instead of sitting by the gaming tables like roués, driven by the virtues of a sage, they insist on telling others how. Isn’t that wonderful? Isn’t that sublime?
Vade retro
, specters of pessimism!

If you imagine that gamblers could live in any paradise whatsoever, it is probable that the Côte d’Azur is most like the paradise gamblers might aspire to. It is a place where gamblers have social status and even enjoy a romantic aura. Obviously all that lasts only as long as a gambler’s money. When your money is gone, you join the ranks of the has-beens. It’s natural. Be that as it may, gamblers are esteemed in this country, as smugglers are in Andorra. When you arrive in Andorra and write on your hotel registration form that your usual employment is smuggling, they treat you like a celebrity. Here there’s no need to write anything, because everyone is sure that, come what may, you will leave your financial contribution on one gaming table or another.

After all, it is so exciting! Few people have lingered hereabouts and not, sooner or later, at one moment or another, voluntarily or dutifully, entered a casino and bet a hundred francs. Let’s be sincere: which game do
you
prefer: roulette,
chemin de fer, trente et quarante
, or baccarat? Roulette enjoys a long tradition and Pascal took the trouble to calculate probabilities. What a strange fascination! Naturally the pleasurable elements afforded by such excitement diminish and shrink when you think how games of chance give the banker five and a half per cent every game. Everything is so expensive! Nothing we can do about that!

Every country is affected by the nature of its main interests and, consequently, here one is allowed to talk perfectly naturally about gambling, as if it were really important. People here attend to gambling problems as elsewhere they talk about wine, cotton, or iron. From time to time the dailies publish solemnly serious articles against baccarat. There was a time when everyone railed against baccarat. A newcomer thinks:
Good God! It was about time they decided to put an end to this immorality, to this abject business of gambling!

The campaign against baccarat is waged on a broad front. Towns that derive lots of money from taxes on gambling – Biarritz, Vichy, Deauville – support it enthusiastically. You are tempted to think a very influential lady must be behind this campaign, one whose husband was bankrupted playing baccarat – a lady with enough energy to orchestrate a general predisposition against the devilish game. But that turns out to be pure fantasy.

The campaign against baccarat stems from its low profit levels. To use the technical terms: baccarat doesn’t leave much lucre in the kitty. The statistical services of the city of Nice have calculated that the city collected two million francs less simply because people played baccarat rather than other games of chance. By playing baccarat
tournant
, with an open bank, a gambler can make some headway. If people had decided to play roulette,
boule
, or
trente et quarante
, those millions of francs would have ended up in the municipal coffers.

What then is the hostility towards baccarat all about? At the end of the day it means that the last game of chance is suppressed, because there isn’t much chance in the others. They are games where eventually you will be fatally fleeced – literally! In the games we have mentioned, the banker has a real, undeniable advantage, because he automatically collects a percentage of all the money that crosses the table. As we have stated repeatedly, this percentage is stipulated. Then there is what the municipality and the state take: the taxman, in a word. If we imagine a set of gamblers rooted round a table, with a limitless bank, after a certain amount of time, all the gamblers will be bankrupted. If the only chance a game permits is the chance to be destined to lose, where does chance come in?

What will the gambler do? Of course, the gambler will continue to play. The gambler pursues what he thinks is his and respects no holidays. To imagine that the accumulation of continual losses will make him stop and
ponder for a moment is to have a partial view of his character. Gamblers gamble, whatever the weather, even though good fortune allows a win from time to time …

In my view, Mentone is the most unforgettable spectacle on the Côte d’Azur. The old town is pure Italian and sits on a small promontory that juts out into the sea. On both sides of the town two slopes open out against the gigantic, purple, fluorescent backdrop of the towering end of the Alps. Covered in mansions, palm, rose, pine and olive trees, these baroque, sunny inclines have a lushness that rather sours in the mouth. The old town, on the other hand, brings a minty freshness to the lips.

These old towns by the sea of Genoa are gracious places. Terraced on either of the church – that’s always at the highest point – precipitously poised over the sea, theirs is a proud, active profile. From out to sea you see houses bunched together, the skylights and windows of the houses of the poor and the loggias of ancient palaces. Pigeons fly in and out of the loggias and circle round the belfry. This bronzed panorama of the town, with its green windows and whitewashed terraces is unforgettable and sparkles with charm. These towns, generally, rise up over a natural port that is its infinitely becalmed and silent with sleepy waters. Four old boats sun themselves by the shore, opposite a street of taverns. Out-of-date advertisements hang on the walls and you can often read loud political exclamations on the walls.
Viva l’anarchia or Il Papa è …
In the afternoon the whole town is reflected in the port, and the occasional school of small fish leaps over the still waters gleaming like a scattered handful of silver coins. At sunset a limp sail sits in the harbor mouth like a fly in a glass of orange juice. And a bell tinkles and a girl’s voice shouts from a terraced roof:
Irmaa sei tuu?

Following the pattern of Genoa, the Italians have created a kind of unmistakably
Mediterranean city. They are all the same: a network of the narrowest streets formed by tall tenements, with dark entranceways and windows with shutters that rise up like eyelids. From the street you can see a strip of blue sky despairing between two parallel roofs. A system of ropes helps to hang out the clothes between one window and the next,
lo straccio
. Rags of every color and shape often blot out the view of the sky. This narrowness creates a concentrated, bustling style of life: it’s simply impossible to describe the lively scenes you encounter on these streets. It’s as if people don’t really know where they live, they all seem to belong to the same house. People bicker from window to window and sometimes you hear epic arguments. Down below, those who are coming and going must take care not to bump into a cot, tread on a child or a dog’s tail that’s splayed over a doorstep. Now and then, suddenly and quite simultaneously, children start bawling, dogs bark, cats miaow, women tear their hair out, men brawl, and girls scream. A hellish din is unleashed that lasts until the
carabinieri
arrive, then everybody dives into their den and only orange peel dots the street. While the
carabinieri
are about there is a dull, subterranean hum; people mumble and mutter behind their doors and behind every window two livid eyes follow the shadows from the tails of the
carabinieris
’ coats. However, this ferment almost always dies down one way or other. People emerge from their hiding-places as quiet as can be, dogs and cats shush, children laugh, women comb their hair in the window and men sit on the doorstep reading
Avanti!
When peace is restored, you see baskets descend, touching the wall, tied to a rope used to hoist them up or down from the flats. Sometimes the girl pulling the rope, between a carnation and a fiasco of red wine, tugs too brusquely and the basket leaps and twists like a scalded cat and
macarrone
is scattered over the ground to general lamentations. If you pass by an hour later, people are still sighing.

Mentone was once a town with this kind of street life. Today it has become too elegant for that hustle and bustle to survive in the old town. The old carcass remains, but preserved, like a relic. Quiet reigns on the narrow streets and it’s difficult to see a basket lowered from a window by rope. The warm charm of life in Mentone gives it a nineteenth-century air. One feels the shade of Garibaldi, with mustache, squib, and red shirt should emerge from the dark stairways.

If you ever go to Mentone, look for the Place de la Tête, go up the street of the Loggette – partly covered by arches – continue along the very narrow Rue Longue, where you’ll find the ancient palace of the princes of Monaco. If you don’t want to walk so far, take the slope up to the church of Saint-Michel, refurbished in Jesuit style. By the church, look for the path hewn out of the rock that leads to the town’s old cemetery, located in one of its highest points. The cemetery is like a kind of amphitheater on four levels, one above the other, and one per religion. You will enjoy wonderful vistas before you and a great expanse of sea; the Italian coast on the left, and the French south-facing coast on the right, covered in olives and pine trees and gardens. Your blue-filled eyes will follow the flight of a seagull or pigeon. You will see the wind gently gyrate the weathervane on the belfry. And if you smoke, you can sit on a half worn gravestone and smoke a cigarette.

Florence was one of the first cities I got to know in the course of my wandering. I lived there a good long time and in excellent company. Some of my friends were staying at the Pensione Balestri on Piazza Mentana on the Lung’Arno. Best friend of all was Lluís Llimona, younger than me, but as lively, sensitive, and intelligent as he is now.

Llimona introduced me to a strange character: a short, abrupt, olive-skinned Mexican painter with thick, frizzy hair who had fought in the civil war with the renowned Pancho Villa; once the revolution was victorious he was given a grant to travel to Europe to study what they call
Arte
in Latin America. The Mexican had lingered in bohemian, literary cafés across the continent and had now wound up in Florence by virtue of amorous pressure exerted by an imposing northern lady straight out of German mythology – plump
and pink with glowing, rippling flesh like a Rubens. Conversely, he was small, bilious, and swarthy with purple lips and greenish teeth.

Another great friend of ours also stayed in the
pensione
(although only briefly), Ràfols the architect, who is one of the most inspired, serene men I have ever known. He depended on a meager grant he received – always late – from the Council for Further Study. Despite his extreme poverty, Ràfols never strayed from the routine of his daily life. He went to mass every day, wrote a daily letter to his close friend Enric C. Ricart, and had his personal beggar to whom he never failed to give a set amount day in day out – even in his direst impecunious moments.

I’m convinced Ràfols has always had a personal beggar, but something occurred with his Florentine beggar that became celebrated in the city’s intellectual circles and was so amusing it travelled the world. People still recount the anecdote though it dates back to 1921.

One early evening the architect left the church of Santa Croce and made for the band of beggars who had cornered the church’s front steps, to give the usual alms to
his
beggar. Ràfols was taken aback; he looked everywhere but the beggar was nowhere to be seen. Worried he might have suffered an upset, he spoke to a woman who belonged to the beggarly band and asked whether she knew what had happened to the absentee, namely, his beggar.

“
Il cieco sta bene, taro commendatore
 …” replied the woman in a rather sarcastic, tipsy tone. “
Il cieco sta benissimo, ma é uscito colla sua signora e sone andati al cinematografo
.”

I hardly need add that, Llimona and Ràfols, like the Mexican and I, became wiser rather than richer in Florence, if I am candid. Our debates in the various cafés we visited and our endless conversations as we strolled along the prestigious banks of the Arno, were of an abundance and quality
in inverse proportion to our meager fare. Our table was always bare, but our ideas and hopes had never flowed so effortlessly, boldly, or beautifully as they did then. We wouldn’t have been at all surprised to read in the newspaper one day that our Mexican painter had been appointed a minister or general in his country, because that man’s eagle eye justified the most optimistic of hypotheses. Nor would it have seemed at all peculiar if Lluís Llimona had made a fortune in commerce or painting, because his gifts as a painter were as evident as his talents as an entrepreneur. Nor that J.F. Ràfols, without shedding the luminous, palpable aura of grace that made him lighter than air, might have finally ended up having not one beggar in his charge but a whole army, for we’ve known greener fruit to ripen. None of that would be odd, but perfectly natural and possible. What would be odd, my beloved distant friends, would be for the scintillating ideas we floated on Florentine nights to resurface, for our ingenuousness to return or the pleasure with which we could stroll for an hour to read a text by Dante or a paragraph from Vasari on a stone house façade, or the enthusiasm that led us to one church after another, every day at any hour, even if we never attended mass. All that has gone never to return, however many years go by.