That night we took on the letters E and F. Delicia was writing somewhat quicker, and the rows of letters were getting straighter and the letters more alike. Then I ate and went out to play.
I had the five-thousand-peso bill balled up in my pants pocket. When I got there, the game had just started. A crowd of people stood over the table, above the heads of the players sitting in the front row. I made a space behind one of the workers and started observing the game. To catch up, I looked at the note pad of the player sitting to the left of the worker. Two bancos had just turned over. I thought it had to go banco again, but I didn’t play, and it turned out punto. I squeezed the bill inside my pocket into an even tighter, flatter ball. My hand was sweating, and the bill’s hard, crisp consistency gave way to something soft and damp.
I told myself that if I could change my luck with those five thousand pesos I would cancel the mortgage.
The next hand went to banco. Logic told me the following: a game of two bancos and one punto is taking shape. One more banco has to turn over before the next punto. If it goes banco in the next hand, in the one after I should play punto.
When it went banco, as I had calculated, I changed the five thousand bill for five red chips of a thousand. I put three on punto, and a third banco turned out.
So the two bancos and one punto game had been broken up in favor of the banco. I put the two thousand-peso chips on banco, and it came out banco. I cashed in the four thousand and waited.
Two more tricks went to banco. Six bancos had now been dealt. That was too many bancos. In my judgment, it made sense to play punto. So I played the four thousand on punto, and it came out punto, and I cashed out eight thousand.
The next hand was a push at six. History teaches that after a push at six it goes banco. I bet five thousand on banco. It wasn’t a banco, but a push at seven, and historically a push at seven is followed by punto rather than banco, so I took out the chips I had put on banco and put them on punto, and it turned out banco.
Then I played the three thousand pesos on banco, and it turned out banco, so with that I played five thousand on banco, and it turned out banco again. In my hand I had an oval, yellow chip, worth five thousand, and six rectangular, red chips of a thousand. I went to the bar, drank a cup of tea, and returned to the table ten minutes later. I opened a space between the guys who were standing around the table and set myself up behind the worker, leaning toward the table over his left shoulder.
I didn’t even glance at the notebook of the guy sitting to the left of the worker. Now I have to play punto, I thought. I played the eleven thousand on punto, and punto took it. The worker handed me a green, rectangular chip, with 10,000 carved into it in gold numbers. Besides that he gave me an oval, yellow chip, and seven red rectangles.
If I get to thirty thousand, I thought, I’ll cancel the mortgage on the house.
Punto had to take it again. Something in my heart told me punto would take it a second time. I bet eight thousand, handing the worker the oval, yellow chip, and three rectangular, red chips. If punto takes it, I thought while the cards were dealt, I’ll reach thirty with these eight, and I’ll cancel the mortgage on the house. Something in my heart told me again that punto would take it a third time. It’s nothing but a third punto, it’s not too much to ask it to come. There was a push at eight, and then punto took it again. During the push I thought about pulling out the chips I had put in, but something told me I had to be patient, and trust. The worker gave me a rectangular, green chip, with the number ten stamped in gold numerals, an oval, yellow chip, and a red rectangle. In my hand I had two chips with the number stamped in gold, a yellow oval, and five red rectangles. I left the table and went to the bar. I drank a second cup of tea. I took out a thousand-peso chip from my pants pocket and paid for the tea. I took the change and put it in my other pocket.
My shirt was stuck to my back, and my whole face was damp. I leaned over the tea cup and a drop of sweat fell from my forehead into the tea. When I finished drinking the tea, sweating the whole time, so much so that the sweat was running down my face and my whole shirt was a swamp, and I put the empty cup on the counter and paused for a moment, examining the strange shapes formed by the leaves at the bottom of the cup, I had already made a decision, and I went back to the table.
They talk about vices that are solitary and vices that aren’t. All vices are solitary. All vices need solitude to be exercised. They attack in solitude. And, at the same time, they’re a pretext for solitude. I’m not saying that vices are bad. They could never be as bad as virtues, work, chastity, obedience, and so on. I’m simply saying how it is and how it goes.
I reached the table at the exact moment when the guy sitting to the left of the worker was getting up and balling up his notes. I took his place, pulled out the chips, and set them on the felt, against the edge of the table. I arranged them in order: first, against the edge, one of the ten-thousand, then the other, then the oval five-thousand, and then the four red rectangles. The worker told me that it was my turn on the banco. I bet the yellow oval. My plan was to leave the yellow oval in the box for the banco until it rotted. It meant that, after the first hand, there would be ten thousand pesos, after the second, twenty, after the third, forty, after the fourth, eighty, after the fifth, one hundred and sixty, and so on.
When the punto turned over his cards, he showed a king of diamonds and a queen of clubs. That meant he had zero. I turned mine over. It was an eight of hearts and a four of diamonds. That meant I had a two, two more than ten. They gave the punto a third card, an ace.
I was a thousand meters ahead. I could win with any card in the deck except a nine, which would mean a push, and an eight, which would mean zero (two plus eight is ten, or zero). They dealt me an eight. So the banco passed to the next player, the guy to the right of the worker. I have to get to thirty thousand again, I thought, so that I can cancel the mortgage on the house tomorrow.
I lost four straight bets of five thousand. The first I played banco, and it was punto, the second I played banco again, and punto took it again, with the third I played punto and it turned out banco, for the fourth I played banco, then I hesitated when there was a push, took the chip from the banco and put it on punto, and the banco took it.
I was sweating so much that I could feel drops of sweat around my ears — from the outside they must have looked like tears. Once in a while, a drop would fall on the felt and leave a damp ring before it evaporated. The last four red rectangles hadn’t stayed stacked up against the edge of the table, but were scattered over the felt. I would gather them together, without looking at them, and scatter them again. I wouldn’t look at them. With the fingers of my left hand I carried out the same operation over and over. Finally I separated myself from them, piling them neatly and sliding them across the felt into the hands of the worker. Punto, I said.
And it went to banco. I thought about Delicia’s tea tin, where she’d been keeping her savings for eighteen months, and I decided that there wasn’t the slightest difference between her behavior and mine. They were exactly the same. Only one of us changed it for geometrical, mother of pearl shapes of various colors and the other kept it in a tea tin. I got up and crossed the room, toward the exit. On the stairs I put my hand in my pants pocket and felt the bills they had given me as change for the thousand-peso chip. I stopped in the staircase, took out the bills, and counted them. There were nine hundred and fifty pesos. There were still some coins in my pocket: they were all tens, and added up to sixty pesos. I had ten thousand and ten pesos total. So I went back up the steps. I went straight to the cage and changed the thousand pesos, giving them the nine-hundred-fifty in bills and five coins. I asked for chips of five hundred. The cashier gave me two silver-plated circles the size of quarters. That silver-plating was a luxury, because they were charamusca—just eye candy. For protection, I put them in my left shirt pocket instead of my pants pocket, like I had done with the others. My heart was beating so hard while I walked to the table that I thought it would make the chips clink. After the first hand there wasn’t any danger of them clinking, because I only had one left. I turned around and took a spot behind the worker, playing over his left shoulder. So I was in the exact opposite location from where I had been before.