“In the end the cards were dealt and, thank God, the son won. I was actually glad of it. Right away he wanted another game. What the deuce, I thought: when someone’s been losing like he has, you can’t be small about it. Well, we played another game, and then another, and another — the shoe, you should know, was now on the other foot. ‘So tell me,’ I said to the old fox, ‘how come you’re not blowing the whistle on Junior now?’ ‘Just wait till we get home,’ he says, ‘and I’ll give him what-for. He’ll have something to remember me by, he will!’
“That’s what he answers me, the old weasel, peeking at my hand, and humming, and hemming, and snuffling up his nose. Not that I had liked any of that before, either — but as long as the cards were going my way, he could peek-hum-hem-and-snuffle all he pleased; it was only now that they weren’t that I began to smell a rat. Meanwhile, though, they kept being dealt and one deal was worse than the next. I was on a real losing streak; I kept having to get up, reach into my jacket, and take out another hundred. What a turnabout! I was beginning to run low on cash. Suddenly the old horse thief grabs my hand and says, ‘I’ll be jiggered if I’ll let you play another game! Why, you’re down to your last hundred.’ You can be sure that burned me up even more. ‘Who says I’m down to my last hundred?’ I said — and just to show him how wrong he was, I went and bet my last hundred.
“It was only then, when I was totally cleaned out — when, seeing my partner, flushed with victory, button up his vest, the truth hit home that I was as fleeced as a shorn lamb and as broke as a dropped dish — it was only then that I began to take stock of what had happened. Something told me I had supped with the Devil and gotten stuck with the bill. Too late it dawned on me that the father was no father and that son of his no son — you could tell it from how they looked at each other, and from how the young man went off to one side and waited for the old one to join him. The old pirate whispered something to him, and I could have sworn the young punk slipped something into his hand …
“My first thought was to throw myself from the train; my next one: them, not you! You should stick a knife into them, you should put a bullet in them, you should choke the living daylights out of both!.. Just try it, though, when it’s two against one — and meanwhile the train is zipping along, the wheels are going clickety-clack, and my head is spinning too. I felt about to blow a gasket … what now? Before I knew it, the train had pulled into a station. What should I do? Who should I turn to? What should I say?… I looked up and saw my two fellow passengers reaching for their suitcases. ‘Where are we?’ I asked. ‘In a town called Odessa,’ they said. I put a hand in my pocket — there wasn’t enough change there to pay a porter. I broke into a cold sweat. My hands shook. There were actually tears in my eyes. I went over to the old vulture and said, ‘Look, perhaps you could do me a small favor … just twenty-five rubles, that’s all I’m asking for …’
“ ‘Why ask me? Ask him,’ shrugs the old crocodile, pointing to his companion. But the young con just twirled his mustache and pretended not to hear. The engine whistled. ‘All out!’—we were in Odessa. I don’t have to tell you that the first person to jump from that car was me. Or that the shouts that everyone heard were mine too. ‘Police!’ I screamed at the top of my lungs. ‘Po-li-i-ce!..’
“In no time one, two, three, four, five, six, seven policemen sprang up out of the ground. By then, though, the young blan-kety-blank had disappeared from sight. There was only the old hyena, whose arm I had a tight grip on to keep him from getting away. I won’t even try to describe the bedlam that broke out in that station. It was like being in the middle of an earthquake. The two of us were brought to a special room, where I told the whole story from start to finish. I poured my bitter heart out, I all but broke down and cried — and it seemed to make an impression, because right away they warned the old shill that he had better come clean. Guess what, though? He didn’t know what they were talking about! Sixty-six? What sixty-six! Cards? What cards! Son? What son! In fact, he had no son and never had one. ‘The man,’ says the old bastard, putting a finger to his head, ‘is off his rocker …’
“ ‘Oh, I am, am I?’ I said. ‘Why don’t you search him!’
“Well, they took him and turned him inside out right down to his underwear — no money, no cards! His total worth amounted to twenty-two rubles and seventy kopecks, and he really did look like such a poor, harmless beggar that I began to wonder myself if I hadn’t imagined it all. Maybe I just dreamed that I met a father and a son and lost a wad playing sixty-six with them?… You know what the end of it was? Don’t ask! Suppose we forget about the past and play a little game of sixty-six ourselves in honor of Hanukkah …”
Whereupon the dignified gentleman, who appeared to be a commercial traveler like myself, produced a pack of cards, cut the deck for first deal, and inquired, “What stakes shall we play for?”
I watched him cut the deck; he did it a little too skillfully, a little too fast. And his hands were a little too white. Too white and too soft. Suddenly I had a most unpleasant thought …
“I would be happy,” I said, “to play a game of sixty-six with you in honor of Hanukkah, but I wouldn’t know how to begin. What actually is this sixty-six you keep talking about?”
My fellow passenger gave me a long, hard look, the barest hint of a smile on his lips, and then quietly, with an inaudible sigh, replaced the cards in his pocket.
He vanished at the next station. On a whim I walked up and down the train twice, looking for him everywhere — he was nowhere to be seen.
(1910)
HIGH SCHOOL
Winter. Across from me, wearing a rather worn skunk-fur coat, sat a middle-aged man whose blond beard was shot with gray. We began to talk.
“You know,” he said to me, “a man is his own worst enemy, especially when there’s a woman involved — I mean a wife. I happen to be talking about myself. Just from looking at me, what would you take me for? A pretty average Jew, wouldn’t you say? You can’t tell by the shape of my nose if I’m rich, poor, or down-and-out. For all you know, I may once have had lots of money. And not just money, either — because what’s money, after all? — but a solid, respectable business, not one of your flash-in-the-pan operations that make a big hoo-ha while they last. No, sir! It happens to be my personal opinion that slowly but surely is best. Slowly but surely is how I built up my business, slowly but surely is how I watched it go under, slowly but surely is how I paid off my debts, and slowly but surely is how I started all over again. If only God hadn’t gone and given me a wife … she isn’t traveling with me, so I can be frank with you. That is, at first glance she’s just a wife like any other, you wouldn’t guess there was anything the matter with her. She cuts a pretty imposing figure, in fact, because she’s twice as big as I am, and not at all bad-looking either — on the contrary, she’s downright pretty. And intelligent too; why, she’s sharp as a razor, she thinks exactly like a man … which is, you know, the first thing wrong with her, because it’s no good for a woman to want to wear the pants in a family. I don’t care how smart she is — the fact remains that when God Almighty created the world, He made Adam before He made Eve. Just try telling that to her, though. ‘Who God made before who,’ she says to me, ‘is His affair; that still doesn’t make it my fault if I have more brains in my small toe than you have in your whole fat skull’