“May we?” one of them asked.
“I am playing one more hand,” I said.
I heard the murmur go up: English bastard — playing one more hand — lucky tonight—
“Very well, sir. How much are you betting?”
“Everything.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely sure.”
“Everything?”
I repeated the word in English.
It was those words that made me famous that night in Macau. Lord Doyle says absolutely sure!
“Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen.”
All my life I had been dreaming of a moment like this. Absolutely sure and filled with a creamy terror. The others were no doubt pressured by the same emotion. They closed in and their greed and fear reached a fever pitch in their faces. How many naturals can the luckiest Englishman ever pull off in a single night? Ah, do the math! Not six, not seven. The laws were against it.
In that moment I thought of myself walking by a tow-path near Newhaven when I was a child. A path by the river Ouse, my father egging me on to swim across the narrow river to a rusted abandoned tanker on the far side and pick off a barnacle. Memories from elsewhere. I swam to the tanker and as I latched onto the weeds growing on the metal I began to sink, to drown, and the weeds came off in my hands and I couldn’t stay afloat except by hugging the rusted steel and I heard my father shouting to me from the bank, “No cowards in this family,” and there was a merry music of church bells from Piddinghoe nearby. “Fear no man,” my grandfather used to say in Latin. “No cowards in this family and no losers either: recall the regimental flags, old son.”
A breeze of summer rot and sea salt and a life yet to begin, and I swam back with a barnacle in my fist. The cards were turned.
“Natural.”
“Nine wins, nine wins.”
“Fuck!”
The player nearest me exploded in heartfelt grief.
“It’s the way it is,” I said coolly.
The dealer stiffened like a napkin being tugged at both ends, his bow tie slightly askew, and while everyone else was consumed in the negative passion of the moment he made a slight gesture to me, depressing a thumb into the palm of his opposing hand, a smile of wan hatred spreading over his face.
Five hundred ten thousand dollars richer, I made my way back to reception and gave over my bags after having the contents counted out for me. The bellhops eavesdropped and rubbed their hands with a mysterious gesture as they offered unnecessarily to show me to the elevators. The night managers couldn’t resist a few admiring remarks. The decrepit gwai lo they had known only a few hours ago had been replaced by the human equivalent of a phoenix. It was the power of Luck, and since it was what their palace had been built on, they were inclined to submit to its diktat.
I summoned the receptionist who had pestered me before and with some ceremony apologized for it being a few minutes after midnight.
“I was detained,” I said, “by a friend. I am sorry to have kept you waiting for a few minutes.”
She, too, looked at her watch, and her face was all consternation and regret. Had she earlier managed to insult what was now a formidable client, and would her superiors notice the awkwardness of the gaffe? People were fired for less, for much less.
“It’s quite all right, Lord Doyle. Thank you for remembering.”
“Oh, I don’t forget a thing like that. I pay my debts.”
“Yes, Lord Doyle.”
I took out an imposing wad of dough and slapped it down on the counter.
“Counted it out myself.”
“Well, I don’t know what to say, Lord Doyle.”
“Just call me Lord if you like. It’s my pleasure.”
She hesitated. Was it a gwai lo joke?
The cash was grubby but it was cash. It was their cash.
“I’m sorry if I was impertinent before,” she said. “It was management’s orders.”
“Quite understood. I’ve decided to ask for a larger room. A suite perhaps. Do you have any suites?”
“Of course we do, Lord Doyle.”
“Then get me a suite if you can.”
“We can move you tomorrow if that is satisfactory.”
“I suppose it’ll have to be.”
“I can move you at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“I want gold taps on the bath.”
We laughed; it is such a well-known Chinese vice, the gold taps.
“No problem,” she assured me.
I wondered what other petty revenge I could exact upon her at this point, but none came to mind so I wished her a good night and went to the basement mall and bought a cigar. The relojerias were open and I went into a few to try on some Piaget watches. It was, to say the least, a novel experience. I couldn’t quite afford them just yet, but I had to savor the way the salesmen came tumbling over to fawn upon me. I said I wanted diamonds in there somewhere, perhaps around the face but certainly not on the band. “Try them on,” they cried, “try them on!” In the end, however, I couldn’t make up my mind and went watchless for my Horlicks and chocolate cake. I sat at an outer table so the high-class Mongolians could see me and lit my Havana. It was, in our humble terms, the kind of moment for which we addicts live but which I had never experienced before with such fullness. Nine times nine was a cosmic run if I had ever heard of one, and it could not be repeated, I was sure of that. By the same token I was also sure that it had never happened before. And perhaps I would never have to play the tables ever again. I could retire.
Just at that moment, though, I wondered to myself what would have happened if I had played a tenth hand. Would I have won with a tenth nine?
I even thought of going up to the Mona Lisa and trying it, just to remove the nagging doubt. I thought about it, but in the end I controlled the urge. It was too much, and sometimes one has to not know. And when all was said and done I was fine as I was. At one o’clock in the morning I was a Midas in the Noite e Dia, and everyone knew of my nines. Men stopped at my table and congratulated me in Chinese. They asked me what my secret was and who I was praying to. When I said no one, they didn’t believe me but they were too polite to object. It seemed as if I was concealing a secret, and some of them merely passed the table and held up a signing hand and said gao, nine, as if that were enough to establish an understanding. And at length I took off my gloves.
FIFTEEN
The following day I decided not to gamble for a few hours. After moving to the suite with the gold taps, I assembled my winnings in my room and counted them out note by note, with a relish bordering on miserly precision. I then packed it all in a single Adidas bag bought for the purpose and put it under my bed. Why I did this I was not sure, but I was convinced that the attitude of the Lisboa toward me had now changed as a result of my brief run of luck and the reputation it had generated for me. Sure, they had moved me to a suite with gold taps, but good luck for me was bad luck for them, and I was certain that management had instructed the staff to be a little less friendly and helpful to me than they had been before.
When I went to the Galera for lunch there was a frost in the air. The waiters eyed me coldly and their politeness was formulaic. In the lobby the staff gave me a similar treatment, though I daresay it was preferable to being hunted like a rat in debt. Of course, one can too easily become paranoid, and I was perhaps too sensitive after the strange events of the preceding night, which could be chalked up to the fluctuations of chance and nothing more. But the Chinese, I knew, wouldn’t see it that way.