Through all these dangers — on safari, in the hunting field, in the gymnasiums and quiet meadows where sabre slashes had settled affairs of honour — Neszti had coolly passed unscathed, perhaps because no matter what he did his aristocratic heart never beat faster in passion nor paused in fear. Nothing seemed to touch him or ruffle the gentlemanly disdain with which he treated all who came near him. In his way he was the beau ideal of the fin de siècleman of the world. He had become the recognized authority on all that concerned the behaviour of a gentleman, and his judgement, cold and laconic, was never questioned. Sometimes he did not even have to open his mouth, his monocle spoke in his place. This little glass disc seemed to have its own language, as if Neszti had developed an extra organ of communication. He wore the rimless eyeglass attached to an almost invisible silken thread, and when he put it up to his eye he could express an infinite variety of opinion merely by varying the gesture: comic surprise, irony, increased interest or incipient boredom, appreciation for a woman’s beauty or reprimand for a man’s presumption. If, while someone was speaking to him he let the monocle drop by a deft movement of the eyebrow alone it would mean, as often as not: ‘This subject is now closed!’ or ‘What an ass you are!’ And no one was ever in doubt as to what was meant, whether it were approval or contempt or a whole range of subtle nuances in between. His timing was inimitable and it was widely recognized that Neszti’s monocle was as much the symbol of his sway as was the sceptre of kings.
At the oval table brightly lit by a green-shaded lamp sat Szent-Gyorgyi, Odon (‘Donci’) Illesvary, younger brother to Ede Illesvary who had just resigned as leading dancer; Janos Rosgonyi, a short, tubby little man who was a famous breeder of race-horses; and the millionaire Zeno Arzenovics from Bacska constituted the hard core of big gamblers. With them were five others who played for smaller stakes but who occasionally initiated a modest bank or combined to share a stake when the play was high. These more modest players held back from the nerve-racking battles played by the first four whose initial bets would often run into thousands of crowns.
The lowest stakes were played by Gedeon Pray, but no one minded as they all knew that he was completely ruined and so they forgave the fact that he never pushed forward a chip worth more than a hundred crowns, and then only if the taille had come to him. And he only bet against the others if he seemed to be on a winning streak and if his opponents were on a run of bad luck.
No banknotes ever appeared on the table. The big players all made deposits with the Club Steward and collected whatever chips they needed on this security. Those who had made no deposit merely signed IOUs — for every club member had the right to ask for credit up to a limit of five thousand crowns — which had to be settled within forty-eight hours.
Laszlo sat in silence, still feeling as much a stranger here as he had with the young men revelling in their private room. Though he was not interested in the game it was still agreeable to be in company and to watch the play undisturbed. Indeed he was more at ease in the card-room than he had been downstairs. There he had been made to feel on sufferance, barely even treated as an equal, not even as another guest but rather on the same level as the bandleader or drummer, whose presence was tolerated as a tiresome necessity. In the past, prepared for this treatment by his orphaned childhood and his homelessness, he had become resigned, accepting that it was his natural destiny, but since he had held Klara in his arms in the angle of her little room in Simonvasar he felt quite different. Now, whenever some young blood filled with thoughtless goodwill spoke patronizingly to him, Laszlo felt himself swelling with resentment and rebellion. Earlier that evening, for example, when someone had said lightly: ‘Oh, yes, come too, if you wish!’ and then had asked him to play the violin or get the music-hall girls to dance, just as if he were the major-domo or hired organizer of their revels, he had felt it was insufferable and that he would no longer put up with it. It was not worthy of him and certainly not worthy of the man that Klara, before all others, had chosen for herself and to whom she had offered her mouth. Ah, the memory of that kiss! Her mouth had been warm and generous and reminiscent of sun-drenched fruit and the mere thought of it made him giddy. That memory was shut in his heart as if he carried with him in secret the world’s biggest diamond, a jewel so precious, so rare, so imbued with pre-eminent magic powers that whosoever carried it in his breast should pass first wherever he went. Sitting quietly at the chemmy table Laszlo, inflamed by the excess of brandy and champagne that he had felt forced to swallow earlier in the evening, felt his blood run hotly within him, clammering for this royal command to be obeyed. As he sat impassively beside the excitable Illesvary, silent and modest for all to see, within him boiled a turmoil of resentment and proud determination. The ‘shoe’ of gleaming mahogany now passed to Zeno Arzenovics. Before dealing he pushed out the entire pile of chips in front of him, which consisted of five hundred-and one thousand-crown pieces, and said: ‘Faites vos jeux!’ He looked around expectantly, turning his head in every direction while his pointed beak of a nose, which curved out so acutely from his profile that everyone called him the ‘Black Cockatoo’, a sobriquet all the more appropriate since his thickly pomaded hair rose from his forehead like a crest of black feathers — seemed to dominate the table. For a while no one spoke. Arzenovics looked around expectantly, his cold prune-black eyes disdainfully seeking someone to meet his challenge. He played to the gallery, sure of his reputation as a famous gambler and hoping to astonish and horrify the usual group of anonymous watchers standing in the shadow behind the players’ chairs. Even at this late hour there was no letting up. Arzenovics had to live up to his fame, which is why he always played the highest stakes, never accepted a partner and never retired from the game. Even had he wished he could now not have played in any other way. His principles were too well known, as he had so often expounded the wisdom of his methods to groups of awed and deferential onlookers.
Slowly some of the players pushed forward little piles of chips until there were some twelve thousand crowns on the table. The banker drew a nine.
‘The bank will be twenty-four!’ said Zeno. He pulled back the first pile of chips and built them into two neat stacks in front of him. Leaning forward, he shifted his cigar to the corner of his mouth and said: ‘Twenty-four, who wants it?’
In front of Donci Illesvary only a solitary five hundred-crown piece remained, the forlorn relic of an evening of continual loss. Donci thought that if he won now he would break even; but if not, well, he could always touch his brother for another loan, as he had so often before. He knocked on the table to show that he would meet the stake.
Zeno drew a nine, winning again, and Donci gestured to the Steward to bring him an IOU to sign.
From then on the Ponte — those playing against the bank — placed ever smaller bets: eight thousand, five, three, and finally only one or two thousand, and that unwillingly, but they had to go on for it was considered dishonourable to withdraw from play just because a great gambler was on a winning streak. At a certain point they started putting up higher stakes again, for everyone felt that the run would soon come to an end. But it didn’t: Arzenovics won eighteen times in a row. Now the betting slowed down. Everyone had been bled white.
‘Pour faire marcher le jeu! — to keep the game going’, said Neszti Szent-Gyorgyi, and pushed two thousand-crown chips forward with his long well-groomed fingers. He was the only player. Zeno won again.