Loser Takes Al

The manager said, “You realize that the Administration of the Casino and of this hotel are most anxious—really most anxious—you realize we are in a very special position here, Mr Bertram, we are not perhaps”—he smiled at his fingernails—“quite ordinary hôteliers. We have had clients here whom we have looked after for—well, thirty years”—he was incredibly slow at delivering his sentence. “We like to think of them as friends rather than clients. You know here in the Principality we have a great tradition—well, of discretion, Mr Bertram. We don’t publish names of our guests. We are the repository of many confidences.”

I couldn’t bear the man’s rigmarole any more. It had become less like an execution than like the Chinese water-torture. I said, “We are quite broke—there’s a confidence for you.”

He smiled again at his nails. “That was what I suspected, Mr Bertram, and so I hope you will accept a small loan. For a friend of Mr Dreuther. Mr Dreuther is a very old client of ours and we should be most distressed if any friend of his failed to enjoy his stay with us.” He stood up, bowed and presented me with an envelope—I felt like a child receiving a good-conduct prize from a bishop. Then he led me to the door and said in a low confidential voice, “Try our Château Gruaud Larose 1934: you will not be disappointed.”

I opened the envelope on the bed and counted the notes. I said, “He’s lent us 250,000 francs.”

“I don’t believe it.”

“What it is to be a friend of the Gom. I wish I liked the bastard.”

“How will we ever repay it?”

“The Gom will have to help. He kept us here.”

“We’ll spend as little as we can, won’t we, darling?”

“But no more coffee and rolls. Tonight we’ll have a party—the wedding party.” I didn’t care a damn about the Gruaud Larose 1934: I hired a car and we drove to a little village in the mountains called Peille. Everything was rocky grey and gorse-yellow in the late sun which flowed out between the cold shoulders of the hills where the shadows waited. Mules stood in the street and the car was too large to reach the inn, and in the inn there was only one long table to seat fifty people. We sat alone at it and watched the darkness come, and they gave us their own red wine which wasn’t very good and fat pigeons roasted and fruit and cheese. The villagers laughed in the next room over their drinks, and soon we could hardly see the enormous hump of hills.

“Happy?”

“Yes.”

She said after a while, “I wish we weren’t going back to Monte Carlo. Couldn’t we send the car home and stay? We wouldn’t mind about toothbrushes tonight, and tomorrow we could go—shopping.” She said the last word with an upward inflexion as though we were at the Ritz and the Rue de la Paix round the corner.

“A toothbrush at Carrier’s,” I said.

“Lanvin for two pyjama tops.”

“Soap at Guerlain.”

“A few cheap handkerchiefs in the Rue de Rivoli.” She said, “I can’t think of anything else we’d want, can you? Did you ever come to a place like this with Dirty?” Dirty was the name she always used for my first wife who had been dark and plump and sexy with pekingese eyes.

“Never.”

“I like being somewhere without footprints.”

I looked at my watch. It was nearly ten and there was half an hour’s drive back. I said, “I suppose we’d better go.”

“It’s not late.”

“Well, tonight I want to give my system a real chance. If I use 200-franc tokens I’ve got just enough capital.”

“You aren’t going to the Casino?”

“Of course I am.”

“But that’s stealing.”

“No it isn’t. He gave us the money to enjoy ourselves with.”

“Then half of it’s mine. You shan’t gamble with my half.”

“Dear, be reasonable. I need the capital. The system needs the capital. When I’ve won you shall have the whole lot back with interest. We’ll pay our bills, we’ll come back here if you like for all the rest of our stay.”

“You’ll never win. Look at the others.”

“They aren’t mathematicians. I am.”

An old man with a beard guided us to our car through the dark arched streets: she wouldn’t speak, she wouldn’t even take my arm. I said, “This is our celebration night, darling. Don’t be mean.”

“What have I said that’s mean?” How they defeat us with their silences: one can’t repeat a silence or throw it back as one can a word. In the same silence we drove home. As we came out over Monaco the city was floodlit, the Museum, the Casino, the Cathedral, the Palace—the fireworks went up from the rock. It was the last day of a week of illuminations: I remembered the first day and our quarrel and the three balconies.

I said, “We’ve never seen the Salle Privée. We must go there tonight.”

“What’s special about tonight?” she said.

“Le mari doit protection à sa femme, la femme obéissance à son mari.”

“What on earth are you talking about?”

“You told the mayor you agreed to that. There’s another article you agreed to—“The wife is obliged to live with her husband and to follow him wherever he judges it right to reside.” Well, tonight we are damned well going to reside in the Salle Privée.”