Passion (10 page)

He wrote,
future
. And then he put a line through it.

What did he mean? His future? My future? I thought back to those sea-salt days when the sun had turned the grass yellow and men had married mermaids. I started my litde book then, the one I still have and Domino had turned on me and called the future a dream.
There's only the present, Henri.

He had never talked of what he wanted to do, where he was going, he never joined in the aimless conversations that clustered round the idea of something better in another time. He didn't believe in the future, only die present, and as our future, our years, had turned so relendessly into identical presents, I understood him more. Eight years had passed and I was still at war, cooking chickens, waiting to go home for good. Eight years of talking about the future and seeing it turn into the present. Years of thinking, 'In another year, I'll be doing something different,' and in another year doing just the same.

Future. Crossed out.

That's what war does.

I don't want to worship him any more. I want to make my own mistakes. I want to die in my own time.

Domino was looking at me. The snow had already covered his words.

He wrote,
you go.

He tried to smile. His mouth couldn't smile but his eyes were bright, and jumping up in the old way, in the way he'd jumped to pick apples from the tallest trees, he snatched an icicle from the blackened canvas and handed it to me.

It was beautiful. Formed from the cold and glittering in the centre. I looked again. There was something inside it, running through the middle from top to bottom. It was a piece of thin gold that Domino usually wore round his neck. He called it his talisman. What had he done with it and why was he giving it to me?

Making signs with his hands he made me understand that he could no longer wear it around his neck because of his sores. He had cleaned it and hung it out of sight and this morning had seen it so encased.

An ordinary miracle.

I tried to give it back, but he pushed me away until I nodded and said I'd hang it on my belt when I left.

I think I had known he wouldn't come. He wouldn't leave the horses. They were the present.

When I got back to the kitchen tent, Patrick was waiting for me with a woman I had never met. She was a
vwandiere.
Only a handful were left and they were stricdy for the officers. The pair of them were wolfing chicken legs and offered one to me.

'Rest your heart,' said Patrick, seeing my horror, 'these don't belong to Our Lord, our friend here came by them and when I came looking for you, she was already in here doing a bit of cooking.'

'Where did you get them?'

'I fucked for them, the Russians have got plenty and there's still plenty of Russians in Moscow.'

I blushed and mumbled something about the Russians having fled.

She laughed and said the Russians could hide under the snowflakes. Then she said, 'They're all different.'

'What?'

'Snowflakes. Think of that.'

I did think of that and I fell in love with her.

When I said I was leaving that night she asked if she could come with me.

'I can help you.'

I would have taken her with me even if she'd been lame.

'If you're both going,' said Patrick, draining the last of his evil spirit, 'I'll come along too. I don't fancy it here on my own.'

I was taken aback and for a moment consumed with jealousy.

Perhaps Patrick loved her? Perhaps she loved him?

Love. In the middle of a zero winter. What was I thinking?

We packed the rest of her food and a good deal of Bonaparte's.

He trusted me and I had never given him reason not to.

Well, even great men can be surprised.

We took what there was and she returned wrapped in a huge fur, another of her souvenirs of Moscow. As we set off, I slipped into Domino's tent and left him as much of the food as I dared spare and scrawled my name in the ice on the sledge.

Then we were gone.

We walked for a night and a day without stopping. Our legs assumed an ungainly rhythm and we were afraid to stop in case our lungs or our legs buckled under us. We didn't talk, we wrapped our noses and mouths as tighdy as we could and let our eyes poke out like slits. There was no fresh snow. The hard ground rang at our heels.

I remembered a woman with her baby, her heels sparking the cobbles.

'Happy New Year, soldier.'

Why do all happy memories feel like yesterday though years have passed?

We were heading in the direction we had come, using the charred villages as gruesome signposts, but our progress was

slow and we were afraid to stick direcdy to the roads for fear of Russian troops or some of our own army, greedy and desperate. Mutineers, or traitors as they were more usually called, found no leniency and were given no opportunity to make their excuses. We camped where we could find some natural shelter and huddled together for warmth. I wanted to touch her, but her body was covered all over and my hands were gloved.

On the seventh night, coming out of the forest, we found a hut full of primitive muskets, a dump for the Russian troops we supposed, but there was no one. We were weary and took our chance in there, using dregs of gunpowder from the barrels to light a fire. It was the first night we had had enough shelter to take off our boots and Patrick and I were soon stretching our toes at the blaze, risking permanent damage to our feet.

Our companion loosed her laces but kept her boots on, and seeing my surprise at forgoing this unexpected luxury said, 'My father was a boatman. Boatmen do not take off their boots.' We were silent, either out of respect for her customs or sheer exhaustion, but it was she who offered to tell us her story if we chose to listen.

'A fire and a tale,' said Patrick. 'Now all we need is a drop of something hot,' and he fathomed from the bottom of his unfathomable pockets another stoppered jar of evil spirit.

This was her story.

I have always been a gambler. It's a skill that comes naturally to me like thieving and loving. What I didn't know by instinct I picked up from working the Casino, from watching others play and learning what it is that people value and therefore what it is they will risk. I learned how to put a challenge in such a way as to make it irresistible. We gamble with the hope of winning, but it's the thought of what we might lose that excites us.

How you play is a temperamental thing; cards, dice, dominoes, jacks, such preferences are frills merely. All gamblers sweat. I come from the city of chances, where everything is possible but where everything has a price. In this city great fortunes are won and lost overnight. It has always been so. Ships that carry silk and spices sink, the servant betrays the master, the secret is out and the bell tolls another accidental death. But penniless adventurers have always been welcome here too, they are good luck and very often their good luck rubs off on themselves. Some who come on foot leave on horseback and others who trumpeted their estate beg on the Rialto. It has always been so.

The astute gambler always keeps something back, something to play with another time; a pocket watch, a hunting dog. But the Devil's gambler keeps back something precious, something to gamble with only once in a lifetime. Behind the secret panel he keeps it, the valuable, fabulous thing that no one suspects he has.

I knew a man like that; not a drunkard sniffing after every wager nor an addict stripping the clothes off his back rather than go home. A thoughtful man who they say had trade with gold and death. He lost heavily, as gamblers do; he won surprisingly, as gamblers do, but he never showed much emotion, never led me to suspect that much important was at stake. A hobbyist, I thought, dismissing him. You see, I like passion, I like to be among the desperate.

I was wrong to dismiss him. He was waiting for the wager that would seduce him into risking what he valued. He was a true gambler, he was prepared to risk the valuable, fabulous thing but not for a dog or a cock or the casual dice.

On a quiet evening, when the tables were half empty and the domino sets lay in their boxes, he was there, wandering, fluttering, drinking and flirting.

I was bored.

Then a man came into the room, not one of our regulars, not one any of us knew, and after a few half-hearted games of chance he spied this figure and engaged him in conversation. They talked for upwards of half an hour and so intendy that we thought they must be old friends and lost our curiosity in the assumption of habit. But the rich man with his strangely bowed companion by his side asked leave to make an announcement, a most remarkable wager, and we cleared the central floor and let him speak.

It seemed that his companion, this stranger, had come from the wastes of the Levant, where exotic lizards breed and all is unusual. In his country, no man bothered with paltry fortunes at the gaming table, they played for higher stakes.

A life.

The wager was a life. The winner should take the life of the loser in whatsoever way he chose. However slowly he chose, with whatever instruments he chose. What was certain was that only one life would be spared.

Our rich friend was clearly excited. His eyes looked past the faces and tables of the gaming room into a space we could not inhabit; into the space of pain and loss. What could it matter to him that he might lose fortunes?

He had fortunes to lose.

What could it matter to him that he might lose mistresses?

There are women enough.

What would it matter to him that he might lose his life?

He had one life. He cherished it.

There were those that night who begged him not to go on with it, who saw a sinister aspect in this unknown old man, who were perhaps afraid of being made the same offer and of refusing.

What you risk reveals what you value.

These were the terms.

A game of three.

The first, the roulette, where only fate is queen.

The second, the cards, where skill has some part.

The third, the dominoes, where skill is paramount and chance is there in disguise. Will she wear your colours? This is the city of disguises.

The terms were agreed and stricdy supervised. The winner was two out of three or in the event of some onlooker crying Nay! a tie, chosen at random, by the manager of the Casino.

The terms seemed fair. More than fair in this cheating world, but there were still some who felt uneasy about the unknown man, unassuming and unthreatening as he seemed. If the Devil plays dice, will he come like this? Will he come so quiedy and whisper in our ear? If he came as an angel of light, we should be immediately on our guard. The word was given: Play on.

We drank throughout the first game, watching the red and black spin under our hands, watching the bright streak of metal dally with one number, then another, innocent of win or lose. At first it seemed as though our rich friend must win, but at the last moment the ball sprang out of its slot and spun again with that dwindling sickening sound that marks the last possible change. The wheel came to rest. It was the stranger whom fortune loved.

There was a moment's silence, we expected some sign, some worry on one part, some satisfaction on another, but with faces of wax, the two men got up and walked to the optimistic baize. The cards. No man knows what they may hold. A man must trust his hand. Swift dealing. These were accustomed to the game. They played for perhaps an hour and we drank. Drank to keep our Hps wet, our Hps that dried every time a card fell and the stranger seemed doomed to victory. There was an odd sense in the room that the stranger must not win, that for all our sakes he must lose. We willed our rich friend to weld his wits with his luck and he did.

At the cards, he won and they were even.

The two men met each other's gaze for a moment before they seated themselves in front of the dominoes and in each face was something of the other. Our rich friend had assumed a more calculating expression, while his challenger's face was more thoughtful, less wolfish than before.

It was clear from the start that they were evenly matched at this game too. They played defdy, judging the gaps and the numbers, making lightning calculations, baffling each other. We had stopped drinking. There was neither sound nor movement save the clicking of the dominoes on the marble table.

It was past midnight. I heard the water lapping at the stones below. I heard my saliva in my throat. I heard the dominoes clicking on the marble table.

There were no dominoes left. No gaps.

The stranger had won.