The Past is a Foreign Country (3 page)

I WAS A MODEL STUDENT. Last year of law, ahead with my exams, my thesis on criminal law almost finished, and with a
near-perfect
record in my assessments. I was due to graduate in June, and then I would decide what to do. Teach at university or take the exam to become a magistrate. All very straightforward, very neat and tidy.

I’d been with Giulia for nearly two years. She was a medical
student,
the same age as me. She wanted to be a doctor, like her dad. She was pretty and petite. Her mum liked me a lot. All my
girlfriends’
mothers had liked me.

Everything was going well.

Francesco phoned me four or five days later. The New Year had come and gone, and it was already 1989.

Did I still fancy a game of poker? Yes, I did. So we made an
appointment
for ten that evening, at the apartment of someone I didn’t know. He gave me the name and address and I said I’d be there.

At nine I quarrelled with Giulia – our first real quarrel since we’d been together, but not the last – and by ten I was at the address Francesco had given me.

I’d brought five hundred thousand lire with me, which for me was quite a lot. I didn’t want to look poor.

The other people there besides Francesco were the owner of the apartment – a fair-haired guy with long, oily hair, named Roberto – and a rather dirty-looking man of about forty. He introduced himself only by his surname – Massaro – and for the whole evening no one called him by his first name.

It was a shabby apartment. The furniture was of poor quality, and naked bulbs hung from the ceiling.

We played in the kitchen. The fair-haired guy put a bottle of whisky and two plastic cups next to the sink. He said we could help ourselves, which we did many times during the course of the evening, until the bottle was empty. Only Francesco drank hardly anything.

We started playing. The custom of the house was to play three hands of draw poker to one of stud poker. There was a fixed stake of ten thousand lire and a limit to how high the pot could go. The game was obviously out of my league. But I was ashamed to leave, so I started losing, a little at a time. I’d put in my stake, maybe make the first bet, then they’d up the ante and I’d have to fold because I was afraid of losing everything in a single hand. I did win a couple of small pots but after playing for about two hours I had almost nothing left and was cursing my own stupidity. Then something happened.

It was time to play stud poker, and Francesco dealt. One card face down, then one card face up. My face-up card was a queen, and so was my face-down card. The fair-haired guy had a ten, Massaro a king, Francesco an ace.

‘Fifty,’ Francesco said. The other two played immediately. I thought about it for a few seconds – I had just over a hundred
thousand
lire left – and then told myself, what the hell, I would lose the rest of my money, call it a day and never play again in my life. It would be a lesson to me.

Again, Francesco turned over the cards. I had the third queen.
I felt my heart racing. The fair-haired guy got another ten, and
Massaro
a jack. Francesco got another ace, so the choice was his.

‘Two hundred thousand.’ In other words, everything in the pot and more than I had left.

Damn, damn, damn, what do I do? The host played, Massaro said he was folding, and I said I didn’t have all the money. Would there be any problem about giving me credit? No, Francesco said, no problem. The other man nodded. He probably didn’t trust me, but didn’t know how to say it. I put everything I had left in the middle of the table and we wrote down on a sheet of paper how much I owed the pot. Then Francesco dealt, for the penultimate time. An ace of hearts for me, a third ten for the fair-haired guy. A seven for Francesco.

‘Five hundred thousand,’ the fair-haired guy said.

Francesco passed, and I said I had to think. In fact I was
genuinely
terrified, and was trying to figure out what to do. What if his face-down card was the fourth ten? I had savings in the bank, but it seemed like madness to throw them away like this. Why the hell had I come? Why? I looked around and for a moment met Francesco’s eyes.

He moved his head imperceptibly, as if telling me to play. I
immediately
looked away, afraid the others had noticed. They hadn’t, so I played, writing down the vast amount I owed on the sheet of paper.

The last two cards slid across the table. A king for the fair-haired guy.

The fourth queen for me.

I was sure I could hear my heart beating wildly. Damn, I had four queens, which meant I was sure to have won. I prayed that the
fair-haired
guy’s face-down card was the fourth ten, or at least a king. Because then he would play, come what may, and I would win. I felt as if I was going mad with the effort I was making to control myself.
I felt as if a drug was coursing through my veins. I felt as if I was having an endless orgasm.

‘It’s up to the man with the three queens,’ the fair-haired guy said. From the way he said it, I was sure he had either four tens or a full house. That meant he was certain he was going to win, going to tear me apart.

‘One million lire.’ The words, as I said them, sounded unreal, first in my mouth and then in the smoky, almost palpable air of that kitchen. What was a million? It was an unreal entity. At least it had been an unreal entity up until a few minutes earlier, but now it was being transformed into something concrete. Something that could be multiplied.

‘Do you have the money?’ the host asked, with a hint of contempt in his voice.

I felt the blood rushing to my cheeks. I was ashamed and
angry
because they were treating me like a pauper. I was also scared stiff that he would try to stop me playing because I didn’t have the money. I made an effort to keep my voice under control.

‘I don’t have it here. I already said.’

‘Sign an IOU.’

‘If I lose, of course I’ll sign an IOU.’ What about you? I’d have liked to add. If you lose, will you give me cash or a cheque? But I didn’t say anything, for fear he might be alarmed and not play.

‘All right. A million, and I’ll raise you another million.’ The
asshole
was absolutely sure he was going to win, with his four tens. I didn’t say immediately that I’d see him. After his last bet I’d become calm suddenly. I felt a kind of tranquil but fierce elation. I wanted to enjoy that feeling for a few moments. I looked around and thought I caught a very slight smile on Francesco’s lips.

‘I’ll see you,’ I said finally.

‘I have the fourth ten under here. So unless you have the fourth queen…’

I turned over the card. ‘Yes, I do have the fourth queen.’

He froze, staring at the card I’d turned over. He couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t possible for two fours to be dealt in a single hand of stud poker.

I couldn’t believe it myself.

‘Good hand,’ Francesco said cheerfully, and the man turned to him with a look of genuine hatred. My own expression was seraphic. I was wondering how he would pay me all that money. I took what was in the pot and we wrote down on the sheet of paper what he owed me. It was a huge amount, and I had only his word for it that he’d be able to pay me.

By the time it came to play or sit the hand out, the fair-haired guy had won back a little, but was still losing millions. I was
practically
the only one winning. I thought it was the decent thing to say that I didn’t mind carrying on. Before Roberto could say anything, Francesco intervened. He was sorry, he couldn’t stay late, he had an appointment in the morning. So we had to stop, because obviously we couldn’t continue with just three players.

The fair-haired guy wrote me a cheque for three million seven hundred thousand, Francesco gave me two hundred thousand in cash. Massaro gave me more or less the same amount.

As we were about to leave, being a polite young man, I thanked them for their hospitality and, as I said it, I realised it was the wrong thing to say. As if I’d not only won all that money but also wanted to take the piss out of them.

Though, come to think of it, maybe I
was
trying to take the piss out of them.

Roberto didn’t say anything. Neither did Massaro, but he’d
hardly
said a word all evening. Both looked pale. They couldn’t seem to get over what had happened. Francesco said he’d arrange a return match and we left together.

It was two o’clock in the morning, and I was sure I wouldn’t find
it easy to get to sleep. So when Francesco asked me if I wanted to go for a drink, I said yes. And as I’d won all that money, I ought to pay.

Yes, he said, smiling strangely, I ought to pay.

WE WENT TO a piano bar called the Dirty Moon, where they had live music and stayed open until dawn. We got cappuccinos and hot Nutella croissants straight from the bakery, and sat down at a table at the back.

‘It was your night, eh?’ Francesco said, with a curious tone to his voice that I couldn’t quite figure out.

‘Absolutely. Nothing like that’ll ever happen to me again. Can you imagine? Two hands of fours in a game of stud poker. And I had the better of the two.’

‘Why shouldn’t it happen again?’

‘Well…I don’t think you can repeat a stroke of luck like that.’

‘You know, life is full of surprises,’ he said in a vague kind of way and with a strange expression on his face. Then he stood up, went to the bar and came back with a pack of French cards. He removed the cards up to the six, shuffled them and started dealing them as if there were four of us at the table and we were going to play poker. When I had five cards face down in front of me, he asked me to look at them.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Look at your cards. Let’s pretend we’re playing another hand.’

I looked at them. Four queens and an ace of hearts. I was
dumbstruck.
He turned over the cards he had dealt the other imaginary players. One of these ghosts had four tens.

I looked around. ‘What…what the hell’s going on?’ I whispered, almost stammering.

‘Luck is a fickle thing. It’s flexible. It’s even capable of
favouritism
if you ask it nicely.’

‘Are you telling me you cheated tonight?’

‘I don’t like the word cheating. Let’s say…’

‘Let’s say what? What the hell are you talking about? Are you
telling
me I won all that money because you cheated?’

‘I helped you. You had the balls to continue playing, even though it was risky. It was a kind of experiment.’

‘Are you telling me you cheated as an experiment and because of that I have four million lire in my pocket? Is that what you’re telling me? You must be crazy. You involved me in a fraud. You involved me in a fucking fraud, damn it. And without even telling me. Damn it, I’d have liked to decide for myself if I wanted to turn into a cheat all of a sudden.’

I hadn’t raised my voice, but I was angry. He didn’t react, didn’t lose his composure. But he did lose the ironic smile that had been hovering on his lips and assumed a serious expression. An
honest
expression. I know it seems absurd, but that’s what I thought at the time.

‘I’m sorry. I should have told you where that money came from. I mean: how you made it. If you think it’s immoral, you can return the cheque, or simply not cash it. You have that cheque because we cheated, it’s true, so if you don’t want to have anything to do with cheating, take it out of your wallet and tear it up. It’s entirely up to you.’

I was stunned. In my moral outrage I hadn’t considered the
possibility
that I could give back the money. Or simply destroy the cheque and with it the proceeds of our foul deed. He was right, I could do what he said. But damn it, that money was
mine
now. The boot was on the other foot. I was trying desperately to find
something
to say, without success, when he spoke again.

‘So that you have all the facts you need to make up your mind, there’s one more thing you should know. Those two guys – Roberto and Massaro – are card sharks.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Oh, they’re strictly small time. The fair-haired one can only do one trick. When we’re playing stud poker and it’s his turn to deal, he knows which cards are face down. To do that trick, you mustn’t cut the cards. Massaro was on his right. Sometimes he didn’t cut, sometimes he lifted a small pack and then Roberto put the cards back exactly where they were before.’

I was flabbergasted. I hadn’t noticed a thing.

Francesco continued with his explanation. ‘They also have a
system
of signals for communicating with each other during the game. I don’t know if you’re following me.’

I was following. I was following, and how.

‘They’re a couple of lowlifes, but they’ve ruined quite a few
people
with this system of theirs. So now you know everything, and you can decide freely.’

That certainly put the matter in a new light, I thought. It was no longer a simple fraud on two unwitting but honest men who
occasionally
gambled. It was a genuine act of justice, and I wasn’t the accomplice of a cheat, but the companion of Robin Hood.

Which meant I could keep the money.

Then it occurred to me that maybe I should share it with Francesco.

‘If I decide to keep it,’ I said cautiously, ‘shall we share?’

He roared with laughter. ‘I certainly think so. You’re doing the right thing, friend. We’ve taken the money from a couple of real bastards. It’s as if we’d robbed a drug dealer.’

For all I knew, I thought at that moment, Francesco may well have robbed a few drug dealers in his time.

‘How did you do it?’

‘I know a few tricks.’

‘I gathered that. I want to know
how
.’

‘Did you ever hear of a magician explaining his tricks? It isn’t done, it’s against professional ethics.’

He smiled in amusement and paused for a few moments.

‘I was taught by a magician,’ he resumed. ‘He was a friend of my father’s. When I was a child and we had a party, if we asked him he’d do these incredible tricks. I was obsessed with the idea of learning those tricks, and whenever anyone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said a magician. At ten I bought myself a manual with money I’d saved. And I started spending lots of time practising. When I was about fifteen – I remember it as if it was yesterday, my father had just died – I went to see the magician and asked him to teach me. I showed him what I’d learned on my own and he was impressed. He said I had talent. So two or three times a week for more than a year, I went to his place and had lessons. He said I had it in me to become a great magician. He said I’d be good enough to go on the stage.’

He stopped to light a cigarette. He had a faraway, nostalgic look in his eyes.

‘Then he had a stroke.’

He fell silent. As if someone else had spoken and given him the news that his teacher had had a stroke. I also took out a cigarette and waited for him to start speaking again.

‘He didn’t die, but after that he couldn’t do magic any more. And he stopped teaching me as well. A few months later I cheated at cards for the first time.’

‘Why?’

‘Why do I cheat? Or why did I cheat that first time?’

‘Both.’

‘I’ve often asked myself that, and I’m not sure I know the answer. Maybe I was angry because I knew I couldn’t be a magician. Maybe I
was angry with him for having a stroke before he’d taught me
everything
. I guess I was also angry with myself, because I didn’t have the courage to drop everything and go away, find another teacher. But I was only sixteen at the time.’

He paused again and stubbed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

‘Or maybe I was just destined for it. I mean, playing tricks at the gambling table is fun. It’s a kind of skill, like doing tricks on a stage.’

‘You’re forgetting one small detail. If I go and see a show by a magician, I pay to be tricked. That’s the contract between me and the magician. I buy the ticket and he sells me a trick, and I’m fine with that. If I sit down to play cards with a cheat and I think I’m playing a normal game…’

‘You’re right. But real life is always more complex than any
examples
we can think of. You just have to think about what happened tonight. They’re waiting in that apartment like two spiders in a web, ready to tear their victims to pieces. They deserve what happened to them. There’s nothing immoral about doing what we did.’

‘But it’s a crime,’ I said, though I wasn’t angry or aggressive any more. I had no desire to argue with him.

‘True, it’s a crime. But the only laws I personally feel bound not to violate are those that coincide with my own ethics. The other night, at Alessandra’s, you smashed that Neanderthal’s face. You
committed
a crime…’

‘No. That was self defence.’

‘In a general sense, yes, it was self defence, though from a strictly legal point of view you were the aggressor. He hadn’t lifted a finger. But it was a morally justified act, just as it’s morally justified to steal from thieves. And it’s morally justified, in fact it’s a duty to oneself, not to get cheated.’

‘So, if I’m following you correctly, you’ve only ever cheated other cheats.’

‘I didn’t say that. But I do think if you’re going to cheat, it must be justified by a moral defect of the person you’re cheating. I’m sorry if that sounds exaggerated. The fact is, I don’t cheat the poor, I don’t cheat those who only play for enjoyment, and I don’t cheat my friends.’

‘So who do you cheat?’

‘Bad people. In my opinion, taking money – cheating at cards – from morally reprehensible people is a kind of practical metaphor for justice.’

Then he paused, looked at me very seriously, and a moment later burst out laughing.

‘All right, I am exaggerating a bit. One of the things I like most about this work is the actual fact of stealing. You saw for yourself, it’s great fun.’

In the course of a few minutes everything had changed, and things I would have made cut and dried judgements about an hour earlier had become debatable at the very least. I realised, with a mixture of amusement and anxiety, that it was true: the way that money had come to me was actually
fun
.

I was starting to question everything, and it was like flashing a torch into the most hidden recesses of my mind.

If I could have turned the clock back four or five hours, to before the game had started, would I still have played, knowing what was going to happen? And having the power now, after the fact, to
decide
that the money had come to me legitimately rather than through fraud, what should I do? Giving back the cheque or at least not
cashing
it: I wasn’t thinking about that any more. I was already beyond that, well beyond that. And I answered my own questions. Everything was fine, I would have played anyway, even if I’d known what was going to happen. And it was much more fun getting that money as the result of a card trick – in other words, because of superior skill and human intention – than as the result of some banal piece of luck.

And then I realised something unsettling. More unsettling than all the rest of it.

I wanted to do it again.

Francesco read my thoughts. ‘Do you fancy another game, in a few days’ time? Fifty-fifty?’

‘Let me ask you something. Why do you need me?’

He explained why he needed me. You can’t cheat alone, especially at poker. If you’re playing for serious money and you always win – and win a lot – when you’re the one dealing the cards, the others soon notice and become suspicious. The assistant is just as important as the magician. One fiddles the cards, the other cashes in and
everyone’s
happy. Well, not exactly happy, but they think it’s just their stupid bad luck. Like Roberto and Massaro.

Briefly, Francesco showed me how it worked. At the table, the assistant has to act like an idiot or a show-off, which in poker amounts to the same thing. He can either have one big win or
several
small wins, depending on the game. The magician himself has to lose a bit, and the assistant’s victory should look like a classic case of beginner’s luck. And so on.

When he’d finished, I asked the question I was burning to ask. ‘Why me?’

He looked at me in silence. Then he looked away, took out a cigarette and tapped it on the table, without lighting it. Then he looked at me again, still in silence. When at last he spoke, he seemed slightly ill at ease.

‘I don’t usually trust my intuition. In fact, I try to disregard it. But in your case, I had an intuition that you were the right person, someone who could
understand
. Have you ever read
Demian
?’

I nodded. Yes, I had read it, and if he was trying to convince me he’d hit the right note. But I didn’t say anything.

‘In other words,’ he continued, ‘I did something I don’t usually do. I took a chance based on an intuition. Do you understand what
I’m saying?’

He was saying that he trusted me. Because of something special that
I
had.

That was enough for me.

Of course it was obvious he’d had another assistant before me. I was replacing someone. But Francesco didn’t talk about it, and I didn’t ask him about it that night.

By the time we left the Dirty Moon, the barman and the only waiter left were starting to put the chairs on the tables.

Outside, a pale January dawn was breaking.