<
id="heading_id_58">Prison Pack</
>
I
Eight or ten prisoners were playing cards in the light from a barred window. Chucho the Hobo shuffled: he was a thug, renowned for rustling, kidnapping wealthy landowners, holding up mail coaches, wreaking havoc, and petty crimes of all sorts; also for his cursing, his gangster’s swagger, his love life, and his bloodthirsty jealousy. His lean hands shuffled slowly; there was a knife scar on his cheek and he was missing three teeth. Jailbirds of a very different stripe were also in the game: down-and-outs and doctors, guerrilla fighters and night watchmen had all gathered around to bet. Nachito Veguillas was around: he hadn’t joined in the game yet, but he was keeping an eye on the pack while he fingered the money in his pocket. A jack turned up and he exclaimed ecstatically, “Got it right again!”
He swiveled around and smiled at the hesitant, deadpan gambler at his side: a specter in a flaccid drill jacket that hung from him as if from a meat hook. Nachito focused on the cards again. On an impulse he produced a fistful of sols and threw them down on the flea-bitten blanket that serves for green baize in a jail. “Ten sols on the fucking king.”
Chucho the Hobo signaled. “You’ve just doubled the stake.”
“Cut.”
“Here we go!”
Hobo cut the pack and the king of clubs tumbled out. Nachito was thrilled to have won and went back for more. From time to time violent arguments broke out. Nachito beamed like a saint as he kept on winning; the hesitant, jaundiced specter wore a tight smile, which soon turned to an ominous scowl. Nachito returned his stare. Now his grieving heart cried out. “What does it matter if we win or lose? Foso-Palmitos levels all.”
The other guy disagreed, hissing biliously like a punctured bladder. “While there’s life, there’s brass. That’s all that counts. And don’t you forget it!”
Nachito sighed. “If you’re on death row, what consolation can money bring?”
“Well, at least gambling helps you forget...And money counts to the very end.”
“My friend, are you also under sentence of death?”
“Who knows?”
“Won’t they kill us all?”
“Who knows?”
“It’s a ray of light! I’m betting fifty sols on the fourth cut.”
Nachito won, and the other guy’s pallid face wrinkled up. “Are you always on a winning streak?”
“I’m not complaining.”
“How about a two-way five-sol stake? You play it your way.”
“Five bets.”
“Whatever.”
“Let’s go for the jack.”
“You seem to like that card.”
“It’s all a crapshoot.”
“It’s going to break us.”
“We’ll see.”
Chucho the Hobo shuffled slowly, then cut the deck so everyone could see; he kept his hand in the air for a moment. Out came the jack. Nachito raked in his winnings and split the column of sols into two, whispering to his yellow partner, “What did I tell you?”
“It’s as if you can see through the cards!”
“Now we’ll switch to number seven.”
“What’s your system?”
“‘Love you; love you not.’ I bet on a card I like, and then I bet on a card I don’t like. Now I’m betting on the seven. I don’t like seven.”
“First time I’ve heard of that system: ‘Love you; Love you not’!”
“I just invented it.”
“We’re gonna lose.”
“Look, it’s a seven.”
“I’ve never seen such a run of luck!”
“Let’s put our third bet on the queen.”
“You like the queen?”
“No, I’m just grateful. Look, we’ve won! Time to divide the spoils.”
“We said five bets.”
“We’ll lose.”
“Or win. The ‘love you’ card is the five, now it’s the turn of the ‘love you not’ card.”
“This is risky business! Let’s hold on to half of our kitty.”
“No, I’m keeping nothing back. Eighty sols on the three.”
“It’s not going to work this time.”
“Can’t always win.”
“You can opt out.”
Chucho the Hobo, keeping one eye on the pack, sized up the difference between the two cards at the top. He whistled contemptuously. “Wow wee...Same difference.”
He put the pack on the blanket and wiped his brow with a handsome silk handkerchief. He could see the gamblers were on tenterhooks. Scowling sarcastically, his scarred face all twisted up, he began to shuffle. Out came the number three. The specter at his side was shaking. “We’ve won!”
Nachito rapped his knuckles on the cloth and demanded the winnings: “One hundred and sixty sols.”
Chucho the Hobo gave him a hard look and jeered as he paid up. “With your kind of luck, only a son of a bitch would have stayed in the game. It’s like there’s an angel whispering in your ear!”
Nachito nodded good-humoredly, stacked his money, and gave thanks: “Croak! Croak!”
And a captain named Viguri muttered churlishly, “The Virgin always appears to shepherds!”
At that very moment the jaundiced specter was whispering in Nachito’s ear: “Time to split the takings.”
Nachito shook his head, and his jaw hung open. “After the fifth bet.”
“That’s crazy.”
“If we lose, we’ll win another way. Who knows? Perhaps they won’t execute us! And if we win, we’ll get our comeuppance in Foso-Palmitos.”
“Stuff it, friend. Don’t tempt fate.”
“Let’s go for the jack again.”
“An ill-omened card.”
“So, it’ll be the death of us. Hey you, Mr. Shuffle! That’s a hundred and sixty on the jack.”
The Hobo replied, “Done!”
Nachito fawned back: “Thank you kindly.”
And the cardsharp retorted: “This’ll be the death of me!”
He cut the pack and out strolled the jack, and the whole table murmured. Nachito turned pale, his hands shaking. “I’d have preferred to lose that one. Sorry, friend, we’ll get our comeuppance in Foso-Palmitos!”
The specter’s wan features brightened. “For the moment, let’s just collect.”
“That’s one hundred and twenty-seven sols each.”
“The cut has fucked us up.”
“It could have fucked us up worse. In this kind of situation, it’s bad luck to win at cards.”
“Let Chucho keep the money then.”
“That’s hardly a solution.”
“Are you going to go on playing?”
“Until I lose! That’s the only way I can calm down.”
“Well, I’m going to get some fresh air. Thanks for your help. Consider me a friend: Bernardino Arias.”
He left. With trembling hands, Nachito stacked up his winnings. Such ridiculous good luck boded ill. He would die. He was full of terror and anguish. Invisible forces had him at their mercy. They were circling around, hostile and mocking. He grabbed a handful of cash and put it on the first card to be dealt. He wanted to win and he wanted to lose. He shut his eyes, then opened them. Chucho the Hobo turned the pack over, shuffled and cut. Nachito was appalled. Once again he’d won. He smiled apologetically, under the crooked cardsharp’s glare. “Well, they’ll probably shoot me this afternoon!”
II
At the other end of the cell, some prisoners were listening to a one-eyed soldier tell a tale full of sibilant s’s and liquid l’s. He spoke in a monotone, sitting on his heels, as he related the defeat of revolutionary troops in Curopaitito. Five prisoners were sprawled on the ground in front of him. “When that happened, I was still with Doroteo Rojas’s band. Life was lousy, I was wet through and through all the time, with my trigger finger itching. The blackest day was July 7: we were crossing a swamp when the federales started firing: we hadn’t seen them because they were hidden behind some of those thorn bushes that were everywhere, and it was only by God’s grace that we got out of that quagmire. The minute we were out, we returned fire mercilessly, but the exchange didn’t let up, after which we were leg-leg-legging it over never-ending plains. A blistering sun turned the sand red-hot and us still leg-leg-legging it. We slunk off like coyotes, crawling through the mud, with the federales behind us. And the bullets kept winging past. And us still leg-leg-legging it all the time.”
The Indian’s voice, with its sibilant s’s and liquid l’s, seemed stuck on a single note. A famous orator on the revolutionary side, who’d been locked up for long months on end, a young man with a pale brow and a romantic sweep of hair, Dr. Atle sat up in his hammock and listened to the tale with rapt attention. Occasionally he jotted something down in his notebook. It seemed like the Indian was trying to lull himself to sleep with his monotonous patter. “Leg-leg-legging it all day until at dusk we spotted a shack that had been torched and rushed in for cover. But that didn’t work. They drove us out, and we took shelter behind a waterwheel, but then they were firing again, bullets coming fierce and thick as hail until the ground began to boil. The federales had decided to finish us off. There were guns blazing, and soon all you could hear was zing, crackle, zing like when Mamma made popcorn. The friend at my side was dancing all over the place, so I said, ‘Don’t try and dodge the bullets, pal; it only makes it worse.’ Then one smashed his head in and there he was, staring at the stars. At dawn we reached the foothills but there was no water, no corn, nothing to eat.”
The Indian fell silent. The prisoners around him went on smoking impassively, as if they hadn’t even heard. Dr. Atle perused his notes. Pencil on lip, he asked the soldier, “What is your name?”
“Indalecio.”
“Surname?”
“Santana.”
“Where are you from?”
“I was born on the Chamulpa estate. I was born there but when I was a kid they took me with a bunch of peons to a mine owned by some miserly whitey in the Llanos de Zamalpoa. When the revolution broke out, we all deserted and joined Doroteo’s band.”
Dr. Atle scribbled a few lines in his notebook, and then leaned back in his hammock, eyes closed, the pencil over his lips setting the seal on his sour features.
III
As the day advanced, the sun slanting through the high bars divided the whole cell into triangles of light and shadow. At that hour the odor of cigarettes and bodies grew thick and sticky. The prisoners were mostly dozing on their hammocks; whenever they turned over, the flies rose up, then settled back down again. Other prisoners huddled silently in triangles of darkness they had sought out. Conversation was reduced to a few words. Everyone knew what fate held in store: their wanderings in this world soon would be over and that insistent, torturing thought also engendered a stoic calm. Those brief conversations, conducted in the cheery light of lamps that were about to sputter out for lack of oil, brought back memories of long-forgotten smiles. Mortality gave an air of indulgent melancholy to eyes that were turning away from the world and looking back into the past. Sharing a destiny gave the same expression to different faces. Everyone felt transported to a distant shore, and the triangles of light slanting across the cell sharpened the silhouettes of those emaciated figures in modern, cubist style.