“ ‘The truth is I’m a very bad gambler …’
“ ‘That doesn’t matter. I don’t mean you should play to win. I mean you should just play, foster the obsession: gamble to win or lose. I repeat: you’ll be quite astounded.’
“Despite that gentleman’s assurances and the increasing pain from that tooth, I couldn’t make up my mind. In fact, at the time I’d yet to start gambling, shall we say, systematically. However, I did notice something strange: the mere thought of the ridiculous figure I’d cut at the gaming table seemed to reduce the pain slightly … Now, years after that peculiar conversation took place, I can tell you one thing: I now believe that man was right. By exercising a passion for gambling one is relieved of the burden of moral and physical misery. When you begin to bet, memory disappears, and so does imagination. Every tension vanishes. That bet is pure present, an absolute fascination with the present. The only pity is that gambling is a medicine that does more damage than the original sickness …”
Sr Souza paused to sip his coffee. Then he hoarsely resumed his monologue.
“And now I will tell Sr Pacheco and you, sir,” he adding turning to me, “why I was and still am a gambler. I think you’ll soon understand. Like other gamblers, I’m suffering from hypothesis mania. I’ll be brief because it’s late and we’d never get to the end of this. I’m obsessed by what might happen to me at any moment. It is literally a horrible feeling. When I walk down the street and see a lame man, a blind man, a beggar, when a funeral crosses my path, when I read that this person or that has committed suicide or is in the middle of great crisis, when a disaster or catastrophe takes place, I tell myself, almost routinely: That could so easily have been you, you know. There are equal possibilities for or against it happening to you. Consequently, there is no absolute reason why you aren’t lame, blind, crippled, or a corpse, like the corpse in the hearse you just watched go by. In other words, I am permanently obsessed by the idea that my physical, moral, spiritual, economic, and social state hangs by a thread, and that my existence teeters on a tightrope that is completely insecure. Now you will say: ‘Sr Souza, sir, you are a man without a scrap of deep biological confidence in yourself.’ I couldn’t say … I understand nothing. I don’t know what lies behind these obsessions. I only know that they are intolerable and horrible. That’s why I’ve gambled and would gamble, if I could, Sr Pacheco: to rid myself of these obsessions that continually depress me, to escape from their suffocating effect.”
After a brief pause, Sr Souza laughed stupidly — his lip sagged and his eyes bulged — and he got wearily up from his chair.
“That’s enough for now …” he said, “these personal things make hardly any sense …”
We said our goodbyes in the café doorway. Sr Souza walked in the direction of the casino. Pacheco and I walked to the main road and headed towards the boarding house. A bright moon splashed golden light over the pine trees. Lit up by the pale glare, the river seemed to flow mysteriously by, which I found rather disturbing after the scenes in the café. I would have preferred total darkness.
It seemed that that was the end of that, but a few days later we witnessed scenes that revealed how the efforts being made by Sr Pacheco hadn’t borne the slightest fruit. Indeed, two or three days later, Sr Souza appeared outside the boarding house’s front gate accompanied on this occasion by a man and a woman. Souza was carrying a large cardboard suitcase.
These two crossed the garden unchallenged — the concierge must have been away — climbed the steps, opened the main door, and walked down the passage. The first person they met was Pacheco, who was about to go out.
“Oh, Pacheco!” said Sr Souza, laughing and putting his case on the floor. “So pleased to see you. Don’t look so astonished, I beg you. Yes, it is me, Souza! No doubt about that … By the way I wanted to tell you something the other day but it completely went out of my head. I was very well acquainted with your father, Sr Pacheco. I’m talking about years ago, evidently. We thought along the same lines, were in the same party, out-and-out, ultramontane monarchists, the pair of us. We met in Lisbon. When you’re young, you believe such nonsense! We were awful … However, we can discuss that another day at our leisure. Now I just want to say that I own this house and have come to live here. These people accompanying me are a family, a family like any other, naturally, and are the family that looks after my things …”
Sr Souza uttered these last words in a state of great confusion. His lower lip was quivering, and he looked at things as if he were afraid. Pacheco was so taken aback he was at a loss for words.
With that, Sr Souza picked up his suitcase and started walking down the passage, followed by the strange couple accompanying him.
“Of course, there must be a kitchen in this flat … I reckon I have a right to this kitchen!” said Souza, suddenly spinning round towards where he imagined Pacheco must be standing. However, this gentleman hadn’t budged from the doorway into the passage. So, as Souza couldn’t see Pacheco, he spoke to the people following in his footsteps with what seemed to be an air of resignation.
“This kitchen will be yours, you wonderful family! Sr Silva, cheer up, I beg you, lift your spirits, you child of God! Those of us who have beliefs and are God-fearing should never be afraid!”
The man addressed by the name of Silva looked completely unremarkable; in his forties, wearing blue clothes thin as an onion skin, he was dark, olive-skinned, and pockmarked by smallpox. His hair was sleek, plastered in brilliantine, and gave him a pretentious crest. He had a neatly trimmed, impudent black mustache that gleamed under his largish nose. His ears were on the big side too. He was carrying a parcel wrapped in yellow material under his arm. The man had the air of someone who might occupy a lowly place in a third- or fourth-rate den of vice. Sr Silva had said very little, but from what he had said, he seemed rather a pernickety lisper.
The female accompanying them, Sra Silva, according to Sr Souza, was around thirty-five, flabby and fat, with small dark eyes, soft hands and a face covered in bumps and growths. She wore slapdash makeup, looked slightly squint-eyed, and sometimes wrinkled her forehead like a cat in a fury.
“Come on in, Sra Silva, come on in,” said Sr Souza, making a bow. “This is our house, you know?”
Sra Silva responded to Sr Souza’s friendly invitation by nodding her head and making all kinds of faces. Her mouth sometimes made sounds like a goldfinch. Just as Sr Souza was grabbing the kitchen door handle, Sra Silva took off her hat, a hat like a tawdry, old-fashioned funeral wreath, and her head came into view. Thin patches of greasy, soot-black hair were sprouting from it. It looked like a thin crust molded to someone’s skull. That spectacle above the clothes worn by Sra Silva — a shapeless, threadbare black velvet dress with a small purple rose cloth trim on the collar, sleeves, and elsewhere — was one of those experiences that takes away your zest for life when you realize that they do actually exist.
The threesome entered the kitchen.
In the meantime, Pacheco had reacted. He leapt upstairs to the second floor three steps at a time to tell Maria Souza what was happening. That lady listened, more dead than alive, though she too reacted swiftly. First she picked up the telephone and called the police. “It’s nothing important,” she said, “just an unruly servant.” Then she went down to the ground floor and knocked on the kitchen door.
Sr Souza and his friends had found the kitchen in a dusty, cobwebby state and were getting ready to clean it. In fact that kitchen wasn’t in use because when the boarding house had been set up, they built another kitchen in a separate annex linked to the house. As Sr Souza went to open the door, Sra Silva, who’d raised her skirt ever so slightly, was gingerly picking up a cloth between her fingertips. Souza and Silva had taken their jackets off and were covered in dust. An ash-colored cobweb had settled on Sr Souza’s greasy crest; at that moment he was cleaning the oven top with a yellowish newspaper. Maria knocked on the door again, impatiently. However, there was nothing untoward in the delay in opening the door. When she first knocked, Sr Souza’s head was inside the oven chimney. He’d found it difficult to twist his head out. When he had freed it up, he’d met the astonished — indeed frightened — gazes of Sr and Sra Silva. They’d not liked that knock on the door one little bit. Sr Souza looked at them and laughed. He cheered them up.