The Gamblers

N is an almost sinister town. It seems to have soaked up some of the blood spilled over millennia on battlefields nearby, where the coveted sea straits were and are a nexus of conflict.

In area it is not a small town - parts of it are very old, with wooden villas weathered to silver-grey, softened in spring by lilac bushes, roses, fruit trees and wistaria. They once belonged to Jewish townspeople. There are old Greek mansions too, and cottages with plastered walls. The Greeks left more than sixty years ago.

The town"s heart is small, and lends itself to meanness. It is not possible to pass through the vortex of agencies selling coach tickets without being seen by the men assembled outside teahouses, and the town"s more affluent citizens, who preside over the bus companies and strategically placed hotels.

Such a town, provincial to the point of decadence, breeds its own varieties of tension, its own cravings. People don"t escape from it. Traditions are entrenched in a kind of perverse loyalty that ends in self-destruction, not escape.

One form of escapism is gambling. Here the idle sons of wealthy fathers spend their nights at cards, their days in the dead sleep of compulsive losers. The nights sap their vitality and they become lethargic, animated only by the prospect of the game.

It was here, while completing an assignment as a journalist, that I recently had occasion to pass a week or so.

The eldest son of the town"s wealthiest man owned the hotel where I took a room. One of his brothers ran it for him. The owner was also the town"s leading gambler, as I soon observed.

Sitting in the hotel foyer having my post-prandial coffee, I would watch the young men who lodged upstairs come down, one by one, three or four of them in suits, almost interchangeable in looks and manner, and register with bleary eyes that it was day. My visit coincided with Ramazan, Islam"s month of fasting, so the gamblers could neither eat nor smoke. Instead, they would ensconce themselves in lounge chairs with their prayer beads, and pass the afternoon in a state of suspended animation.

At three, or four, or five, their young patron would appear, and park his silver-blue Mercedes outside the front windows. The gamblers would show flickerings of interest at this point: a glint in the eye, an acceleration in the click of prayer-beads as the son of the town"s wealthiest man made his entrance.

His manner was imperious, but he had the same bleary eyes and blurring body as the others, and the same white, unworked hands with a ring of cluster diamonds on one of his little fingers. His facial features were strongly delineated, particularly in profile. His appearance and bearing suggested qualities that might have been put to better use.

Curt greetings were exchanged, deferential on their part, perfunctory on his. He would sit for a time, restlessly running his black prayer beads through his fingers, visibly regaining vitality, while they all watched him for a sign. The moment he moved they were at his side, then they would depart together in the Mercedes, driving a few blocks this way and that to inspect the family"s newest building-sites and enterprises.

I noticed when they returned in the early evening that there was always a young woman sitting in the foyer, at the back towards the bar, with a discreet view of the street. She was a foreigner, whose appearance reminded me of Central European women I had met from time to time. There seemed to be a kind of unspoken communication between her and the young man, though usually he barely acknowledged her presence. The rest of his party were aware of her, however, and watched his reactions to her closely. If he acknowledged her, so did they.

According to the conventions of the fasting month, there was a further interval of waiting, until the mosque illuminations and the cannon signalled that it was time to dine. Then the patron would nod to the young woman, and she would go with the group to a nearby restaurant.

When they returned, all were in better spirits. The young woman would enter, smiling, at the young man"s side. He ordered coffee for her, cigarettes, pistachios, and sometimes sat beside her for an hour watching television. The gamblers would group themselves about the pair, expectantly. If he talked to her a lot, they would react with bland smiles, but you could tell that they were worried.

One night, they were worried to the point of vexation. He sat with her all evening and talked a lot. Sometimes the two of them laughed, and found pretexts to touch each other. His fingers brushed against her arm as he passed a dish of sweets. Her hair brushed his cheek as she explained something. His features had a gentler cast than I had seen before. Her obvious affection for him seemed less inexplicable.

But her victory that night, if that is the correct interpretation of what I saw, was a Pyrrhic one. At midnight a messenger arrived, the young man leapt to his feet, and the group of men moved as one, out the door and up and down the street, conferring urgently.

Sitting at the bar, I watched him hurry to his car and get in. He moved with unexpected grace and speed. Before his cohorts could follow him, she rushed out to the driver"s door. He got out, surprised, and she flung her arms about his neck while the other men stood by impassively. He disengaged her arms, got into the car and drove away. The others followed in another car.

That happened midway through my stay, and incidentally confirmed my suspicions that she occupied the room next door to mine. Usually she slipped in and out so quickly and quietly that I had never actually seen her come or go. On this occasion, obviously too distressed to be cautious, she grabbed her key from its hook behind the reception desk and ran upstairs. The key she took was hanging next to mine.

I tried to pinpoint when she had arrived. I"d first become aware of her, though not of how she looked, several nights before, when I had heard them in her room. I was sure by this time that it had been them. I had heard two voices, male and female. I couldn"t decipher the language or the words, only sounds and intonations. Her voice was more prevalent than his. The exchange that night went on for hours. She seemed to be asking many questions. Then the voices would lower into silence, and resume again, very low and monosyllabic.

I had heard the shower running for a long time, then the clink of coffee cups outside their door. Shortly after that, someone knocked. There was an exchange of male voices through the door, then somebody left the room, presumably the young man. I was sure by now that it had been him.

Intrigued as I had become by the curious enclave in the hotel, I had begun to neglect my own assignment. It was difficult to ignore what was going on, or for that matter to ignore the girl. There was  something about her. My journalistic instincts sniffed a story. My self-preservation instincts told me to back off, to watch and wait, but time was getting short. I was becoming frustrated at my own relative inactivity, and, at the same time, impatient to know more about the events unfolding around me. By this time I had been at the hotel six days, and she, I estimated, for five.

The following night, an opportunity to approach her presented itself. I had been unable to sleep, so I went downstairs at about three a.m. to take a stroll down to the ferry. Ferries run all night across the straits. Their sirens are a part of that town"s pattern of nocturnal sounds. As I crossed the foyer, I saw her sitting there, dressed in baggy Turkish trousers and a flimsy blouse, half-illuminated by the night light. She was staring blankly at the clock behind the reception desk. The desk clerk was slumped forward on the desk, asleep.

"Hello," I said. "Where are your friends?"

She started, and then answered me in English. I couldn"t place her accent.

"They are at the casino." She gestured upwards towards the window and across the street. In a tall, new building behind the travel agencies, the top floor was illuminated, but the windows were masked by drapes. She looked at me dismissively and lit a cigarette.

When I returned from my walk, she"d gone upstairs. I drew aside the curtains in my room. Light from her windows outlined her shadow on the street. I glanced across at the casino windows. A man"s silhouette was framed in one of them. I did not think it was the young woman"s paramour. The man at the window looked shorter, and I thought I recognised him as one of the gamblers who lived in the hotel. As I watched, unaware for the moment that I too could be seen, the whistles of the military patrol began to shrill, and then the drums that preceded the day"s fasting rumbled in the street. The lights in the casino all went out abruptly. The curtains in the room next door snapped shut.

I wondered how long this situation could continue. Even being at the periphery of their field of energy was beginning to dissipate me. The young man was obviously the centre of a field of force. The gamblers were his creatures. But he needed them, too, he was addicted to the same pursuit. And what was the woman"s part in it all? She looked intelligent and sensitive; she had a vivid face and eyes and a supple body. Why was she wasting her time with him, in such a backwater?

I had seen the sidearms they all carried. I had noticed the mixture of fear and contempt with which the brother who ran the hotel regarded them. I guessed that some of the money they gambled away so freely came from the labour of tenant farmers and people who were similarly exploited. Now she seemed to be in the process of abdicating her identity, and becoming one of the hangers-on whose purpose in life centred on this young man already going to seed. I could see her losing some of her vitality, coming downstairs with dark smudges under her eyes. I couldn"t tell how he really felt about her.

I could sense frustration growing in her. The following evening, on a rash impulse, finding her inexplicably alone at seven thirty, I asked her to have dinner with me. Without a word she stood up and accompanied me. I couldn"t tell whether she was acting from inclination or a tactical gambit that had nothing to do with me. I was by now confused about my own motives in relation to her. Somehow commitments and loyalties formed elsewhere seemed to loosen and dissolve in the atmosphere of that town.

If I had been hoping to find out who she was and where she came from, I was disappointed.

"I"d rather not tell you," was all she would say. "But English is not my first language, although I know it well."

About the young man she was more forthcoming. Perhaps she needed to unburden herself.

"Have you known him long?" I asked abruptly. I noticed that she wasn"t eating, although she smoked and drank.

"Long enough. (A pause.) Two years. But I see him seldom."

"What is it that brings you back? You"re not happy here."

"You are no psychologist, but maybe I will tell you."

She refilled her glass and took a sip of water.

"When I met him, it was different. You know, beginnings… It was something strange for me, as if we had known each other somewhere before, in some better place, when we were innocent. We gave each other something - maybe an image, an illusion. But it seemed more real than that, at the time… It made us so alive, to everything. Not like now. I think we were both desperate, before we met. You do impulsive things. But meeting him gave me back my energy, it made me want to live, to be constructive. I had to go away, and that was hard, but I took something with me. I know what you see, and that is real, too, but it"s not all. There is another side to him - an artist, a lover, a sensibility - but this is dying. I don"t want to watch it happen, but I can"t leave now. I can"t let them win without a struggle."

"You really think you"ll win?"

"I can"t afford to lose."

"Why don"t you leave, before he loses interest?"

"You"re implying that I can"t help him, that whether I stay or leave will make no difference to him. Perhaps it is too late to help myself, but I can"t accept what I am seeing. If it is really true, then I will leave."

"How long does it take to recognise the truth?"

She lit a cigarette before replying. My meal had gone cold before I"d noticed it in front of me, but my appetite to learn more about her had replaced any desire for food. She stubbed out her cigarette before continuing.

"Always when I first arrive, I think it is all right. The first night, it is always new again. We are so happy. He talks about his projects, what he will make and build. He forgets them all, those men. We both forget. Then, when it is late, they come for him."

"Why does he go with them?"

She doesn"t answer me. Instead, she says: "The second night is not so good. Then he starts to make excuses, shows me his despair. "I have a black job," he will say. "Not a normal life. But this I started many years ago. I must keep going. When I am forty, I will stop, get closer to the mosque.""

"Where will you be then?" I ask.

She says nothing, then: "Who knows?"

In the street the next morning, I see the young man walking with his father. The family resemblance is unmistakable. The old man is leading the son by the hand. The father"s face is a study in parental indulgence and pride, the son"s face is gentle. He reminds me not of the caged wolf I have sometimes glimpsed behind his languid faзade in the hotel foyer - a feral, unpredictable quality she was aware of too - but more of the docile pet sheep old men lead about in villages, completely trusting, doted on by their owners, unaware that they are being fattened for the annual ritual slaughter.

That night, I missed her in the hotel foyer. The old man was sitting there instead, complacently, a glint almost of triumph in his eye. The son appeared soon after, and remonstrated with him. The old man smiled a stubborn smile, but wouldn"t budge.

I heard the voices for a short time in her room, late that night. I saw the watchers, waiting at the casino windows across the way.

The next night she had gone. I asked the brother working on reception. "Yes," he said, "she left today. Perhaps she knows it"s too late, but I think she hasn"t learned that yet. She will be back. She is one of them."

"A gambler?" I asked, already knowing the answer.

"A gambler," he said.

That night I lay awake, planning my departure, and listened to her empty room, the drums.