"Beijing Craps" - читать интересную книгу автора (Masterton Graham)

'Solly -' Jack warned; but the boy touched one finger against his lips.

'We're all playing for time here, Jack. We're playing for life. It's your own decision; it's Solly's own decision.'

Jack looked at Solly - tried for the first time in a coon's age to look like a friend, somebody who cared; although he didn't find it easy. To the professional craps player, no expression comes easy.

The boy said, 'You'll have to change. There's a Chinese screen in the corner, with plenty of robes.'

'Change?' Solly wanted to know. 'Why?'

'You might win, Solly,' the boy smiled at him. 'You might win big. And if you win big, you might find yourself ten years old, all over again. And how would a ten-year-old boy look, hmh? in a 38-chest sport-coat like yours?'

Solly nodded. 'Sure. You're right. I'll change. For sure. If I lose, though - you won't take my suit for collateral?'

'You're a kidder, Solly,' the boy grinned at him. 'You're a genuine platinum-plated kidder.'

Solly disappeared behind the Chinese screen; and while everybody edgily waited for him, the boy whistled, She's My Jeannie With The Light Brown Hair, over and over.

At last Solly emerged in his black silk robe. He looked like an invalid, on his way to hydro-therapy. He smiled nervously - first at the rest of the players, then at Nevvar Graf, then at Jack.

Jack hesitated, and then stepped back. He didn't shake Solly's hand. He didn't say a word. He knew that - inside of himself - he was just as much of a victim as Solly.

'All right,' said the boy, smacking his hands. 'Let's play Beijing Craps!'

From out of the shadows at the back of the room, three Chinese and a Burmese appeared, dressed in the Golden Lode uniform of overtight black tuxedo and frilled shirtfront. The boy said, 'Same as regular craps, a boxman, a stickman, and two dealers. In Beijing Craps, though, we call them Tevodas, which means witnesses who can testify to somebody's sins.'

It was Mr Fortunato's turn to roll. Solly stood beside him, watching him with naked eagerness. 'Six months,' Mr Fortunato declared, and placed six shimmering gold tokens in front of him; tokens that shone brighter than the bottle-green lamp.

'Two weeks he dies-a-little,' whispered a white-haired old man from the far corner of the table.

'One month he lives-a-little,' said the twelve-year-old girl. Jack looked at her closely for the first time and realized that her hair had been permanent-waved in the style of a woman who was old enough to be her mother.

'One week he dies-a-little,' said one of the oldest players, a woman whose skull was showing through her skin. Her shriveled hand placed one of her last gold tokens on to the square marked with the face of Yama.

When all the bets had been placed, Mr Fortunato gasped on the dice, and rolled them. They sparkled and bounced, leaving fluorescent after-images of Chinese ghosts melting in the air over the tabletop. Yo-Hang and Kuan-yin Pusa. Mr Fortunato had won his six months.

'Mr Fortunato lives-a-little,' intoned the Tevoda, the stickman, and collected the dice and handed them back. Mr Fortunato breathed a little more easily on to the dice this time; but the old woman who had lost a week betting that he would die-a-little had begun to shudder. Jack swallowed and looked at the blond-haired boy; but the blond-haired boy simply grinned.

Mr Fortunato bet another six months, and rolled again. He threw Kuan-yin Pusa and Shui-Mu. The blond-haired boy leaned toward Jack and whispered, 'He's won again. In Chinese magic, Kuan-yin Pusa trapped Shui-Mu by feeding her with noodles which turned into chains in her stomach and locked her guts up for good. Throwing Kuan-yin Pusa and Shui-Mu is like a point in craps; and what Mr Fortunato has to do now is to throw them again. But if he throws Yo-Hang and Kuan-yin Pusa again, he loses.'

Jack watched every roll of the dice intently; and especially the side bets. Some of the players were picking up weeks here and there with easy bets; others lost one month after another with hard-ways bets. Live-a-little, die-a-little. Their lives ebbed and flowed with every roll.

Mr Fortunato bet a whole year, threw a crap, and lost it. Twelve months of his life, swallowed in an instant. Who knows what age Mr Fortunato had been, when he had started playing this game? Forty? Seventy? Twenty-two? It didn't matter. His age was determined by the dice now; his life depended on Beijing Craps. He coughed and wheezed with stress and badly-concealed terror, and passed the dice to Solly with fingers that could scarcely manage to open. Nobody else at the table showed any compassion. The blond boy had aged by three years since Mr Fortunato had started to play, and was far taller and more composed; although the woman with the skull-like face seemed to have shrunk in her black silk robe almost to nothing, more like a bewildered vivisected monkey than a human.

Jack caught Solly's eyes but he remained impassive. They were professionals, both of them. They helped each other on the tables when the dice were rolling, but they never ventured to give each other criticism, or personal advice, or to warn each other to back off, no matter how cold the table, no matter how vertiginous the bet. You want to fly, you want to die? That's your business. Under the lights, out on the center, there was nobody else but you, and Madame Luck.

'Solly,' said Jack; but the adolescent Mr Graf shot him a glance as hard as a carpet-tack, and he said nothing else.

Solly bet six months. He jiggled the dice in the palms of his hands, and breathed on them, and whispered something, and then he rolled. They had once called Solly the Arm of Atlantic City; and his arm didn't fail him now. The dice bounced, glowed, and tumbled, and came up Kuan-yin Pusa and Yo Huang.