Episode 99 · The Honest Cheat

— Leaf II —

Casimir Lenz never cheated at cards.

That was what he told anyone who asked. It was true, which was exactly why they believed him. The cards belonged to the house. Someone else shuffled them, someone else cut them, and the boy in the apron at The Switch, the tavern behind the freight station, dealt them. Casimir cheated with his eyes.

It was the second winter of the war. The green-shaded lamp hung so low above the table that the players could see their hands better than their faces. That suited Casimir. Faces lied in all the same ways. Hands, each in its own.

Money had been worthless since autumn. They played for bread coupons, cans of gas written on slips of paper, and travel passes stamped at headquarters. A man with a pass for a train south had a life. Those were wagered too.

Casimir read them.

The depot sergeant counted his coupons three times before betting, but never when his hand was good. The hide merchant held his cigarette at the corner of his mouth when he bluffed and between his fingers when he did not. The young lieutenant, when he thought he had something, straightened his back as if posing for a photograph. Everyone hid something with their hands, and hands hid badly. You only had to look where no one else was looking.

And when he was not reading, he lied, with an elegance no one had taught him. He lost small hands with disappointment measured so perfectly that the others felt guilty for beating him.

The tavern keeper had found him at sixteen on Platform Three, taking coins from soldiers on leave with three matchboxes and a marble. He had watched him for a while, then told him to come inside where it was warm.

Casimir had stayed warm ever since, in a room above the tavern. He played at the tavern keeper’s table, with whoever the man told him to, and at the end of the night half of what he won passed across the counter beneath the cloth used to wipe the glasses.

— No one is forcing you, the tavern keeper would tell him.

It was true.

The tavern keeper had also taught him the one thing Casimir had not known on his own, one night in his first year, after Casimir lost a large hand because he had lied too well.

— Everyone expects a lie from you, the tavern keeper had told him, slowly wiping the inside of a glass with his thumb inside the cloth. The best bluff is a true card shown at the right time.

Casimir had learned the sentence by heart, without ever thinking about it.

By the second winter, the guns could be heard at night. The trains south filled up. In the mornings the gendarmes moved along Platform Three asking for travel passes. Those without one were sent back into the city. Some were not sent anywhere.

Casimir asked the tavern keeper for a pass.

— After winter, the man said. I still need you for one more winter.

Casimir watched his thumb inside the cloth and saw that he was not lying.

A major came to The Switch near the end of February, while wet snow fell and a freight train had been sitting on Track Four for two days. He was a man of fifty, with a trimmed mustache and an accountant’s hands, his nails cut straight. He worked in the quartermaster’s office. He signed travel passes.

— He’s got one in his breast pocket, the tavern keeper said quietly as he poured Casimir’s tea. Signed in blank. Take it from him and it’s yours.

— Mine?

— In whatever name you write on it.

Casimir watched that thumb for a long time and saw nothing. It did not move at all.

They played from ten until three, the lamp swaying whenever a train passed. By two, only the two of them remained.

The major played simply. He called when he had something, folded when he did not, and never raised the stakes just to frighten someone. Casimir watched him for hours and found nothing. No fingers, no breath, no back straightened for a photograph. He was the first man Casimir had ever seen play as though his cards were face up.

That unsettled Casimir more than every bluff he had ever seen.

At a quarter to three, the major placed the travel pass on the table. It was yellow, with the quartermaster’s stamp in the corner and his signature underneath, while the name field was blank.

— Last hand, he said. I’m tired.

Casimir had a good hand. The cards had fallen his way, once in a winter, as sometimes happened.

— I call, the major said.

Casimir turned over his cards. The major nodded and turned over his own. They were weaker. Not by much.

Casimir took the travel pass. He held it and felt something in his chest slowly loosen, something that had been tight for years.

The major unfastened the other breast pocket of his tunic. He took out a sheet folded into quarters and laid it in front of Casimir, the same way he had laid down his cards.

It was the tavern keeper’s handwriting, large, round, heavily pressed. A list. Officers’ names, two winters’ worth, and beside each one what had been lost: coupons, fuel cans, travel passes, once even a car. In the margin beside every line, written small in pencil, were the initials “C. L.”

Below it was a statement, signed and dated that day. The proprietor of The Switch denounced, under wartime law, the profiteer Casimir Lenz, who trafficked in military documents won through gambling, and offered to testify.

— The owner told me you can tell when someone is lying to you, the major said. So I didn’t lie.

He fastened the button.

— The travel pass is real. The signature is mine. It cost you three hours to take it from me fair and square. If it matters anymore, you play very well.

Casimir looked over his shoulder toward the counter.

The tavern keeper was wiping the inside of a glass, his thumb inside the cloth. He did not look up. Casimir watched that thumb and saw what he had seen all evening: nothing. He was not lying. He was not ashamed. He had put a true card on the table at the right time.

Two gendarmes came in from the cold and knocked the snow from their boots at the threshold, the way people do when entering someone else’s house.

They shot him in the morning, against the wall behind the freight depot, together with four others, only one of whom was actually a profiteer. Wet snow was falling. At the station, the train on Track Four had finally begun moving south.

Casimir had spent his whole life watching the hands that hid things. He had never learned to look at the ones that had nothing to hide.

The last thing he thought about was the tavern keeper’s sentence. That he had known it by heart since he was sixteen. That he had never once thought about whom it had been said for.

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