“He is entitled to one cent profit.”
“But not to ten cents,” I added triumphantly.
The guardian of law and order grunted an unwilling affirmative, casting a pitying glance up and down my person, and turned away with another audible sneer only when I had produced a cent. The vender snatched the coin with an expression of disgust, and retains to this day, I suppose, a much lower opinion of Americans.
This silly ordeal, which I have never since had the courage to repeat, proved the assertion that the Cubans may buy their lottery-tickets at the legal price, but it demonstrated at the same time why few of them do so. Pride is the chief ally of the profiteer. The difference between twenty cents and thirty is not worth a dispute, but the failure of the individual Cuban to insist upon his rights, and of his Government to protect them, constitutes a serious tax upon the nation and enriches many a worthless loafer. With some forty lottery drawings a year, this extra, illegal ten cents a “piece” costs the Cuban people the neat little sum of at least $12,000,000 a year, or four dollars per capita.
The drawings take place every ten days, besides a few loterías extraordinarias, with prizes several times larger, on the principal holidays. They are conducted in the old treasury building down near the end of Calle Obispo. We reached there soon after seven of the morning named on our tickets. A crowd of two hundred or more heavy-mouthed negroes, poorly clad mestizos, and ragged, emaciated old Chinamen for the most part, were huddled together in the shade at the edge of the porch-like room. A policeman—not the one whose scorn I had aroused—beckoned us to step inside and take one of the seats of honor along the wall, not, evidently, because we were Americans, but because our clothing was not patched or our collars missing. At the back a long table stretched the entire length of the room. A dozen solemn officials, resembling a jury or an election board, lolled in their seats behind it, a huge ledger, a sheath of papers, an ink-well and several pens and pencils before each of them. At the edge of the room, just clear of the standing crowd of hopeful riffraff, was a similar table on which another group of solemn-faced men were busily scribbling in as many large blank-books, with the sophisticated air of court or congressional reporters. Between the tables were two globes of open-work brass, one perhaps six feet in diameter, the other several times smaller. The larger was filled with balls the size of marbles, each engraved with a number; the smaller one contained several thousand others, representing varying sums of money.
Almost at the moment we entered a gong sounded. Four muscular negroes rushed forth from behind the scenes and, grasping two handles projecting at the rear, turned the big globe over and over, its myriad of little balls rattling like a stage wind-storm. At the same time an individual of as certain, if less decided, African ancestry, solemnly shuffled the contents of the smaller sphere in the same manner. Then the interrupted drawing began again. Four boys, averaging eight years of age, stood in pairs at either globe. At intervals of about thirty seconds two of them pulled levers that released one marble from each sphere, and which long brass troughs or runways deposited in cut-glass bowls in front of the other two boys. The urchin on the big globe side snatched up his marble, called out a long number—in most cases running into the tens of thousands—and as his voice ceased, his companion opposite announced the amount of the prize. Then the two balls were spitted side by side on a sort of Chinese reckoning-board manipulated by another solemn-faced adult, who now and again corrected a misreading by the boy calling the numbers.
For the hour we remained this monotonous formality went steadily on, as it does every ten days from seven in the morning until nearly noon, ceasing only when all the balls in the smaller sphere have been withdrawn. Each of these represents a prize, but as considerably more than a thousand of them are of one hundred dollars each—or a dollar a “piece”—the almost constant “con cien pesos” of the prize-boy grew wearisome in the extreme. The men at the reporters’ table scribbled every number feverishly with their sputtering steel pens, but the “jury” at the back yielded to the soporific drone of childish voices and dozed half-open-eyed in their chairs—except when one of the major prizes was announced. Then they sat up alertly at attention, and inscribed one after another on their massive ledgers the number on the ball which an official held before each of their noses in turn, while the patch-clad gathering outside the room shifted excitedly on their weary feet and scanned the “pieces” in their sweaty hands with varying expressions of disgust and disappointment. Now and then the boys changed places, but only one of them, of dull-brown complexion and already gifted with the shifty eye of the half-caste, performed his task to the general satisfaction. The others were frequently interrupted by a protest from one of the recorders, whereupon the number that had just been called was emphatically reread by an adult, amid much scratching of pens in the leather-bound ledgers. If the monotony of the scene was wearisome, its solemnity made it correspondingly amusing. An uninformed observer would probably have taken it for at least a presidential election. Rachel asserted that it reminded her of Alice in Wonderland, but as my education was neglected I cannot confirm this impression. What aroused my own wonder was the fact that some two score more-or-less-high officials of a national government should be engaged in so ridiculous a formality, and that a sovereign republic should indulge in the nefarious profession of the bookmaker. But to every people its own customs.
If I had fancied it the fault of my own ear that I had not caught all the numbers, the impression would have been corrected by the afternoon papers. All of them carried a column or more of protest against the “absurd inefficiency” of the boys who had served that morning; most of them made the complaint the chief subject of their editorial pages. The Casa de Beneficencia—an institution corresponding roughly to our orphan asylums—was solemnly warned that it must thereafter furnish more capable inmates to cantar las bolas (“sing the balls”) on pain of losing the privilege entirely. Not only had the “uninstructed urchins” of that morning made mistakes in reading the numbers—a dastardly thing from the Cuban point of view—but had pronounced many of them in so slovenly a manner that “our special reporters were unable to supply our readers with correct information on a subject of prime importance to the entire republic.” Beware that it never happened again! It was easy to picture the poor overworked nuns of the asylum toiling far into the night to impress upon a multi-complexioned group of fatherless gamins the urgent necessity of learning to read figures quickly and accurately, if they ever hoped to become normal, full-grown men and perhaps win the big prize some day themselves.
Winning tickets may be cashed at any official colectoría at any time within a year, but such delays are rare. Barely is the drawing ended when the venders, armed with the billetes of the next sorteo, hurry forth over their accustomed beats to pay the winners and establish a reputation not so much for promptitude as for the ability to offer lucky numbers. The capital prize, $100,000 in most cases, is perhaps won now and then by some favorite of fortune, instead of falling to the Government, collector of all unsold winners, though I have never personally known of such a stroke of luck during all my wanderings in lottery-infested lands. Smaller causes for momentary happiness are more frequent, for with 1741 prizes, divisible into a hundred “pieces” each, it would be strange if a persistent player did not now and then “make a killing.” But even these must be rare in comparison to the optimistic multitude that pursues the goddess Chance, for on the morning following a drawing the streets of Havana are everywhere littered with worthless billetes cast off by wrathy purchasers. Wherefore an incorrigible moralist has deduced a motto that may be worth passing on to future travelers in Cuba:
“Buy a ‘piece’ or two that you may know the sneer of Fortune, but don’t get the habit.”