It seems that numbers are no good unless they are connected with something that happens to you during the week. This explained why at Selinunte the brigadier had discarded the price of my clothes, which was not his concern but mine and belonged
to the week in which I had bought them, and preferred to play the number that fell from the cigarettes, of which he was at the moment actually smoking one.
“If there shall be a railway accident,” continued Peppino, “on Thursday night, then shall there be going plenty much people and shall sleep in the ground to be first on Friday morning, because the office shall shut early to take the papers to Palermo to turn the wheel the Saturday. And if to come out the number, the people shall be gaining many money, but if to don’t come out, shall be gaining no money. This is not a good thing.
“They think it is fortunate the—please, what is sogno? Excuse me, it is the dream. But it must be the dream in the week you play. When the man in the dream shall be coming from the other world and shall be saying, ‘Please you, play this number,’ then they believe you shall certainly win. But if to play the number, very uncertain to win.”
They live in a state of wild hope after buying their tickets until the numbers are declared and, the odds being enormously in favour of the government, the gamblers
usually lose. Then they live in a state of miserable despair until the possession of a few soldi, the happening of something remarkable, or merely the recollection of the departed joys of hope compared with present actual depression, urges them to try their luck again. So that the gambler’s life consists of alternations of feverish expectation and maddening dejection. “This is not a good thing”; but it is a worse thing for the gambler who wins. He sees how easy it is and is encouraged to believe he can do it every time; in his exaltation he stakes again and loses all his winnings, instead of only a few soldi. If he does not do this he spends the money in treating his friends and getting into debt over it and has to pawn his watch. So that the Genovese, by way of wishing his enemy ill-luck, while appearing to observe the proprieties, says to him—
“Ti auguro un’ ambo.” (“I hope you may win an ambo.”)
Peppino does not approve of the lottery, yet he has not made up his mind that it ought to be abolished. It certainly does harm, but so deep is the natural instinct for gambling that innumerable private lotteries would spring up to replace it, and they would
do far more mischief, because they would be in the hands of rogues, whereas the government manages the affair quite honestly. The government pays no attention to dreams or ladies in white dresses or anything that happens during the week; it bases its calculations on the mathematical theory of chances, and gathers in the soldi week after week, so that it makes an annual profit of about three million sterling. Besides, if people are willing to pay for the pleasure of a week of hope, why should they not be allowed to do so? The uneducated as a class ought to contribute to the expenses of governing their country, and the lottery is a sure and convenient way of collecting their contributions. It is literally what it is often called—La tassa sull’ ignoranza. (The tax upon ignorance.)
Peppino even uses the lottery himself, but in a way of his own. He chooses two numbers every week, according to what occurs to him as though he were going in for an ambo and, instead of buying a ticket, puts four soldi into an earthenware money-box. The numbers he has chosen do not come out and he considers that he has won his four soldi and has put them by. In this way he has accumulated several money-boxes