Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

While the better angels of my intellect tugged me towards the historic Portuguese quarter, my feet took on a bloody-minded life of their own. They insistently appropriated my visceral side and dragged me towards the towering presence of the Hotel Lisboa. It dominated the Macau skyline, a great gold Mayan god its multiple glistening arms reaching up to the heavens in insistent welcome. It was why many people come to Macau. It was a casino. Or, if you were to believe in the swaggering self-aggrandisement of its improbable design, it was the casino.

I could resist no longer and was drawn into the lobby. Was it a museum? Or was it the ante-chamber of some gaudy Byzantine emperor’s palace where humbled subjects crouched respectfully before being granted audience? Uniformed flunkies paraded dressed as if belonging in a Georgian salon, powdered wigs and skin-tight white stockings. They mixed incongruously with tourists swathed in photographic equipment wearing those multi-pocketed trousers donned for serious walking. A couple were dressed in Tyrolean gear – short trousers, green felt pre-war hats with feathers and anoraks carrying the word ‘Pontresina’ on their lapels – squinted quizzically at the cabinets filled with a miscellany of jewels and a golden Ferrari.

My feet relentlessly dragged me towards the main body of the casino with the power of two small boys tugging a wizened grandfather towards an ice cream seller on a cold day. I passed small rooms where Chinese gentlemen huddled silently, conspiratorially over a Baccarat table. They were devout and inscrutable and pursued their game with the respectfulness of a religious service. There were no sounds. No cries of joy or murmurs of anguish. There would always be another time.

The brash ‘come-on’ of the temple and its reception had now given way to starched functionality. The pleasure dome outside had become a vast, sterile operating theatre. Or was it a torture chamber? Its ceiling reaching to heaven with light so bright that it stung my eyeballs.

What really struck me was the kaleidoscope of sound. It was a symphony led by the ‘ker-ching’ of mechanical fruit machines, the violins and string section, the woodwind marbles dancing across rotating roulette wheels and the percussive rhythm of defeated chips being raked into the croupiers slots. There must have been a thousand people assembled in the room and yet human noise was curiously muted.

I moved closer now wanting to run my hands over the experience, feel the action. I settled at a roulette table and dangled a few apologetic squares of high density plastic in front of me. They were my permission to be there. I am a pusillanimous gambler. But I wanted to watch.

The audience was largely Chinese and their expressions were unfathomable. And their impenetrability seemed to spread to everyone else at the table. I was surprised. Roulette is a game of you against the house. Inscrutability only belongs when it is man against man. But what did I know?

The croupier, who had appropriated expressionlessness as if he owned it called for bets to be placed. His look, if it could be called that, raised the lack of enthusiasm to the level of an art form. He had sailed past boredom, kicked on way past ennui and his face finally fixed in a paralysis of unconcern. Objectivity personified.

Hands scrambled towards the green baise, greedily edging each other to find their wagers’ intended places. Scary bony arthritic fingers pushed $1,000 tokens towards ‘Impair’. A stubby hand with fingers flashily adorned with rubies the size of quails’ eggs irrationally pushed a pile of chips towards ‘black’. The fingers flailing became more urgent as the croupier started to turn the wheel, a circle of polished beauty, its numbers and colours gleaming with invitation. The croupier rolled the marble against the spin of the wheel, anti-clockwise and it began dancing promisingly, invitingly amongst the numbers. It bounced and jumped and began to slow.
The expression of the players did not change. The turning wheel was framed by a wall of impassivity. Where was the excitement, the irrational encouragement that involuntarily shoots out when you try to influence something you can’t control? Nothing : silence : Mount Rushmore in China.

The wheel relaxes, slows almost to a halt and the marble takes one final insouciant hop, settling triumphantly in red 36. Nobody won. Nobody cried. Nothing changed.

My feet relented and tugged me out towards the street. I was a willing accomplice.