Art Fiction: The Card Players (Paul Cézanne)
I am an old waiter, one more year and I will be retired. Serving the customers is humiliating; they're kind, but after several glasses of wine, they become rude and violent. It's very hot here. We're underground in a cramped cellar, to get out, we have to go up on a narrow, damp wooden staircase. Here it smells of tobacco, sweat, and farts. Everything changes on Thursday afternoon, the canteen is completely deserted, only me, the wise waiter as they call me is admitted to serve them tobacco, and pour red wine into their glasses. At 3 pm they are comfortably seated on straw chairs, the man on the left has never lit up the tobacco inside his pipe, despite the fact that he has a box of matches in his left pocket. In front of him there is a man of the same age, it is curious that they never spoke to each other, they never looked each other in the face, they always look down to avoid their eyes crossing, They are prone to getting heavily drunk, but they never insult each other...
