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, when they sit on their chairs they look frozen to me, even their heart? This is my dilemma.

Around them there is always silence, I am not authorised to pour the wine and can't speak, all I can hear is the sound of the cards slamming on the wooden table.

Thinking about it, this is their only way of communicating: if they're angry, they slam the cards violently on the table; if they're happy, they put them down gently.

It could seem normal, but it isn't that they don't really play cards, I never saw one of them win or lose, they are always immersed in their thoughts, and probably the cards represent their existences: evil versus good probably.