Howondaland

— Gambler, let’s go to this store! Look, what a funny hat, well, try it on!

The girl puts on him hat and laughs happily:

— Siuts you, Gambler! Wrap it!

The young man grumbles at his companion:

— Clarissa, firstly, I can buy myself, and secondly … yes, I look like an idiot in it.

— No more than with your hair. Are you hippy? Or a rocker?

The young man jerks his shoulders and silently looks at himself in the mirror.

— It really suits you, — the saleswoman smiles behind his back. And Gambler surrenders. He does not know how to argue with women at all.

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♫ 

Und der Haifisch, der hat Tränen

 Und die laufen vom Gesicht 

 Doch der Haifisch lebt im Wasser 

So die Tränen sieht man nicht  ♫

                                                      I’m Gambler.

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— It’s not you who started the plane, did you? — asked his young man, when the lessons were over and Clarissa happily ran into the garden.

Gambler twisted the globe, standing on the table and shrugged.

— What’s the difference? No, it was me.

Gambler, — the man twisted the pencil in his fingers disapprovingly and threw it on the table. — You are eight, you must learn if you want to get out of it all. Just do not say that you decided to link your whole life with cards and bones. This is not the case for the child.

The boy blinked bright eyelashes. Then he lowered his eyes and muttered:

— I do not know what I want to be.

— You’re still quite a child, learn! Read books, develop! Ask to be sent to school! Especially, — he frowned, — soon Clarissa goes to a boarding house for girls and I will not teach her anymore. I’m leaving here, Gambler!

— What? — the boy looked up. — But how … It does not matter.

He again twisted the globe.

The young man sighed heavily and stared out the window. He did not know how to help the child.

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Two years later.

— Gambler, are you pampering again?

The young man turned away from the board and pulled a paper airplane out of his hair. Gambler shuddered and glanced sideways at the neighbor on the desk, innocently sitting next to him.

It’s been two years since he found himself in the house of the mafia boss. He
was not particularly touched, allowed to play with the boss’s daughter,
Clarissa, and favorably treated that he was studying with her at home
school. But Gambler learned not only this. In the evenings, he went with the boss, father of Clarissa to the casino and learned to play gambling. Did he learn? It seemed that he simply remembers how to do it. Eight-year-old boy was born a sham.

— Gambler, —  the teacher’s hand lay on the boy’s shoulder and he shuddered again. — I’ll talk to you after the lessons. And now, be kind, do not get distracted.

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