Casino Royale

Casino Royale es la primera novela del autor británico Ian Fleming. Casino Royale fue publicada in 1953, la primera de la serie James Bond, que totalizaría once novelas y dos colecciones de cuentos.

Al final: staleness, bluntness, salle privée, cosh y otros en vocabulario.

 

… The scent and smoke and sweat of a casino are nauseating at three in the morning. Then the soul-erosion produced by high gambling—a compost of greed and fear and nervous tension—becomes unbearable and the senses awake and revolt from it.

James Bond suddenly knew that he was tired. He always knew when his body or his mind had had enough and he always acted on the knowledge. This helped him to avoid staleness and the sensual bluntness that breeds mistakes.

He shifted himself unobtrusively away from the roulette he had been playing and went to stand for a moment at the brass rail which surrounded breast-high the top table in the salle privée.

Le Chiffre was still playing and still, apparently, winning. There was an untidy pile of flecked hundred-mille plaques in front of him. In the shadow of his thick left arm there nestled a discreet stack of the big yellow ones worth half a million francs each.

Bond watched the curious, impressive profile for a time, and then he shrugged his shoulders to lighten his thoughts and moved away.

The barrier surrounding the caisse comes as high as your chin and the caissier, who is generally nothing more than a minor bank clerk, sits on a stool and dips into his piles of notes and plaques. These are ranged on shelves. They are on a level, behind the protecting barrier, with your groin. The caissier has a cosh and a gun to protect him, and to heave over the barrier and steal some notes and then vault back and get out of the casino through the passages and doors would be impossible. And the caissiers generally work in pairs.

Bond reflected on the problem as he collected the sheaf of hundred thousand and then the sheaves of ten thousand franc notes. With another part of his mind, he had a vision of tomorrow’s regular morning meeting of the casino committee.

John McLusky´s rendition of James Bond

‘Monsieur Le Chiffre made two million. He played his usual game. Miss Fairchild made a million in an hour and then left. She executed three “bancos” of Monsieur Le Chiffre within an hour and then left. She played with coolness. Monsieur le Vicomte de Villorin made one million two at roulette. He was playing the maximum on the first and last dozens. He was lucky. Then the Englishman, Mister Bond, increased his winnings to exactly three million over the two days. He was playing a progressive system on red at table five. Duclos, the chef de partie, has the details. It seems that he is persevering and plays in maximums. He has luck. His nerves seem good. On the soirée, the chemin-de-fer won x, the baccarat won y and the roulette won z. The boule, which was again badly frequented, still makes its expenses.’…

Or something like that, thought Bond as he pushed his way through the swing doors of the salle privée and nodded to the bored man in evening clothes whose job it is to bar your entry and your exit with the electric foot-switch which can lock the doors at any hint of trouble.

And the casino committee would balance its books and break up to its homes or cafés for lunch.

As for robbing the caisse, in which Bond himself was not personally concerned, but only interested, he reflected that it would take ten good men, that they would certainly have to kill one or two employees, and that anyway you probably couldn’t find ten non-squeal killers in France, or in any other country for the matter of that.

As he gave a thousand francs to the vestiaire and walked down the steps of the casino, Bond made up his mind that Le Chiffre would in no circumstances try to rob the caisse and he put the contingency out of his mind. Instead he explored his present physical sensations. He felt the dry, uncomfortable gravel under his evening shoes, the bad, harsh taste in his mouth and the slight sweat under his arms. He could feel his eyes filling their sockets. The front of his face, his nose and antrum, were congested. He breathed the sweet night air deeply and focused his senses and his wits. He wanted to know if anyone had searched his room since he had left it before dinner… (Paragraphs from Casino Royale, chapter 1, by Ian Fleming)

 

Vocabulario

Cosh: A thick, heavy stick or bar used as a weapon.

Staleness: being no longer new, usually as a result of being kept for too long:

Employees had to remove any food they suspected of staleness from the shelves.

Bluntness: a way of speaking in which you say what you think without trying to be polite.

Some people are put off by his bluntness.

Salle privée: private room.

Informer le patient qu'elle aura besoin d'une salle privée.

Flecked: a spot or small patch of color, light, etc.:

The dapple mare with flecks of gray.

Caisse: caja.

Une caisse de riz comme demandé.

Caissier: cajero.

Mettez-vous d'accord qui sera le caissier.

Heave: a number of things, especially pieces of paper or plant stems, that are held or tied together:

A lawyer walked in carrying a whole sheaf of papers.Sheaf:

Chef de partie: A chef de partie, station chef, or line cook is a chef in charge of a particular area of production in a restaurant.

Soirée: noche.

Vous avez relancé ma soirée également.

Chemin-de-fer: Chemin de fer was the original version of baccarat when it was introduced to France and is still the version that is popular there.

Boule: a French game similar to boccie.

Vestiaire: vestuario. Guardarropa.

Gravel: very small, rounded stones, often mixed with sand:

Gravel covers the driveway.

Antrum: estómago.

 

Para saber

Casino Royale trata sobre el agente secreto James Bond que juega en el casino hasta llevar a la quiebra a Le Chiffre, miembro del servicio secreto ruso. Bond es apoyado por miembros de los servicios secretos norteamericanos y franceses.

Fleming usó su experiencia en la guerra para proveer elementos al argumento. Escribió el borrador en su finca, Goldeneye, en Jamaica.

Casino Royale trata temas como la posición británica en el mundo, particularmente su relación con los Estados Unidos.

Desde su publicación Casino Royale apareció como historieta y ha sido adaptada a la pantalla grande: en 1967 con David Niven y en el 2006 con Daniel Craig

El personaje de Bond fue una composición basada en comandos que Fleming conoció en sus años de servicio en la inteligencia naval. El nombre fue copiado del ornitólogo americano James Bond.

Bond tiene una serie de características que aparecen a lo largo de las novelas, incluyendo el amor por los autos, la comida y las bebidas y un consumo de sesenta cigarrillos, hechos a medida, por día.

 

Ian Fleming

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… me llevó algunas tardes a algunos lugares sombríos en el Soho y más hacia el este… The Riddle of the Sands

 

Fuentes

Casino Royale, from Wikipedia.

James Bond, literary character.