The domino game

Come on, don't be a coward, you already know I'm going to beat you.

Laughter and smiles from the retirees, gathered at the club.

Don Bernardo was well known (he played very well), he had won many medals for the club. Lately he'd been refusing, he was sunk in a sadness his friends couldn't pull him out of. The tiles on the table, the fellows drew lots, they dealt out 7 tiles each.

He thought: seven, a cabalistic number. 7 days of the week, 7 years of plenty, 7 of drought, and he was living through those. How to tell them that on his meager pension he had to help his son, the one he'd managed, with such effort, to see graduate as an engineer.

"Bernardo, it's your turn, are you asleep? Come on, play a tile. The 0 or the 6, don't think so much." He thought: zero is nothingness, like him. He set down a double zero. A tile as blank as his hair, as his hopes for a happy old age.

"Bernardo, didn't you have anything else? Go on, on account of the partner I drew. Didn't you see I passed." He thought: I passed through life too, and what did I get out of it?

He looked at the table, the tiles with their dots marking numbers, the ones that decide the fate of the game. He decided to pay attention, his partner was asking for a five, he must have the double, and at that moment he remembered a poem from his childhood and quietly began reciting it: "five, just five cents so the child can ride the carousel, so the child can know how great it is to be small." He smiled, no one dared say anything. He felt ashamed for having let himself get carried away by the memory. "Sorry, boys, I'm a bit far away today."

"It's nothing, Bernardo," his partner said, "very nice poem, but these days 5 cents won't get you one ride on the carousel."

"I was 5 years old and for 5 cents I got 4 rides, in cahoots with the carousel man."

"Ah, so that's where you learned to cheat." General laughter.

Bernardo gradually relaxed, coming to the club did him good, the fellows pulled him out of his troubles, they couldn't imagine how much they helped him.

The game ended, they had a coffee and went their separate ways.

On the way home he thought: how many tiles do I still need to finish the game of my life.