Page 198 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Chapter 18.

Birch Bough Blind

When Tozzo Scatenarsi drank too much, two things happened: he got very very happy,
and he lost his sense of balance. But, the tavern girl, Carola, noticed there was an order to these
two things. First Tozzo got very very happy, and then an hour or so later, he began to lose his
balance. Carola had figured out how to turn this to her advantage; that is, how to make money.
You recall how Carola knew to wager on the outcome of the tossing of the hucklebones by
calculating how certain sums of the dice were more likely than others. That was all well and to
the good, but soon the regular patrons at the Wheat and Chaff began to notice that Carola won
more bets than she lost, and whenever she put wagers down for herself, they all knew to
withdraw their own bets from the opposing side, which gave Carola very few people to bet
against. Carola had noticed their noticing her, and tried to include a number of inferior bets, but
over time that reduced her winnings, and she had begun looking out for other ways to make
money off the gamblers who came to the tavern to drink (or was it the drinkers who came to the
tavern to gamble?). When she noticed Tozzo's drunken happiness was followed at a lag by his
imbalance, Carola saw an opportunity in a rather nasty sport called Birch Bough Blind.

Here's how it worked. Two men were blindfolded and given sticks to thrash the other
within a circular playing area. With their other non-thrashing hand they must each hold onto a
length of rope which was tethered in a loose knot to a stake in the middle of the circle. Thus,
when the blinded men were compelled to run within the confines of the circle, hoping to thrash
the other more often than they themselves got thrashed, the longer went the match, the more
circles round the peg they ran, the dizzier the combatants grew, and the giddier the spectators.

Tozzo was terrible at this game. He would thrash wildly left and right, running and
running round the perimeter of the circle, roaring with alternating frustration and pain. All his
opponents need do was keep silent so that Tozzo couldn't hear them, and the advantage went so
far to them that it was hard to find anyone who would bet for Tozzo. However, Carola noticed,
as no one else in the tavern did, that when Tozzo was drunk and lost his balance, he spun
naturally around to his left, the opposite direction of the combatants in Birch Bough Blind who
always spun round the circle to the right. This meant that there was a certain brief period in
every evening of competition when Tozzo's natural dizziness to his left was exactly neutralized
by the sport's spinning to the right, making for a moment in which Tozzo was absolutely steady
on his feet against opponents who were dizzied. The equilibrium didn't last long: three or four
rounds only, then gradually the game's spinning would be stronger than the alcohol's counterspin
and Tozzo would lose his advantage. Carola saw this was a golden opportunity: allow Tozzo
approximately three rounds to establish how terrible he was, so that Carola could be offered five-
to-one odds, ten-to-one odds, even occasionally twenty-to-one odds because no one, no one
would wager that Tozzo could win. And then suddenly, miraculously, Tozzo would win three
bouts in a row! Then when the crowd felt suddenly like he looked like a sure thing to win,
Carola would either stop betting entirely, or place a small wager on Tozzo's opponent.

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