The trick track game
The Tricktrackpartie (French: La Partie de trictrac ) is a novella by the French writer Prosper Mérimée from 1830.
Frame narration
The narrator has to endure four months on the sailing ship to the port of destination. Soon he knows the faces on board. The stories that are told when there is calm repeat themselves. The narrator, gradually bored, wants to play with the captain's dagger. He doesn't give the stabbing weapon, but he tells the story of the officer who wore the dagger during his lifetime. All listeners who know the story of Lieutenant Roger - that was a good friend of the captain - very well (internal story below), tear away - as far as that is possible on board. Unfortunately, the narrator cannot present the story to the end. When things get really exciting, an ensign reports a whale to port . The captain, excitedly, commands: “The dinghy into the sea! All sloops into the sea! Harpoons , ropes ! "
Internal narration
Back then - as a young ensign - the captain met Lieutenant Roger, who was three years his senior. In Brest , Roger falls in love with the beautiful young actress Gabrielle. When they ran out of money in the common economic treasury, Roger took eighty thousand francs from a Dutch lieutenant while playing a trick track game . The winner cheated and doesn't want all that money. The Dutchman pushes it across the table and shoots himself that night.
Roger confesses to Gabrielle that he is wrong. Her shocked reply: "I wish you'd rather killed ten men than betrayed one in the game." Roger considers suicide, but pushes the thought aside. Six weeks later, Gabrielle gets involved with an officer candidate. Roger asks her about the money she got for it. Gabrielle never owes a hard answer. She let the young fellow pay her, but don't insist on him. When Gabrielle leaves Roger, the unfortunate man opens up again to a suicide and lets in on his friend, the future captain and narrator of the inner story.
The suicide on the second attempt will not work again. Gabrielle returns to Roger ruefully. She too became a thief.
The happy ending is thwarted by the French Minister of War. On board the frigate “Galatée” it goes against the English with 38 guns. In the fight against the English frigate “Alceste” - it has 58 guns on board - First Lieutenant Roger gets a grape shot in his body. The dying asks his friend to throw him into the sea. When the latter does not comply with the request, Roger cheers the sailors on with the last of his strength. The fight apparently continues. The friend stays with Roger and asks: "Shake my hand!"
expenditure
French
- La Partie de Trictrac (1845)
German
- “ Mateo Falcone and Die Tricktrackpartie. Read by Christian Poewe ”. Verlag RADIOROPA audio book 2008 (audio CD), ISBN 978-3-8368-0349-6
Used edition
- The trick track game. Translator: Alfred Thierbach, pp. 256–274 in Prosper Mérimée: Don Juan in Purgatory and other short stories. (also contains: The Bartholomew Night . Mateo Falcone . Vision of Charles XI. The storm on the hill. The pearl of Toledo. The double error . Don Juan in purgatory . Lokis ). With an introduction by Herbert Kühn. Dieterich'sche Verlagbuchhandlung in Leipzig 1957 (3rd edition 1965, license Rudolf Marx). 476 pages