“And did you notice that he’s not on good terms with the general today?”
“You want to know what’s the matter?” she answered dryly and irritably. “You do know that the general is entirely mortgaged to him, everything he owns is his, and if grandmother doesn’t die, the Frenchman immediately comes into possession of all that’s mortgaged to him.”
“Ah, so it’s really true that everything’s mortgaged? I’d heard, but didn’t know it was decidedly everything.”
“But of course!”
“And with that it’s good-bye Mlle Blanche,” I observed. “She won’t be a generaless then! You know what: it seems to me the general is so in love that he might shoot himself if Mlle Blanche abandons him. At his age it’s dangerous to be so in love.”
“I think myself that something will happen to him,” Polina Alexandrovna observed pensively.
“And how splendid that is,” I cried. “She couldn’t show more crudely that she had consented to marry only for money. Here even decencies weren’t observed, it all happened quite without ceremony. A wonder! And as for grandmother, what could be more comical and filthy than to send telegram after telegram, asking: ‘Is she dead, is she dead?’ Eh? How do you like it, Polina Alexandrovna?”
“That’s all nonsense,” she said with disgust, interrupting me. “On the contrary, I’m astonished that you’re in such a merry mood. What are you glad about? Can it be because you lost my money?”
“Why did you give it to me to lose? I told you I couldn’t play for others, the less so for you. I’ll obey whatever orders you give me; but the result doesn’t depend on me. I warned you that nothing would come of it. Tell me, are you very crushed to have lost so much money? What do you need so much for?”
“Why these questions?”
“But you yourself promised me to explain…Listen: I’m perfectly convinced that when I start playing for myself (I have twelve friedrichs d’or), I’ll win. Then take as much as you need from me.”
She made a scornful face.
“Don’t be angry with me,” I went on, “for such an offer. I’m so pervaded by the awareness that I’m a zero before you, that is, in your eyes, that you can even accept money from me. A present from me cannot offend you. Besides, I lost yours.”
She gave me a quick glance and, noticing that I was speaking irritably and sarcastically, changed the subject again:
“There’s nothing interesting for you in my circumstances. If you want to know, I simply owe the money. I borrowed money and would like to pay it back. I had the crazy and strange notion that I was sure to win here at the gaming table. Why I had that notion I don’t understand, but I believed in it. Who knows, maybe I believed because I had no other choice.”
“Or because there was all too much need to win. It’s exactly like a drowning man grasping at a straw. You must agree that if he weren’t drowning, he wouldn’t take a straw for the branch of a tree.”
Polina was surprised.
“Why,” she asked, “aren’t you hoping for the same thing yourself? Two weeks ago you yourself once spoke to me, a lot and at length, about your being fully convinced of winning here at roulette, and tried to persuade me not to look at you as a madman—or were you joking then? But I remember you spoke so seriously that it couldn’t possibly have been taken for a joke.”
“That’s true,” I answered pensively. “To this day I’m fully convinced of winning. I’ll even confess to you that you’ve just now led me to a question: precisely why has my senseless and outrageous loss today not left me with any doubts? I’m still fully convinced that as soon as I start playing for myself, I’m sure to win.”
“Why are you so completely certain?”
“If you like—I don’t know. I know only that I need to win, that it’s also my one way out. Well, so maybe that’s why it seems to me that I’m sure to win.”
“Which means you also have all too much need to win, if you’re so fanatically convinced.”
“I’ll bet you doubt I’m capable of feeling a serious need.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Polina replied quietly and indifferently. “If you like—yes, I doubt that you could seriously suffer from anything. You may suffer, but not seriously. You’re a disorderly and unsettled man. What do you need money for? I found nothing serious in any of the reasons you gave me then.”
“By the way,” I interrupted, “you said you had to repay a debt. A nice debt, then! Not to the Frenchman?”
“What are these questions? You’re particularly sharp today. You’re not drunk, are you?”
“You know I allow myself to say anything and sometimes ask very frank questions. I repeat, I am your slave, one is not ashamed with slaves, and a slave cannot give offense.”
“That’s all rubbish! And I can’t stand this ‘slave’ theory of yours!”
“Note that I speak of my slavery not because I wish to be your slave, but just so—as of a fact that does not depend on me at all.”
“Tell me straight out, why do you need money?”
“And why do you want to know that?”
“As you like,” she replied and proudly tossed her head.
“You can’t stand the slave theory, but you demand slavery: ‘Answer and don’t argue!’ Very well, so be it. Why money, you ask? What do you mean, why? Money’s everything!”
“I understand, but not falling into such madness from desiring it! You also reach the point of frenzy, of fatalism! There’s something in it, some special goal. Speak without meandering, I want it that way.”
It was as if she was beginning to get angry, and I liked terribly that she put so much heart into her questioning.
“Of course there’s a goal,” I said, “but I’m unable to explain what it is. No more than that with money I’ll become a different person for you, and not a slave.”
“What? How are you going to achieve that?”
“How achieve it? What, you don’t even understand how I can achieve that you look at me otherwise than as a slave? Well, that’s just what I don’t want, such surprises and perplexities.”
“You said this slavery was a pleasure for you. I thought so myself.”
“You thought so,” I cried with some strange pleasure. “Ah, how good such naïveté is coming from you! Well, yes, yes, to be enslaved to you is a pleasure. There is, there is pleasure in the ultimate degree of humiliation and insignificance!” I went on raving. “Devil knows, maybe there is in the knout, too, when the knout comes down on your back and tears your flesh to pieces…But may be I want to try other pleasures as well. Earlier at the table, in your presence, the general read me a lesson, because of the seven hundred roubles a year which I still may not even get from him. The marquis des Grieux raises his eyebrows, scrutinizes me, and at the same time doesn’t notice me. And maybe I, for my part, passionately desire to take the marquis des Grieux by the nose in your presence?”
“A milksop’s talk. One can behave with dignity in any situation. If there’s a struggle involved, it’s elevating, not humiliating.”
“Straight out of a copybook! Just try to suppose that I may not know how to behave with dignity. That is, perhaps I’m a dignified man, but I don’t know how to behave with dignity. Do you understand that it may be so? All Russians are that way, and you know why? Because Russians are too richly and multifariously endowed to be able to find a decent form for themselves very quickly. It’s a matter of form. For the most part, we Russians are so richly endowed that it takes genius for us to find a decent form. Well, but most often there is no genius, because generally it rarely occurs. It’s only the French, and perhaps some few other Europeans, who have so well-defined a form that one can look extremely dignified and yet be a most undignified man. That’s why form means so much to them. A Frenchman can suffer an insult, a real, heartfelt insult, and not wince, but a flick on the nose he won’t suffer for anything, because it’s a violation of the accepted and time-honored form of decency. That’s why our young ladies fall so
much for Frenchmen, because they have good form. In my opinion, however, there’s no form there, but only a rooster, le coq gaulois.[9] {7} However, that I cannot understand, I’m not a woman. Maybe roosters are fine. And generally I’m driveling, and you don’t stop me. Stop me more often; when I talk with you, I want to say everything, everything, everything. I lose all form. I even agree that I have not only no form, but also no merits. I announce that to you. I don’t even care about any merits. Everything in me has come to a stop now. You yourself know why. I don’t have a single human thought in my head. For a long time I haven’t known what’s going on in the world, either in Russia or here. I went through Dresden and don’t remember what Dresden is like. You know yourself what has swallowed me up. Since I have no hope and am a zero in your eyes, I say outright: I see only you everywhere, and the rest makes no difference to me. Why and how I love you—I don’t know. Do you know, maybe you’re not good at all? Imagine, I don’t even know whether you’re good or not, or even good-looking? Your heart probably isn’t good; your mind isn’t noble; that may very well be.”
“Maybe that’s why you count on buying me with money,” she said, “since you don’t believe in my nobility?”
“When did I ever count on buying you with money?” I cried.
“Your tongue ran away with you and you lost your thread. If it’s not me, it’s my respect you think you can buy with money.”
“Well, no, that’s not so at all. I told you, it’s hard for me to explain. You intimidate me. Don’t be angry at my babbling. You see why it’s impossible to be angry with me: I’m simply mad. But, anyhow, it’s all the same to me if you are angry. When I’m upstairs in my little room, I only have to remember and imagine the rustle of your dress, and I’m ready to bite my hands. And why are you angry with me? Because I call myself a slave? Avail yourself, avail yourself of my slavery, avail yourself! Someday I’ll kill you, do you know that? Not because I’ve fallen out of love or become jealous, but—just so, simply kill you, because I sometimes long to eat you up. You’re laughing…”
“I’m not laughing at all,” she said with wrath. “I order you to be silent.”
She stopped, barely able to breathe from wrath. By God, I don’t know whether she was good-looking or not, but I always liked looking at her when she stood before me like that, and so I often liked to provoke her wrath. I told her that.
“What filth!” she exclaimed with disgust.
“It makes no difference to me,” I went on. “Do you know, too, that it’s dangerous for us to go about together: many times I’ve had an irrepressible longing to beat you, to mutilate you, to strangle you. And what do you think, won’t it come to that? You’ll drive me to delirium. Am I afraid of a scandal? Of your wrath? What is your wrath to me? I love without hope, and I know that after that I’ll love you a thousand times more. If I ever kill you, I’ll have to kill myself, too; well, so—I’ll put off killing myself for as long as I can, in order to feel this unbearable pain of being without you. Do you know an incredible thing: I love you more every day, and yet that’s almost impossible. Can I not be a fatalist after that? Remember, two days ago on the Schlangenberg you challenged me, and I whispered: say the word and I’ll jump into this abyss. If you had said the word then, I would have jumped. You don’t believe I’d have jumped?”
“What stupid babble!” she cried.
“It’s none of my affair whether it’s stupid or intelligent,” I cried. “I know that in your presence I have to talk, talk, talk—and so I talk. I lose all self-respect in your presence, and it makes no difference to me.”
“Why should I make you jump off the Schlangenberg?” she said dryly and somehow especially offensively. “It would be completely useless to me.”
“Splendid!” I cried. “You said that splendid ‘useless’ on purpose, in order to intimidate me. I see right through you. Useless, you say? But pleasure is always useful, and wild, boundless power—if only over a fly—is also a pleasure of a certain sort. Man is a despot by nature and likes to play the torturer. You like it terribly.”
I remember she studied me with some especially close attention. It must be that my face then expressed all my senseless and absurd feelings. I recall now that our conversation actually went on like that almost word for word, as I’ve described it here. My eyes were bloodshot. Froth clotted on the edges of my lips. And as for the Schlangenberg, I swear on my honor even now: if she had ordered me to throw myself down then, I would have done it! If she had said it only as a joke, said it with contempt, spitting on me—even then I would have jumped!
“No, why, I believe you,” she said, but as only she knows how to speak sometimes, with such contempt and sarcasm, with such arrogance, that, by God, I could have killed her at that moment. She was taking a risk. I also wasn’t lying about that, talking to her.
“Are you a coward?” she asked me suddenly.
“I don’t know, maybe I am. I don’t know…I haven’t thought about it for a long time.”
“If I told you: kill this man, would you kill him?”
“Who?”
“Whoever I wanted.”
“The Frenchman?”
“Don’t ask, answer—whoever I point to. I want to know whether you were speaking seriously just now.” She waited so seriously and impatiently for my reply that I felt somehow strange.
“But will you tell me, finally, what’s going on here?” I cried. “Are you afraid of me, or what? I myself can see all the disorders here. You’re the stepdaughter of a ruined and crazy man, infected with a passion for that she-devil—Blanche; then there’s this Frenchman with his mysterious influence over you, and—now you ask me so seriously…such a question. At any rate let me know: otherwise I’ll go mad right here and do something. Or are you ashamed to honor me with your candor? Can you really be ashamed with me?”
“I’m not talking about that at all. I asked you and I’m waiting for a reply.”
“Of course I’ll kill,” I cried, “whoever you order me to, but can you really…would you really order that?”
“What do you think, that I’ll feel sorry for you? I’ll order you to do it, and stay out of it myself. Can you bear that? No, how could you! You might kill on orders and then come and kill me for having dared to send you.”
It was as if something hit me on the head at these words. Of course, even then I considered her question half as a joke, as a challenge; but all the same she said it much too seriously. All the same, I was struck by her speaking it out like that, by her having such a right over me, accepting such power over me, and saying so directly: “Go to your ruin, and I’ll stay out of it.” There was something so cynical and frank in these words that, in my opinion, it was far too much. So that’s how she looks at me then? This was going beyond the bounds of slavery and nonentity. To have such a view is to raise a man to one’s own level. And however absurd, however unbelievable our whole conversation was, my heart shook.
Suddenly she burst out laughing. We were sitting on a bench then in front of the playing children, across from the place where carriages stopped and unloaded the public on the avenue before the vauxhall.
“Do you see that fat baroness?” she cried. “It’s Baroness Wurmerhelm. She came only three days ago. See her husband: a long, dry Prussian with a stick in his hand? Remember him looking us over two days ago? Go now, walk over to the baroness, take off your hat, and say something to her in French.”
“Why?”
“You swore you’d jump off the Schlangenberg; you swear you’re ready to kill if I order it. Instead of all these killings and tragedies, I want only to laugh. Go without any excuses. I want to see the baron beat you with his stick.”
“You’re challenging me; you think I won’t do it?”
“Yes, I’m challenging you, go, that’s how I want it!”
“I’ll go, if you please, though it’s a wild fantasy. Only here’s the thing: won’t there be trouble for the general, and for you through him? By God, I don’t wor
ry about myself, but about you, well—and the general. And what is this fantasy of going and insulting a woman?”
“No, you’re a mere babbler, I can see,” she said contemptuously. “Your eyes became bloodshot earlier—however, maybe that’s because you drank a lot of wine at dinner. As if I don’t understand myself that it’s stupid, and trite, and that the general will get angry? I simply want to laugh. Well, I want to, that’s all! And why should you insult a woman? You’ll sooner get beaten with a stick.”
I turned and silently went to do her bidding. Of course it was stupid, and of course I failed to get out of it, but as I went up to the baroness, I remember something seemed to egg me on, namely, schoolboy prankishness. And I was terribly worked up, as if drunk.
CHAPTER VI
TWO DAYS HAVE NOW gone by since that stupid day. And so much shouting, noising, knocking, talking! And it’s all such disorder, confusion, stupidity, and banality, and I’m the cause of it all. However, sometimes it seems funny—to me at any rate. I’m unable to give myself an accounting for what has happened to me, whether I’m indeed in a state of frenzy, or have simply jumped off the rails and gone on a rampage till they tie me up. At times it seems I’m going mad. And at times it seems I’m still not far from childhood, from the schoolbench, and it’s simply crude prankishness.
It’s Polina, it’s all Polina! Maybe there would be no schoolboy pranks if it weren’t for her. Who knows, maybe I’m doing it all out of despair (however stupid it is to reason this way). And I don’t understand, I don’t understand what’s so good about her! Good-looking she is, though; yes, it seems she’s good-looking. Others lose their minds over her, too. She’s tall and trim. Only very thin. It seems to me you could tie her in a knot or bend her double. The print of her foot is narrow and long—tormenting. Precisely tormenting. Her hair has a reddish tint. Her eyes—a real cat’s, but how proud and arrogant she can look with them. Four months ago, when I had just entered their service, she had a long and heated conversation with des Grieux one evening in the drawing room. And she looked at him in such a way…that later, when I went to my room to go to bed, I imagined that she had given him a slap—given it a moment before, then stood in front of him and looked at him…That evening I fell in love with her.
The Gambler Page 5