The Gambler

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  I started to explain, and he began to listen, sprawling, cocking his head slightly towards me, with an obvious, unconcealed ironic nuance in his face. In general, he behaved with extreme haughtiness. I tried with all my might to pretend that I looked at the business from the most serious point of view. I explained that, since the baron had addressed a complaint against me to the general, as though I was the general’s servant, he had, first of all, deprived me thereby of my post, and, second, treated me as a person who is unable to answer for himself and is not worth talking to. Of course, I am justified in feeling myself offended; however, understanding the difference in age, of position in society, and so on, and so forth (I could barely keep from laughing at this point), I do not want to take another frivolity upon myself, that is, directly demand satisfaction from the baron, or even merely suggest it to him. Nevertheless, I consider myself perfectly within my rights in offering him, and especially the baroness, my apologies, the more so in that lately I have indeed been feeling unwell, upset, and, so to speak, fantastic, and so on, and so forth. However, by offensively addressing the general yesterday and insisting that the general deprive me of my post, the baron has put me in such a position that I can no longer offer him and the baroness my apologies, because he, and the baroness, and the whole world would probably think I am coming with my apologies out of fear, in order to get my post back. It follows from all this that I now find myself forced to ask the baron to apologize to me first, in the most moderate terms—for instance, by saying he had by no means wished to offend me. And once the baron speaks it out, then I, my hands now untied, will offer him my openhearted and sincere apologies. In short, I concluded, I ask only that the baron untie my hands.

  “Fie, such scrupulousness and such subtleties! And why should you apologize? Well, you will agree, Monsieur…Monsieur… that you are starting it all on purpose to vex the general…or perhaps you have some sort of special goals…mon cher monsieur, pardon, j’ai oublié votre nom, monsieur Alexis?…n’est-ce pas?”[15]

  “Excuse me, mon cher marquis, but what business is that of yours?”

  “Mais le général…”

  “And what is it to the general? He said something yesterday about having to keep himself on some sort of footing…and he was so alarmed…but I understood nothing.”

  “Here there is…here precisely there exists a special circumstance,” des Grieux picked up in a pleading tone, in which more and more vexation could be heard. “Do you know Mlle de Cominges?”

  “You mean Mlle Blanche?”

  “Well, yes, Mlle Blanche de Cominges…et madame sa mère[16] …you must agree, the general…in short, the general is in love and even…the marriage may even take place here. And, imagine, at the same time various scandals, stories…”

  “I don’t see any scandals or stories here that have anything to do with his marriage.”

  “But le baron est si irascible, un caractère prussien, vous savez, enfin il fera une querelle d’Allemand.”[17]

  “It will be with me, then, not with you, since I no longer belong to the household…” (I deliberately tried to be as muddle-headed as possible.) “But, excuse me, so it’s decided that Mlle Blanche will marry the general? What are they waiting for? I mean to say—why conceal it, at any rate from us, the household?”

  “I cannot tell you…however, it is still not entirely…though…you know, they are waiting for news from Russia; the general must arrange his affairs…”

  “Aha! la baboulinka!”

  Des Grieux looked at me with hatred.

  “In short,” he interrupted, “I fully trust in your innate courtesy, your intelligence, your tact…you will, of course, do it for the family, in which you were like their own, were loved, respected…”

  “Good God, I’ve been thrown out! You insist now that it was for the sake of appearances; but you must agree that if you say: ‘Of course, I don’t want to box your ears, but for the sake of appearances allow me to box your ears…’ Well, isn’t it almost the same?”

  “If so, if no entreaties have any influence on you,” he began sternly and presumptuously, “then allow me to assure you that measures will be taken. There are authorities here, you will be sent away today—que diable! un blanc-bec comme vous[18] wants to challenge a person like the baron to a duel! And you think you will be left alone? And, believe me, nobody here is afraid of you! If I asked, it was more on my own behalf, because you have troubled the general. And can you, can you possibly think that the baron will not simply ask a footman to throw you out?”

  “But I won’t go myself,” I replied with extraordinary calm, “you’re mistaken, M. des Grieux, it will all work out with much greater decency than you think. I will now go to Mr. Astley and ask him to be my mediator, in short, to be my second. The man likes me and certainly will not refuse me. He will go to the baron, and the baron will receive him. If I myself am un outchitel and seem something of a subalterne, well, and, finally, without protection, Mr. Astley is the nephew of a lord, a real lord, that is known to everyone, Lord Pibroch, and that lord is here. Believe me, the baron will be polite to Mr. Astley and hear him out. And if he doesn’t, Mr. Astley will count it as a personal insult (you know how tenacious Englishmen are) and send a friend to the baron on his own behalf, and he has good friends. Consider now that things may not come out quite the way you reckon.”

  The Frenchman was decidedly scared; indeed, it all very much resembled the truth, and consequently it appeared that I really was capable of starting a whole story.

  “But I beg you,” he began in a thoroughly pleading voice, “drop it all! It is as if you are pleased that a whole story will come of it! It is not satisfaction you want, but a story! I told you, it will come out amusing and even clever—which is maybe what you are after—but, in short,” he concluded, seeing that I had stood up and was taking my hat, “I have come to convey to you these few words from a certain person. Read them. I was told to wait for an answer.”

  So saying, he took from his pocket a little note, folded and sealed with wax, and handed it to me.

  It was written in Polina’s hand:

  I have the impression that you intend to go on with this story. You’re angry and are beginning to behave like a schoolboy. But there are certain special circumstances here, and later maybe I will explain them to you; so please stop it and calm yourself. How stupid this all is! I have need of you, and you have promised to obey. Remember the Schlangenberg. I beg you to be obedient, and, if need be, I order it.

  Your P.

  P.S. If you are angry with me about yesterday, forgive me.

  Everything seemed to turn upside down as I read these lines. My lips went white, and I began to tremble. The cursed Frenchman looked on with an exaggeratedly modest air and averted his eyes from me, as if in order not to see my confusion. It would have been better if he had burst out laughing at me.

  “Very well,” I said, “tell mademoiselle not to worry. Allow me, however, to ask you,” I added sharply, “why you took so long to give me this note? Instead of talking about trifles, it seems to me, you ought to have begun with it…since you came precisely on that errand.”

  “Oh, I wanted…generally this is all so strange that you must pardon my natural impatience. I wanted the sooner to learn your intentions for myself, from you personally. However, I do not know what is in this note, and thought I would always have time to give it to you.”

  “I see, you were simply told to give it to me as a last resort, and not to give it if you could settle it verbally. Right? Talk straight, M. des Grieux!”

  “Peut-être,”[19] he said, assuming an air of some special restraint and giving me some sort of special look.

  I took my hat; he inclined his head and left. I fancied there was a mocking smile on his lips. And how could it be otherwise?

  “We’ll settle accounts, Frenchy, we’ll measure forces!” I muttered, going down the stairs. I still couldn’t grasp anything, as if I’d been hit on the head. The fresh air re
vived me a little.

  After a couple of minutes, when I just began to grasp things clearly, two thoughts distinctly presented themselves to me: first, that from such trifles, from a few prankish, improbable threats from a mere boy, uttered the day before in passing, such a general alarm had arisen! and the second thought—what influence, anyhow, does this Frenchman have on Polina? One word from him, and she does everything he wants, writes a note, and even begs me. Of course, their relations had always been an enigma to me from the very beginning, ever since I got to know them; however, in these last few days I’d noticed in her a decided loathing and even contempt for him, while he didn’t even look at her, was even simply impolite to her. I’d noticed that. Polina herself spoke to me of her loathing; extremely significant confessions have burst from her…That means he’s simply got her in his power, he keeps her in some sort of chains…

  CHAPTER VIII

  ON THE PROMENADE, as they call it here, that is, the chestnut avenue, I met my Englishman.

  “Oho!” he began when he saw me, “I’m going to you, and you to me. So you’ve already parted from your people?”

  “Tell me, first of all, how you know about all this,” I asked in surprise. “Can it be that everybody knows all about it?”

  “Oh, no, everybody does not know; and it’s better if they don’t. Nobody’s talking about it.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “I know because I chanced to learn. Now where are you going to go from here? I like you, that’s why I was coming to see you.”

  “You’re a nice man, Mr. Astley,” I said (though I was terribly struck: where did he find out?), “and since I haven’t had my coffee yet, and you probably did a poor job on yours, let’s go to the vauxhall café, sit there, have a smoke, and I’ll tell you everything, and…you’ll also tell me.”

  The café was a hundred paces away. Coffee was brought, we sat down, I lit a cigarette, Mr. Astley didn’t light anything and, fixing his eyes on me, prepared to listen.

  “I’m not going to go anywhere, I’m staying here,” I began.

  “I was just sure you’d stay,” Mr. Astley said approvingly.

  On my way to see Mr. Astley, I had had no intention and even purposely did not want to tell him anything about my love for Polina. In all those days I had scarcely said a single word to him about it. Besides, he was very shy. I had noticed from the first that Polina had made a great impression on him, but he never mentioned her name. But, strangely, suddenly, now, as soon as he sat down and fixed me with his intent, tinny gaze, an urge came over me, I don’t know why, to tell him everything, that is, all my love and with all its nuances. I spent a whole half-hour telling him, and I found it extremely pleasant to be telling about it for the first time! Noticing that in some especially ardent places he became embarrassed, I deliberately increased the ardor of my story. One thing I regret: I may have said some unnecessary things about the Frenchman…

  Mr. Astley listened, sitting opposite me, without moving, without uttering a word or a sound, and looking me in the eye; but when I started speaking of the Frenchman, he suddenly cut me short and asked sternly whether I had the right to mention this extraneous circumstance. Mr. Astley always put his questions in a very strange way.

  “You’re right: I’m afraid I don’t,” I replied.

  “You can say nothing precise about this marquis and Miss Polina, apart from mere surmises?”

  Again I was surprised at such a categorical question from such a shy man as Mr. Astley.

  “No, nothing precise,” I replied, “of course not.”

  “If so, you have done a wrong thing not only in talking about it with me, but even in thinking about it to yourself.”

  “All right, all right! I acknowledge it; but that’s not the point now,” I interrupted, surprised in myself. Here I told him the whole of yesterday’s story in all its details, Polina’s escapade, my adventure with the baron, my dismissal, the general’s extraordinary cowardice, and finally I gave him a detailed account of today’s visit from des Grieux, with all its nuances; in conclusion, I showed him the note.

  “What do you make of it?” I asked. “I was precisely coming to learn your thoughts. As for me, I think I could kill that little Frenchman, and maybe I will.”

  “And I, too,” said Mr. Astley. “As for Miss Polina…you know, we enter into relations even with people we hate, if necessity demands it of us. Here there may be relations unknown to you, which depend on extraneous circumstances. I think you can rest easy—in part, to be sure. As for her action yesterday, it is, of course, strange—not because she wanted to get rid of you and sent you under the baron’s stick (which he didn’t use, though I don’t understand why, since he had it in his hand), but because such an escapade from such a…from such an excellent miss…is improper. Naturally, she couldn’t have foreseen that you would literally carry out her jesting wish…”

  “You know what?” I cried suddenly, peering intently at Mr. Astley. “I have the feeling that you’ve already heard about all this, and do you know from whom?—from Miss Polina herself!”

  Mr. Astley looked at me in surprise.

  “Your eyes flash, and I read suspicion in them,” he said, recovering his former equanimity at once, “but you haven’t the least right to reveal your suspicions. I cannot acknowledge that right, and I totally refuse to answer your question.”

  “Well, enough! And you needn’t!” I cried, strangely agitated and not understanding why that had popped into my mind! And when, where, how could Mr. Astley have been chosen by Polina as a confidant? Lately, however, I had partially let Mr. Astley slip from sight, and Polina had always been an enigma to me—so much an enigma that now, for instance, in setting out to tell Mr. Astley the whole history of my love, I was suddenly struck, during the telling, by the fact that I could say almost nothing precise and positive about my relations with her. On the contrary, everything was fantastic, strange, insubstantial, and even bore no resemblance to anything.

  “Well, all right, all right; I’m confused, and now there are still many things I can’t grasp,” I replied as if breathlessly. “However, you’re a good man. Now it’s a different matter, and I ask your—not advice, but opinion.”

  I paused and began:

  “Why do you think the general got so scared? Why did they make such a story out of my most stupid mischievousness? Such a story that even des Grieux himself found it necessary to interfere (and he interferes only in the most important cases), visited me (how about that!), begged, pleaded with me—he, des Grieux, with me! Finally, note for yourself that he came at nine o’clock, just before nine, and Miss Polina’s note was already in his hands. When, may I ask, was it written? Maybe Miss Polina was awakened just for that! Besides, from that I can see that Miss Polina is his slave (because she even asked my forgiveness!)—besides that, what is all this to her, to her personally? Why is she so interested? Why are they afraid of some baron? And so what if the general is marrying Mlle Blanche de Cominges? They say they have to behave in some special way, owing to this circumstance—but this is much too special, you must agree! What do you think? I’m convinced by your eyes that here, too, you know more than I do.”

  Mr. Astley smiled and nodded his head.

  “Indeed, it seems that in this, too, I know a great deal more than you do,” he said. “This whole business concerns Mlle Blanche alone, and I’m sure it’s perfectly true.”

  “Well, what about Mlle Blanche?” I cried impatiently (I suddenly had a hope that something would be revealed now about Mlle Polina).

  “It seems to me that Mlle Blanche has at the present moment a special interest in avoiding any kind of meeting with the baron and baroness—all the more so an unpleasant meeting, worse still a scandalous one.”

  “Well? Well?”

  “Two years ago, Mlle Blanche was here in Roulettenburg during the season. And I also happened to be here. Mlle Blanche was not known as Mlle de Cominges then, nor was her mother, Madame la veuve Cominges,
then in existence. At any rate there was no mention of her. Des Grieux—there was no des Grieux either. I nurse the profound conviction that they are not only not related to each other, but even became acquainted quite recently. Des Grieux also became a marquis quite recently—I am sure of that because of one circumstance. It may even be supposed that he became known as des Grieux quite recently as well. I know a man here who met him under a different name.”

  “But he does have a respectable circle of acquaintances?”

  “Oh, that may be. Even Mlle Blanche may. But two years ago Mlle Blanche, on a complaint from this same baroness, received an invitation from the local police to leave town, and leave she did.”

  “How was that?”

  “She appeared here first then with an Italian, some sort of prince with a historic name something like Barberini or something similar. A man all in rings and diamonds, and not even fake. They drove around in an astonishing equipage. Mlle Blanche played at trente et quarante,[20] successfully at first, but then luck began to let her down badly; so I recall. I remember one evening she lost a considerable sum. But, worst of all, un beau matin[21] her prince vanished no one knew where; the horses and equipage vanished, everything vanished. The hotel bill was terrible. Mlle Zelmà (instead of Barberini she suddenly turned into Mlle Zelmà) was in the last degree of despair. She howled and shrieked for the whole hotel to hear and tore her dress in rage. A certain Polish count (all traveling Poles are counts) was staying right there in the hotel, and Mlle Zelmà, who was tearing her dress and scratching her face like a cat with her beautiful perfume-washed hands, made a certain impression on him. They talked, and by dinnertime she was comforted. That evening he appeared arm in arm with her in the vauxhall. Mlle Zelmà laughed, as was her custom, quite loudly, and her manner showed a somewhat greater casualness. She entered directly into that category of roulette-playing ladies, who, as they come to the table, will shove a player aside as hard as they can with their shoulder in order to clear a space for themselves. That’s especially chic here among these ladies. You’ve noticed them, of course?”