The Gambler and Other Stories (Penguin ed.)

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  ‘You’ll see … Only I don’t know how I’m going to survive the next twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Sleep well; good night – and remember that I have already put myself into your hands. But your exclamation just now put it so nicely: must one really account for every feeling, even for brotherly sympathy! Do you know, that was put so nicely that I suddenly thought I might confide in you …’

  ‘By all means, but about what? What’s it about?’

  ‘Until tomorrow. Let it be a secret in the meantime. It will be better for you that way; although from a distance it will look like a love story. Maybe I’ll tell you tomorrow and maybe not … I’ll talk with you a bit more first, we’ll get to know each other better …’

  ‘Oh, and tomorrow I’ll tell you everything about myself! But what is this? It’s as though a miracle were happening to me … My God, where am I? Well, tell me, aren’t you glad that you didn’t get angry as another woman would have done and drive me away from the very beginning? Two minutes and you have made me happy forever. Yes! happy; who knows, perhaps you have reconciled me with myself, resolved my doubts … Perhaps such moments overwhelm me … Well, I’ll tell you everything tomorrow, you’ll learn everything about me, everything …’

  ‘Very well, I accept; and you’ll start first …’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Goodbye!’

  ‘Goodbye!’

  And we parted. I walked all night long; I couldn’t make up my mind to go home. I was so happy … until tomorrow!

  THE SECOND NIGHT

  ‘Well, so you survived!’ she said to me, laughing and taking hold of both my hands.

  ‘I’ve been here for two hours already; you have no idea what I’ve been through today!’

  ‘I know, I know … But now to the matter at hand. Do you know why I’ve come? Not to talk nonsense like yesterday, you know. Here’s why: we need to act more sensibly from now on. I thought about all this for a long time last night.’

  ‘But how, how are we to be more sensible? For my part, I’m ready; but really nothing more sensible has ever happened to me in all my life than what is happening now.’

  ‘Is that so? First of all, please don’t squeeze my hands like that; and second, I want to tell you that I thought about you long and hard today.’

  ‘Well, and what conclusion did you reach?’

  ‘Conclusion? I concluded that we must begin all over again, because today I came to the conclusion that I don’t know you at all, that yesterday I acted like a child, like a little girl, and it goes without saying that it turned out that my kind heart was to blame for it all; that is, I praised myself, which is how it always ends when we start examining our actions. And that’s why, in order to correct this mistake, I’ve decided to find out everything I can about you in the most detailed manner. But since there’s no one from whom I can find out anything about you, you must tell me everything yourself, everything that there is to know. Well, what sort of person are you? Quickly – begin, tell me the story of your life.’

  ‘The story of my life!’ I cried out, frightened. ‘My story! But who told you that I have a story to tell? I don’t have a story …’

  ‘But how have you lived if there’s no story?’ she interrupted, smiling.

  ‘Absolutely without stories of any kind! I lived, as they say, on my own, that is, absolutely alone – alone, completely alone – do you understand what it means to be alone?’

  ‘But what do you mean by alone? Do you mean you never see anyone?’

  ‘Oh, no, of course I see people, but nevertheless I am alone.’

  ‘But can it really be that you don’t talk to anyone?’

  ‘Strictly speaking, to nobody.’

  ‘So who are you, then, explain yourself! Wait, I’ll hazard a guess: you probably have a grandmother, like I do. She’s blind, and for as long as I can remember she has never let me go anywhere, so that I’ve practically forgotten how to talk. A couple of years ago I got into a lot of mischief and she saw that she couldn’t control me, so she called me over and pinned my dress to hers with a safety pin – and ever since we sit like that for days on end; she knits a stocking, even though she’s blind; and I sit beside her, sewing or reading a book to her out loud – it’s such a strange way to live, and I’ve been pinned to her like that now for two years already …’

  ‘Oh, my God, how dreadful! But no, I don’t have a grandmother like that.’

  ‘But if you don’t, then how is it that you stay at home? …’

  ‘Listen, do you want to know what sort of person I am?’

  ‘Well, yes, yes!’

  ‘In the strict sense of the word?’

  ‘In the very strictest sense of the word!’

  ‘Well, then, I’m a type.’

  ‘Type, type! What sort of type?’ the girl cried out, laughing as if she had not had a chance to laugh for a whole year. ‘You’re certainly very amusing company! Look: there’s a bench here; let’s sit down! No one walks by here, no one will hear us, and – you can begin your story! Because you won’t succeed in persuading me otherwise, you do have a story, only you’re concealing it. First of all, what is a type?’

  ‘A type? A type is an eccentric, a ridiculous person!’ I answered, and burst out laughing myself in response to her childish laughter. ‘He’s a real character. Listen: do you know what a dreamer is?’

  ‘A dreamer? Excuse me, but of course I do! I’m a dreamer myself! What doesn’t enter my head sometimes when I’m sitting beside my grandmother. Well, then you begin to dream, and you become so lost in your thoughts that before you know it you’re marrying a Chinese prince … But sometimes dreaming is a good thing! But then, God only knows! Particularly if there’s something to think about without dreaming,’ the girl added, quite serious now.

  ‘Excellent! If you’ve been married to a Chinese emperor, that means you’ll understand me perfectly then. Well, listen … But excuse me; I don’t even know your name.’

  ‘At last! You certainly took your time about it!’

  ‘Oh, my goodness! It never entered my head – I was so happy as it was …’

  ‘My name is Nastenka.’

  ‘Nastenka! And that’s all?’

  ‘That’s all! Is that really not enough for you? What an insatiable fellow you are!’

  ‘Not enough? On the contrary, it’s a great deal, a very great deal indeed, Nastenka – you’re a kind girl if you’re Nastenka to me right away!’

  ‘So, there you are!’

  ‘So then, Nastenka, listen to what a ridiculous story this turns out to be.’

  I sat down next to her, assumed a pedantically serious pose and began as though I were reading something that had been written down.

  ‘There are, Nastenka, in case you don’t know, there are rather strange little corners in Petersburg. It’s as if the same sun that shines for all of Petersburg’s people doesn’t even peek into these places, but there is another different, new sun, as if specially ordered for these corners, and it shines on everything with a different, special light. In these corners, dear Nastenka, it’s as if a completely different kind of life is lived, one that doesn’t resemble that which seethes around us, but the kind that might exist in a faraway kingdom, and not among us in our serious, oh so serious times. And it is this life which is a mixture of something purely fantastic, fervently ideal, and at the same time (alas, Nastenka) dully prosaic and ordinary, not to say – incredibly vulgar.’

  ‘Ugh! Good heavens! What an introduction! Whatever will I hear next?’

  ‘You’ll hear, Nastenka (it seems that I shall never tire of calling you Nastenka), you’ll hear that in these corners live strange people – dreamers. A dreamer – if you require a precise definition – is not a man, but some sort of sexless being, you see. For the most part, he makes his home somewhere in an inaccessible corner, as if he were hiding there even from the light of day, and once he goes into hiding, he sticks to his corner, like a snail, or at any rate, he very much re
sembles in this regard that entertaining animal, both animal and house at the same time, which is called a tortoise. What do you think, why does he so love his own four walls, which are certain to be painted green, covered with soot, wretched and unforgivably grimy from tobacco smoke? Why does this ridiculous gentleman, when one of his few acquaintances comes to visit him (and he ends up losing all his acquaintances), why does this ridiculous person greet him with such embarrassment, such a changed countenance and such confusion, as though he had just committed a crime within his four walls, as though he had been forging counterfeit notes or some little poems to be sent to a journal with an anonymous letter in which it is revealed that a true poet has died and that his friend considers it his sacred duty to publish his ditties. Why, tell me, Nastenka, does the conversation between these two interlocutors never get going? Why does neither laughter nor some lively remark fly from the tongue of the completely unexpected and perplexed friend, who in different circumstances likes to laugh a great deal, as well as engage in lively banter, and conversations about the fair sex, and other cheerful subjects? And why, finally, does this friend, probably a recent acquaintance making his first visit – because in this case there will not be a second and the friend won’t come again – why does this friend become so embarrassed, so stiff, all his wit notwithstanding (if indeed he has any) as he looks at the crestfallen face of his host, who in turn has already managed to become completely flustered and utterly muddled after gigantic but futile efforts to smooth over and keep the conversation going, to show his knowledge of the ways of the world, to talk, too, about the fair sex and, at the very least, by such deference to please the poor person who has turned up at the wrong place and mistakenly come to visit him. Why, finally, does the guest suddenly grab his hat and quickly leave, having remembered all of a sudden some very urgent business, which never existed, and somehow or other extricate his hand from the warm handshake of his host, who in every way possible was trying to show his regret and set right that which had been lost? Why does the departing friend chortle as he goes out the door, there and then vowing never to visit this crackpot, even though this crackpot is truly a most excellent fellow; at the same time why can he not deny his imagination the passing fancy of comparing, if only remotely, the physiognomy of his recent interlocutor throughout the entire time of their meeting with the look of an unhappy little kitten, treacherously captured by children who have mauled, frightened and tormented it in every way possible, and which has finally taken refuge from them under a chair, in the dark, and there for an entire hour at its leisure bristles, hisses and washes its aggrieved face with both paws, and for a long time afterwards looks with enmity at nature and life and even at the scraps from his master’s dinner which the compassionate housekeeper had saved for him.’

  ‘Listen,’ interrupted Nastenka, who all this time had been listening to me in amazement, with her eyes and little mouth wide open. ‘Listen: I absolutely do not know why all this happened and why you are putting such ridiculous questions to me; but what I do know for certain is that all these adventures certainly happened to you, word for word.’

  ‘Without a doubt,’ I answered with the most serious expression.

  ‘Well, as there’s no doubt, then continue,’ Nastenka answered, ‘because I very much want to know how it all ends.’

  ‘You want to know, Nastenka, what our hero was doing in his corner – or rather, what I was doing, for the hero of this whole affair is myself – my own humble person; you want to know why I became so alarmed and was flustered for an entire day by the unexpected visit of a friend? You want to know why I was so startled, why I blushed so when the door to my room opened, why I didn’t know how to receive my guest and why I floundered so shamefully under the weight of my own hospitality?’

  ‘Well, yes, yes!’ Nastenka answered. ‘That’s the whole point. Listen: you tell it splendidly, but could you tell it somehow less splendidly? Otherwise, you talk as though you were reading from a book.’

  ‘Nastenka!’ I answered in a dignified and stern voice, scarcely holding back my laughter, ‘dear Nastenka, I know that I am telling it splendidly; I plead guilty – but I don’t know how to tell it differently. Now, dear Nastenka, now I’m like King Solomon’s genie9 trapped in an earthenware urn for a thousand years, under seven seals, and from which these seven seals were at last removed. Now, dear Nastenka, when we have come together again after such a lengthy separation – because I have known you for a long time, Nastenka, because I have long been searching for someone, and that is a sign that I was looking precisely for you and that we were fated to meet now – now in my head thousands of valves have opened and I must set loose this river of words, or I will choke to death. So then, I ask that you not interrupt me, Nastenka, but listen obediently and dutifully; otherwise – I’ll keep my silence.’

  ‘No-no-no! By no means! Speak! I won’t say another word.’

  ‘To continue: there is, my friend Nastenka, in my day one hour that I like exceedingly. It is the hour when almost all business, duties and engagements are coming to an end, and everybody is hurrying home to dinner, to lie down and rest, and there and then, as they’re making their way home, they concoct other cheerful schemes pertaining to the evening, the night and all the rest of their free time. At this hour our hero, too – for allow me, Nastenka, to tell the story in the third person, because it’s terribly embarrassing to tell all this in the first person – so then, at this hour our hero, too, who has also not been idle, walks along behind the others. But a strange sense of pleasure plays on his pale, somewhat rumpled face. With feeling he looks at the sunset, which slowly fades away in the cold Petersburg sky. When I say he looks, I’m lying: he doesn’t look, but he contemplates it somehow without thinking, as if he were tired or preoccupied at the same time with some other more interesting object, so that he can only cursorily, almost involuntarily, spare time for everything around him. He is pleased, because he has finished until tomorrow with the business that he finds irksome, and he is as happy as a schoolboy who has been dismissed from the classroom to his favourite games and mischief. Look at him in profile, Nastenka: you’ll see at once that the joyful feeling fortunately has already begun to have an effect on his weak nerves and morbidly excited imagination. He’s fallen deep in thought about something … Do you think it’s about dinner? About this evening? What is he looking at like that? At that respectable-looking gentleman who bowed so picturesquely to the lady riding past him in a glittering carriage drawn by those frisky horses? No, Nastenka, what does he care now about such trifles? His own particular life has already made him rich; he somehow suddenly became rich, and not in vain did the farewell ray of the dying sun so gaily sparkle before him and call forth an entire swarm of impressions from his warmed heart. Now he scarcely notices the path on which even the most petty trifle would have struck him earlier. Now the “Goddess of Fantasy” (if you have read Zhukovsky,10 dear Nastenka) has already spun her golden warp and begun to fashion before his eyes patterns of a fantastic, marvellous life – and who knows, perhaps with her whimsical hand she has transported him to the seventh crystal heaven11 from the excellent granite sidewalk on which he was walking home. Try stopping him now, and ask him suddenly where he’s standing now, along which streets has he walked. He probably will remember nothing, neither where he was walking, nor where he is now standing, and after blushing with vexation he will certainly tell some lie in order to save face. That’s why he was so taken aback, almost crying out and looking all around in alarm, when a very respectable old woman who had lost her way politely stopped him in the middle of the sidewalk and began to ask him for directions. Frowning with vexation, he carries on walking, scarcely noticing that he has caused more than one passer-by to smile and turn round to look at him as he walked away, and that some little girl, as she timidly made way for him, began to laugh loudly, as she looked wide-eyed at his broad, contemplative smile and gesturing hands. But the same fantasy caught up in its playful flight the old woman, a
nd the curious passers-by, and the laughing girl, and the peasants who were spending their night right there on the barges that crowded the Fontanka (let’s suppose that at this moment our hero was walking along there), and mischievously wove everybody and everything into its canvas, like a fly in a spider’s web, and with this new acquisition the eccentric had entered his comforting lair, sat down to dinner, finished his dinner long ago and only came to when the pensive and eternally doleful Matryona who waits on him had already cleared everything from the table and given him his pipe; he came to and recalled with surprise that he had already had his dinner, but had taken no notice whatsoever how that was accomplished. It had grown dark in the room; his heart feels empty and forlorn; the whole kingdom of dream has collapsed around him, collapsed without a trace, without a sound or fuss – it flew past like a vision, and he himself doesn’t remember what he was dreaming about. But some vague sensation faintly disturbs his breast and causes it to ache, some new desire seductively tickles and excites his fancy and imperceptibly summons a whole swarm of new phantoms. Quiet reigns in the little room; solitude and indolence caress the imagination; it faintly catches fire, it is faintly brought to the boil, like the water in the coffeepot of old Matryona, who placidly potters about next door in the kitchen, as she makes her cook’s coffee. Now it’s already gently breaking through in bursts; now the book, picked up without purpose and at random, is already falling from my dreamer’s hand, without his even getting to the third page. His imagination is once again incited, excited, and suddenly again a new world, a new enchanting life with its glistening vistas flashes before him. A new dream is new happiness! A new dose of exquisite, voluptuous poison! Oh, what does real life have to offer him! In his misdirected view, you and I, Nastenka, live so idly, slowly, sluggishly; in his view, we are all so dissatisfied with our fate, so worn down by our life! And really, as a matter of fact, look how everything at first glance among us is cold, gloomy, indeed wrathful … “The poor things,” my dreamer thinks. And it’s no wonder that he should think so! Look at these magical phantoms that so enchantingly, so whimsically, so boundlessly and broadly take shape before him in such a magical, animated picture, in which the most important figure in the foreground, of course, is he himself, our dreamer, his own dear person. Look, what diverse adventures, what an endless swarm of ecstatic daydreams. You will ask, perhaps, what does he dream about? Why ask that? About everything … about the role of the poet, who at first goes unrecognized, but is later crowned with success; about friendship with Hoffmann; St Bartholomew’s Night, Diana Vernon, the heroic role of Ivan Vasilyevich in the taking of Kazan, Clara Mowbray, Effie Deans, the Council of the Prelates and Huss before them, the rising of the dead in Robert (do you remember the music? It smells of the graveyard!), Minna and Brenda, the battle of Beryozina, the reading of a poem at Countess V.D.’s, Danton, Cleopatra ei suoi amanti, the little house in Kolomna;12 his own little corner, with a dear creature at his side who listens on a winter’s evening, with her little mouth and eyes open, just as you’re listening to me now, my little angel … No, Nastenka, what need has he, this voluptuous sluggard, of this life that you and I desire so? He thinks that this is a poor, pitiful life, not anticipating that perhaps some day the sad hour will strike for him as well, when for a single day of this pitiful life he would give up all of his fantastic years, and give them up not for joy, or for happiness, and without wishing to choose in this hour of sadness, repentance and boundless sorrow. But this terrible time has yet to come – he desires nothing, because he is above desire, because he has everything, because he is sated, because he himself is the artist of his life and he creates it for himself every hour to suit his latest whim. And, you see, this fairy-tale, fantastic world is created so easily, so naturally! As though all this were truly not a phantom! Indeed, he is prepared to believe at certain moments that all of this life is not the excitement of feelings, not a mirage, not a delusion of the imagination, but that it is, indeed, authentic, genuine, real! Why, tell me, Nastenka, oh why, at such moments does one’s breathing become laboured? Why, by what magic, by what mysterious caprice does the pulse quicken, do tears gush forth from the dreamer’s eyes, his pale, moist cheeks burn as his entire being fills with such irresistible delight? Why do whole sleepless nights pass by like a single instant in inexhaustible merriment and happiness, and when the dawn’s rosy ray shines through the windows and the daybreak illumines the gloomy room with its dubious fantastic light, such as we have in Petersburg, why does our dreamer, exhausted and weary, throw himself on his bed and fall asleep, his tormented and overwhelmed spirit trembling with ecstasy, while his heart aches with a sweet agony? Yes, Nastenka, you deceive yourself, and unwittingly and dispassionately believe that it is a genuine, true passion that disturbs his soul, you unwittingly believe that there is something alive and tangible in his incorporeal daydreams! But, you see, it’s all a delusion – take, for example, the love that has pierced his breast with all its inexhaustible joy, with all its wearisome torments … Just look at him and you’ll be convinced! Would you believe, when you look at him, dear Nastenka, that indeed he has never known her whom he loves so in his frenzied daydreams? Can it be that he has only seen her in certain captivating phantoms and only dreamed this passion? Can it really be that they have not spent so many years of their lives together hand in hand – alone, just the two of them, having forsaken the entire world and each uniting their life, their world, with the life of their friend? Can it really be that at this late hour, when the time had come to part, did not she lay there, sobbing and grieving on his breast, not hearing the storm, which was breaking under the bleak sky, or the wind, which plucked and carried away the tears from her black lashes? Can this really all have been a dream – this garden, cheerless, desolate and wild, with paths overgrown with moss, secluded, and gloomy, where they so often would walk together, where they hoped, grieved, loved, loved each other for such a long time, “so long and tenderly”!13 And this strange, ancestral home, in which she had lived for such a long time, secluded and melancholy, with her sullen, old husband, always silent and peevish, who frightened them, while they, timid as children, dolefully and timorously concealed their love from each other? How they suffered, how fearful they were, and how innocent and pure was their love and how (it goes without saying, Nastenka) malicious people were! And, my God, was it really not she he met later, far from the shores of their homeland, under an alien sky, in the torrid South, in the marvellous Eternal City,14 in the brilliance of a ball, to the thunder of music, in a palazzo (it absolutely must be a palazzo), drowned in a sea of lights, on this balcony, wreathed with myrtle and roses, where she, upon recognizing him, so hastily took off her mask and whispered: “I am free”, and trembling, threw herself into his arms, and with a cry of rapture, they embraced, and in an instant they forgot sorrow, separation, all their torments, the gloomy house, the old man, the dismal garden in their distant homeland, the bench on which, with one last passionate kiss, she had torn herself away from his arms, numb from torments of despair … Oh, you must agree, Nastenka, that you would be startled, feel embarrassed and blush like a schoolboy who had just crammed into his pocket an apple stolen from the neighbour’s orchard, if some lanky, hearty lad, a merry fellow and a joker, your uninvited friend, opened your door and shouted out, as if nothing had happened: “And I, my dear fellow, just got back from Pavlovsk!”15 My goodness! The old count has died, ineffable happiness is close at hand – and here people are coming from Pavlovsk!’