The Gambler and Other Stories (Penguin ed.)

by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

  ‘Perhaps that’s why you’re counting on buying me with money,’ she said, ‘because you don’t believe in my nobleness.’

  ‘When did I count on buying you with money?’ I cried.

  ‘You’ve been letting your tongue get away from you so that you’ve lost the thread of what you were saying. You were thinking of buying my respect with your money, if not me.’

  ‘Oh, no, that’s not it at all. I told you that I found it difficult to explain myself. You’re overwhelming me. Don’t be angry with my chatter. You understand why you can’t be angry with me: I’m simply mad. But then, it’s all the same to me, even if you do get angry. All I need to do up there, in my little closet of a room, is remember and imagine merely the rustling of your dress, and I’m ready to gnaw my hands off. And why are you angry with me? Because I called myself your slave? Make use of my slavery, make use of it! Do you know that some day I will kill you? I won’t kill you because I have stopped loving you or because I’m jealous of you, but I’ll kill you simply because sometimes I want to devour you. You laugh …’

  ‘I’m not laughing at all,’ she said angrily. ‘I order you to be silent.’

  She stopped, breathless with anger. My God! I don’t know whether she was pretty or not, but I have always liked looking at her when she would stop like that in front of me, and that was why I often liked to provoke her anger. Perhaps she had noticed this and became angry on purpose. I told her this.

  ‘What filth!’ she exclaimed with disgust.

  ‘It’s all the same to me,’ I continued. ‘Do you also know that it’s dangerous for the two of us to walk together: many times I have been irresistibly tempted to beat you, disfigure you, strangle you. And do you think that it won’t come to that? You’ll drive me mad. You can’t think that I’m afraid of a scandal? Or your anger? What’s your anger to me? I love without hope, and I know that after this I will love you a thousand times more. If I kill you some day, I’ll have to kill myself as well, you know; but I’ll put off killing myself as long as possible so that I can feel the unbearable pain of being without you. Do you want to know something incredible? I love you more with every passing day, and that’s all but impossible, you know. And how can I not be a fatalist after that? Do you remember the day before yesterday, on the Schlangenberg, I whispered to you, after being provoked by you: “Say the word and I’ll jump into the abyss.” If you had said the word, I would have jumped then. Do you really not believe that I would have jumped?’

  ‘What foolish chatter!’ she cried.

  ‘I don’t care whether it’s stupid or clever,’ I cried. ‘I know that when I’m with you I need to talk, talk, talk – and I do talk. I lose all self-respect when I’m with you – and I don’t care.’

  ‘Why should I make you jump off the Schlangenberg?’ she said coldly, and in a particularly insulting manner. ‘It would be absolutely of no use to me.’

  ‘Splendid!’ I cried, ‘you uttered that splendid “no use” on purpose, in order to crush me. I can see through you. No use, you say? But, you know, pleasure is always useful, and a wild boundless power – even over a fly – is also a pleasure, you know, in its own way. Man is a despot by nature and loves to be a tormentor. You like it terribly.’

  I remember that she was scrutinizing me particularly intently. My face must have expressed all my incoherent and absurd feelings then. I recall that our conversation then really went almost word for word as I have described it here. My eyes had become bloodshot. Foam caked the corners of my mouth. And as for the Schlangenberg, I swear on my honour even now: if she had ordered me to throw myself down, I would have done it! If she had said it simply as a joke, or with scorn, or if she had said it with a jeer, even then I would have jumped!

  ‘No, why, I believe you,’ she pronounced, but in a way that only she knows how sometimes to speak, with such scorn and malice, with such arrogance that, my God, at that moment I could have killed her. She was taking a chance. I had not lied when I told her about that.

  ‘You’re not a coward?’ she asked me suddenly.

  ‘I don’t know, perhaps I am a coward. I don’t know … I haven’t thought about that for a long time.’

  ‘If I were to say to you: kill this man – would you kill him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whomever I want.’

  ‘The Frenchman?’

  ‘Don’t ask questions, but answer me – whomever I tell you. I want to know: were you speaking seriously just now?’ She waited for her answer so seriously and with such impatience that I started feeling somehow strange.

  ‘But will you tell me, finally, what’s going on here!’ I cried. ‘What’s wrong, are you afraid of me? I can see for myself that everything’s in a muddle here. You’re the stepdaughter of a man who’s ruined and gone mad, poisoned by passion for that she-devil – Blanche; then there’s that Frenchman, with his mysterious influence on you and – now you are seriously asking me … a question like that. At least let me know; otherwise I’ll go mad here and do something. Or are you ashamed to confer upon me such candour? But surely you can’t be ashamed with me?’

  ‘That isn’t at all what I’m talking to you about. I asked you a question and am waiting for your answer.’

  ‘It goes without saying, I’d kill,’ I cried, ‘whomever you ordered me to, but surely you can’t … surely you won’t order me to do that?’

  ‘And what do you think, that I’ll spare you? I’ll give the order and remain on the sidelines. Could you bear that? But of course not, how could you! You perhaps would kill if ordered to do so, but then you would come and kill me for daring to send you.’

  It was as if something had hit me on the head when I heard those words. Of course, even then I considered her question to be something of a joke, a challenge; but nevertheless she had uttered it too seriously. Nevertheless, I was struck that she had spoken out like that, that she maintained such rights over me, that she would consent to wield such power over me, and say so frankly: ‘Go to your ruin, while I remain on the sidelines.’ There was something so cynical and candid in these words that, in my opinion, it went too far. Was that, then, how she regarded me now? It had already gone beyond slavery and being a nonentity. A view like that raises a person to your own level. And however absurd, however improbable our whole conversation may have been, my heart was pounding.

  Suddenly she burst out laughing. We were sitting on a bench then, the children playing before us, just opposite the place where carriages would stop and let people off in the avenue in front of the casino.

  ‘Do you see that fat baroness?’ she cried. ‘That’s Baroness Wurmerhelm.3 She only arrived the day before yesterday. Do you see her husband: the tall, gaunt Prussian holding a walking stick? Do you remember how he looked us over the day before yesterday? Off you go now, walk up to the baroness, take off your hat and say something to her in French.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘You swore that you would jump off the Schlangenberg; you swear that you are prepared to kill if I give the order. Instead of all these killings and tragedies I just want to have a laugh. Off you go now – no excuses. I want to see the baron beat you with his stick.’

  ‘Are you challenging me: do you think that I won’t do it?’

  ‘Yes, I’m challenging you; off you go, it’s what I want!’

  ‘As you wish, I’m going, though it’s a preposterous fancy. There’s only one thing – won’t there be some unpleasantness for the general, and through him for you as well? By God, I’m not worrying about myself, but about you – well and about the general too. And what sort of fancy is this to insult a woman for no reason?’

  ‘No, I can see you’re nothing but a chatterbox,’ she said scornfully. ‘Your eyes just now were bloodshot, but perhaps that was from drinking too much wine at dinner. Do you really think that I don’t understand myself that it’s both stupid and vulgar and that the general will be furious? I simply want to have a laugh. Well, I want to and that’s all there is to it!
And why should you insult a woman? So that you get beaten with a stick all the sooner.’

  I turned around and set off in silence to carry out her commission. Of course it was stupid and of course I didn’t know how to get myself out of it, but when I started walking towards the baroness, I remember, it was as if something were egging me on; to wit, the idea of acting like a naughty schoolboy. And I was terribly overwrought, as if I were drunk.

  CHAPTER 6

  Two days have passed now since that stupid day. And what shouts, rows, explanations, rumbles! And what a brouhaha it’s all been, what wrangling, stupidity and vulgarity – and I’m the cause of it all. But then again, sometimes it is funny – at least to me. I’m unable to comprehend what has happened to me; am I in fact in a state of frenzy or have I simply lost my bearings and am I going to wreak havoc until they tie me up? At times it seems that I’m losing my mind. At times it seems that I’m not all that far removed from childhood, from the school desk, and that I’m simply behaving like a naughty schoolboy.

  It’s Polina, it’s all Polina! Perhaps there wouldn’t be any schoolboy pranks if it weren’t for her. Who knows, perhaps I do all this out of despair (no matter how stupid it is to think like that). And I don’t understand, I don’t understand what’s good about her! Yes, she’s rather good-looking; I think she’s good-looking. After all, she drives other men out of their mind. She’s tall and svelte. Only she’s very thin. I think you could tie her in a knot or bend her double. Her footprint is very narrow and long – it’s tormenting. Truly tormenting. Her hair has a reddish tint. Her eyes are real cat’s eyes, but how proudly and haughtily she can use them. One evening about four months ago, when I had just come here, she was talking heatedly and for a long time in the drawing room with des Grieux. And she looked at him in such a way … that later when I went to my room to go to bed, I could imagine that she had given him a slap – that she had just done it to him, and stood there in front of him looking at him … It was from that evening that I loved her.

  However, to business.

  I walked down the path to the avenue, stood in the middle of it and waited for the baroness and baron. At a distance of five paces, I took off my hat and made a bow.

  I remember that the baroness was dressed in a light-grey silk dress of immense circumference, with flounces, a crinoline and a train. She is quite short and exceptionally fat, with a double chin so terribly fat you can’t see her neck at all. Her face is crimson. Her eyes are small, malevolent and insolent. She walks as though she were bestowing an honour on everyone. The baron is gaunt, tall. His face, as is usual with Germans, is lopsided and covered with a thousand tiny wrinkles; he wears glasses; he’s about forty-five years old. His legs begin practically right from his chest; that means he has breeding. He’s as proud as a peacock. A bit clumsy. There’s something sheep-like about his face, which in its own way might pass for profundity.

  All this flashed before my eyes in a matter of three seconds.

  My bow and my hat in my hands at first scarcely caught their attention. Only the baron arched his eyebrows slightly. The baroness kept sailing straight at me.

  ‘Madame la baronne,’ I pronounced loudly and clearly, rapping out each word, ‘j’ai l’honneur d’être votre esclave.’1

  Then I made a bow, put on my hat and walked past the baron, politely turning my face to him and smiling.

  I had been ordered to take off my hat, but bowing and playing the naughty schoolboy was my own idea. The devil only knows what urged me on. It’s as if I was hurtling down from a mountain.

  ‘Hein!’2 the baron cried, or rather, wheezed, turning towards me with angry surprise.

  I turned around and came to a stop in polite expectation, as I continued to look at him and smile. He was evidently perplexed and raised his eyebrows nec plus ultra.3 His face grew darker and darker. The baroness also turned in my direction and also looked at me in furious bewilderment. Some of the passers-by began to gawk. Some even stopped.

  ‘Hein!’ the baron wheezed again, with a redoubled wheeze and with redoubled fury.

  ‘Jawohl,’ I drawled, as I continued to look him straight in the eye.

  ‘Sind Sie resend?’4 he shouted, waving his stick and, it seems, beginning to cower a bit. Perhaps he was baffled by my clothes. I was very decently, even foppishly, dressed, like a man who clearly belongs to the most respectable society.

  ‘Jawo-o-ohl!’ I shouted suddenly with all my might, drawling out the ‘o’ like Berliners do, who constantly use the word jawohl in conversation, drawling out the letter ‘o’ more or less, to express different nuances of ideas and feelings.

  The baron and the baroness quickly turned around and almost ran away from me in fright. Some of the onlookers began to talk, while others looked at me in bewilderment. However, I don’t remember it very clearly.

  I turned around and started walking at my normal pace towards Polina Alexandrovna. But when I was still about a hundred paces from her bench, I saw that she had got up and set off to the hotel with the children.

  I caught up with her on the porch.

  ‘I carried out … your folly,’ I said, as I came up beside her.

  ‘Well, what of it? Now get yourself out of it,’ she answered, without even a glance in my direction, and went up the stairs.

  I spent all that evening walking in the park. I even walked across the park and then through a forest into another principality. In a cottage I ate some fried eggs and drank wine – for this idyll they extorted a whole thaler and a half from me.

  I didn’t return home until eleven o’clock. I was immediately summoned to the general.

  Our party occupies two suites in the hotel; they have four rooms in all. The first, a large room, is the salon and has a piano. Adjacent to it is another large room, which is the general’s study. He was waiting for me there, standing in the middle of his study in an extremely majestic pose. Des Grieux was sprawled out on the sofa.

  ‘Allow me to ask you, my dear sir, what have you been up to?’ the general began, addressing me.

  ‘I would like you to get straight to the point, General,’ I said. ‘You no doubt wish to speak about my encounter today with a certain German?’

  ‘A certain German?! That German is Baron Wurmerhelm and a very important person, sir! You have behaved rudely to him and the baroness.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘You frightened them, my dear sir,’ the general shouted.

  ‘Not in the least. When I was in Berlin my ears started ringing with this jawohl that they repeat after every word and which they drawl out so disgustingly. When I came upon them in the avenue, this jawohl suddenly came to mind, I don’t know why, and made me irritable … And besides that the baroness, as she has already done three times upon meeting me, has a habit of making straight for me, as if I were some worm that can be trampled underfoot. You must agree that I, too, may have my pride. I took off my hat and politely (I assure you that it was politely) said: “Madame, j’ai l’honneur d’être votre esclave.” When the baron turned around and shouted, “Hein!” – suddenly something induced me to also shout “Jawohl!” I shouted it twice: the first time in a normal voice, and the second time I drawled it out with all my might. And that’s all there is to it.’

  I must confess that I was terribly happy with this extremely childish explanation. I myself was surprised how much I wanted to spin out this story with as many absurdities as possible.

  And the further along I went, the more I developed a taste for it.

  ‘Are you making fun of me, is that it?’ the general shouted. He turned to the Frenchman and explained in French that I was definitely asking for a scandal. Des Grieux grinned contemptuously and shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘Oh, don’t think anything of the kind, it wasn’t that at all!’ I exclaimed to the general. ‘Of course, I behaved badly, and I admit that to you in all sincerity. My behaviour might even be called a stupid and unseemly schoolboy’s prank, but nothing more. And you should k
now, General, that I very much repent my actions. But there is one circumstance here that in my view almost absolves me even from repentance. Recently, for the last two or even three weeks, I have not been feeling well: I’m sick, nervous, irritable, fantastic, and on certain occasions I’ve completely lost all self-control. Indeed, sometimes I’ve wanted terribly to turn to the Marquis des Grieux suddenly and … However, there’s no point in finishing what I was going to say; he might take offence. In a word, these are symptoms of an illness. I don’t know whether Baroness Wurmerhelm will take this circumstance into consideration when I apologize to her (because I do intend to apologize). I don’t suppose she will, all the more so because as I understand it lawyers have started abusing this circumstance of late in the courts: in criminal trials they all too often have begun justifying their clients – the criminals – by the fact that they didn’t remember anything at the moment the crime was committed and that it was apparently some kind of illness. “He beat him,” they say, “but he doesn’t remember a thing.” And just imagine, General, medicine supports them – our medical men actually attest to the fact that there is an illness like this, a temporary insanity, when a person remembers almost nothing, or remembers only half, or a quarter. But the baron and baroness are people of the old generation, and Prussian junkers5 and landowners at that. They probably are still unaware of this progress in the legal and medical worlds, and therefore they won’t accept my explanation. What do you think, General?’

  ‘Enough, sir!’ the general uttered sharply and with restrained indignation. ‘Enough! I will try, once and for all, to rid myself of your schoolboy pranks. You will not apologize to the baron and baroness. Any dealings with you, even though it were to consist solely of your asking their forgiveness, would be too degrading for them. The baron, upon learning that you belong to my household, has already had a talk with me in the casino, and I must admit that had it gone a little further he would have demanded satisfaction from me. Do you understand what I – I – have been subjected to, my dear sir? I, sir, was forced to apologize to the baron and gave him my word that you would immediately, as of today, cease to be a member of my house-hold …’