I had scarcely left the general when Potapych came to me with a summons from Grandmother. It was eight o’clock and she had just come back from the casino after her final losses. I went to see her: the old woman was sitting in an armchair, utterly exhausted and visibly ill. Marfa had given her a cup of tea which she almost forced her to drink. Both Grandmother’s voice and tone had noticeably changed.
‘Good evening, Alexey Ivanovich,’ she said, bowing her head slowly and imposingly. ‘Forgive me for disturbing you again, please forgive an old woman. I, my friend, left there everything I had, almost a hundred thousand roubles. You were right not to go with me yesterday. I have no money now, not a kopeck. And I do not wish to linger here another minute, I’m leaving at half past nine. I’ve sent for your Englishman – his name is Astley, isn’t it? – and I want to ask him to loan me 3,000 francs for a week. Please persuade him, won’t you, and don’t let him think anything’s wrong and refuse. I’m still quite rich, my friend. I have three villages and two houses. And besides that there’s still some money, I didn’t bring it all with me. I’m telling you this so that he will not have any doubts … Ah, and here he is! One can see he’s a good man.’
Mr Astley had hurried over at Grandmother’s first summons. Without giving it a great deal of thought and without saying much, he immediately counted out 3,000 francs against a promissory note which Grandmother signed. After the business was finished, he took his leave and hurried out.
‘And now you go as well, Alexey Ivanovich. There’s just over an hour left – I want to lie down, my bones ache. Don’t be hard on me, old fool that I am. Now I will no longer accuse young people of being frivolous, and it would also be a sin for me to blame that unhappy general of yours. All the same, I won’t give him the money he wants, because, in my opinion, he’s a complete nincompoop, but then I’m not any smarter than he is, old fool that I am. Truly, God calls the old to account as well and punishes them for their pride. Well, goodbye. Marfusha, help me up.’
I, however, wished to see Grandmother off. Besides, I was in a state of some expectation; I kept waiting for something to happen at any minute. I couldn’t bear staying in my room. I went out into the hallway, and even went for a bit of a walk on the avenue. My letter to her was clear and decisive, and the present catastrophe, of course, was final. I had heard about des Grieux’s departure at the hotel. In the end, if she rejects me as a friend, then perhaps she won’t reject me as a servant. You see, she does need me, if only to run errands; and I might be of use, how could it be otherwise!
When it was time for the train, I ran to the platform and helped Grandmother to her seat. They were all seated in a private family carriage.4 ‘Thank you, my dear, for your unselfish concern,’ she said at parting with me. ‘And mention to Praskovya again what I told her yesterday – I’ll be expecting her.’
I went home. As I walked past the general’s room, I met the nanny and asked about the general. ‘Oh, sir, he’s fine,’ she answered cheerlessly. I went in, however, but in the doorway to the study I stopped in absolute amazement. Mlle Blanche and the general were roaring with laughter about something. Veuve Cominges was sitting right next to them on the sofa. The general, clearly beside himself with joy, was babbling all sorts of nonsense and would burst into prolonged nervous peals of laughter, which transformed his whole face into a myriad of tiny wrinkles, and his eyes would disappear from sight altogether. Later I learned from Blanche herself that, after banishing the prince and learning about the general’s tears, she took it into her head to console him and stopped by to see him for a minute. But the poor general did not know at that moment that his fate had already been decided and that Blanche had begun packing so that she could rush off to Paris on the first morning train.
After standing on the threshold of the general’s study for a bit, I thought better of entering and left unnoticed. After going up to my room and opening the door, I suddenly noticed in the half-darkness the figure of someone sitting on the chair in the corner, by the window. The figure did not get up when I appeared. I quickly walked over, looked and – my breath was taken away: it was Polina!
CHAPTER 14
I actually cried out.
‘What is it? What is it?’ she asked strangely. She was pale and looked gloomy.
‘What do you mean “what is it?” You? Here in my room!’
‘If I come, then I do so wholeheartedly. That’s my way. You’ll see that in a moment; light a candle.’
I lit a candle. She got up, walked over to the table and placed before me a letter that had been unsealed.
‘Read it,’ she ordered.
‘This – this is des Grieux’s handwriting,’ I cried out, seizing the letter. My hands were shaking, and the lines danced before my eyes. I have forgotten the letter’s exact turns of phrase, but here it is – if not word for word, then at the very least, thought for thought.
Mademoiselle – des Grieux wrote – unfortunate circumstances compel me to leave immediately. You, of course, have noticed that I have deliberately avoided a final explanation with you until all the circumstances became clear. The arrival of your old relation (de la vielle dame) and her ridiculous conduct have put an end to all my uncertainties. My own affairs are in disarray, and this forbids me once and for all from nourishing any further the sweet hopes which I had allowed myself to entertain for some time now. I regret the past, but I hope you will not find anything in my conduct unworthy of a gentleman and an honest man (gentilhomme et honnête homme).1 After losing almost all my money in loans to your stepfather, I find myself in urgent need of making use of what I have left: I have already let my friends in Petersburg know that they should immediately arrange for the sale of the property mortgaged to me; knowing, however, that your frivolous stepfather has squandered your own money, I have decided to forgive him 50,000 francs and am returning to him mortgage deeds on his property in that amount, so that you are now in a position to return all that you have lost, after laying claim to your property from him through legal channels. I hope, Mademoiselle, that my action will prove to be quite advantageous for you in the present circumstances. I also hope that with this action I am fulfilling in every respect the duty of an honest and noble man. Rest assured that the memory of you is forever imprinted on my heart.
‘Well then, it’s all clear,’ I said, turning to Polina. ‘Did you really expect anything different?’ I added indignantly.
‘I didn’t expect anything,’ she answered, to all appearances calmly, although there was something of a quaver in her voice. ‘I made up my mind long ago; I read his thoughts and knew what he was thinking. He thought that I was looking for … that I would insist …’ (She stopped, without finishing what she was saying, bit her lip and fell silent.) ‘I deliberately doubled my scorn for him,’ she began again, ‘I waited to see what he would do. If a telegram had come about the inheritance, I would have flung at him what was owed by that idiot (my stepfather) and sent him packing! I have found him loathsome for a long, long time now. Oh, he was not the same man as before, a thousand times not the same one, but now, but now! … Oh, how happy I would be to throw at him now, into his vile face, that 50,000 and spit at him … and rub it in!’
‘But the document, the mortgage deed for 50,000 that he returned, the general must have it now, right? Take it and give it to des Grieux.’
‘Oh, it’s not the same thing, not the same thing at all! …’
‘Yes, true, true, it’s not the same thing! Besides, what can the general do now? What about Grandmother?’ I cried suddenly.
Polina looked at me somewhat absent-mindedly and impatiently.
‘Why Grandmother?’ Polina said with vexation. ‘I can’t go to her … And I don’t want to ask anybody’s forgiveness,’ she added irritably.
‘What’s to be done!’ I cried. ‘And how, well, how could you have loved des Grieux! Oh, the scoundrel, scoundrel! Well, if you want, I’ll kill him in a duel! Where is he now?’
‘He’s in Frankfurt and w
ill stay there for three days.’
‘Just one word from you and I’ll be gone, tomorrow, on the first train!’ I said in some sort of foolish enthusiasm.
She laughed.
‘What if he were to say, first return the 50,000 francs. And why should he fight? … What nonsense!’
‘Well then, where, where are you going to get these 50,000 francs?’ I repeated, grinding my teeth, just as though one might suddenly pick them up from the floor. ‘Look here – what about Mr Astley?’ I asked, turning to her with the beginning of a strange idea.
Her eyes began to sparkle.
‘What, do you really want me to leave you for that Englishman?’ she said, looking me straight in the face with a piercing stare and a bitter smile. It was the first time that she had addressed me with the familiar ‘you’.
I think that at that moment her head began spinning from the excitement, and she suddenly sat down on the sofa, as if she were utterly exhausted.
It was as if I had been struck by lightning; I stood there and didn’t believe my eyes, I didn’t believe my ears! Why, that means she loves me! She came to me, and not to Mr Astley! She, alone, a girl, had come to my room, in a hotel – which means that she had compromised herself in society’s eyes – and I, I was standing before her and still didn’t understand!
A wild idea flashed through my head.
‘Polina! give me just one hour! Wait here for just an hour and … I will return! This … this is essential! You’ll see! Stay here, stay here!’
And I ran out of the room, without answering her surprised, questioning look; she cried out something after me, but I didn’t turn back.
Yes, sometimes the wildest idea, which looks like the most impossible idea, becomes so firmly entrenched in your head that in the end you take it to be something realizable … Moreover, if the idea is combined with a strong, passionate desire, then perhaps sometimes you take it in the end to be something fated, necessary, predestined, something that cannot but exist and come to be! Perhaps there’s some reason here as well, some sort of combination of presentiments, some unusual force of will, that is becoming poisoned by your own fantasy or something else – I don’t know; but something miraculous happened to me that evening (which I will never forget as long as I live). Even though it is completely supported by simple arithmetic, nevertheless I still find it to be something miraculous. And why, why had this certainty lodged itself inside me then so deeply, and for such a long time? To be sure, I used to think about it – I repeat – not as about an event that might happen among other things (and consequently, that might not happen), but as something that could not but come about!
It was a quarter past ten; I entered the casino with such firm hopes and at the same time such agitation, the likes of which I had never experienced. There were still rather a lot of people in the gaming rooms, though less than half as many as in the morning.
After ten o’clock it’s the genuine, desperate gamblers who remain at the gaming tables, those for whom roulette is the only thing that exists at the spa, who came only for that, who hardly notice what’s happening around them, and who are interested in nothing else all season long, but only play from morning till night, and who very likely would be more than ready to play all night long until dawn, if that were possible. And they always leave with annoyance when the roulette closes at midnight. And when the head croupier calls out around twelve o’clock before the roulette closes: ‘Les trois derniers coups, messieurs!’,2 they are sometimes prepared to stake on those three last turns everything they have in their pockets – indeed, this is when they lose most of their money. I made my way over to the same table where Grandmother had sat earlier. It wasn’t very crowded, so I soon found a place to stand at the table. Directly in front of me, on the green cloth, was written the word ‘passe’. ‘Passe’ is the series of numbers from nineteen to thirty-six inclusive. The first series, from one to eighteen inclusive, is called ‘manque’. But what did I care about that? I wasn’t making any calculations, I didn’t hear what number had come up in the last round nor did I even ask when I began playing, as the least shrewd gambler would have done. I took all my twenty friedrichs d’or from my pocket and threw them down on passe, which happened to lay before me.
‘Vingt-deux!’ the croupier called out.
I’d won – and once again I staked everything: both what I had before and my winnings.
‘Trente et un,’3 the croupier trumpeted. Another win! That meant I now had eighty friedrichs d’or in all! I moved all eighty to the twelve middle numbers (I’d triple my winnings, but with the odds two to one against me) – the wheel started spinning and it came up twenty-four. They spread before me three rolls of 50 friedrichs d’or each and ten gold coins; all in all, counting what I had before, I now found myself with 200 friedrichs d’or.
Feeling as though I had a fever, I moved this entire pile of money on to red – and suddenly I came to my senses! And only this once during the whole of the evening, during all the time that I was playing, did fear course through me like a chill and cause my arms and legs to tremble. I sensed with horror and for an instant realized: what it would mean for me to lose now! My whole life was at stake!
‘Rouge!’ the croupier cried – and I took a deep breath, fiery pins and needles ran up and down my body. I was paid in banknotes; that meant I already had 4,000 florins and 80 friedrichs d’or! (I could still keep track of the total at this time.)
Next, I remember, I staked 2,000 florins on the middle twelve numbers again and I lost; I staked my gold and 80 friedrichs d’or and lost. I was consumed with rage: I snatched up the last remaining 2,000 florins and staked them on the first twelve numbers – haphazard, on the off chance, to no purpose, without any calculation! However, there was one moment of anticipation, similar perhaps to the sensation experienced by Madame Blanchard in Paris as she plummeted to the earth from a balloon.4
‘Quatre!’5 the croupier cried. In all, with my previous stake, I again found myself with 6,000 florins. I already looked like a conqueror, I was afraid of nothing, absolutely nothing, and I flung down four 4,000 florins on black. Some nine others, following my example, also rushed to stake black. The croupiers exchanged glances and conferred with one another. All around me people were talking and waiting.
It came up black. I no longer remember my calculations or the sequence of my stakes after this. I only remember, as if in a dream, that I had already won, I believe, some 16,000 florins; suddenly, after three unlucky rounds I squandered twelve of them; then I moved the last 4,000 to passe (but feeling almost nothing as I did so; I merely waited, somehow mechanically, without thinking) – and I won again; then I won another four times in a row. I remember only that I was raking in money by the thousands; I also recall that the twelve middle numbers came up more frequently than the rest, and I kept to them. They came up with some sort of regularity – without fail three or four times in a row, and then would disappear for two times, and then start up once again three or four times in a row. This astonishing regularity is sometimes encountered in streaks – and it’s this that confuses inveterate gamblers who tot up their calculations with pencil in hand. And what terrible mockeries of fate sometimes take place here!
I don’t think that more than half an hour had passed since my arrival. Suddenly the croupier informed me that I had won 30,000 florins, and since the bank could not be responsible for more than that at one time, this meant that the table would be closed until the following morning. I snatched up all my gold and dropped it into my pockets, I snatched up all the banknotes and immediately moved to another table in another room where there was another game of roulette; the whole crowd surged after me; a place was immediately cleared for me, and I once again began staking haphazardly and without calculating. I don’t know what saved me!
Sometimes, however, glimmerings of calculation began to flash through my head. I would become attached to some numbers and odds, but I would soon abandon them and was staking again almost unconscio
usly. I must have been very absent-minded; I remember that the croupiers corrected the way I was playing several times. I made outrageous mistakes. My temples were wet with sweat and my hands were shaking. Some little Poles came running up to offer their services, but I didn’t listen to anybody. My luck was holding! Suddenly loud talk and laughter broke out all around me. ‘Bravo, bravo!’ everybody shouted, some even clapped. I broke the bank here as well with 30,000 florins, and it too was closed until the following day!
‘Leave, leave,’ somebody’s voice whispered to me on my right. It was a Frankfurt Jew; he had been standing next to me the whole time and, I think, had sometimes helped me play.
‘For goodness’ sake, leave,’ another voice whispered in my left ear. I glanced around quickly. It was a quite modestly and decently dressed lady, about thirty, with a somewhat sickly-pale and weary face, but which even now bore traces of its former marvellous beauty. At that moment I was stuffing my pockets with banknotes, which I simply crumpled up, and gathering up the remaining gold coins from the table. When I picked up the last roll of fifty friedrichs d’or, I managed, completely unobserved, to thrust it into the pale lady’s hand; I wanted terribly to do this then, and her slender, thin little fingers, I remember, pressed my hand firmly in token of warmest gratitude. All this happened in an instant.
After gathering up everything, I quickly moved over to the trente et quarante.
The aristocratic clientele plays trente et quarante. This is not roulette, but cards. Here the bank is responsible for a hundred thousand thalers at once. The largest stake is also 4,000 florins. I did not know the game at all and hardly knew a single stake, besides red and black, which they have here as well. And so I stuck to those. The whole casino crowded round. I don’t remember whether I even once gave a thought to Polina all this time. I felt then an irresistible delight in grabbing and raking up the banknotes which were piling up in front of me.
The Gambler and Other Stories (Penguin ed.) Page 31