The Greatest Russian Stories of Crime and Suspense

by Otto Penzler

  At the table a man unlike ordinary people was sitting motionless. He was a skeleton with the skin drawn tight over his bones, with long curls like a woman’s and a shaggy beard. His face was yellow with an earthy tint in it, his cheeks were hollow, his back long and narrow, and the hand on which his shaggy head was propped was so thin and delicate that it was dreadful to look at it. His hair was already streaked with silver, and seeing his emaciated, aged-looking face, no one would have believed that he was only forty. He was asleep.… In front of his bowed head there lay on the table a sheet of paper on which there was something written in fine handwriting.

  “Poor creature!” thought the banker, “he is asleep and most likely dreaming of the millions. And I have only to take this half-dead man, throw him on the bed, stifle him a little with the pillow, and the most conscientious expert would find no sign of a violent death. But let us first read what he has written here.…”

  The banker took the page from the table and read as follows:

  “To-morrow at twelve o’clock I regain my freedom and the right to associate with other men, but before I leave this room and see the sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to you. With a clear conscience I tell you, as before God, who beholds me, that I despise freedom and life and health, and all that in your books is called the good things of the world.

  “For fifteen years I have been intently studying earthly life. It is true I have not seen the earth nor men, but in your books I have drunk fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted stags and wild boars in the forests, have loved women.… Beauties as ethereal as clouds, created by the magic of your poets and geniuses, have visited me at night, and have whispered in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a whirl. In your books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz and Mont Blanc, and from there I have seen the sun rise and have watched it at evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops with gold and crimson. I have watched from there the lightning flashing over my head and cleaving the storm-clouds. I have seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns. I have heard the singing of the sirens, and the strains of the shepherds’ pipes; I have touched the wings of comely devils who flew down to converse with me of God.… In your books I have flung myself into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms.…

  “Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting thought of man has created in the ages is compressed into a small compass in my brain. I know that I am wiser than all of you.

  “And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe.

  “You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if, owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don’t want to understand you.

  “To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I renounce the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact.…”

  When the banker had read this he laid the page on the table, kissed the strange man on the head, and went out of the lodge, weeping. At no other time, even when he had lost heavily on the Stock Exchange, had he felt so great a contempt for himself. When he got home he lay on his bed, but his tears and emotion kept him for hours from sleeping.

  Next morning the watchmen ran in with pale faces, and told him they had seen the man who lived in the lodge climb out of the window into the garden, go to the gate, and disappear. The banker went at once with the servants to the lodge and made sure of the flight of his prisoner. To avoid arousing unnecessary talk, he took from the table the writing in which the millions were renounced, and when he got home locked it up in the fireproof safe.

  ALEXANDER PUSHKIN

  THE QUEEN OF SPADES

  Admired by Russians as the greatest poet the country ever produced, Alexander Sergevich Pushkin (1799–1837) led a less than successful life. Although born to a noble family on his father’s side, most of the money had been lost over the centuries so the family was merely minor nobility. On his mother’s side, his great grandfather was the son of an Abyssinian prince, and Pushkin was interested enough in his heritage to begin work on a long novel about his ancestor titled The Negro of Peter the Great. He led a relatively liberal and dissolute early life, followed by minor government positions and exile. He was killed when he challenged a young French nobleman who engaged in a flirtation with his pretty young wife to a duel.

  In spite of his wild youth, there was no denying Pushkin’s genius, as his first poem was published in the most influential Russian literary magazine when he was barely fifteen. Among his greatest poetic successes were Rusland and Ludmila (1820), a romance in the form of a fairy tale; The Prisoner of the Caucasus (1821), which was heavily influenced by Byron; and The Gypsies (1824), about a young Russian seeking freedom and, when he finds it, his unwillingness to allow it to others. His masterpiece, Eugene Onegin, was begun in 1823 and was completed in eight cantos in 1830. While writing his epic poem, he wrote his most famous work, the play Boris Godunov (1825), about the difficult Russian history after the death of Ivan the Terrible. Later in life, he began to produce prose works in a clear and simple style, many of which have as their theme the notion of unpredictable fate.

  Pushkin’s most famous and often reprinted story is “The Queen of Spades,” a powerful tale of self-destructive greed. It was first published in Russia in 1833; its first English translation was published in Chambers’ Papers in 1850. It was made into an opera by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky which premiered in St. Petersburg in 1890.

  At the house of Naroumov, a cavalry officer, the long winter night had been passed in gambling. At five in the morning breakfast was served to the weary players. The winners ate with relish; the losers, on the contrary, pushed back their plates and sat brooding gloomily. Under the influence of the good wine, however, the conversation then became general.

  “Well, Sourine?” said the host inquiringly.

  “Oh, I lost as usual. My luck is abominable. No matter how cool I keep, I never win.”

  “How is it, Herman, that you never touch a card?” remarked one of the men, addressing a young officer of the Engineering Corps. “Here you are with the rest of us at five o’clock in the morning, and you have neither played nor bet all night.”

  “Play interests me greatly,” replied the person addressed, “but I hardly care to sacrifice the necessaries of life for uncertain superfluities.”

  “Herman is a German, therefore economical; that explains it,” said Tomsky. “But the person I can’t quite understand is my grandmother, the Countess Anna Fedorovna.”

  “Why?” inquired a chorus of voices.

  “I can’t understand why my grandmother never gambles.”

  “I don’t see anything very striking in the fact that a woman of eighty refuses to gamble,” objected Naroumov.

  “Have you never heard her story?”

  “No—”

  “Well, then, listen to it. To begin with, sixty years ago my grandmother went to Paris, where she was all the fashion. People crowded each other in the streets to get a chance to see the ‘Muscovite Venus,’ as she was called. All the great ladies played faro, then. On one occasion, while playing with the Duke of Orleans, she lost an enormous sum. She told her husband of the debt, but he refused outright to pay it. Nothing could induce him to change his mind on the subject, and grandmother was at her
wits’ ends. Finally, she remembered a friend of hers, Count Saint-Germain. You must have heard of him, as many wonderful stories have been told about him. He is said to have discovered the elixir of life, the philosopher’s stone, and many other equally marvelous things. He had money at his disposal, and my grandmother knew it. She sent him a note asking him to come to see her. He obeyed her summons and found her in great distress. She painted the cruelty of her husband in the darkest colors, and ended by telling the Count that she depended upon his friendship and generosity.

  “‘I could lend you the money,’ replied the Count, after a moment of thoughtfulness, ‘but I know that you would not enjoy a moment’s rest until you had returned it; it would only add to your embarrassment. There is another way of freeing yourself.’

  “‘But I have no money at all,’ insisted my grandmother.

  “‘There is no need of money. Listen to me.’

  “The Count then told her a secret which any of us would give a good deal to know.”

  The young gamesters were all attention. Tomsky lit his pipe, took a few whiffs, then continued:

  “The next evening, grandmother appeared at Versailles at the Queen’s gaming-table. The Duke of Orleans was the dealer. Grandmother made some excuse for not having brought any money, and began to punt. She chose three cards in succession, again and again, winning every time, and was soon out of debt.”

  “A fable,” remarked Herman; “perhaps the cards were marked.”

  “I hardly think so,” replied Tomsky, with an air of importance.

  “So you have a grandmother who knows three winning cards, and you haven’t found out the magic secret.”

  “I must say I have not. She had four sons, one of them being my father, all of whom are devoted to play; she never told the secret to one of them. But my uncle told me this much, on his word of honor. Tchaplitzky, who died in poverty after having squandered millions, lost at one time, at play, nearly three hundred thousand rubles. He was desperate and grandmother took pity on him. She told him the three cards, making him swear never to use them again. He returned to the game, staked fifty thousand rubles on each card, and came out ahead, after paying his debts.”

  As day was dawning the party now broke up, each one draining his glass and taking his leave.

  The Countess Anna Fedorovna was seated before her mirror in her dressing-room. Three women were assisting at her toilet. The old Countess no longer made the slightest pretensions to beauty, but she still clung to all the habits of her youth, and spent as much time at her toilet as she had done sixty years before. At the window a young girl, her ward, sat at her needlework.

  “Good afternoon, grandmother,” cried a young officer, who had just entered the room. “I have come to ask a favor of you.”

  “What, Pavel?”

  “I want to be allowed to present one of my friends to you, and to take you to the ball on Tuesday night.”

  “Take me to the ball and present him to me there.”

  After a few more remarks the officer walked up to the window where Lisaveta Ivanovna sat.

  “Whom do you wish to present?” asked the girl.

  “Naroumov; do you know him?”

  “No; is he a soldier?”

  “Yes.”

  “An engineer?”

  “No; why do you ask?”

  The girl smiled and made no reply.

  Pavel Tomsky took his leave, and, left to herself, Lisaveta glanced out of the window. Soon, a young officer appeared at the corner of the street; the girl blushed and bent her head low over her canvas.

  This appearance of the officer had become a daily occurrence. The man was totally unknown to her, and as she was not accustomed to coquetting with the soldiers she saw on the street, she hardly knew how to explain his presence. His persistence finally roused an interest entirely strange to her. One day, she even ventured to smile upon her admirer, for such he seemed to be.

  The reader need hardly be told that the officer was no other than Herman, the would-be gambler, whose imagination had been strongly excited by the story told by Tomsky of the three magic cards.

  “Ah,” he thought, “if the old Countess would only reveal the secret to me. Why not try to win her good-will and appeal to her sympathy?”

  With this idea in mind, he took up his daily station before the house, watching the pretty face at the window, and trusting to fate to bring about the desired acquaintance.

  One day, as Lisaveta was standing on the pavement about to enter the carriage after the Countess, she felt herself jostled and a note was thrust into her hand. Turning, she saw the young officer at her elbow. As quick as thought, she put the note in her glove and entered the carriage. On her return from the drive, she hastened to her chamber to read the missive, in a state of excitement mingled with fear. It was a tender and respectful declaration of affection, copied word for word from a German novel. Of this fact, Lisa was, of course, ignorant.

  The young girl was much impressed by the missive, but she felt that the writer must not be encouraged. She therefore wrote a few lines of explanation and, at the first opportunity, dropped it, with the letter, out of the window. The officer hastily crossed the street, picked up the papers and entered a shop to read them.

  In no wise daunted by this rebuff, he found the opportunity to send her another note in a few days. He received no reply, but, evidently understanding the female heart, he persevered, begging for an interview. He was rewarded at last by the following:

  “To-night we go to the ambassador’s ball. We shall remain until two o’clock. I can arrange for a meeting in this way. After our departure, the servants will probably all go out, or go to sleep. At half-past eleven enter the vestibule boldly, and if you see any one, inquire for the Countess; if not, ascend the stairs, turn to the left and go on until you come to a door, which opens into her bedchamber. Enter this room and behind a screen you will find another door leading to a corridor; from this a spiral staircase leads to my sitting-room. I shall expect to find you there on my return.”

  Herman trembled like a leaf as the appointed hour drew near. He obeyed instructions fully, and, as he met no one, he reached the old lady’s bedchamber without difficulty. Instead of going out of the small door behind the screen, however, he concealed himself in a closet to await the return of the old Countess.

  The hours dragged slowly by; at last he heard the sound of wheels. Immediately lamps were lighted and servants began moving about. Finally the old woman tottered into the room, completely exhausted. Her women removed her wraps and proceeded to get her in readiness for the night. Herman watched the proceedings with a curiosity not unmingled with superstitious fear. When at last she was attired in cap and gown, the old woman looked less uncanny than when she wore her ball-dress of blue brocade.

  She sat down in an easy chair beside a table, as she was in the habit of doing before retiring, and her women withdrew. As the old lady sat swaying to and fro, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings, Herman crept out of his hiding-place.

  At the slight noise the old woman opened her eyes, and gazed at the intruder with a half-dazed expression.

  “Have no fear, I beg of you,” said Herman, in a calm voice. “I have not come to harm you, but to ask a favor of you instead.”

  The Countess looked at him in silence, seemingly without comprehending him. Herman thought she might be deaf, so he put his lips close to her ear and repeated his remark. The listener remained perfectly mute.

  “You could make my fortune without its costing you anything,” pleaded the young man; “only tell me the three cards which are sure to win, and—”

  Herman paused as the old woman opened her lips as if about to speak.

  “It was only a jest; I swear to you, it was only a jest,” came from the withered lips.

  “There was no jesting about it. Remember Tchaplitzky, who, thanks to you, was able to pay his debts.”

  An expression of interior agitation passed over the face of the old woman; then
she relapsed into her former apathy.

  “Will you tell me the names of the magic cards, or not?” asked Herman after a pause.

  There was no reply.

  The young man then drew a pistol from his pocket, exclaiming: “You old witch, I’ll force you to tell me!”

  At the sight of the weapon the Countess gave a second sign of life. She threw back her head and put out her hands as if to protect herself; then they dropped and she sat motionless.

  Herman grasped her arm roughly, and was about to renew his threats, when he saw that she was dead!

  Seated in her room, still in her ball-dress, Lisaveta gave herself up to her reflections. She had expected to find the young officer there, but she felt relieved to see that he was not.

  Strangely enough, that very night at the ball, Tomsky had rallied her about her preference for the young officer, assuring her that he knew more than she supposed he did.

  “Of whom are you speaking?” she had asked in alarm, fearing her adventure had been discovered.

  “Of the remarkable man,” was the reply. “His name is Herman.”

  Lisa made no reply.

  “This Herman,” continued Tomsky, “is a romantic character; he has the profile of a Napoleon and the heart of a Mephistopheles. It is said he has at least three crimes on his conscience. But how pale you are.”

  “It is only a slight headache. But why do you talk to me of this Herman?”

  “Because I believe he has serious intentions concerning you.”

  “Where has he seen me?”

  “At church, perhaps, or on the street.”

  The conversation was interrupted at this point, to the great regret of the young girl. The words of Tomsky made a deep impression upon her, and she realized how imprudently she had acted. She was thinking of all this and a great deal more when the door of her apartment suddenly opened, and Herman stood before her. She drew back at sight of him, trembling violently.

  “Where have you been?” she asked in a frightened whisper.