Russian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida (Penguin Classics)

by Chandler, Robert

  All that day Hermann felt extremely upset. Dining at an out-of-the-way tavern, he uncharacteristically drank a great deal in the hope of stifling his inner turmoil. But the wine only further inflamed his imagination. Returning home, he threw himself fully clothed on his bed and fell into a deep sleep.

  It was night when he woke; his room was lit by the moon. He glanced at his watch: it was a quarter to three. He was no longer sleepy; he sat up, thinking about the funeral of the old Countess.

  Just then someone out on the street looked in through the window and immediately stepped back. Hermann paid no attention. A minute later he heard the sound of the ante-room door being opened. Hermann thought his orderly was returning, drunk as usual, from a night-time spree. But he heard unfamiliar footsteps: someone was softly shuffling along in slippers. The door opened; in came a woman dressed in white. Hermann took her for his old nurse and wondered what could have brought her to him at such an hour. But the white woman, gliding forward, was suddenly in front of him – and Hermann recognized the Countess.

  ‘I have come to you against my will,’ she said in a firm voice, ‘but I have been ordered to grant your request. The three, the seven and the ace will win for you in sequence – on condition you play only one card in twenty-four hours and that you never, as long as you live, gamble again. I forgive you my death on condition you marry my ward, Lizaveta Ivanovna.’

  With these words she quietly turned round, shuffled to the door and disappeared. Hermann heard her slam the door to the entrance room and saw someone looking in at him again through the window.

  It took Hermann a long time to come back to himself. He went into the other room. His orderly was asleep on the floor; Hermann could barely wake him up. As usual, the man was drunk; it was impossible to get any sense out of him. The door into the entrance room was locked. Hermann returned to his room, lit a candle and wrote down his vision.

  6

  ‘Attendez!’

  ‘How dare you speak to me like that?’

  ‘Your Excellency, I said: “Attendez, sir!”’16

  Two idées fixes cannot coexist in the moral sphere, just as two bodies cannot occupy the same space in the physical world. The image of the dead old woman was soon eclipsed in Hermann’s imagination by the three, the seven and the ace. The three, seven and ace were always in his thoughts and on his lips. Seeing a young woman, he would come out with, ‘She’s so slender! A real three of hearts.’ When asked the time, he might reply, ‘Five minutes to the seven.’ A potbellied man always made him think of an ace. The three, the seven and the ace pursued him through his dreams, assuming every conceivable guise: the three blossomed before him like a large and splendid flower, the seven became a gothic portal, the ace a huge spider. All his thoughts merged into one unchanging thought: how could he make use of a secret for which he had paid dearly? He began thinking about resigning his commission and travelling. In the public casinos of Paris he would wrest treasure from an enchanted Fortuna. Chance spared him the trouble.

  In Moscow there was a circle of wealthy gamblers presided over by the famous Chekalinsky, who had spent his entire life at the card table and had at one time made millions, accepting promissory notes when he won and paying his losses in cash. Long experience had won him the trust of his fellow gamblers; his open house and famous chef, along with his courteous and cheerful manner, gained him the respect of society in general. He came to Petersburg. Young men flocked to him, forsaking ballrooms for cards and preferring the temptations of faro to the allures of philandering. Narumov brought Hermann to his house.

  They passed through a series of magnificent rooms, filled with attentive servants. Generals and privy councillors were playing whist; young men were lounging on damask sofas, eating ice creams or smoking pipes. In the drawing room, twenty or so gamblers were crowded around a long table behind which sat the host, who was keeping the bank. He was a most respectable-looking man of about sixty; he had a fine head of silvery-grey hair; his full, fresh face was the picture of benevolence; his eyes shone, animated by a constant smile. Narumov introduced Hermann to him. Chekalinsky shook his hand warmly, asked him not to stand on ceremony and went on dealing.

  The round went on for a long time. More than thirty cards were on the table. After dealing to a player, Chekalinsky would pause, allowing everyone time to decide what they wanted; he noted down losses, listened politely to requests and still more politely straightened out a card whose corner was being bent back by an absentminded hand.17 At last the round was over. Chekalinsky shuffled the cards and got ready to deal another.

  ‘Allow me to play a card,’ said Hermann, reaching forward from behind a stout gentleman, one of the gamblers. Chekalinsky smiled silently and nodded his head, indicating his obedient consent. Narumov laughingly congratulated Hermann on breaking his long fast and wished him a lucky beginning.

  ‘There!’ said Hermann, chalking a number of figures on the back of his card.

  ‘How much, sir?’ asked the banker, screwing up his eyes. ‘Forgive me, I can’t quite see.’

  ‘Forty-seven thousand,’ Hermann replied.

  At these words every head turned instantly, and all eyes were fixed on Hermann. ‘He’s gone mad,’ thought Narumov.

  ‘Allow me to observe,’ Chekalinsky said with his same unchanging smile, ‘that your stake is very high. Until now no one has placed an initial stake of more than two hundred and seventy-five.’

  ‘What of it?’ replied Hermann. ‘Will you play against my card or not?’

  Chekalinsky bowed with the same air of humble compliance.

  ‘I merely wished to point out,’ he said, ‘that, being honoured with the trust of my fellows, I can play only against ready cash. For my own part, of course, I am confident that your word is enough, but, for the sake of clarity in our reckonings and the conduct of the game, I must ask you to place your money on your card.’

  Hermann took a bank note out of his pocket and handed it to Chekalinsky, who, after a quick glance at it, placed it on Hermann’s card.

  He began to deal. A nine to the right, a three to the left.

  ‘My three wins,’ said Hermann, turning over his card.

  The players all began whispering. Chekalinsky frowned, but a smile instantly returned to his face.

  ‘Would you like your winnings now?’ he asked.

  ‘If you please,’ answered Hermann.

  Chekalinsky took several bank notes from his pocket and settled up with him then and there. Hermann took his money and left the table. Narumov felt bewildered. Hermann drank a glass of lemonade and set off back home.

  The next evening he appeared at Chekalinsky’s again. The host was dealing. Hermann went up to the table; the other gamblers at once made room for him. Chekalinsky bowed courteously.

  Hermann waited till the next round and placed a card on the table; on top of it he placed both his original forty-seven thousand and the previous day’s winnings.

  Chekalinsky dealt to Hermann. To the right – a knave; to the left – a seven.

  Hermann turned over his seven.

  Everyone gasped. Chekalinsky was visibly perturbed. He counted out ninety-four thousand and handed it to Hermann. Hermann accepted the money with sang-froid and left straight away.

  The following evening, Hermann appeared again at the card table. Everyone was expecting him. The generals and privy councillors abandoned their whist to watch such extraordinary play. The young officers leaped up from their sofas; the servants all congregated in the drawing room. Everyone clustered around Hermann. The other gamblers let their turns pass, impatient to see how Hermann would end. Hermann stood by the table, about to play alone against a pale but still smiling Chekalinsky. Each unsealed a new pack. Chekalinsky shuffled. Hermann chose his card and placed it on the table, covering it with a heap of bank notes. It was like a duel. Deep silence reigned all around.

  Chekalinsky dealt; his hands were trembling. To the right – a queen; to the left – an ace.

  �
�My ace wins,’ said Hermann, turning over his card.

  ‘Your Queen’s lost,’ Chekalinsky said courteously.

  Hermann shuddered. Before him, instead of an ace, stood the Queen of Spades. He couldn’t believe his eyes, unable to understand how he could have played the wrong card.

  At that moment the Queen of Spades seemed to him to wink and smirk. Hermann was struck by an extraordinary likeness.

  ‘The old woman!’ he cried out in horror.

  Chekalinsky gathered in Hermann’s bank notes. Hermann stood there stock-still. When at last he walked away, there was a sudden hubbub. ‘Splendid play,’ said the other gamblers. Chekalinsky shuffled again; the game continued its course.

  Conclusion

  Hermann went mad. He is in room 17 of the Obukhov Hospital; he doesn’t answer any questions and he keeps muttering with extraordinary rapidity, ‘Three, seven, ace! Three, seven, queen!’

  Lizaveta Ivanovna has married a very pleasant young man; he works in some government office and has a respectable fortune of his own: he is the son of the old Countess’s former steward. Lizaveta Ivanovna is bringing up a young ward, a poor relation.

  Tomsky has been promoted to captain and is marrying Princess Polina.

  First published in 1834

  Translated by Robert and Elizabeth Chandler and Olga Meerson

  MIKHAIL YURYEVICH LERMONTOV (1814–41)

  Born in Moscow, Lermontov was raised mainly by his grandmother on her Central Russian estate. He returned to Moscow in 1827 and attended the School for the Nobility and Moscow University, where he studied ethics, politics and literature. After two years at a military academy in St Petersburg, he became a junior officer in the Life Guard Hussars. He made his name with a poem on Pushkin’s death, accusing court circles of complicity; the resulting controversy led to his exile to the Caucasus. After his return to St Petersburg, Lermontov was exiled a second time – for duelling with the son of the French Ambassador.

  Lermontov was hailed as Pushkin’s successor and his career followed a similar pattern. Like Pushkin, he mastered a variety of poetic genres: lyric, narrative and satirical. Like Pushkin, he turned to prose in his last years, publishing the novel A Hero of Our Time only a year before his death. And, like Pushkin, he died in a duel, in the spa town of Pyatigorsk in the northern Caucasus. Nearly all of Lermontov’s best work dates from his last two years; this makes his premature death still more tragic.

  Lermontov’s prose, like Pushkin’s, seems surprisingly modern. A Hero of Our Time consists of five separate stories linked by a common hero. Each story is in a distinct genre. The first two, told by two different narrators, introduce the figure of Pechorin, a young officer serving in the Caucasus; the last three are extracts from his journal. Both attractive and repulsive, Pechorin is thus seen from several perspectives; it is for the reader to bring these perspectives together.

  ‘The Fatalist’, the last story in the novel, can be read both as a meditation on chance, causality and fate and as an exploration of Pechorin’s inner contradictions. Pechorin claims to believe in free will, yet he accepts that Vulich’s death is ‘written in the heavens’. Lermontov may have intended Pechorin to represent Russia, poised between the individualistic West and the fatalistic East.

  Russia had secured most of Transcaucasia by 1830. Two parts of the northern Caucasus, however, remained largely independent: Circassia in the west and Chechnya in the east. In Lermontov’s day, Russia’s attempt to assert her power in these areas was largely a matter of sending brief punitive expeditions into enemy territory. Chechnya and Circassia were not subdued until 1864. Even after that, however, there were periodic rebellions and the collapse of the Soviet Union has led to two more wars between Russia and Chechnya.

  THE FATALIST

  I happened once to spend a couple of weeks in a Cossack village on the left flank.1 An infantry battalion was stationed there and in the evenings the officers gathered in one another’s quarters to play cards, taking it in turn to be host.

  One evening at Major S——‘s we grew tired of boston, threw the cards under the table and sat up until very late; the conversation, for once, was interesting. We were talking about the way many Christians accept the Muslim belief that a man’s fate is written in the heavens; each of us had unusual stories to tell – for or against.

  ‘None of this, gentlemen, proves anything at all,’ said the old major. ‘Not one of you, I take it, has witnessed the strange happenings with which you back up your views.’

  ‘That’s true,’ several of us admitted, ‘but we heard about them from people we can trust.’

  ‘It’s all nonsense!’ said somebody else. ‘Where are these trustworthy people who have seen the records on which the hour of our death is inscribed? And if there really is such a thing as predestination, why have we been given free will and reason? Why must we account for our actions?’

  At that moment, an officer sitting in the corner got to his feet. He walked slowly up to the table and looked at us all with a calm and solemn look. He was a Serb by birth, as was clear from his name.

  Lieutenant Vulich’s looks perfectly matched his character. His height, his swarthy face, his black hair and penetrating black eyes, the large but straight nose so characteristic of his nation, the sad cold smile constantly wandering on his lips – all this seemed to give him the air of someone apart, unable to share his thoughts and passions with the men Fate had given him as companions.

  He was brave; he spoke little, but to the point; there was no one to whom he confided the secrets of his soul or his family; he hardly ever drank wine and he never chased after the young Cossack girls – whose charms, unless you have seen them, cannot be imagined. It was said, admittedly, that the Colonel’s wife was not indifferent to his expressive eyes, but any insinuations about this made him extremely angry.

  There was just one passion he did not hide – his passion for gambling. Once he was at the green table, he would forget everything, and he usually lost; but repeated bad luck only exacerbated his obstinacy. It was said that one night, while out on an expedition, he and his fellows had been playing faro, using a pillow as a table; he had been keeping the bank himself and was enjoying terrific luck. Suddenly there were shots, the alarm sounded, and everyone jumped up and rushed for their weapons.

  ‘Place your card – I’m staking the bank!’ Vulich shouted, without moving from his seat, to one of the most ardent punters. ‘I’m playing a seven,’2 said the punter as he ran off. In spite of the general commotion, Vulich finished the round; the card he chanced to deal to the punter was a seven.

  When Vulich caught up with the others, he found himself amid a heavy exchange of fire. Not bothering in the least about either the bullets or the swords of the Chechens, he began to search for the fortunate punter.

  ‘I dealt you a seven!’ he shouted, finally catching sight of his man in the line of marksmen who were beginning to force the enemy out of the wood. He went up closer, took out his purse and wallet and handed them to the lucky man, ignoring his protests that this was no time or place for payment. After discharging this unpleasant duty, Vulich rushed forward, taking our soldiers along with him, and went on coolly exchanging shots with the Chechens until the end of the engagement.

  When Lieutenant Vulich went up to the table, everyone fell silent, expecting something out of the ordinary.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ he said (his voice was calm, though a tone below its usual pitch). ‘Gentlemen, what use are empty arguments? What you need is evidence. I suggest we test here and now whether a man is able to dispose of his life at will, or whether the fateful minute has been assigned to each of us in advance. Who’ll be the one?’

  From every side came cries of ‘Not me! Not me!’ and ‘He’s crazy! What on earth’s got into him?’

  ‘I’ll place a bet,’ I said jokingly.

  ‘Which way?’

  ‘I assert that there is no predestination,’ I said, dropping twenty gold coins – all I had in my pocket –
on to the table.

  ‘I accept your bet,’ Vulich answered in a low voice. ‘Major, you will be umpire. Here are fifteen gold pieces. You owe me the other five yourself – do me a favour: add them to these.’

  ‘Very well,’ said the Major, ‘but I really don’t understand what this is all about or how you’re going to settle the argument.’

  Without a word Vulich stepped into the Major’s bedroom; we followed behind. He went up to the wall where the Major had hung his weapons and, quite at random, took down from its nail one of the various-calibred pistols. We still didn’t understand, but when he cocked the pistol and poured some gunpowder into the pan, several of us yelled out involuntarily and grabbed him by the arms.

  ‘What do you want to do? You’re mad!’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he said slowly, freeing his arms, ‘are any of you willing to pay twenty gold coins on my behalf?’

  We all fell silent and walked away.

  Vulich went back into the other room and sat down at the table; we followed him. He motioned to us to sit down around him. We obeyed in silence: he had acquired some mysterious power over us. I looked him hard in the eye, but he met my scrutiny with a calm, steady gaze and his pale lips smiled; yet for all his sang-froid I felt I could see the mark of death on his pale face. I have observed – and many seasoned fighters have confirmed this observation of mine – that the face of a man who is going to die within a few hours often bears some strange sign of a fate that cannot be avoided; an experienced eye is rarely mistaken.