The Double and The Gambler

by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  It was still early; Mr. Astley was not receiving anyone; learning that it was I, he came out to me in the corridor and stood before me, silently aiming his tinny gaze at me, waiting for what I was going to say. I inquired at once about Polina.

  “She’s ill,” Mr. Astley replied, looking at me point-blank as before and not taking his eyes off me.

  “So she’s really here with you?”

  “Oh, yes, with me.”

  “So, then, you…you intend to keep her with you?”

  “Oh, yes, I do.”

  “Mr. Astley, this will cause a scandal; this is impossible. Besides, she’s quite ill; maybe you haven’t noticed?”

  “Oh, yes, I have, and I’ve already told you she’s ill. If she weren’t ill, she wouldn’t have spent the night with you.”

  “So you know that, too?”

  “I know that. She was on her way here yesterday, and I would have taken her to my female relation, but since she was ill, she went to you by mistake.”

  “Imagine that! Well, I congratulate you, Mr. Astley. By the way, you’ve given me an idea: didn’t you spend the whole night standing under the window? Miss Polina kept telling me all night to open the window and see whether you were standing there, and she laughed terribly.”

  “Really? No, I wasn’t standing under the window; but I waited in the corridor and walked about.”

  “But she needs to be treated, Mr. Astley.”

  “Oh, yes, I’ve already sent for a doctor, and if she dies, you will give me an accounting for her death.”

  I was amazed.

  “For pity’s sake, Mr. Astley, what is it you want?”

  “Is it true that you won two hundred thousand thalers yesterday?”

  “Only one hundred thousand florins in all.”

  “Well, you see! So, then, go to Paris this morning.”

  “What for?”

  “All Russians go to Paris when they have money,” Mr. Astley explained in a voice and tone as if he was reading it from a book.

  “What will I do in Paris now, in the summer? I love her, Mr. Astley! You know it yourself.”

  “Really? I’m convinced that you don’t. Besides, if you stay here, you’re certain to lose everything, and you won’t have the money to go to Paris. But good-bye, I’m perfectly convinced that you’ll go to Paris today.”

  “Very well, good-bye, only I won’t go to Paris. Think, Mr. Astley, about how it will be for us now. In short, the general…and now what’s happend with Miss Polina—why, it will get all over town.”

  “Yes, all over town. The general, I think, doesn’t think about it and couldn’t care less. Besides, Miss Polina is fully entitled to live wherever she likes. As for this family, it would be correct to say that this family no longer exists.”

  I walked along and chuckled at this Englishman’s strange certainty that I would go to Paris. “Anyhow he wants to shoot me in a duel,” I thought, “if Mlle Polina dies—there’s another business!” I swear I felt sorry for Polina, but, strangely, since the moment I touched the gaming table the night before and began to rake in wads of money, it was as if my love moved into the background. I say that now; but at the time I still hadn’t noted it all clearly. Can it be that I’m really a gambler, can it be that I indeed…loved Polina so strangely? No, I love her even now, by God! And at that moment, when I left Mr. Astley and walked home, I sincerely suffered and blamed myself. But…but here I got involved in an extremely strange and stupid story.

  I was hurrying to the general’s when a door suddenly opened near their suite and someone called out to me. It was Mme la veuve Cominges, and she called me on Mlle Blanche’s orders. I went into Mlle Blanche’s suite.

  They had a small two-room suite. I could hear the laughter and cries of Mlle Blanche from the bedroom. She was getting up.

  “Ah, c’est lui! Viens donc, béta! Is it true that tu as gagné d’or et d’argent? J’aimerais mieux l’or.” *61

  “I did win,” I answered, laughing.

  “How much?”

  “A hundred thousand florins.”

  “Bibi, comme tu es bête. But do come in, I can’t hear a thing. Nous ferons bombance, n’est-ce pas?” †62

  I went into her room. She was lying under a pink satin spread, from which her swarthy, healthy, astonishing shoulders protruded—shoulders such as can only be seen in a dream—negligently covered by a batiste nightgown trimmed with the whitest lace, which went wonderfully with her swarthy skin.

  “Mon fils, as-tu du coeur?” ‡63 she cried, seeing me, and laughed loudly. She always laughed very gaily and sometimes even sincerely.

  “Tout autre…” §64 I began, paraphrasing Corneille. 14

  “You see, vois tu,” she suddenly began chattering, “first, find my stockings, help me into my shoes, and second, si tu n’est pas trop bête, je te prends à Paris. ¶65 You know, I’m going right now.”

  “Now?”

  “In half an hour.”

  Indeed, everything was packed. All her suitcases and things were standing ready. Coffee had been served long ago.

  “Eh bien! If you want, tu verra Paris. Dis donc qu’est-ce que c’est qu’un outchitel? Tu étais bien bête quand tu étais outchitel. *66 But where are my stockings? So, help me on with them!”

  She stuck out a really delightful little foot, swarthy, small, not misshapen, like almost all those little feet that look so cute in shoes. I laughed and began to pull a silk stocking onto it. Mlle Blanche meanwhile sat on the bed and chattered.

  “Eh bien, que feras-tu, si je te prends avec? First, je veux cinquante mille francs. You’ll give them to me in Frankfurt. Nous allons à Paris; there we’ll live together et je te ferais voir des étoiles en plein jour. †67 You’ll see women such as you’ve never seen before. Listen…”

  “Wait, so I give you fifty thousand francs, and what am I left with?”

  “Et cent cinquante mille francs, you’ve forgotten, and, on top of that, I agree to live in your apartment for a month, two months, que sais-je! Of course, in two months we’ll go through that hundred and fifty thousand francs. You see, je suis bonne enfant and am telling you beforehand, mais tu verras des étoiles.” ‡68

  “What, all in two months?”

  “What? So it frightens you? Ah, vil esclave! You don’t know that one month of that life is better than your whole existence? One month—et aprèsledéluge! 15 Mais tu ne peux comprendre, va! Off with you, you’re not worthy of it! Aie, que fais-tu?” §69

  At that moment I was putting a stocking on her other foot, but I couldn’t help myself and kissed it. She pulled it back and began flicking me in the face with her toe. Finally, she drove me out altogether.

  “Eh bien, mon outchitel, je t’attends, si tu veux; *70 I’m leaving in a quarter of an hour!” she called after me.

  Returning home, I was already as if in a whirl. What, then, was it my fault that Mlle Polina had thrown the whole wad in my face and already yesterday had preferred Mr. Astley to me? Some stray banknotes still lay on the floor; I picked them up. At that moment the door opened and the manager himself (who wouldn’t even look at me before) came with an invitation: wouldn’t I like to move downstairs to an excellent suite in which Count V. had just been staying?

  I stood and thought a moment.

  “The bill!” I cried. “I’m leaving right now, in ten minutes.” “If it’s Paris, let it be Paris,” I thought to myself, “it must have been written down at my birth!”

  A quarter of an hour later the three of us were indeed sitting in a family compartment: myself, Mlle Blanche, and Mme la veuve Cominges. Mlle Blanche laughed loudly, looking at me, to the point of hysterics. La veuve Cominges seconded her. I wouldn’t say that I felt very gay. My life was breaking in two, but since the previous day I had become accustomed to staking all I had. Maybe it was really true that the money was too much for me and got me into a whirl. Peut-être, je ne demandais pas mieux. †71 It seemed to me that for a time—but only for a time—the stage set was b
eing changed. “But in a month I’ll be back here, and then…then I’ll still have it out with you, Mr. Astley!” No, as I remember it now, I felt terribly sad then, though I did laugh my head off with that little fool Blanche.

  “But what is it to you? How stupid you are! oh, how stupid!” cried Blanche, interrupting her laughter and beginning to scold me seriously. “Well, yes, yes, we’ll go through your two hundred thousand francs, but to make up for it, mais tu seras heureux, comme un petit roi; ‡72 I’ll tie your necktie myself and introduce you to Hortense. And when we’ve gone through all our money, you’ll come back here and break the bank again. What did those Jews tell you? It’s boldness above all, and you have it, and you’ll be coming to Paris bringing me money more than once. Quant à moi, je veux cinquante mille francs de rente et alors… *73

  “And the general?” I asked her.

  “And the general, as you know yourself, goes to fetch me a bouquet every day at this hour. Today I purposely told him to find the rarest flowers. The poor thing will come back, and the bird will have flown. He’ll fly after us, you’ll see. Ha, ha, ha! I’ll be very glad. He’ll be useful to me in Paris; here Mr. Astley will pay for him…”

  And so it was that I left for Paris then.

  CHAPTER XVI

  W HAT SHALL I SAY about Paris? It was all, of course, both delirium and foolery. I lived in Paris for only a little more than three weeks, and in that time my hundred thousand francs were completely finished. I’m speaking of only a hundred thousand; the remaining hundred thousand I gave to Mlle Blanche in straight cash—fifty thousand in Frankfurt, and three days later in Paris I handed her the other fifty thousand francs in a promissory note, for which, however, she took the money from me a week later, “et les cent mille francs qui nous restent, tu les mangeras avec moi, mon outchitel.” *74 She always called me outchitel. It’s hard to imagine anything in the world more calculating, mean, and stingy than the category of beings like Mlle Blanche. But that’s with regard to her own money. As for my hundred thousand francs, she later declared to me straight out that she needed it in order to establish herself initially in Paris. “So that now I’m standing on a decent footing once and for all, and it will be a long time before anybody throws me off, so at least I’ve arranged things,” she added. However, I scarcely saw that hundred thousand; she kept the money herself all the while, and my purse, which she visited every day, never held more than a hundred francs, and almost always less.

  “What do you need money for?” she said occasionally with a most artless look, and I didn’t argue with her. Instead, she decorated her apartment very, very nicely on this money, and later when she moved me to the new place, she said, as she was showing me the rooms: “See what can be done, with calculation and taste, on the scantiest means.” This scantiness added up, however, to exactly fifty thousand francs. The other fifty thousand she spent on a carriage and horses, and besides that we threw two balls, that is, two evening parties, to which Hortense, and Lisette, and Cléopatre came—women remarkable in many, many respects, and even far from bad. At these two parties I was forced to play the utterly stupid role of host, to meet and entertain some rich and extremely dull merchants, impossibly ignorant and shameless army lieutenants of various sorts, and pathetic little authors and magazine midges, who arrived in fashionable tailcoats, straw-colored gloves, and with a vanity and conceit of dimensions inconceivable even in Petersburg—which is saying a lot. They even ventured to make fun of me, but I got drunk on champagne and lay about in the back room. All this was loathsome to me in the highest degree. “C’est un outchitel,” Blanche said of me, “il a gagné deux cent mille francs, *75 and without me he wouldn’t know how to spend it. And afterwards he’ll become an outchitel again—does anyone know of a post? We must do something for him.” I began resorting to champagne quite often, because I was very sad and extremely bored all the time. I lived in the most bourgeois, in the most mercantile milieu, where every sou was counted and measured out. For the first two weeks, Blanche disliked me very much, I noticed that; true, she got me smartly dressed and tied my necktie every day, but in her heart she sincerely despised me. I didn’t pay the slightest attention to that. Bored and despondent, I got into the habit of going to the Château des Fleurs, 16 where regularly, every evening, I got drunk and practiced the cancan (which they dance most vilely there) and later on even achieved some celebrity in that line. Finally, Blanche got to the bottom of me: she had somehow formed an idea for herself beforehand that during our cohabitation, I would walk behind her with a pencil and paper in my hand and keep an account of how much she spent, how much she stole, how much she was going to spend, and how much more she was going to steal, and, of course, she was sure that we would have battles over every ten francs. To each of my assaults, which she imagined beforehand, she had prepared timely objections; but seeing no assaults from me, at first she herself started to object. Sometimes she would begin very hotly, but seeing that I kept silent—most often lying on the sofa and staring fixedly at the ceiling—she would finally even become astonished. At first she thought I was simply stupid, an outchitel, and simply broke off her objections, probably thinking to herself: “He’s stupid; there’s no point in suggesting anything, if he doesn’t understand for himself.” She would leave, but about ten minutes later would come back again (this happened during the time of her most furious spending, spending completely beyond our means: for instance, she changed horses and bought a pair for sixteen thousand francs).

  “Well, so, Bibi, you’re not angry?” she came up to me.

  “No-o-o! How bo-o-oring!” I said, moving her away with my hand, but this made her so curious that she at once sat down beside me:

  “You see, if I decided to pay so much, it’s because they were a good deal. They can be sold again for twenty thousand francs.”

  “I believe you, I believe you; they’re splendid horses; and now you’ve got a nice turnout; it will be useful; well, and enough.”

  “So you’re not angry?”

  “At what? It’s smart of you to stock up on a few things you need. It will all be of use later. I see you really have to put yourself on such a footing, otherwise you’ll never make a million. Here our hundred thousand francs is only a beginning, a drop in the ocean.”

  Blanche, who least of all expected such talk from me (instead of shouts and reproaches!), looked as if she’d fallen from the sky.

  “So you…so that’s how you are! Mais tu as l’esprit pour comprendre! Sais-tu, mon garçon, *76 you’re an outchitel, but you should have been born a prince! So you’re not sorry our money’s going so quickly?”

  “Who cares, the quicker the better!”

  “Mais…sais-tu…mais dis donc, are you rich? Mais sais-tu, you really despise money too much. Qu’est-ce que tu feras après, dis donc?” *77

  “Après, I’ll go to Homburg and win another hundred thousand francs.”

  “Oui, oui, c’est ça, c’est magnifique! †78 And I know you’ll certainly win and bring it all here. Dis donc, you’ll make it so that I really fall in love with you! Eh bien, since that’s the way you are, I’ll love you all the while and won’t be unfaithful even once. You see, all this while, though I didn’t love you, parce que je croyais que tu n’est qu’un outchitel (quelque chose comme un laquais, n’estce pas?), but even so I was faithful to you, parce que je suis bonne fille.” ‡79

  “No, lies! And with Albert, that swarthy little officer—as if I didn’t see it last time?”

  “Oh, oh, mais tu es…”

  “No, lies, lies; and what do you think, that I’m angry? I spit on it; il faut que jeunesse se passe. §80 You can’t chase him away, if he was there before me and you love him. Only don’t give him any money, you hear?”

  “So you’re not angry about that either? Mais tu es un vrai philosophe, sais tu? Un vrai philosophe! ” she cried in delight. “Eh, bien, je t’aimerai, je t’aimerai—tu verras, tu sera content! ” ¶81

  And, indeed, since then it was even a
s if she really did become attached to me, even in a friendly way, and so we spent our last ten days. The promised “stars” I didn’t see; but in some respects she really kept her word. Moreover, she got me acquainted with Hortense, who was even all too remarkable a woman in her own way and in our circle was known as Thérèse-philosophe… 17

  However, there’s no point expanding on it; all this could make up a special story, with a special coloring, which I don’t want to put into this story. The thing is that I wished with all my might that it would all be over soon. But our hundred thousand francs lasted, as I’ve already said, for almost a month—at which I was genuinely surprised: at least eighty thousand of this money Blanche spent buying things for herself, and we lived on no more than twenty thousand francs, and even so it was enough. Blanche, who towards the end was even almost candid with me (at least in certain things she didn’t lie to me), confessed that at least the debts she had had to incur wouldn’t fall on me. “I didn’t give you any bills or promissory notes to sign,” she said to me, “because I felt sorry for you; another woman would certainly have done that and packed you off to prison. You see, you see how I’ve loved you and how kind I am! This damned wedding alone is going to cost me quite a bit!”

  We did indeed have a wedding. It took place at the very end of our month, and I suppose the last dregs of my hundred thousand francs went on it; with that the affair ended, that is, with that our month ended, after which I was formally dismissed.

  It happened like this: a week after we installed ourselves in Paris, the general came. He came straight to Blanche and from the very first visit all but stayed with us. True, he had his own little apartment somewhere. Blanche greeted him joyfully, with shrieks and loud laughter, and even rushed to embrace him; as things turned out, she herself wouldn’t let him go, and he had to follow her everywhere: to the boulevards, and for carriage rides, and to the theater, and to see acquaintances. The general was still fit for this employment; he was rather stately and respectable—almost tall, with dyed side-whiskers and enormous mustaches (he served formerly in the cuirassiers), with a distinguished though somewhat flabby face. His manners were excellent, he wore a tailcoat very smartly. In Paris he started wearing his decorations. With such a man, to stroll down the boulevard was not only possible, but, if one may put it so, even recommandable. The kind and muddle-headed general was terribly pleased with it all; he had by no means counted on that when he appeared before us on his arrival in Paris. He appeared then all but trembling with fear; he thought Blanche would start shouting and order him thrown out; and therefore, seeing such a turn of affairs, he went into raptures and spent the whole month in some sort of senselessly rapturous state; and in such a state I left him. I was already here when I learned in detail how, after our sudden departure then from Roulettenburg, that same morning something like a fit came over him. He fell unconscious, and then for a whole week was almost like a crazy man and talked nonsense. He was treated, but he suddenly dropped everything, got on the train, and showed up in Paris. Naturally, Blanche’s reception of him proved the best medicine; but some signs of illness remained long afterwards, despite his joyful and rapturous state. He was completely unable to reason or even merely conduct any sort of slightly serious conversation; on such occasions he merely added a “Hm!” to every word spoken and nodded his head—and he got off with that. He often laughed, but it was some sort of nervous, morbid laughter, as if he was going into a fit; other times he would sit for whole hours as gloomy as night, knitting his bushy eyebrows. Many things he even didn’t remember at all; he became outrageously absentminded and adopted the habit of talking to himself. Only Blanche could revive him; and the fits of a gloomy, sullen state, when he hid in the corner, meant only that he hadn’t seen Blanche for a long time, or that Blanche had gone somewhere and hadn’t taken him with her, or hadn’t been nice to him as she was leaving. Yet he himself couldn’t say what he wanted and didn’t know he was gloomy and sad. Having sat for an hour or two (I noticed it twice when Blanche left for the whole day, probably to see Albert), he would suddenly start looking around, fussing, glancing over his shoulder, recalling, and seemed as if he wanted to find someone; but seeing no one and just not recalling what he wanted to ask, he would again lapse into oblivion, until Blanche suddenly appeared, gay, frolicsome, dressed up, with her loud, ringing laughter. She would run to him, start pulling at him, and even kiss him—a favor, however, that she rarely bestowed on him. Once the general was so glad to see her that he even burst into tears—I even marveled at him.