‘ “What! When he has the cardinal with him!” the little abbé shouted, and moving away from me in horror, he rushed to the door and spread out his arms as if he were on the cross, assuming the attitude that he would rather die than let me pass.
‘Then I answered him that I was a heretic and barbarian, “que je suis hérétique et barbare” ’, and that I cared nothing for all these archbishops, cardinals, monseigneurs and so forth and so on. In a word, I assumed the attitude that I would not back down. The abbé looked at me with boundless malice, then snatched my passport and took it upstairs. A minute later the visa was ready. Here, gentlemen, would you like to see it?’ I took out the passport and showed the Roman visa.
‘You, however,’ the general began …
‘What saved you is that you declared yourself to be a barbarian and a heretic,’ observed the little Frenchman, grinning. ‘Cela n’était pas si bête.’9
‘But must I really follow the example of our Russians? They sit here – not daring to utter a word and are likely ready to deny that they are Russian. At least in my hotel in Paris they began to treat me more attentively when I had told everybody about my fight with the abbé. The fat Polish pan,10 the person most hostile to me at the table d’hôte, retired into the background. The Frenchmen even bore with me, when I told them that two years ago I had seen a man whom a French chasseur11 had shot in 1812 simply because he wanted to unload his rifle. This man was then a ten-year-old child and his family had not managed to get out of Moscow.’
‘That cannot be,’ the little Frenchman flew into a rage, ‘a French soldier would not shoot a child!’
‘Nevertheless, that’s what happened,’ I answered. ‘A respectable retired captain told me, and I myself saw the scar on his cheek from the bullet.’
The Frenchman began talking a lot and speaking quickly. The general started to back him up, but I suggested that he read, for example, at least excerpts from the Notes of General Perovsky, who had been taken prisoner by the French in 1812. Finally, Marya Filippovna began talking about something else in order to cut the conversation short. The general was very unhappy with me, because the Frenchman and I had almost begun shouting at each other. But Mr Astley seemed to enjoy my argument with the Frenchman; as he was getting up from the table, he invited me to drink a glass of wine with him. In the evening, I duly succeeded in talking with Polina Alexandrovna for a quarter of an hour. Our conversation took place while we were out for a stroll. Everybody had gone to the park by the casino. Polina sat down on a bench across from the fountain, and let Nadenka12 go play with some children not far away. I also let Misha go play by the fountain, and we were finally alone.
We began, of course, with business first of all. Polina simply became angry when all I had to give her was 700 gulden. She was certain that I would bring her back from Paris at least 2,000 gulden, if not more, after pawning her diamonds.
‘I must have money, no matter what,’ she said, ‘I must get it; otherwise, I’m simply lost.’
I began to question her about what had happened in my absence.
‘Nothing except that we received two pieces of news from Petersburg: first, that Grandmother was very poorly, and two days later that apparently she had died. This news was from Timofey Petrovich,’ Polina added, ‘and he’s a very reliable man. We’re waiting for final confirmation.’
‘And so, everybody here is in a state of anticipation?’ I asked.
‘Of course: everybody and everything; for six whole months they’ve been hoping for nothing else.’
‘And do you hope, too?’ I asked.
‘You see, I’m not related to her in any way, I’m only the general’s stepdaughter. But I do know for a fact that she will remember me in her will.’
‘I imagine that you’ll get a great deal,’ I said earnestly.
‘Yes, she loved me; but why do you imagine this?’
‘Tell me,’ I answered with a question, ‘our marquis, it seems, is also privy to all the family secrets?’
‘But why does that interest you?’ Polina asked, looking at me sternly and coldly.
‘It would be surprising if it didn’t; if I’m not mistaken, the general has already managed to borrow some money from him.’
‘You have guessed quite correctly.’
‘Well, would he have given him money if he didn’t know about Granny? Did you notice that at dinner on three occasions when speaking of Grandmother he called her Granny: “la baboulinka”.13 Such close and such friendly relations!’
‘Yes, you’re right. As soon as he finds out that I’m going to get something from the will as well, he’ll start courting me at once. Is that what you wanted to know?’
‘What do you mean start courting? I thought that he’d been courting you for a long time now.’
‘You know very well that he hasn’t!’ Polina said crossly. ‘Where did you meet that Englishman?’ she added after a minute’s silence.
‘I just knew that you would ask about him now.’
I told her about my previous meetings with Mr Astley on my travels.
‘He’s shy and amorous and of course he’s fallen in love with you already, hasn’t he?’
‘Yes, he’s fallen in love with me,’ Polina replied.
‘And of course, he’s ten times richer than the Frenchman. Why, is it certain that the Frenchman has anything? That’s not subject to any doubt?’
‘No, it’s not. He has some sort of château. The general spoke about it to me yesterday as a matter of fact. Well, is that enough for you?’
‘In your place I would certainly marry the Englishman.’
‘Why?’ Polina asked.
‘The Frenchman is handsomer, but he’s viler; while the Englishman, apart from the fact that he’s honest, is also ten times richer,’ I snapped.
‘Yes, but on the other hand, the Frenchman is a marquis and cleverer,’ she replied very coolly.
‘Is that so?’ I went on in the same manner.
‘Absolutely.’
Polina took a terrible dislike to my questions, and I saw that she wanted to make me angry by the tone and the absurdity of her reply; and I told her so straight away.
‘Well now, it really amuses me to see you get so upset. You ought to be made to pay, if for no other reason than that I allow you to ask such questions and make such conjectures.’
‘I really do consider myself entitled to ask you all sorts of questions,’ I replied calmly, ‘precisely because I am prepared to pay for them any way you wish, and I don’t set any store whatsoever by my life now.’
Polina burst into laughter.
‘Last time, on the Schlangenberg,14 you told me that you were prepared, as soon as I gave the word, to throw yourself down head first, and it’s a thousand feet there, I believe. One day I will say that word if only to see how you’ll pay up, and you can be certain that I will stand firm. You’re hateful to me – precisely because I’ve allowed you so many liberties, and you’re even more hateful, because I need you so much. But as long as I need you – I must take care of you.’
She started to get up. She had spoken with irritation. Of late she always ended a conversation with me with malice and irritation, with genuine malice.
‘Allow me to ask you, what exactly is Mlle Blanche?’ I asked, not wishing to let her go without an explanation.
‘You know yourself what Mlle Blanche is. Nothing more has been added. Mlle Blanche will probably become the general’s wife – if, of course, the rumour about Grandmother’s death is confirmed, because Mlle Blanche and her mother and her second cousin the marquis – they all know only too well that we are ruined.’
‘And is the general truly in love?’
‘That’s not the point now. Listen and remember: take these 700 florins and go and play, and win me as much as you can at roulette; I need money now, no matter what.’
Having said this, she called Nadenka and set off for the casino, where she joined the rest of our party. I, on the other hand, turne
d left at the first path I came upon, deep in thought and marvelling. It was as if I had been hit on the head with her order to go and play roulette. It was a strange thing: I had more than enough to ponder, and yet I became completely absorbed in analysing my feelings for Polina. Indeed, it was easier for me during the fortnight of my absence than now, on the day of my return, although during my journey I had yearned for her like a madman, rushed about like one possessed, and even saw her before me constantly in my dreams. Once (this was in Switzerland), having fallen asleep in the train, it seems that I began to speak aloud to Polina, which amused all the passengers sitting with me. And once again I now asked myself the question: Do I love her? And once again I was unable to answer it; that is, to put it more precisely, I answered myself for the hundredth time that I hated her. Yes, she was hateful to me. There were moments (to wit, at the end of every one of our conversations) when I would have given half my life to strangle her! I swear, if it were possible to slowly sink a sharp knife into her breast, then I believe that I would have snatched it up with delight. And yet, I swear by all that is holy, that if she had indeed said to me on the Schlangenberg, on that fashionable peak: ‘Throw yourself down’, then I would have thrown myself at once, and even with delight. I knew that. One way or another, this must be settled. She understands all this surprisingly well, and the thought that I recognize altogether unmistakably and certainly the extent of her complete inaccessibility to me, and the complete impossibility of fulfilling my fantasies – this thought, I am certain, affords her extraordinary pleasure; otherwise, would she, she who is so careful and clever, be on such intimate and frank terms with me? It seems to me that until now she has regarded me like that empress of antiquity who would undress in front of her slave, since she did not consider him a man. Yes, she has not considered me a man several times …
However, I had a commission from her – to win at roulette, no matter what. I had no time to ponder why or how soon I must win or what new designs had come into being in that perpetually calculating head. Moreover, during this fortnight a multitude of new facts about which I still had no idea had evidently come into play as well. All this must be gone into, gotten to the bottom of – and as soon as possible. But there was no time now – I needed to set out for the roulette tables.
CHAPTER 2
I confess that I found this unpleasant; although I had decided that I would play, I had not at all counted on beginning by playing for other people. This had even thrown me off some, and I went to the gaming rooms feeling greatly annoyed. From the first glance I disliked everything. I can’t stand the bootlicking one sees in the feuilletons1 the world over and particularly in our Russian newspapers, in which almost every spring our journalists write about two things: first, the extraordinary magnificence and splendour of the gaming rooms in the roulette towns on the Rhine, and second, the piles of gold supposedly heaped on those tables. It’s not as though they’re paid to do this; they do it out of disinterested obsequiousness. There’s absolutely no magnificence to be found in these rubbishy rooms, and not only are there no piles of gold on the tables, there’s hardly any ever to be seen. Of course, every once in a while during the course of the season some character turns up, either an Englishman or an Asian of some sort – or a Turk, as happened this summer – and he either loses or wins a great deal; but the rest play for small stakes, and on average there’s very little money on the table. Once I had entered the gaming room (for the first time in my life), I could not make up my mind to play for some time. Moreover, it was crowded. But even if I had been alone, even then I think that I would have sooner walked away than started playing. I confess that my heart was pounding and I had not pulled myself together; I knew for certain and had decided long ago that I would not leave Roulettenburg as I had arrived; something radical and final would take place in my destiny without fail. That is how it must be, and that is how it will be. It may seem ridiculous that I should expect so much from roulette, but I find even more ridiculous the routine opinion, accepted by all, that it is silly and absurd to expect anything at all from gambling. And why is gambling worse than any other means of acquiring money, trade, for instance? It’s true that only one out of a hundred wins. But – what does that have to do with me?
In any case, I had planned it so that I would first have a good look around and not begin anything serious this evening. If something did happen this evening, then it would be by chance and of no consequence – that’s what I had decided. Moreover, I needed to learn the game itself; because notwithstanding the thousands of descriptions of roulette that I had always read with such eagerness, I understood absolutely nothing of how it worked until I saw it for myself.
In the first place, it all seemed so filthy – somehow morally sordid and dirty. I’m not at all referring to those greedy and anxious faces, which cluster round the gaming tables by the dozens, the hundreds even. I definitely see nothing filthy in the desire to win as quickly as possible and as much as possible; I have always found very silly the view of a certain well-fed and well-to-do moralist, who to somebody’s excuse that ‘they were playing for small stakes’, replied, ‘So much the worse, because the greed is so petty.’ As if petty greed and massive greed weren’t the same thing. It’s a matter of proportion. What is petty for a Rothschild2 is wealth for me, and as far as gains and winnings are concerned, people everywhere, and not only at roulette, are always doing somebody out of something or winning something. Whether gains or winnings are vile is another question. But I will not solve that here. Since I myself was utterly possessed by the desire to win, all this greed and all this greedy filth, if you will, were somehow suitable and familiar to me as I entered the room. It is a most pleasant state of affairs when people don’t stand on ceremony, but act in the open and unbuttoned. And what’s the point of deceiving oneself? A most futile and imprudent pursuit! At first glance, what was particularly unsightly about this roulette riff-raff was the respect for the pursuit, the seriousness, and even the deference with which they crowded round the tables. That’s why there’s a sharp distinction here between the kind of game that is called mauvais genre3 and the kind that is appropriate for a respectable person. There are two types of gambling: one is gentlemanly; the other is plebeian, greedy, the gambling for all sorts of riff-raff. The sharp distinction is strictly observed here and – how vile, in essence, is this distinction! A gentleman, for instance, may stake 5 or 10 louis d’or, rarely more than that; however, he may also stake a thousand francs if he is very rich, but simply for the sake of the game itself, simply for the sake of amusement, simply to observe the process of winning or losing; he must on no account show any interest in his winnings. When he wins he may, for instance, laugh out loud, or make a remark to one of the onlookers, and he may even stake again and then double it, but only out of curiosity, in order to observe the workings of chance, to calculate, but not for the plebeian desire to win. In a word, he must look upon all these gaming tables, roulette and trente et quarante,4 only as an amusement organized solely for his pleasure. He must not even suspect the greed and traps on which the bank depends. And it would not at all be a bad thing if, for instance, he were of the opinion that all the other gamblers, all this scum trembling over a gulden, were precisely the same sort of rich men and gentlemen as he, and that they were playing solely for the sake of diversion and amusement. This utter ignorance of reality and innocent view of people would, of course, be extraordinarily aristocratic. I have seen how quite a few mamas push forward their daughters, innocent and elegant little misses of fifteen and sixteen, and after giving them a few gold coins, teach them how to play. The young lady wins or loses, is sure to be smiling and walks away very contented. Our general made his way to the table like a respectable and important gentleman; a lackey rushed to proffer him a chair, but he did not notice him; he very slowly took out his purse, very slowly took 300 francs in gold from his purse, staked it on black and won. He didn’t pick up his winnings but left them on the table. Black came up again; h
e didn’t pick them up this time either, and when it came up red the third time he lost 1,200 francs in one go. He walked away with a smile, retaining his composure. I am convinced that he felt torn-up inside and if the stake had been two or three times as much again, he would not have retained his composure, but would have let his emotions show. However, I witnessed a Frenchman win and then lose almost 30,000 francs cheerfully and without any sign of emotion. A true gentleman, even if he loses his entire fortune, must not show emotion. Money is supposed to be so far beneath a gentleman that it’s almost not worth thinking about. Of course, it would have been exceedingly aristocratic not even to notice the filth of all this riff-raff and the whole milieu. But then, sometimes the opposite stratagem is no less aristocratic: that is, to have a close look, even to examine carefully, for example, all this riff-raff through a lorgnette; but only so as to view all this crowd and all this filth as an entertainment of some sort, as a performance arranged for gentlemen’s amusement. Although you may be jostled in this crowd, you still look around with the absolute conviction that you are merely an observer and in no way a part of it. But then again, it wouldn’t do to look too closely: that would not be gentlemanly, because this spectacle in any case does not merit great or too close observation. And in general, there are few spectacles worthy of a gentleman’s very close attention. And yet it seemed to me personally that all this very much merited close attention, particularly for the person who had come not merely to watch, but who sincerely and conscientiously counted himself a member of all this riff-raff. As far as my most secret moral convictions are concerned, there is no place for them in my present deliberations. Be that as it may; I am speaking to clear my conscience. But I will make this observation: for some time now I have found it terribly repugnant to judge my actions and thoughts by any moral standard whatsoever. Something else was guiding me …
The Gambler and Other Stories (Penguin ed.) Page 19
