“You know perfectly well he hasn’t!” Polina said testily. “Where did you meet this Englishman?” she asked after a moment’s silence.
“I just knew you’d ask about him right away.”
I told her about my previous meetings with Mr. Astley during my trip. “He’s shy and amorous and, of course, already in love with you?”
“Yes, he’s in love with me,” Polina replied.
“And he’s certainly ten times richer than the Frenchman. What, does the Frenchman really have anything? Isn’t that open to doubt?”
“No, it’s not. He has some sort of chateau. The general told me that yesterday. Well, so, is that enough for you?”
“In your place, I’d certainly marry the Englishman.”
“Why?” asked Polina.
“The Frenchman’s handsomer, but he’s meaner; and the Englishman, on top of being honest, is also ten times richer,” I snapped.
“Yes, but then the Frenchman is a marquis and more intelligent,” she replied with the greatest possible equanimity.
“Is that true?” I went on in the same way.
“Perfectly.”
Polina terribly disliked my questions, and I saw that she wanted to make me angry with her tone and the wildness of her answer. I told her so at once.
“Why, it does indeed amuse me to see you in a fury. You ought to pay for the fact alone that I allow you to put such questions and make such surmises.”
“I do indeed consider it my right to put all sorts of questions to you,” I replied calmly, “precisely because I’m prepared to pay for them however you like, and my own life I now count for nothing.”
Polina burst out laughing:
“Last time, on the Schlangenberg, you told me you were ready at my first word to throw yourself down headfirst, and I believe it’s a thousand-foot drop. One day I’ll speak that word, solely to see how you’re going to pay, and you may be sure I’ll stand firm. You are hateful to me—precisely because I’ve allowed you so much, and more hateful still, because I need you so much. But for the time being I do need you—I must take good care of you.”
She went to get up. She had spoken with irritation. Lately she has always finished a conversation with me with spite and irritation, with real spite.
“Allow me to ask you, what is this Mlle Blanche?” I asked, not wanting to let her go without an explanation.
“You know yourself what Mlle Blanche is. Nothing more has been added. Mlle Blanche will probably become Madame la Generale—naturally, if the rumor of grandmother’s death is confirmed, because Mlle Blanche, and her mother, and her second cousin, the marquis, all know very well that we are ruined.”
“And the general is definitively in love?”
“That’s not the point now. Listen and remember: take these seven hundred florins and go gambling, win me as much as you can at roulette; I need money now at all costs.”
Having said this, she called Nadenka and went to the vauxhall, where she joined our whole company. I, however, turned into the first path to the left, pondering and astonished. It was as if I’d been hit on the head, after the order to go and play roulette. Strange thing: I had enough to ponder, and yet I immersed myself wholly in an analysis of my feelings for Polina. Really, it had been easier for me during those two weeks of absence than now, on the day of my return, though on the way I had longed for her like a madman, had thrashed about like a man in a frenzy, and even in sleep had seen her before me every moment. Once (this was in Switzerland), I had fallen asleep on the train, and it seems I began talking aloud with Polina, which made all my fellow travelers laugh. And now once more I asked myself the question: do I love her? And once more I was unable to answer it, that is, better to say, I answered myself again, for the hundredth time, that I hated her. Yes, she was hateful to me. There were moments (and precisely each time at the end of our conversations) when I would have given half my life to strangle her! I swear, if it had been possible to sink a sharp knife slowly into her breast, it seems to me I’d have snatched at it with delight. And yet, I swear by all that’s holy, if on the Schlangenberg, on the fashionable
However, I had her commission—to win at roulette at all costs. There was no time to reflect on why and how soon I had to win, and what new considerations had been born in that eternally calculating head. Besides, during these two weeks, evidently, no end of new facts had accrued, of which I still had no idea. All this had to be figured out, it all had to be grasped, and as soon as possible. But meanwhile now there was no time: I had to go to the roulette table.
CHAPTER II
I CONFESS, THIS WAS unpleasant for me. Though I had decided that I would play, it was not at all my intention to begin by playing for others. It even threw me off somewhat, and I went into the gaming rooms with a most vexatious feeling. At first sight, I disliked everything there. I can’t stand this lackeyishness in the gossip columns of the whole world, and mainly in our Russian newspapers, where almost every spring our columnists tell about two things: first, the extraordinary magnificence and splendor of the gaming rooms in the roulette towns on the Rhine, and second, the heaps of gold that supposedly lie on the tables. They’re not paid for that; they simply do it out of disinterested obsequiousness. There is no magnificence in these trashy rooms, and as for the gold, not only are there no heaps on the tables, but there’s scarcely even the slightest trace. Of course, now and then during the season some odd duck suddenly turns up, an Englishman, or some sort of Asiatic, a Turk, as happened this summer, and suddenly loses or wins a great deal; the rest all play for small change, and, on the average, there’s usually very little money lying on the table. As I had only just entered the gaming room (for the first time in my life), I did not venture to play for a while. Besides, it was crowded. But if I had been alone, even then I think I would sooner have left than started playing. I confess, my heart was pounding, and I was not coolheaded; I knew for certain and had long resolved that I would not leave Roulettenburg just so; something radical and definitive was bound to happen in my fate. So it must be, and so it would be. Ridiculous as it is that I should expect to get so much from roulette, it seems to me that the routine opinion, accepted by all, that it is stupid and absurd to expect anything at all from gambling, is even more ridiculous. Why is gambling worse than any other way of making money—trade, for instance? It’s true that only one in a hundred wins. But what do I care about that?
In any case, I decided to look on at first and not start anything serious that evening. That evening, if something did happen, it would be accidental and slight—and that’s what I settled on. Besides, I had to study the game itself; because, despite the thousands of descriptions of roulette I had always read with such avidity, I understood decidedly nothing of how it worked until I saw it myself.
First, it all seemed so filthy to me—somehow morally nasty and filthy. I am by no means speaking of those greedy and restless faces that stand in dozens, even in hundreds, around the gaming tables. I see decidedly nothing filthy in the desire to win sooner and more; I have always found very stupid the thought of one well-nourished and prosperous moralist, who, in response to someone’s excuse that “they play for low stakes,” replied: so much the worse, because there’s little interest. As if little interest and big interest were not the same. It’s a matter of proportion. What’s small for Rothschild, is great wealth for me, and as for gains and winnings—people everywhere, not only at the roulette table, do nothing but gain or win something from each other. Whether gain and profit are
