The Gambler

“I’ll try it yet, grandmother, for certain, later on.”

“And stake directly on zero! You’ll see! How much capital do you have?”

“Only twenty friedrichs d’or, grandmother.”

“Not much. I’ll lend you fifty friedrichs d’or, if you like. Here’s that same roll, take it, and you, dearie, don’t get your hopes up, I won’t give you anything!” she suddenly turned to the general.

The man was as if bowled over, but he said nothing. Des Grieux frowned.

“Que diable, c’est une terrible vieille! ”[37] he whispered to the general through his teeth.

“A beggar, a beggar, again a beggar!” cried grandmother. “Alexei Ivanovich, give this one a gulden, too.”

This time we met a gray-haired old man on a wooden leg, in some sort of long-skirted blue frock coat and with a long cane in his hand. He looked like an old soldier. But when I offered him a gulden, he stepped back and examined me menacingly.

“Was ist’s der Teufel! ”[38] he cried, adding another dozen oaths.

“Eh, the fool!” cried grandmother, waving her hand. “Drive on! I’m hungry! I’ll have dinner right now, then loll about for a bit and go back again.”

“You want to gamble again, grandmother?” I cried.

“What do you think? You all sit here and mope, so I’ve got to look at you?”

“Mais, madame,” des Grieux came closer, “les chances peuvent tourner, une seule mauvaise chance and vous perdrez tout…surtout avec votre jeu…c’etait terrible! ”[39]

“Vous perdrez absolument,”[40] chirped Mlle Blanche.

“What is it to all of you? It’s my money I’ll be losing, not yours! And where is that Mr. Astley?” she asked me.

“He stayed at the vauxhall, grandmother.”

“A pity; he’s such a nice man.”

On reaching home, grandmother, meeting the manager while still on the stairs, called to him and boasted of her win; then she called Fedosya, gave her three friedrichs d’or and ordered dinner served. Fedosya and Marfa simply dissolved before her during dinner.

“I’m watching you, dearie,” Marfa rattled out, “and I say to Potapych, what is it our dearie means to do? And all that money on the table, all that money, saints alive! in my whole life I never saw so much money, and gentlefolk all around, nothing but gentlefolk. How is it, Potapych, I say, it’s all such gentlefolk here? Mother of God, I think, help her. I’m praying for you, dearie, and my heart sinks, it just sinks, I’m trembling, I’m trembling all over. Grant her, Lord, I think, and so here the Lord sent it to you. And till now I’m still trembling, dearie, just trembling all over.”

“Alexei Ivanovich, after dinner, at around four, get ready and we’ll go. Meanwhile, good-bye—oh, yes, and don’t forget to send me some little doctor, I also have to drink the waters. Or else you may forget.”

I left grandmother’s as if in a daze. I tried to imagine what would happen now with all our people and what turn affairs would take. I saw clearly that they (the general mainly) had not yet managed to collect their senses, even from the first impression. The fact of grandmother’s appearance, instead of the telegram about her death (and therefore about the inheritance as well) that had been expected at any moment, had so shattered the whole system of their intentions and already-made decisions, that they treated grandmother’s further exploits at roulette with decided perplexity and a sort of stupor, which had come over them all. And yet this second fact was almost more important than the first, because, though grandmother had twice repeated that she would give no money to the general, who could tell—all the same they should not lose hope yet. Des Grieux, who was involved in all the general’s affairs, had not. I was sure that Mlle Blanche, who was also quite involved (what else: a general’s wife and a considerable inheritance!) would not lose hope and would use all the seductions of coquetry on grandmother—in contrast to the proud and unyielding Polina, who was not given to tenderness. But now, now, when grandmother had performed such exploits at roulette, now, when grandmother’s personality was stamped so clearly and typically before them (an obstinate, domineering old woman, et tombee en enfance)—now perhaps all was lost: why, she was pleased, like a child, to have gotten down to it, and, as usually happens, would lose her shirt. God! I thought (and, Lord forgive me, with the most malicious laughter), God, every friedrich d’or grandmother had staked today had left a sore spot in the general’s heart, had infuriated des Grieux, and had driven Mlle de Cominges, who felt the spoon going past her mouth, to a frenzy. Here is another fact: even after winning, in her joy, when grandmother had given money to everybody and had taken every passerby for a beggar, even then she had let slip to the general: “But all the same I won’t give you anything!” Which meant she was stubbornly fixed on this thought, had promised it to herself—dangerous! dangerous!

All these considerations wandered through my head while I was going up the central stairway from grandmother’s to the topmost floor, to my little room. All this concerned me greatly; though, of course, I could guess in advance the main, the thickest threads connecting the actors before me, I still did not ultimately know all the means and secrets of this game. Polina was never fully trusting with me. Though, true, it did happen that she would open her heart to me occasionally, as if inadvertently, I noticed that often, even almost always, after being open, she either turned everything she had said to ridicule, or deliberately made it look confused and false. Oh, she concealed a lot! In any case, I sensed that the finale was approaching for this whole mysterious and tense situation. One more stroke and everything would be finished and revealed. About my own fate, which was also caught up in it all, I almost didn’t worry. I was in a strange mood: in my pocket a total of twenty friedrichs d’or; I’m far away in a foreign land, with no post and no means of existence, no hopes, no plans and—it doesn’t worry me! If it hadn’t been for the thought of Polina, I would simply have surrendered myself entirely to the comic interest of the coming denouement and laughed my head off. But Polina confounds me. Her fate is being decided, I can feel that, but, I confess, it’s not at all her fate that troubles me. I’d like to penetrate her secrets; I’d like her to come to me and say: “I love you,” and if not, if that madness is unthinkable, then…well, what should I wish for? Do I know what to wish for? I’m as if lost myself; all I need is to be near her, in her aura, in her radiance, forever, always, all my life. Beyond that I know nothing! And can I possibly leave her?

On the third floor, in their corridor, it was as if something nudged me. I turned and, twenty or more paces away, saw Polina coming out the door. She seemed to have been waiting and watching for me, and immediately beckoned to me.

“Polina Alexandrovna…”

“Quiet!” she warned.

“Imagine,” I whispered, “it’s as if something just nudged me in the side; I turn around—it’s you! As if you give off some kind of electricity!”

“Take this letter,” Polina said with a preoccupied and frowning air, probably without hearing what I had just said, “and deliver it personally to Mr. Astley right away. Be quick, I beg you. No reply is needed. He himself…”

She didn’t finish. “To Mr. Astley?” I repeated in astonishment.

But Polina had already disappeared through the door.

“Aha, so they correspond!” Naturally, I ran at once to look for Mr. Astley, first in his hotel, where I didn’t find him, then in the vauxhall, where I ran around all the rooms, and finally, in vexation, almost in despair, on my way home, I met him by chance in a cavalcade of some English men and ladies, on horseback. I beckoned to him, stopped him, and gave him the letter. We had no time even to exchange glances. But I suspect that Mr. Astley deliberately hastened to urge his horse on.

Was I tormented by jealousy? I was indeed in the most broken state of mind. I didn’t even want to know what they corresponded about. So he was her confidant! “A friend he may be,” I thought, and that was clear (and when had he found time to become one?), “but is there love in it?” “Of course not,” reason whispered to me. But reason alone is not enough in such cases. In any case, this, too, was to be clarified. The business was becoming unpleasantly complicated.

I no sooner entered the hotel than the doorman and the manager, coming out of his room, informed me that I was being asked for, looked for, that three times there had been an inquiry about where I was, and a request that I go as quickly as possible to the general’s suite. I was in the nastiest state of mind. In the general’s study, besides