The Gambler

with an expression of boundless hatred, her lips trembling with anger, said to me:

“Well, now give me my fifty thousand francs!”

“Again, again, Polina!” I tried to begin.

“Or have you changed your mind? Ha, ha, ha! Maybe you’re sorry now?”

The twenty-five thousand florins, already counted out last night, were lying on the table. I took them and gave them to her.

“So it’s mine now? Is it? Is it?” she asked me spitefully, holding the money in her hands.

“But it has always been yours,” I said.

“Well, then, here’s your fifty thousand francs!” She swung and sent them flying at me. The wad struck me painfully in the face and scattered over the floor. Having done that, Polina ran out of the room.

I know, of course, she was not in her right mind at that moment, though I don’t understand this temporary madness. True, even now, a month later, she’s still unwell. What, however, was the cause of this condition and, above all, of this escapade? Injured pride? Despair over the fact that she had even ventured to come to me? Did I look to her as if I was glorying in my success and indeed, just like des Grieux, wanted to get rid of her by giving her fifty thousand francs? But that wasn’t so, I know it by my own conscience. I think that part of the blame here lay in her vanity: vanity prompted her not to believe me and to insult me, though all this may have presented itself to her quite vaguely. In that case, of course, I answered for des Grieux, and was to blame, maybe, without much blame. True, all this was only delirium; it’s also true that I knew she was delirious, and…paid no attention to that circumstance. Maybe now she can’t forgive me for it? Yes, but that’s now; but then, then? Her delirium and illness were not so strong that she totally forgot what she was doing when she came to me with des Grieux’s letter? So she knew what she was doing.

Carelessly, hastily, I stuffed all my paper money and my whole heap of gold into the bed, covered it, and left some ten minutes after Polina. I was sure she had run home, and wanted to get to their suite quietly and ask the nanny in the front room about the young lady’s health. What was my amazement when, meeting the nanny on the stairs, I learned that Polina had not returned home yet and that the nanny herself was coming to my room to fetch her.

“Just now,” I said to her, “she left me only just now, some ten minutes ago, where could she have gone?”

The nanny looked at me reproachfully.

And meanwhile a whole story had come out, which had already spread through the hotel. In the porter’s lodge and at the manager’s it was whispered that, at six o’clock in the morning, the Fraulein came running out of the hotel, in the rain, and ran off in the direction of the Hotel d’Angleterre. From their words and hints, I noticed that they already knew she had spent the whole night in my room. However, there was already talk about the general’s whole family: it became known that the general had lost his mind the day before and wept for the whole hotel to hear. The talk also was that the grandmother who had come was his mother, who had appeared on purpose from Russia itself to forbid her son to marry Mlle de Cominges, and in case he disobeyed, to deprive him of his inheritance, and since he hadn’t obeyed, the countess, before his eyes, had deliberately lost all her money at roulette, so that there was nothing to leave him. “Diese Russen! ”[59] the manager repeated in indignation, shaking his head. Others laughed. The manager was making out the bill. Everybody already knew about my winning; Karl, my floorboy, was the first to congratulate me. But I couldn’t be bothered with them. I raced to the Hotel d’Angleterre.

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, beta! Is it true that tu as gagne d’or et d’argent? J’aimerais mieux l’or.”[60]

“I did win,” I answered, laughing.

“How much?”

“A hundred thousand florins.”

“Bibi, comme tu es bete. But do come in, I can’t hear a thing. Nous ferons bombance, n’est-ce pas?”[61]

I went into her room. She was lying under a pink satin spread, from which her swarthy, healthy, astonishing