The Adolescent

If I had a reader and he had read all that I’ve already written about my adventures, doubtless there would be no point in explaining to him that I am decidedly not created for any society whatever. Above all, I’m totally unable to behave myself in society. When I walk in somewhere where there are many people, it always feels to me that all their looks electrify me. I decidedly begin to cringe, cringe physically, even in such places as the theater, to say nothing of private houses. At all these roulettes and gatherings I decidedly failed to acquire any kind of bearing: first I sit and reproach myself for my unnecessary softness and politeness, then suddenly I get up and commit some rudeness. And meanwhile such blackguards, compared with me, managed to behave themselves there with astonishing bearing—and that was what infuriated me most of all, so that I lost my coolheadedness more and more. I’ll say straight out that, not only now, but then as well, this whole society—and even winning itself, if all be told— finally became repugnant and tormenting to me. Decidedly tormenting. Of course, I experienced an extreme pleasure, but that pleasure came by way of torment; all of it, that is, these people, the gambling, and, above all, I myself there with them, seemed terribly dirty to me. “The moment I win, I’ll spit on it all at once!” I said to myself each time, falling asleep at dawn in my lodgings after the night’s gambling. And then again this winning: take just the fact that I had no love of money at all. That is, I’m not going to repeat the vile pronouncements usual in such explanations, that I gambled, say, for the sake of gambling, for the sensation, for the pleasure of risk, passion, and so on, and not at all for gain. I needed money terribly, and though it was not my way, not my idea, somehow or other I still decided then, as an experiment, to try this way, too. One strong thought kept throwing me off here: “You’ve already figured out that you can unfailingly become a millionaire only if you have a suitably strong character. You’ve already tested your character; show yourself here as well: does roulette call for more character than your idea?” That’s what I repeated to myself. And since even to this day I hold the conviction that in games of chance, given a complete calmness of character, which preserves all the subtlety of intelligence and calculation, it is impossible not to overcome the crudeness of blind luck and win—so, naturally, I had to grow more and more vexed, seeing that at every moment I failed to sustain my character and got carried away like a perfect little brat. “I, who could endure hunger, cannot endure such a stupid thing!” That’s what irked me. What’s more, the awareness I have that no matter how ridiculous and humiliated I may seem, there lies within me that treasure of strength which will someday make them all change their opinion of me, this awareness—almost since the humiliated years of my childhood—then constituted the only source of my life, my light and my dignity, my weapon and my consolation, otherwise I might have killed myself while still a child. And therefore how could I not be irritated with myself, seeing what a pathetic being I turned into at the gaming table? That was why I could no longer leave off gambling; now I see it all clearly. Besides that main thing, my petty self-love also suffered. Losing humiliated me before the prince, before Versilov, though he never deigned to say anything, before everybody, even before Tatyana—so it seemed, so it felt to me. Finally, I’ll make yet another confession: I was already corrupted then; it was already hard for me to give up a seven-course dinner in the restaurant, Matvei, the English shop, my perfumer’s opinion—well, and all that. I was aware of it then, too, only I waved it away; now, though, in writing it down, I blush.

III

ARRIVING ALONE AND finding myself in an unfamiliar crowd, I first settled myself at the corner of the table and began staking small sums, and sat like that for about two hours without stirring. In those two hours, terrible rubbish went on—neither this nor that. I missed astonishing chances and tried not to get angry, but to succeed by coolheadedness and confidence. The end was that in the whole two hours I neither lost nor won: of the three hundred roubles, I lost some ten or fifteen. This insignificant result angered me, and what’s more a most unpleasant vileness occurred. I know that there sometimes happen to be thieves at these roulette tables—that is, not from the street, but simply among the well-known gamblers. I’m certain, for instance, that the well-known gambler Aferdov is a thief; to this day he cuts a figure around town: I met him recently driving a pair of his own ponies; but he’s a thief and he stole from me. This story is still to come; what happened that evening was just a prelude: I sat for the whole two hours at the corner of the table, and next to me all the while, on the left, was some rotten little fop—a Yid, I think; he participates somewhere, however, even writes something and gets it published. At the very last moment I suddenly won twenty roubles. Two red banknotes lay in front of me, and suddenly I see this little Yid reach out and quite calmly take one of my notes. I tried to stop him, but he, with a most insolent air and without raising his voice in the least, suddenly declares to me that it was his winnings, that he had just staked and won; he even refused to continue the conversation and turned his back. As if on purpose, I was in a most stupid state of mind at that moment: I had conceived a grand idea, and so I spat, got up quickly, and walked away, not even wanting to argue and making him a gift of the ten roubles. And it would have been hard to carry on with this story of the insolent pilferer, because the moment had been lost; the game had already gone ahead. And that was a huge mistake on my part, which had its consequences: three or four players next to us noticed our altercation and, seeing me give up so easily, probably took me for the same sort. It was exactly midnight; I went to another room, thought a bit, figured out a new plan, and, returning, exchangd my notes for half-imperials. I was now in possession of over forty pieces. I divided them into ten parts and decided to stake on zero ten times in a row, four half-imperials each time, one after another. “If I win, I’m in luck; if I lose, so much the better; I’m never going to play anymore.” I’ll note that zero hadn’t come up even once in those two hours, so that in the end nobody even staked on it.

I played standing up, silently frowning and clenching my teeth. On the third stake, Zershchikov loudly announced zero, which hadn’t come up all day. They counted me out a hundred and forty half-imperials in gold. I still had seven stakes left, and I went on, and meanwhile everything around me began to spin and dance.

“Move over here!” I called the whole length of the table to one of the players who had been sitting next to me earlier, a gray-haired man with a big moustache and a purple face, wearing a tailcoat, who for several hours already, with inexpressible patience, had been staking small sums and losing time after time. “Move over here! The luck’s here!”

“Are you speaking to me?” the moustache responded with some sort of menacing surprise from the other end of the table.

“Yes, you! You’ll lose everything over there!”

“It’s none of your business, and I beg you not to interfere with me!”

But I could no longer control myself. Across the table from me sat an elderly officer. Looking at my pile, he murmured to his neighbor:

“Strange: zero. No, I won’t venture on zero .”

“Venture it, Colonel!” I cried, placing another stake.

“I beg you to leave me in peace as well, sir, without your advice,” he snapped sharply. “You shout too much here.”

“I’m giving you good advice. Well, if you want to bet that zero will come up again right now—here, I’ll stake ten gold pieces, are you game?”

And I put up ten half-imperials.

“Bet ten gold pieces? That I can,” he said drily and sternly. “I bet you that zero won’t come up.”