Complete Works of Fyodor Dostoyevsky (586 page)

That last thought rose spontaneously in my mind and I did not even remark it.  Such were the thoughts that floated through my mind one after another, and I was straightforward with myself; I did not cheat or deceive myself; and if there was anything I did not understand at that moment, it was not from sophistry with myself but only from lack of brains.

I returned home in great excitement, and — I don’t know why — in a very cheerful, though confused state of mind.  But I was afraid of analysing my feelings and did my utmost to distract my mind.  I went in at once to see my landlady: it turned out that a terrible quarrel really had taken place between her husband and her.  She was in advanced consumption, and though, perhaps, she was a good- natured woman, like all consumptives she was of uncertain temper.  I began trying to reconcile them at once; I went to the lodger, who was a very vain little bank clerk, called, Tchervyak, a coarse pock-marked fool.  I disliked him very much, but I got on with him quite well, for I often was so mean as to join him in turning Pyotr Ippolitovitch into ridicule.  I at once persuaded him to keep on the lodgings, and indeed he would not in any case have really gone so far as to move.  It ended in my reassuring the landlady completely, and even succeeding in very deftly putting a pillow under her head:  “Pyotr Ippolitovitch would never have known how to do it,” she commented malignantly.  Then I busied myself in the kitchen preparing mustard plasters for her and succeeded in making two capital ones with my own hand.  Poor Pyotr Ippolitovitch looked on envious, but I did not allow him to touch them, and was rewarded by liberal tears of gratitude from the lady.  I remember I suddenly felt sick of it all, and suddenly realized that I was not looking after the invalid from kindness at all, but from something else, some very different motive.

I waited for Matvey with nervous impatience: I had resolved that evening to try my luck at cards for the last time and . . . and, apart from my need to win, I had an intense longing to play; but for that, my excitement would have been unbearable.  If I had not gone anywhere I might have been unable to hold out and should have gone to her.  It was almost time for Matvey to come, when the door was opened and an unexpected visitor, Darya Onisimovna, walked in.  I frowned and was surprised.  She knew my lodging, for she had been there once with some message from my mother.  I made her sit down and looked at her inquiringly.  She said nothing, and only looked straight into my face with a deferential smile.

“You’ve not come from Liza?” it occurred to me to ask.

“No, it’s nothing special.”

I informed her that I was just going out; she replied again that it was “nothing special,” and that she was going herself in a minute.  I suddenly for some reason felt sorry for her.  I may observe that she had met with a great deal of sympathy from all of us, from my mother, and still more from Tatyana Pavlovna, but after installing her at Mme. Stolbyeev’s all of us had rather begun to forget her, except perhaps Liza, who often visited her.  I think she was herself the cause of this neglect, for she had a special faculty for effacing herself and holding herself aloof from people in spite of her obsequiousness and her ingratiating smiles.  I personally disliked those smiles of hers, and her affected expression, and I even imagined on one occasion that she had not grieved very long for her Olya.  But this time for some reason I felt very sorry for her.

And behold, without uttering a word, she suddenly bent forward with her eyes cast down, and all at once, throwing her arms round my waist, hid her face on my knees.  She seized my hand, I thought she meant to kiss it, but she pressed it to her eyes, and hot tears trickled upon it.  She was shaking all over with sobs, but she wept silently.  It sent a pang to my heart, even though I felt at the same time somehow annoyed.  But she was embracing me with perfect confidence and without the least fear that I might be vexed, though only just before she had smiled so timidly and cringingly.

I began begging her to calm herself.

“Kind, good friend, I don’t know what to do with myself.  As soon as it gets dark, I can’t bear it; as soon as it gets dark I can’t go on bearing it, and I feel drawn into the street, into the darkness.  And I am drawn there by my imaginings.  My mind is possessed by the fancy that as soon as ever I go out I shall meet her in the street.  I walk and seem to see her.  That is other girls are walking along the street and I walk behind them on purpose, and I think:  ‘Isn’t it she, there she is,’ I think, ‘it really is my Olya!’  I dream and dream.  I turn giddy at last, and feel sick, and stumble and jostle against people; I stumble as though I were drunk and some swear at me; I hide by myself and don’t go to see anyone, and wherever one goes, it makes one’s heart more sick; I passed by your lodging just now, and thought:  ‘I’ll go in to him; he is kinder than any of them, and he was there at the time.’  Forgive a poor creature who’s no use to anyone; I’ll go away directly; I’m going. . . .”

She suddenly got up and made haste to depart.  Matvey arrived just then; I made her get into the sledge with me, and left her at Mme. Stolbyeev’s on my way.

2

I had of late begun to frequent Zerstchikov’s gambling saloon.  I had so far visited three gambling houses, always in company with Prince Sergay, who had introduced me to these places.  At one of these houses the game was faro especially, and the stakes were high.  But I did not care for going there: I saw that one could not get on there without a long purse, and also that the place was crowded with insolent fellows and swaggering young snobs.  This was what Prince Sergay liked; he liked playing, too, but he particularly liked getting to know these young prodigals.  I noticed that though he went in with me he kept away from me during the evening and did not introduce me to any of “his set.”  I stared about me like a wild man of the woods, so much so that I sometimes attracted attention.  At the gambling table people spoke to one another freely; but once I tried bowing next day to a young fop, with whom I had not only talked but laughed the previous evening, sitting beside him, and had even guessed two cards from him.  Yet when I greeted him in the same room next day, he actually did not recognize me.  Or what was worse, stared at me with simulated amazement, and passed by with a smile.  So I quickly gave up the place and preferred to visit a “sewer” — I don’t know what else to call it — it was a wretched sordid little place for roulette, managed by a kept woman, who, however, never showed herself in the saloon.  It was all horribly free and easy there, and though officers and wealthy merchants sometimes frequented it, there was a squalid filthiness about the place, though that was an attraction to many.  Moreover, I was often lucky there.  But I gave that place up, too, after a disgusting scene, which occurred when the game was at its hottest and ended in a fight between two players.  I began going instead to Zerstchikov’s, to which Prince Sergay took me also.  The man was a retired captain, and the tone at his rooms was very tolerable, military, curt, and businesslike, and there was a fastidiously scrupulous keeping up of the forms of punctilio.  No boisterous practical jokers or very fast men frequented it.  Moreover, the stakes played for were often considerable.  Both faro and roulette were played.  I had only been there twice before that evening, the 15th of November, but I believe Zerstchikov already knew me by sight; I had made no acquaintances there, however.  As luck would have it Prince Sergay did not turn up till about midnight, when he dropped in with Darzan after spending the evening at the gambling saloon of the young snobs which I had given up; and so that evening I found myself alone and unknown in a crowd of strangers.

If I had a reader and he had read all I have written so far of my adventures, there would be certainly no need to inform him that I am not created for any sort of society.  The trouble is I don’t know how to behave in company.  If I go anywhere among a great many people I always have a feeling as though I were being electrified by so many eyes looking at me.  It positively makes me shrivel up, physically shrivel up, even in such places as a theatre, to say nothing of private houses.  I did not know how to behave with dignity in these gambling saloons and assemblies; I either sat still, inwardly upbraiding myself for my excessive mildness and politeness, or I suddenly got up and did something rude.  And meanwhile all sorts of worthless fellows far inferior to me knew how to behave with wonderful aplomb — and that’s what exasperated me above everything, so that I lost my self-possession more and more.  I may say frankly, even at that time, if the truth is to be told, the society there, and even winning money at cards, had become revolting and a torture to me.  Positively a torture.  I did, of course, derive acute enjoyment from it, but this enjoyment was at the cost of torture: the whole thing, the people, the gambling, and, most of all, myself in the midst of them, seemed horribly nasty.  “As soon as I win I’ll chuck it all up!” I said to myself every time when I woke up in my lodgings in the morning after gambling over night.  Then, again, how account for my desire to win, since I certainly was not fond of money?  Not that I am going to repeat the hackneyed phrases usual in such explanations, that I played for the sake of the game, for the pleasure of it, for the risk, the excitement and so on, and not for gain.  I was horribly in need of money, and though this was not my chosen path, not my idea, yet somehow or other I had made up my mind to try it by way of experiment.  I was continually possessed by one overwhelming thought:  “You maintained that one could reckon with certainty on becoming a millionaire if only one had sufficient strength of will; you’ve tested your strength of will already; so show yourself as strong in this case: can more strength of will be needed for roulette than for your idea?” that is what I kept repeating to myself.  And as I still retain the conviction, that in games of chance, if one has perfect control of one’s will, so that the subtlety of one’s intelligence and one’s power of calculation are preserved, one cannot fail to overcome the brutality of blind chance and to win, I naturally could not help growing more and more irritated when at every moment I failed to preserve my strength of will and was carried away by excitement, like a regular child.  “Though I was able to endure hunger, I am not able to control myself in an absurd thing like this!” that was what provoked me.  Moreover, the consciousness that however absurd and abject I might seem, I had within me a rich store of strength which would one day make them all change their opinion of me, that consciousness has been from the days of my oppressed childhood the one spring of life for me, my light, my dignity, my weapon and my consolation, without which I might have committed suicide as a little child.  And so how could I help being irritated when I saw what a pitiful creature I became at the gambling table?  That is why I could not give up playing!  I see it all clearly now.  This was the chief reason, but apart from that my petty vanity was wounded.  Losing had lowered me in the eyes of Prince Sergay, of Versilov, though he did not deign to speak of it, of every one, even of Tatyana Pavlovna; that is what I thought, I felt.  Finally, I will make another confession!  By that time I had begun to be corrupted: it had become hard for me to give up a dinner of seven dishes at the restaurant, to give up Matvey, and the English shop, to lose the good opinion of my hairdresser, and all that, in fact.  I was conscious of it even at the time, but I refused to admit the thought; now I blush to write it.

3

Finding myself alone in a crowd of strangers, I established myself at first at a corner of the table and began staking small sums.  I remained sitting there without stirring for two hours.  For those two hours the play was horribly flat — neither one thing nor another.  I let slip some wonderful chances and tried not to lose my temper, but to preserve my coolness and confidence.  At the end of the two hours I had neither lost nor won.  Out of my three hundred roubles I had lost ten or fifteen roubles.  This trivial result exasperated me, and what’s more an exceedingly unpleasant, disgusting incident occurred.  I know that such gambling saloons are frequented by thieves, who are not simply pickpockets out of the street but well-known gamblers.  I am certain that the well- known gambler Aferdov is a thief; he is still to be seen about the town; I met him not long ago driving a pair of his own ponies, but he is a thief and he stole from me.  But this incident I will describe later; what happened this evening was simply a prelude.

I spent there two hours sitting at a corner of the table, and beside me, on the left, there was all the time an abominable little dandy, a Jew I believe; he is on some paper though, and even writes something and gets it published.  At the very last moment I suddenly won twenty roubles.  Two red notes lay before me, and suddenly I saw this wretched little Jew put out his hand and remove one of my notes.  I tried to stop him; but with a most impudent air he immediately informed me, without raising his voice in the least, that it was what he had won, that he had just put down a stake and won it; he declined to continue the conversation and turned away.  As ill-luck would have it, I was in a state of extreme stupidity at that moment: I was brooding over a great idea, and with a curse I got up quickly and walked away; I did not want to dispute, so made him a present of the red note.  And indeed it would have been difficult to go into the matter with an impudent thief, for I had let slip the right moment, and the game was going on again.  And that was my great mistake, the effect of which was apparent later on: three or four players near us saw how the matter ended, and noticing how easily I had given way, took me for another of the same sort.

It was just twelve o’clock; I walked into the other room, and after a little reflection formed a new plan.  Going back I changed my notes at the bank for half imperials.  I received over forty of them.  I divided them into ten lots, and resolved to stake four half imperials ten times running on the zero.  “If I win it’s my luck.  If I lose, so much the better, I’ll never play again.”  I may mention that zero had not turned up once during those two hours, so that at last no one was staking on zero.