Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Gambler

SHE WAS UNUSUALLY PENSIVE, but as soon as we left the table, she told me to accompany her on a walk. We took the children and went to the fountain in the park.

As I was particularly agitated, I blurted out a question stupidly and crudely: why is it that our marquis des Grieux, the little Frenchman, not only doesn’t accompany her now, when she goes out somewhere, but doesn’t even speak to her for whole days at a time?

“Because he’s a scoundrel,” she answered strangely. I had never before heard such an opinion about des Grieux from her, and I kept silent, afraid to understand this irritability.

“And did you notice that he’s not on good terms with the general today?”

“You want to know what’s the matter?” she answered dryly and irritably. “You do know that the general is entirely mortgaged to him, everything he owns is his, and if grandmother doesn’t die, the Frenchman immediately comes into possession of all that’s mortgaged to him.”

“Ah, so it’s really true that everything’s mortgaged? I’d heard, but didn’t know it was decidedly everything.”

“But of course!”

“And with that it’s good-bye Mlle Blanche,” I observed. “She won’t be a generaless then! You know what: it seems to me the general is so in love that he might shoot himself if Mlle Blanche abandons him. At his age it’s dangerous to be so in love.”

“I think myself that something will happen to him,” Polina Alexandrovna observed pensively.

“And how splendid that is,” I cried. “She couldn’t show more crudely that she had consented to marry only for money. Here even decencies weren’t observed, it all happened quite without ceremony. A wonder! And as for grandmother, what could be more comical and filthy than to send telegram after telegram, asking: ‘Is she dead, is she dead?’ Eh? How do you like it, Polina Alexandrovna?”

“That’s all nonsense,” she said with disgust, interrupting me. “On the contrary, I’m astonished that you’re in such a merry mood. What are you glad about? Can it be because you lost my money?”

“Why did you give it to me to lose? I told you I couldn’t play for others, the less so for you. I’ll obey whatever orders you give me; but the result doesn’t depend on me. I warned you that nothing would come of it. Tell me, are you very crushed to have lost so much money? What do you need so much for?”

“Why these questions?”

“But you yourself promised me to explain…Listen: I’m perfectly convinced that when I start playing for myself (I have twelve friedrichs d’or), I’ll win. Then take as much as you need from me.”

She made a scornful face.

“Don’t be angry with me,” I went on, “for such an offer. I’m so pervaded by the awareness that I’m a zero before you, that is, in your eyes, that you can even accept money from me. A present from me cannot offend you. Besides, I lost yours.”

She gave me a quick glance and, noticing that I was speaking irritably and sarcastically, changed the subject again:

“There’s nothing interesting for you in my circumstances. If you want to know, I simply owe the money. I borrowed money and would like to pay it back. I had the crazy and strange notion that I was sure to win here at the gaming table. Why I had that notion I don’t understand, but I believed in it. Who knows, maybe I believed because I had no other choice.”

“Or because there was all too much need to win. It’s exactly like a drowning man grasping at a straw. You must agree that if he weren’t drowning, he wouldn’t take a straw for the branch of a tree.”

Polina was surprised.

“Why,” she asked, “aren’t you hoping for the same thing yourself? Two weeks ago you yourself once spoke to me, a lot and at length, about your being fully convinced of winning here at roulette, and tried to persuade me not to look at you as a madman—or were you joking then? But I remember you spoke so seriously that it couldn’t possibly have been taken for a joke.”

“That’s true,” I answered pensively. “To this day I’m fully convinced of winning. I’ll even confess to you that you’ve just now led me to a question: precisely why has my senseless and outrageous loss today not left me with any doubts? I’m still fully convinced that as soon as I start playing for myself, I’m sure to win.”

“Why are you so completely certain?”

“If you like—I don’t know. I know only that I need to win, that it’s also my one way out. Well, so maybe that’s why it seems to me that I’m sure to win.”

“Which means you also have all too much need to win, if you’re so fanatically convinced.”

“I’ll bet you doubt I’m capable of feeling a serious need.”

“It’s all the same to me,” Polina replied quietly and indifferently. “If you like— yes , I doubt that you could seriously suffer from anything. You may suffer, but not seriously. You’re a disorderly and unsettled man. What do you need money for? I found nothing serious in any of the reasons you gave me then.”

“By the way,” I interrupted, “you said you had to repay a debt. A nice debt, then! Not to the Frenchman?”

“What are these questions? You’re particularly sharp today. You’re not drunk, are you?”

“You know I allow myself to say anything and sometimes ask very frank questions. I repeat, I am your slave, one is not ashamed with slaves, and a slave cannot give offense.”

“That’s all rubbish! And I can’t stand this ‘slave’ theory of yours!”

“Note that I speak of my slavery not because I wish to be your slave, but just so—as of a fact that does not depend on me at all.”

“Tell me straight out, why do you need money?”

“And why do you want to know that?”

“As you like,” she replied and proudly tossed her head.

“You can’t stand the slave theory, but you demand slavery: ‘Answer and don’t argue!’ Very well, so be it. Why money, you ask? What do you mean, why? Money’s everything!”

“I understand, but not falling into such madness from desiring it! You also reach the point of frenzy, of fatalism! There’s something in it, some special goal. Speak without meandering, I want it that way.”

It was as if she was beginning to get angry, and I liked terribly that she put so much heart into her questioning.

“Of course there’s a goal,” I said, “but I’m unable to explain what it is. No more than that with money I’ll become a different person for you, and not a slave.”

“What? How are you going to achieve that?”

“How achieve it? What, you don’t even understand how I can achieve that you look at me otherwise than as a slave? Well, that’s just what I don’t want, such surprises and perplexities.”

“You said this slavery was a pleasure for you. I thought so myself.”

“You thought so,” I cried with some strange pleasure. “Ah, how good such naïveté is coming from you! Well, yes, yes, to be enslaved to you is a pleasure. There is, there is pleasure in the ultimate degree of humiliation and insignificance!” I went on raving. “Devil knows, maybe there is in the knout, too, when the knout comes down on your back and tears your flesh to pieces…But may be I want to try other pleasures as well. Earlier at the table, in your presence, the general read me a lesson, because of the seven hundred roubles a year which I still may not even get from him. The marquis des Grieux raises his eyebrows, scrutinizes me, and at the same time doesn’t notice me. And maybe I, for my part, passionately desire to take the marquis des Grieux by the nose in your presence?”

“A milksop’s talk. One can behave with dignity in any situation. If there’s a struggle involved, it’s elevating, not humiliating.”