Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Gambler

It was as if something hit me on the head at these words. Of course, even then I considered her question half as a joke, as a challenge; but all the same she said it much too seriously. All the same, I was struck by her speaking it out like that, by her having such a right over me, accepting such power over me, and saying so directly: “Go to your ruin, and I’ll stay out of it.” There was something so cynical and frank in these words that, in my opinion, it was far too much. So that’s how she looks at me then? This was going beyond the bounds of slavery and nonentity. To have such a view is to raise a man to one’s own level. And however absurd, however unbelievable our whole conversation was, my heart shook.

Suddenly she burst out laughing. We were sitting on a bench then in front of the playing children, across from the place where carriages stopped and unloaded the public on the avenue before the vauxhall.

“Do you see that fat baroness?” she cried. “It’s Baroness Wurmerhelm. She came only three days ago. See her husband: a long, dry Prussian with a stick in his hand? Remember him looking us over two days ago? Go now, walk over to the baroness, take off your hat, and say something to her in French.”

“Why?”

“You swore you’d jump off the Schlangenberg; you swear you’re ready to kill if I order it. Instead of all these killings and tragedies, I want only to laugh. Go without any excuses. I want to see the baron beat you with his stick.”

“You’re challenging me; you think I won’t do it?”

“Yes, I’m challenging you, go, that’s how I want it!”

“I’ll go, if you please, though it’s a wild fantasy. Only here’s the thing: won’t there be trouble for the general, and for you through him? By God, I don’t worry about myself, but about you, well—and the general. And what is this fantasy of going and insulting a woman?”

“No, you’re a mere babbler, I can see,” she said contemptuously. “Your eyes became bloodshot earlier—however, maybe that’s because you drank a lot of wine at dinner. As if I don’t understand myself that it’s stupid, and trite, and that the general will get angry? I simply want to laugh. Well, I want to, that’s all! And why should you insult a woman? You’ll sooner get beaten with a stick.”

I turned and silently went to do her bidding. Of course it was stupid, and of course I failed to get out of it, but as I went up to the baroness, I remember something seemed to egg me on, namely, schoolboy prankishness. And I was terribly worked up, as if drunk.

TWO DAYS HAVE NOW gone by since that stupid day. And so much shouting, noising, knocking, talking! And it’s all such disorder, confusion, stupidity, and banality, and I’m the cause of it all. However, sometimes it seems funny—to me at any rate. I’m unable to give myself an accounting for what has happened to me, whether I’m indeed in a state of frenzy, or have simply jumped off the rails and gone on a rampage till they tie me up. At times it seems I’m going mad. And at times it seems I’m still not far from childhood, from the schoolbench, and it’s simply crude prankishness.

It’s Polina, it’s all Polina! Maybe there would be no schoolboy pranks if it weren’t for her. Who knows, maybe I’m doing it all out of despair (however stupid it is to reason this way). And I don’t understand, I don’t understand what’s so good about her! Good-looking she is, though; yes, it seems she’s good-looking. Others lose their minds over her, too. She’s tall and trim. Only very thin. It seems to me you could tie her in a knot or bend her double. The print of her foot is narrow and long—tormenting. Precisely tormenting. Her hair has a reddish tint. Her eyes—a real cat’s, but how proud and arrogant she can look with them. Four months ago, when I had just entered their service, she had a long and heated conversation with des Grieux one evening in the drawing room. And she looked at him in such a way…that later, when I went to my room to go to bed, I imagined that she had given him a slap—given it a moment before, then stood in front of him and looked at him…That evening I fell in love with her.

However, to business.

I went down the path to the avenue, stood in the middle of the avenue, and waited for the baroness and baron. From five paces away I took off my hat and bowed.

I remember the baroness was wearing a silk dress of boundless circumference, light gray in color, with flounces, a crinoline, and a train. She was short and extraordinarily fat, with a terribly fat, pendulous chin, so that her neck couldn’t be seen at all. A purple face. Small eyes, wicked and insolent. She walks along as if she’s doing everyone an honor. The baron is dry, tall. His face, as German faces usually are, is crooked and covered with a thousand tiny wrinkles; eyeglasses; forty-five years old. His legs begin almost at the level of his chest; that takes breeding. Proud as a peacock. A bit clumsy. Something sheeplike in the expression of his face, which in its way replaces profundity.

All this flashed in my eyes within three seconds.

My bow and the hat in my hand at first barely caught their attention. Only the baron knitted his brows slightly. The baroness just came sailing towards me.

“ Madame la baronne ,” I said loudly and clearly, rapping out each word, “ j’ai l’honneur d’être votre esclave. ” [10] Madame baroness…I have the honor of being your slave.

Then I bowed, put my hat on, and walked past the baron, politely turning my face to him and smiling.

She had told me to take off my hat, but the bowing and prankishness were all my own. Devil knows what pushed me. It was as if I was flying off a hilltop.

“ Hein! ” cried, or, better, grunted the baron, turning to me with angry surprise.

I turned and stopped in respectful expectation, continuing to look at him and smile. He was obviously perplexed and raised his eyebrows to the ne plus ultra . [11] Utmost. His face was darkening more and more. The baroness also turned towards me and stared in wrathful perplexity. Passersby began to look. Some even stopped.

“ Hein! ” the baron grunted again with a redoubled grunt and with redoubled wrath.

“ Jawohl! ” [12] Yes indeed. I drawled, continuing to look him straight in the face.

“ Sind Sie rasend? ” [13] Are you crazy? he cried, waving his stick and, it seemed, beginning to turn a bit cowardly. He might have been thrown off by my outfit. I was very decently, even foppishly, dressed, like a man fully belonging to the most respectable public.

“ Jawo-o-ohl! ” I suddenly shouted with all my might, drawing out the O as Berliners do, who constantly use the expression jawohl in conversation, with that more or less drawn out letter O expressing various nuances of thought and feeling.

The baron and baroness quickly turned and all but fled from me in fright. Some of the public started talking, others looked at me in perplexity. However, I don’t remember it very well.

I turned and walked at an ordinary pace towards Polina Alexandrovna. But I was still about a hundred yards from her bench when I saw her get up and go towards the hotel with the children.

I caught up with her by the porch.

“I performed…the foolery,” I said, drawing even with her.

“Well, what of it? Now you can deal with it,” she replied, without even looking at me, and went up the stairs.

That whole evening I spent walking in the park. Through the park and then through the woods, I even walked to another principality. {8} 8 Germany was made up at that time of independent principalities or states, which were finally united only in 1871, after Bismarck’s defeat of the French. Dostoevsky probably drew his Roulettenburg from Wiesbaden, a spa he visited several times. Wiesbaden was a few miles from the border of the grand duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt. In one cottage I ate scrambled eggs and drank wine. For this idyll I was fleeced as much as one and a half thalers.