Fyodor Dostoevsky - The Gambler

“Well, lift me up!” she cried, and we set off again for the roulette tables.

GRANDMOTHER WAS IN AN impatient and irritable state of mind; it was clear that roulette had lodged itself firmly in her head. She paid no attention to anything else, and was generally extremely distracted. For instance, she didn’t ask questions about anything on the way, as she had earlier. Seeing a very rich carriage that raced past us like the wind, she raised her hand and asked: “What’s that? Whose is it?”—but didn’t seem to hear my reply; her pensiveness was constantly broken by abrupt and impatient movements and actions. When I pointed out Baron and Baroness Wurmerhelm in the distance, as we were approaching the vauxhall, she looked distractedly and said quite indifferently: “Ah!”—and, turning quickly to Potapych and Marfa, who were walking behind her, said sharply:

“Well, why are you tagging along? You needn’t be taken every time! Go home! You’re enough for me,” she added to me, when the other two hastily bowed and returned home.

Grandmother was already expected in the vauxhall. She was at once allotted the same place next to the croupier. It seems to me that these croupiers, who are always so decorous and pretend to be ordinary officials for whom it is decidedly almost all the same whether the bank wins or loses, are not at all indifferent to the bank’s losses and, of course, are furnished with certain instructions for attracting gamblers and keeping better watch over the establishment’s interests—for which they certainly receive prizes and awards. At any rate they already looked upon grandmother as a nice little victim. Thereupon, what had been assumed of us—happened.

Here’s how it went.

Grandmother fell directly on zéro and straight away ordered me to stake twelve friedrichs d’or. We staked once, twice, three times— zéro wouldn’t come up. “Go on, stake!” grandmother nudged me impatiently. I obeyed.

“How many times have we lost?” she asked finally, grinding her teeth in impatience.

“That was the twelfth stake, grandmother. We’ve lost a hundred and forty-four friedrichs d’or. I tell you, grandmother, it may not be till evening…”

“Silence!” grandmother interrupted. “Stake on zéro , and right now stake a thousand guldens on red. Here, take the banknote.”

Red came up, but the zéro lost again; we won back a thousand guldens.

“See, see!” whispered grandmother, “we won back almost everything we lost. Stake again on zéro ; we’ll stake ten more times and drop it.”

But by the fifth time grandmother had become quite bored.

“To hell with it, drop that nasty little zéro . Here, stake all four thousand guldens on red,” she ordered.

“Grandmother! it’s too much, what if red doesn’t come up?” I implored; but grandmother nearly hit me. (However, she nudged me so hard that one could almost call it beating.) There was nothing to be done, I staked all the four thousand guldens we had won earlier on red. The wheel spun. Grandmother sat calmly and proudly erect, not doubting the certainty of winning.

“ Zéro ,” announced the croupier.

At first grandmother didn’t understand, but when she saw the croupier rake in her four thousand guldens along with everything that was on the table, and learned that the zéro which had taken so long to come up, and on which we had lost almost two hundred friedrichs d’or, had popped up, as if on purpose, just when grandmother denounced it and dropped it, she cried “Ah!” and clasped her hands for the whole hall to see. People around her even laughed.

“Saints alive! The cursed thing had to pop up just now!” grandmother yelled. “What a fiendish, fiendish thing! It’s you! It’s all you!” she fell upon me ferociously, shoving me. “You talked me out of it.”

“Grandmother, I talked sense to you, how can I be responsible for all the chances?”

“I’ll give you your chances!” she whispered threateningly. “Get out of here!”

“Good-bye, grandmother,” I turned to leave.

“Alexei Ivanovich, Alexei Ivanovich, stay! Where are you going? Well, what is it? what is it? Look, he’s angry! Fool! Stay, stay awhile, don’t be angry, I’m a fool myself! Well, tell me, what am I to do now?”

“I won’t venture to tell you, grandmother, because you’re going to accuse me. Play on your own; order me, and I’ll stake.”

“Well, well! so stake another four thousand guldens on red! Here’s my wallet, take it.” She took the wallet from her pocket and gave it to me. “Well, take it quickly, there’s twenty thousand roubles in cash here.”

“Grandmother,” I whispered, “such amounts…”

“I’ll win it back if it kills me. Stake!” We staked and lost.

“Stake, stake, stake the whole eight thousand!”

“I can’t, grandmother, the biggest stake is four!…”

“Stake four then!”

This time we won. Grandmother took heart. “See, see!” she nudged me. “Stake four again.”

We staked and lost; staked again and lost again.

“Grandmother, the whole twelve thousand is gone,” I reported.

“I see it’s gone,” she said in some sort of calm fury, if I may put it so, “I see, dearie, I see,” she muttered, staring fixedly in front of her and as if pondering. “Eh, even if it kills me, stake another four thousand guldens!”

“But we have no money, grandmother; there are some Russian five percent notes and some postal money orders in the wallet, but no money.”

“And in the purse?”

“Only small change left, grandmother.”

“Do they have exchange bureaus here? I was told I could cash any Russian papers here,” grandmother asked resolutely.

“Oh, as much as you like! But you’ll lose so much on the exchange that…the Jew himself will be horrified.”

“Rubbish! I’ll win it back. Take me. Call those blockheads!”

I rolled the chair away, the porters appeared, and we rolled out of the vauxhall. “Hurry, hurry!” grandmother commanded. “Show the way, Alexei Ivanovich, the shortest…is it far?”

“Two steps away, grandmother.”

But at the turn from the green into the avenue, we met our whole company: the general, des Grieux, and Mlle Blanche with her mama. Polina Alexandrovna was not with them, nor was Mr. Astley.

“Well, well, well! no stopping!” shouted grandmother. “Well, what do you care? I have no time for you!”

I walked behind; des Grieux sprang over to me.

“She lost all she won in the morning and blew twelve thousand guldens of her own. We’re on our way to exchange the five percent notes,” I whispered to him hurriedly.

Des Grieux stamped his foot and dashed to tell the general. We went on rolling grandmother.

“Stop her, stop her!” the general whispered in a frenzy.

“You go and try stopping her,” I whispered to him.

“Auntie!” the general approached, “auntie…we’re just…we’re just…” his voice trembled and faltered, “going to hire horses and drive out of town…A most delightful view…a point …we were on our way to invite you.”

“Eh, you and your point !” grandmother waved him away irritably.

“There’s a village…we’ll have tea…” the general went on, now in total despair.

“ Nous boirons du lait, sur l’herbe fraîche ,” [45] We’ll drink milk, in the fresh grass. des Grieux added with ferocious spite.

Du lait, de l’herbe fraîche —that’s all a Parisian bourgeois has of the ideally idyllic; therein, as everybody knows, lies his view of “ la nature et la vérité! ” [46] Nature and truth. {10} 10 Dostoevsky often refers ironically to this pair of words, which come from the prefatory note to Confessions , by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (see note 30 to The Double ): “Here is the only portrait of a man painted exactly from nature and in all its truth that exists and probably ever will exist.”