Short Stories by Chekhov
had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was beside
himself with rapture. During supper he said to the lawyer jokingly:
"Come to your senses, young man, before it's too late. Two millions are
nothing to me, but you stand to lose three or four of the best years of
your life. I say three or four, because you'll never stick it out any
longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary is much
heavier than enforced imprisonment. The idea that you have the right to
free yourself at any moment will poison the whole of your life in the
cell. I pity you."
And now the banker pacing from corner to corner, recalled all this and
asked himself:
"Why did I make this bet? What's the good? The lawyer loses fifteen
years of his life and I throw away two millions. Will it convince people
that capital punishment is worse or better than imprisonment for life.
No, No! all stuff and rubbish. On my part, it was the caprice of a well-
fed man; on the lawyer's, pure greed of gold."
He recollected further what happened after the evening party. It was
decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the
strictest observation, in a garden-wing of the banker's house. It was
agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right to cross
the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices, and to
receive letters and newspapers. He was permitted to have a musical
instrument, to read books, to write letters, to drink wine and smoke
tobacco. By the agreement he could communicate, but only in silence,
with the outside world through a little window specially constructed for
this purpose. Everything necessary, books, music, wine, he could receive
in any quantity by sending a note through the window. The agreement
provided for all the minutest details, which made the confinement
strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to remain exactly fifteen
years from twelve o'clock of November 14th 1870 to twelve o'clock of
November 14th 1885. The least attempt on his part to violate the
conditions, to escape if only for two minutes before the time freed the
banker from the obligation to pay him the two millions.
During the first year of imprisonment, the lawyer, as far as it was
possible to judge from his short notes, suffered terribly from
loneliness and boredom. From his wing day and night came the sound of
the piano. He rejected wine and tobacco. "Wine," he wrote, "excites
desires, and desires are the chief foes of a prisoner; besides, nothing
is more boring than to drink good wine alone," and tobacco spoils the
air in his room. During the first year the lawyer was sent books of a
light character; novels with a complicated love interest, stories of
crime and fantasy, comedies, and so on.
In the second year the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer asked
only for classics. In the fifth year, music was heard again, and the
prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him said that during the
whole of that year he was only eating, drinking, and lying on his bed.
He yawned often and talked angrily to himself. Books he did not read.
Sometimes at nights he would sit down to write. He would write for a
long time and tear it all up in the morning. More than once he was heard
to weep.
In the second half of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously to
study languages, philosophy, and history. He fell on these subjects so
hungrily that the banker hardly had time to get books enough for him. In
the space of four years about six hundred volumes were bought at his
request. It was while that passion lasted that the banker received the
following letter from the prisoner: "My dear gaoler, I am writing these
lines in six languages. Show them to experts. Let them read them. If
they do not find one single mistake, I beg you to give orders to have a
gun fired off in the garden. By the noise I shall know that my efforts
have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in
different languages; but in them all burns the same flame. Oh, if you
knew my heavenly happiness now that I can understand them!" The
prisoner's desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in the garden by
the banker's order.
Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his
table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange that
a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite volumes, should
have spent nearly a year in reading one book, easy to understand and by
no means thick. The New Testament was then replaced by the history of
religions and theology.
During the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
extraordinary amount, quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself to the
natural sciences, then would read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes used to
come from him in which he asked to be sent at the same time a book on
chemistry, a text-book of medicine, a novel, and some treatise on
philosophy or theology. He read as though he were swimming in the sea
among the broken pieces of wreckage, and in his desire to save his life
was eagerly grasping one piece after another. II
The banker recalled all this, and thought:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he receives his freedom. Under the
agreement, I shall have to pay him two millions. If I pay, it's all over
with me. I am ruined for ever...."
Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count, but now he was
afraid to ask himself which he had more of, money or debts. Gambling on
the Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the recklessness of which he
could not rid himself even in old age, had gradually brought his
business to decay; and the fearless, self-confident, proud man of
business had become an ordinary banker, trembling at every rise and fall
in the market.
"That cursed bet," murmured the old man clutching his head in
despair.... "Why didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He will
take away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the Exchange,
and I will look on like an envious beggar and hear the same words from
him every day: 'I'm obliged to you for the happiness of my life. Let me
help you.' No, it's too much! The only escape from bankruptcy and
disgrace--is that the man should die."
The clock had just struck three. The banker was listening. In Ike house
everyone was asleep, and one could hear only the frozen trees whining
outside the windows. Trying to make no sound, he took out of his safe
the key of the door which had not been opened for fifteen years, put on
his overcoat, and went out of the house. The garden was dark and cold.
It was raining. A keen damp wind hovered howling over all the garden and
gave the trees no rest. Though he strained his eyes, the banker could
see neither the ground, nor the white statues, nor the garden-wing, nor
the trees. Approaching the place where the garden wing stood, he called
the watchman twice. There was no answer. Evidently the watchman had
taken shelter from the bad weather and was now asleep somewhere in the
kitchen or the greenhouse.
"If I have the courage to fulfil my intention," thought the old man,
"the suspicion will fall on the watchman first of all."
In the darkness he groped for the stairs and the door and entered the
hall of the gardenwing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and
struck a match. Not a soul was there. Someone's bed, with no bedclothes
on it, stood there, and an iron stove was dark in the corner. The seals
on the door that led into the prisoner's room were unbroken.
When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation, peeped
into the little window.
In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dim. The prisoner himself
sat by the table. Only his back, the hair on his head and his hands were
visible. On the table, the two chairs, the carpet by the table open
books were strewn.
Five minutes passed and the prisoner never once stirred. Fifteen years
confinement had taught him to sit motionless. The banker tapped on the
window with his finger, but the prisoner gave no movement in reply. Then
the banker cautiously tore the seals from the door and put the key into
the lock. The rusty lock gave a hoarse groan and the door creaked. The
banker expected instantly to hear a cry of surprise and the sound of
steps. Three minutes passed and it was as quiet behind the door as it
had been before. He made up his mind to enter. Before the table sat a
man, unlike an ordinary human being. It was a skeleton, with tight-drawn
skin, with a woman's long curly hair, and a shaggy beard. The colour of
his face was yellow, of an earthy shade; the cheeks were sunken, the
back long and narrow, and the hand upon which he leaned his hairy head
was so lean and skinny that it was painful to look upon. His hair was
already silvering with grey, and no one who glanced at the senile
emaciation of the face would have believed that he was only forty years
old. On the table, before his bended head, lay a sheet of paper on which
something was written in a tiny hand.
"Poor devil," thought the banker, "he's asleep and probably seeing
millions in his dreams. I have only to take and throw this half-dead
thing on the bed, smother him a moment with the pillow, and the most
careful examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But, first,
let us read what he has written here."
The banker took the sheet from the table and read:
"To-morrow at twelve o'clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom and the
right to mix with people. But before I leave this room and see the sun I
think it necessary to say a few words to you. On my own clear conscience
and before God who sees me I declare to you that I despise freedom,
life, health, and all that your books call the blessings of the world.
"For fifteen years I have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw
neither the earth nor the people, but in your books I drank fragrant
wine, sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forests, loved
women.... And beautiful women, like clouds ethereal, created by the
magic of your poets' genius, visited me by night and whispered me
wonderful tales, which made my head drunken. In your books I climbed the
summits of Elbruz and Mont Blanc and saw from thence how the sun rose in
the morning, and in the evening overflowed the sky, the ocean and the
mountain ridges with a purple gold. I saw from thence how above me
lightnings glimmered cleaving the clouds; I saw green forests, fields,
rivers, lakes, cities; I heard syrens singing, and the playing of the
pipes of Pan; I touched the wings of beautiful devils who came flying to
me to speak of God.... In your books I cast myself into bottomless
abysses, worked miracles, burned cities to the ground, preached new
religions, conquered whole countries....
"Your books gave me wisdom. All that unwearying human thought created in
the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know that I
am more clever than you all.
"And I despise your books, despise all wordly blessings and wisdom.
Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive like a mirage. Though
you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the
face of the earth like the mice underground; and your posterity, your
history, and the immortality of your men of genius will be as frozen
slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial globe.
"You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take lie for truth and
ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if by certain conditions there
should suddenly grow on apple and orange trees, instead of fruit, frogs
and lizards, and if roses should begin to breathe the odour of a
sweating horse. So do I marvel at you, who have bartered heaven for
earth. I do not want to understand you.
"That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you live, I