The Bet, and other stories
postponed his departure every week. There have been some changes in him
lately. He’s suddenly got thin, begun to be affected by drink--a thing
that never happened to him before, and his black eyebrows have begun
to get grey. When our buggy stops at the gate he cannot hide his joy
and impatience. Anxiously he helps Katy and me from the buggy, hastily
asks us questions, laughs, slowly rubs his hands, and that gentle,
prayerful, pure something that I used to notice only in his eyes is now
poured over all his face. He is happy and at the same time ashamed of
his happiness, ashamed of his habit of coming to Katy’s every evening,
and he finds it necessary to give a reason for his coming, some
obvious absurdity, like: “I was passing on business, and I thought I’d
just drop in for a second.”
All three of us go indoors. First we drink tea, then our old friends,
the two packs of cards, appear on the table, with a big piece of
cheese, some fruit, and a bottle of Crimean champagne. The subjects of
conversation are not new, but all exactly the same as they were in the
winter. The university, the students, literature, the theatre--all of
them come in for it. The air thickens with slanders, and grows more
close. It is poisoned by the breath, not of two toads as in winter,
but now by all three. Besides the velvety, baritone laughter and the
accordion-like giggle, the maid who waits upon us hears also the
unpleasant jarring laugh of a musical comedy general: “He, he, he!”
V
There sometimes come fearful nights with thunder, lightning, rain, and
wind, which the peasants call “sparrow-nights.” There was one such
sparrow-night in my own personal life....
I wake after midnight and suddenly leap out of bed. Somehow it seems
to me that I am going to die immediately. I do not know why, for there
is no single sensation in my body which points to a quick end; but
a terror presses on my soul as though I had suddenly seen a huge,
ill-boding fire in the sky.
I light the lamp quickly and drink some water straight out of the
decanter. Then I hurry to the window. The weather is magnificent. The
air smells of hay and some delicious thing besides. I see the spikes of
my garden fence, the sleepy starveling trees by the window, the road,
the dark strip of forest. There is a calm and brilliant moon in the sky
and not a single cloud. Serenity. Not a leaf stirs. To me it seems that
everything is looking at me and listening for me to die.
Dread seizes me. I shut the window and run to the bed, I feel for my
pulse. I cannot find it in my wrist; I seek it in my temples, my chin,
my hand again. They are all cold and slippery with sweat. My breathing
comes quicker and quicker; my body trembles, all my bowels are stirred,
and my face and forehead feel as though a cobweb had settled on them.
What shall I do? Shall I call my family? No use. I do not know what my
wife and Liza will do when they come in to me.
I hide my head under the pillow, shut my eyes and wait, wait.... My
spine is cold. It almost contracts within me. And I feel that death
will approach me only from behind, very quietly.
“Kivi, kivi.” A squeak sounds in the stillness of the night. I do not
know whether it is in my heart or in the street.
God, how awful! I would drink some more water; but now I dread opening
my eyes, and fear to raise my head. The terror is unaccountable,
animal. I cannot understand why I am afraid. Is it because I want to
live, or because a new and unknown pain awaits me?
Upstairs, above the ceiling, a moan, then a laugh ... I listen. A
little after steps sound on the staircase. Someone hurries down, then
up again. In a minute steps sound downstairs again. Someone stops by my
door and listens.
“Who’s there?” I call.
The door opens. I open my eyes boldly and see my wife. Her face is pale
and her eyes red with weeping.
“You’re not asleep, Nicolai Stiepanovich?” she asks.
“What is it?”
“For God’s sake go down to Liza. Something is wrong with her.”
“Very well ... with pleasure,” I murmur, very glad that I am not alone.
“Very well ... immediately.”
As I follow my wife I hear what she tells me, and from agitation
understand not a word. Bright spots from her candle dance over the
steps of the stairs; our long shadows tremble; my feet catch in the
skirts of my dressing-gown. My breath goes, and it seems to me that
someone is chasing me, trying to seize my back. “I shall die here on
the staircase, this second,” I think, “this second.” But we have passed
the staircase, the dark hall with the Italian window and we go into
Liza’s room. She sits in bed in her chemise; her bare legs hang down
and she moans.
“Oh, my God ... oh, my God!” she murmurs, half shutting her eyes from
our candles. “I can’t, I can’t.”
“Liza, my child,” I say, “what’s the matter?”
Seeing me, she calls out and falls on my neck.
“Papa darling,” she sobs. “Papa dearest ... my sweet. I don’t know what
it is.... It hurts.”
She embraces me, kisses me and lisps endearments which I heard her lisp
when she was still a baby.
“Be calm, my child. God’s with you,” I say. “You mustn’t cry. Something
hurts me too.”
I try to cover her with the bedclothes; my wife gives her to drink; and
both of us jostle in confusion round the bed. My shoulders push into
hers, and at that moment I remember how we used to bathe our children.
“But help her, help her!” my wife implores. “Do something!” And what
can I do? Nothing. There is some weight on the girl’s soul; but I
understand nothing, know nothing and can only murmur:
“It’s nothing, nothing.... It will pass.... Sleep, sleep.”
As if on purpose a dog suddenly howls in the yard, at first low and
irresolute, then aloud, in two voices. I never put any value on such
signs as dogs’ whining or screeching owls; but now my heart contracts
painfully, and I hasten to explain the howling.
“Nonsense,” I think. “It’s the influence of one organism on another.
My great nervous strain was transmitted to my wife, to Liza, and to
the dog. That’s all. Such transmissions explain presentiments and
previsions.”
A little later when I return to my room to write a prescription for
Liza I no longer think that I shall die soon. My soul simply feels
heavy and dull, so that I am even sad that I did not die suddenly. For
a long while I stand motionless in the middle of the room, pondering
what I shall prescribe for Liza; but the moans above the ceiling are
silent and I decide not to write a prescription, but stand there still.
There is a dead silence, a silence, as one man wrote, that rings
in one’s ears. The time goes slowly. The bars of moonshine on the
windowsill do not move from their place, as though congealed.... The
dawn is still far away.
But the garden-gate creaks; someone steals in, and strips a twig from
the starveling trees, and cautiously knocks with it on my window.
“Nicolai Stiepanovich!” I hear a whisper. “Nicolai Stiepanovich!”
I open the window, and I think that I am dreaming. Under the window,
close against the wall stands a woman in a black dress. She is brightly
lighted by the moon and looks at me with wide eyes. Her face is pale,
stern and fantastic in the moon, like marble. Her chin trembles.
“It is I....” she says, “I ... Katy!”
In the moon all women’s eyes are big and black, people are taller and
paler. Probably that is the reason why I did not recognise her in the
first moment.
“What’s the matter?”
“Forgive me,” she says. “I suddenly felt so dreary ... I could not bear
it. So I came here. There’s a light in your window ... and I decided to
knock.... Forgive me.... Ah, if you knew how dreary I felt! What are
you doing now?”
“Nothing. Insomnia.”
Her eyebrows lift, her eyes shine with tears and all her face is
illumined as with light, with the familiar, but long unseen, look of
confidence.
“Nicolai Stiepanovich!” she says imploringly, stretching out both her
hands to me. “Dear, I beg you ... I implore.... If you do not despise
my friendship and my respect for you, then do what I implore you.”
“What is it?”
“Take my money.”
“What next? What’s the good of your money to me?”
“You will go somewhere to be cured. You must cure yourself. You will
take it? Yes? Dear ... Yes?”
She looks into my face eagerly and repeats:
“Yes? You will take it?”
“No, my dear, I won’t take it....”, I say. “Thank you.”
She turns her back to me and lowers her head. Probably the tone of my
refusal would not allow any further talk of money.
“Go home to sleep,” I say. “I’ll see you to-morrow.”
“It means, you don’t consider me your friend?” she asks sadly.
“I don’t say that. But your money is no good to me.”
“Forgive me,” she says lowering her voice by a full octave. “I
understand you. To be obliged to a person like me ... a retired
actress... But good-bye.”
And she walks away so quickly that I have no time even to say
“Good-bye.”
VI
I am in Kharkov.
Since it would be useless to fight against my present mood, and I have
no power to do it, I made up my mind that the last days of my life
shall be irreproachable, on the formal side. If I am not right with
my family, which I certainly admit, I will try at least to do as it
wishes. Besides I am lately become so indifferent that it’s positively
all the same, to me whether I go to Kharkov, or Paris, or Berditshev.
I arrived here at noon and put up at a hotel not far from the
cathedral. The train made me giddy, the draughts blew through me, and
now I am sitting on the bed with my head in my hands waiting for the
tic. I ought to go to my professor friends to-day, but I have neither
the will nor the strength.
The old hall-porter comes in to ask whether I have brought my own
bed-clothes. I keep him about five minutes asking him questions about
Gnekker, on whose account I came here. The porter happens to be
Kharkov-born, and knows the town inside out; but he doesn’t remember
any family with the name of Gnekker. I inquire about the estate. The
answer is the same.
The clock in the passage strikes one,... two,... three.... The last
months of my life, while I wait for death, seem to me far longer than
my whole life. Never before could I reconcile myself to the slowness
of time as I can now. Before, when I had to wait for a train at the
station, or to sit at an examination, a quarter of an hour would seem
an eternity. Now I can sit motionless in bed the whole night long,
quite calmly thinking that there will be the same long, colourless
night to-morrow, and the next day....
In the passage the clock strikes five, six, seven.... It grows dark.
There is dull pain in my cheek--the beginning of the tic. To occupy
myself with thoughts, I return to my old point of view, when I was not
indifferent, and ask: Why do I, a famous man, a privy councillor, sit
in this little room, on this bed with a strange grey blanket? Why do
I look at this cheap tin washstand and listen to the wretched clock
jarring in the passage? Is all this worthy of my fame and my high
position among people? And I answer these questions with a smile. My
_naïveté_ seems funny to me--the _naïveté_ with which as a young man
I exaggerated the value of fame and of the exclusive position which
famous men enjoy. I am famous, my name is spoken with reverence. My
portrait has appeared in “Niva” and in “The Universal Illustration.”
I’ve even read my biography in a German paper, but what of that? I sit
lonely, by myself, in a strange city, on a strange bed, rubbing my
aching cheek with my palm....
Family scandals, the hardness of creditors, the rudeness of railway
men, the discomforts of the passport system, the expensive and
unwholesome food at the buffets, the general coarseness and roughness
of people,--all this and a great deal more that would take too long