The Bet, and other stories
Receiving no answer, he stood musing for a while, and said to himself
good-naturedly:
“Out. He’s gone to the University. Damn him.”
And went away.
Vassiliev lay down on his bed and burying his head in the pillow he
began to cry with the pain. But the faster his tears flowed, the more
terrible was the pain. When it was dark, he got into his mind the idea
of the horrible night which was awaiting him and awful despair seized
him. He dressed quickly, ran out of his room, leaving the door wide
open, and into the street without reason or purpose. Without asking
himself where he was going, he walked quickly to Sadovaia Street.
Snow was falling as yesterday. It was thawing. Putting his hands into
his sleeves, shivering, and frightened of the noises and the bells
of the trams and of passers-by, Vassiliev walked from Sadovaia to
Sukhariev Tower then to the Red Gates, and from here he turned and
went to Basmannaia. He went into a public-house and gulped down a big
glass of vodka, but felt no better. Arriving at Razgoulyai, he turned
to the right and began to stride down streets that he had never in
his life been down before. He came to that old bridge under which the
river Yaouza roars and from whence long rows of lights are seen in the
windows of the Red Barracks. In order to distract the pain of his soul
by a new sensation or another pain, not knowing what to do, weeping
and trembling, Vassiliev unbuttoned his coat and jacket, baring his
naked breast to the damp snow and the wind. Neither lessened the pain.
Then he bent over the rail of the bridge and stared down at the black,
turbulent Yaouza, and he suddenly wanted to throw himself head-first,
not from hatred of life, not for the sake of suicide, but only to hurt
himself and so to kill one pain by another. But the black water, the
dark, deserted banks covered with snow were frightening. He shuddered
and went on. He walked as far as the Red Barracks, then back and into a
wood, from the wood to the bridge again.
“No! Home, home,” he thought. “At home I believe it’s easier.”
And he went back. On returning home he tore off his wet clothes and
hat, began to pace along the walls, and paced incessantly until the
very morning.
VII
The next morning when the painter and the medico came to see him,
they found him in a shirt torn to ribbons, his hands bitten all over,
tossing about in the room and moaning with pain.
“For God’s sake!” he began to sob, seeing his comrades, “Take me
anywhere you like, do what you like, but save me, for God’s sake now,
now! I’ll kill myself.”
The painter went pale and was bewildered. The medico, too, nearly began
to cry; but, believing that medical men must be cool and serious on
every occasion of life, he said coldly:
“It’s a fit you’ve got. But never mind. Come to the doctor, at once.”
“Anywhere you like, but quickly, for God’s sake!”
“Don’t be agitated. You must struggle with yourself.”
The painter and the medico dressed Vassiliev with trembling hands and
led him into the street.
“Mikhail Sergueyich has been wanting to make your acquaintance for a
long while,” the medico said on the way. “He’s a very nice man, and
knows his job splendidly. He took his degree in ’82, and has got a huge
practice already. He keeps friends with the students.”
“Quicker, quicker....” urged Vassiliev. Mikhail Sergueyich, a stout
doctor with fair hair, received the friends politely, firmly, coldly,
and smiled with one cheek only.
“The painter and Mayer have told me of your disease already,” he said.
“Very glad to be of service to you. Well? Sit down, please.”
He made Vassiliev sit down in a big chair by the table, and put a box
of cigarettes in front of him.
“Well?” he began, stroking his knees. “Let’s make a start. How old are
you?”
He put questions and the medico answered. He asked whether Vassiliev’s
father suffered from any peculiar diseases, if he had fits of drinking,
was he distinguished by his severity or any other eccentricities. He
asked the same questions about his grandfather, mother, sisters, and
brothers. Having ascertained that his mother had a fine voice and
occasionally appeared on the stage, he suddenly brightened up and asked:
“Excuse me, but could you recall whether the theatre was not a passion
with your mother?”
About twenty minutes passed. Vassiliev was bored by the doctor stroking
his knees and talking of the same thing all the while.
“As far as I can understand your questions, Doctor,” he said. “You want
to know whether my disease is hereditary or not. It is not hereditary.”
The doctor went on to ask if Vassiliev had not any secret vices
in his early youth, any blows on the head, any love passions,
eccentricities, or exceptional infatuations. To half the questions
habitually asked by careful doctors you may return no answer without
any injury to your health; but Mikhail Sergueyich, the medico and the
painter looked as though, if Vassiliev failed to answer even one single
question, everything would be ruined. For some reason the doctor wrote
down the answers he received on a scrap of paper. Discovering that
Vassiliev had already passed through the faculty of natural science and
was now in the Law faculty, the doctor began to be pensive....
“He wrote a brilliant thesis last year....” said the medico.
“Excuse me. You mustn’t interrupt me; you prevent me from
concentrating,” the doctor said, smiling with one cheek. “Yes,
certainly that is important for the anamnesis.... Yes, yes.... And do
you drink vodka?” he turned to Vassiliev.
“Very rarely.”
Another twenty minutes passed. The medico began _sotto voce_ to give
his opinion of the immediate causes of the fit and told how he, the
painter and Vassiliev went to S----v Street the day before yesterday.
The indifferent, reserved, cold tone in which his friends and the
doctor were speaking of the women and the miserable street seemed to
him in the highest degree strange....
“Doctor, tell me this one thing,” he said, restraining himself from
being rude. “Is prostitution an evil or not?”
“My dear fellow, who disputes it?” the doctor said with an expression
as though he had long ago solved all these questions for himself. “Who
disputes it?”
“Are you a psychiatrist?”
“Yes-s, a psychiatrist.”
“Perhaps all of you are right,” said Vassiliev, rising and beginning
to walk from corner to corner. “It may be. But to me all this seems
amazing. They see a great achievement in my having passed through two
faculties at the university; they praise me to the skies because I have
written a work that will be thrown away and forgotten in three years’
time, but because I can’t speak of prostitutes as indifferently as I can
about these chairs, they send me to doctors, call me a lunatic, and
pity me.”
For some reason Vassiliev suddenly began to feel an intolerable pity
for himself, his friends, and everybody whom he had seen the day before
yesterday, and for the doctor. He began to sob and fell into the chair.
The friends looked interrogatively at the doctor. He, looking as though
he magnificently understood the tears and the despair, and knew himself
a specialist in this line, approached Vassiliev and gave him some drops
to drink, and then when Vassiliev grew calm undressed him and began to
examine the sensitiveness of his skin, of the knee reflexes....
And Vassiliev felt better. When he was coming out of the doctor’s he
was already ashamed; the noise of the traffic did not seem irritating,
and the heaviness beneath his heart became easier and easier as though
it were thawing. In his hand were two prescriptions. One was for
kali-bromatum, the other--morphia. He used to take both before.
He stood still in the street for a while, pensive, and then, taking
leave of his friends, lazily dragged on towards the university.
MISFORTUNE
Sophia Pietrovna, the wife of the solicitor Loubianzev, a handsome
young woman of about twenty-five, was walking quickly along a forest
path with her bungalow neighbour, the barrister Ilyin. It was just
after four. In the distance, above the path, white feathery clouds
gathered; from behind them some bright blue pieces of cloud showed
through. The clouds were motionless, as if caught on the tops of the
tall, aged fir trees. It was calm and warm.
In the distance the path was cut across by a low railway embankment,
along which at this hour, for some reason or other, a sentry strode.
Just behind the embankment a big, six-towered church with a rusty roof
shone white.
“I did not expect to meet you here,” Sophia Pietrovna was saying,
looking down and touching the last year’s leaves with the end of her
parasol. “But now I am glad to have met you. I want to speak to you
seriously and finally. Ivan Mikhailovich, if you really love and
respect me I implore you to stop pursuing me! You follow me like
a shadow--there’s such a wicked look in your eye--you make love to
me--write extraordinary letters and ... I don’t know how all this is
going to end--Good Heavens! What can all this lead to?”
Ilyin was silent. Sophia Pietrovna took a few steps and continued:
“And this sudden complete change has happened in two or three weeks
after five years of friendship. I do not know you any more, Ivan
Mikhailovich.”
Sophia Pietrovna glanced sideways at her companion. He was staring
intently, screwing up his eyes at the feathery clouds. The expression
of his face was angry, capricious and distracted, like that of a man
who suffers and at the same time must listen to nonsense.
“It is annoying that you yourself can’t realise it!” Madame Loubianzev
continued, shrugging her shoulders. “Please understand that you’re not
playing a very nice game. I am married, I love and respect my husband.
I have a daughter. Don’t you really care in the slightest for all this?
Besides, as an old friend, you know my views on family life ... on the
sanctity of the home, generally.”
Ilyin gave an angry grunt and sighed:
“The sanctity of the home,” he murmured, “Good Lord!”
“Yes, yes. I love and respect my husband and at any rate the peace of
my family life is precious to me. I’d sooner let myself be killed than
be the cause of Andrey’s or his daughter’s unhappiness. So, please,
Ivan Mikhailovich, for goodness’ sake, leave me alone. Let us be good
and dear friends, and give up these sighings and gaspings which don’t
suit you. It’s settled and done with! Not another word about it. Let us
talk of something else!”
Sophia Pietrovna again glanced sideways at Ilyin. He was looking up.
He was pale, and angrily he bit his trembling lips. Madame Loubianzev
could not understand why he was disturbed and angry, but his pallor
moved her.
“Don’t be cross. Let’s be friends,” she said, sweetly.
“Agreed! Here is my hand.”
Ilyin took her tiny plump hand in both his, pressed it and slowly
raised it to his lips.
“I’m not a schoolboy,” he murmured. “I’m not in the least attracted by
the idea of friendship with the woman I love.”
“That’s enough. Stop! It is all settled and done with. We have come as
far as the bench. Let us sit down....”
A sweet sense of repose filled Sophia Pietrovna’s soul. The most
difficult and delicate thing was already said. The tormenting question
was settled and done with. Now she could breathe easily and look
straight at Ilyin. She looked at him, and the egotistical sense of
superiority that a woman feels over her lover caressed her pleasantly.
She liked the way this big strong man with a virile angry face and a
huge black beard sat obediently at her side and hung his head. They
were silent for a little while. “Nothing is yet settled and done with,”
Ilyin began. “You are reading me a sermon. ‘I love and respect my
husband ... the sanctity of the home....’ I know all that for myself