The Bet, and other stories
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 waive the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise, and
which I now despise. That I may deprive myself of my right to them, I
shall come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term, and
thus shall violate the agreement.”
When he had read, the banker put the sheet on the table, kissed the
head of the strange man, and began to weep. He went out of the wing.
Never at any other time, not even after his terrible losses on the
Exchange, had he felt such contempt for himself as now. Coming home,
he lay down on his bed, but agitation and tears kept him long from
sleep....
The next morning the poor watchman came running to him and told him
that they had seen the man who lived in the wing climbing through the
window into the garden. He had gone to the gate and disappeared.
Together with his servants the banker went instantly to the wing and
established the escape of his prisoner. To avoid unnecessary rumours he
took the paper with the renunciation from the table and, on his return,
locked it in his safe.
A TEDIOUS STORY
(FROM AN OLD MAN’S JOURNAL)
I
There lives in Russia an emeritus professor, Nicolai Stiepanovich ...
privy councillor and knight. He has so many Russian and foreign Orders
that when he puts them on the students call him “the holy picture.”
His acquaintance is most distinguished. Not a single famous scholar
lived or died during the last twenty-five or thirty years but he was
intimately acquainted with him. Now he has no one to be friendly with,
but speaking of the past the long list of his eminent friends would
end with such names as Pirogov, Kavelin, and the poet Nekrasov, who
bestowed upon him their warmest and most sincere friendship. He is a
member of all the Russian and of three foreign universities, et cetera,
et cetera. All this, and a great deal besides, forms what is known as
my name.
This name of mine is very popular. It is known to every literate person
in Russia; abroad it is mentioned from professorial chairs with the
epithets “eminent and esteemed.” It is reckoned among those fortunate
names which to mention in vain or to abuse in public or in the Press
is considered a mark of bad breeding. Indeed, it should be so; because
with my name is inseparably associated the idea of a famous, richly
gifted, and indubitably useful person. I am a steady worker, with
the endurance of a camel, which is important. I am also endowed with
talent, which is still more important. In passing, I would add that
I am a well-educated, modest, and honest fellow. I have never poked
my nose into letters or politics, never sought popularity in disputes
with the ignorant, and made no speeches either at dinners or at my
colleagues’ funerals. Altogether there is not a single spot on my
learned name, and it has nothing to complain of. It is fortunate.
The bearer of this name, that is myself, is a man of sixty-two, with a
bald head, false teeth and an incurable tic. My name is as brilliant
and prepossessing, as I, myself am dull and ugly. My head and hands
tremble from weakness; my neck, like that of one of Turgeniev’s
heroines, resembles the handle of a counter-bass; my chest is hollow
and my back narrow. When I speak or read my mouth twists, and when I
smile my whole face is covered with senile, deathly wrinkles. There is
nothing imposing in my pitiable face, save that when I suffer from the
tic, I have a singular expression which compels anyone who looks at me
to think: “This man will die soon, for sure.”
I can still read pretty well; I can still hold the attention of my
audience for two hours. My passionate manner, the literary form of
my exposition and my humour make the defects of my voice almost
unnoticeable, though it is dry, harsh, and hard like a hypocrite’s.
But I write badly. The part of my brain which governs the ability to
write refused office. My memory has weakened, and my thoughts are
too inconsequent; and when I expound them on paper, I always have a
feeling that I have lost the sense of their organic connection. The
construction is monotonous, and the sentence feeble and timid. I
often do not write what I want to, and when I write the end I cannot
remember the beginning. I often forget common words, and in writing a
letter I always have to waste much energy in order to avoid superfluous
sentences and unnecessary incidental statements; both bear clear
witness of the decay of my intellectual activity. And it is remarkable
that, the simpler the letter, the more tormenting is my effort. When
writing a scientific article I fed much freer and much more intelligent
than in writing a letter of welcome or a report. One thing more: it is
easier for me to write German or English than Russian.
As regards my present life, I must first of all note insomnia, from
which I have begun to suffer lately. If I were asked: “What is now
the chief and fundamental fact of your existence?” I would answer:
“Insomnia.” From habit, I still undress at midnight precisely and get
into bed. I soon fall asleep but wake just after one with the feeling
that I have not slept at all. I must get out of bed and light the
lamp. For an hour or two I walk about the room from corner to corner
and inspect the long familiar pictures. When I am weary of walking I
sit down to the table. I sit motionless thinking of nothing, feeling
no desires; if a book lies before me I draw it mechanically towards me
and read without interest. Thus lately in one night I read mechanically
a whole novel with a strange title, “Of What the Swallow Sang.” Or in
order to occupy my attention I make myself count to a thousand, or I
imagine the face of some one of my friends, and begin to remember in
what year and under what circumstances he joined the faculty. I love
to listen to sounds. Now, two rooms away from me my daughter Liza will
say something quickly, in her sleep; then my wife will walk through the
drawing-room with a candle and infallibly drop the box of matches. Then
the shrinking wood of the cupboard squeaks or the burner of the lamp
tinkles suddenly, and all these sounds somehow agitate me.
Not to sleep of nights confesses one abnormal; and therefore I wait
impatiently for the morning and the day, when I have the right not
to sleep. Many oppressive hours pass before the cock crows. He is my
harbinger of good. As soon as he has crowed I know that in an hour’s
time the porter downstairs will awake and for some reason or other go
up the stairs, coughing angrily; and later beyond the windows the air
begins to pale gradually and voices echo in the street.
The day begins with the coming of my wife. She comes in to me in a
petticoat, with her hair undone, but already washed and smelling of eau
de Cologne, and looking as though she came in by accident, saying the
same thing every time: “Pardon, I came in for a moment. You haven’t
slept again?” Then she puts the lamp out, sits by the table and begins
to talk. I am not a prophet but I know beforehand what the subject of
conversation will be, every morning the same. Usually, after breathless
inquiries after my health, she suddenly remembers our son, the officer,
who is serving in Warsaw. On the twentieth of each month we send him
fifty roubles. This is our chief subject of conversation.
“Of course it is hard on us,” my wife sighs. “But until he is finally
settled we are obliged to help him. The boy is among strangers; the
pay is small. But if you like, next month we’ll send him forty roubles
instead of fifty. What do you think?”
Daily experience might have convinced my wife that expenses do
not grow less by talking of them. But my wife does not acknowledge
experience and speaks about our officer punctually every day, about
bread, thank Heaven, being cheaper and sugar a half-penny dearer--and
all this in a tone as though it were news to me.
I listen and agree mechanically. Probably because I have not slept
during the night strange idle thoughts take hold of me. I look at my
wife and wonder like a child. In perplexity I ask myself: This old,
stout, clumsy woman, with sordid cares and anxiety about bread and
butter written in the dull expression of her face, her eyes tired with
eternal thoughts of debts and poverty, who can talk only of expenses
and smile only when things are cheap--was this once the slim Varya
whom I loved passionately for her fine clear mind, her pure soul, her
beauty, and as Othello loved Desdemona, for her “compassion” of my
science? Is she really the same, my wife Varya, who bore me a son?
I gaze intently into the fat, clumsy old woman’s face. I seek in her
my Varya; but from the past nothing remains but her fear for my health
and her way of calling my salary “our” salary and my hat “our” hat. It