III
ARRIVING ALONE AND finding myself in an unfamiliar crowd, I first settled myself at the corner of the table and began staking small sums, and sat like that for about two hours without stirring. In those two hours, terrible rubbish went on—neither this nor that. I missed astonishing chances and tried not to get angry, but to succeed by coolheadedness and confidence. The end was that in the whole two hours I neither lost nor won: of the three hundred roubles, I lost some ten or fifteen. This insignificant result angered me, and what’s more a most unpleasant vileness occurred. I know that there sometimes happen to be thieves at these roulette tables—that is, not from the street, but simply among the well-known gamblers. I’m certain, for instance, that the well-known gambler Aferdov is a thief; to this day he cuts a figure around town: I met him recently driving a pair of his own ponies; but he’s a thief and he stole from me. This story is still to come; what happened that evening was just a prelude: I sat for the whole two hours at the corner of the table, and next to me all the while, on the left, was some rotten little fop—a Yid, I think; he participates somewhere, however, even writes something and gets it published. At the very last moment I suddenly won twenty roubles. Two red banknotes lay in front of me, and suddenly I see this little Yid reach out and quite calmly take one of my notes. I tried to stop him, but he, with a most insolent air and without raising his voice in the least, suddenly declares to me that it was his winnings, that he had just staked and won; he even refused to continue the conversation and turned his back. As if on purpose, I was in a most stupid state of mind at that moment: I had conceived a grand idea, and so I spat, got up quickly, and walked away, not even wanting to argue and making him a gift of the ten roubles. And it would have been hard to carry on with this story of the insolent pilferer, because the moment had been lost; the game had already gone ahead. And that was a huge mistake on my part, which had its consequences: three or four players next to us noticed our altercation and, seeing me give up so easily, probably took me for the same sort. It was exactly midnight; I went to another room, thought a bit, figured out a new plan, and, returning, exchangd my notes for half-imperials. I was now in possession of over forty pieces. I divided them into ten parts and decided to stake on zéro ten times in a row, four half-imperials each time, one after another. “If I win, I’m in luck; if I lose, so much the better; I’m never going to play anymore.” I’ll note that zéro hadn’t come up even once in those two hours, so that in the end nobody even staked on it.
I played standing up, silently frowning and clenching my teeth. On the third stake, Zershchikov loudly announced zéro, which hadn’t come up all day. They counted me out a hundred and forty half-imperials in gold. I still had seven stakes left, and I went on, and meanwhile everything around me began to spin and dance.
“Move over here!” I called the whole length of the table to one of the players who had been sitting next to me earlier, a gray-haired man with a big moustache and a purple face, wearing a tailcoat, who for several hours already, with inexpressible patience, had been staking small sums and losing time after time. “Move over here! The luck’s here!”
“Are you speaking to me?” the moustache responded with some sort of menacing surprise from the other end of the table.
“Yes, you! You’ll lose everything over there!”
“It’s none of your business, and I beg you not to interfere with me!”
But I could no longer control myself. Across the table from me sat an elderly officer. Looking at my pile, he murmured to his neighbor:
“Strange: zéro. No, I won’t venture on zéro .”
“Venture it, Colonel!” I cried, placing another stake.
“I beg you to leave me in peace as well, sir, without your advice,” he snapped sharply. “You shout too much here.”
“I’m giving you good advice. Well, if you want to bet that zéro will come up again right now—here, I’ll stake ten gold pieces, are you game?”
And I put up ten half-imperials.
“Bet ten gold pieces? That I can,” he said drily and sternly. “I bet you that zéro won’t come up.”
“Ten louis d’ors, Colonel.”
“Ten louis d’ors?”
“Ten half-imperials, Colonel, or, in high style—louis d’ors.”
“Say half-imperials, then, and kindly do not joke with me.”
I certainly had no hope of winning the bet: there were thirty-six chances to one that zéro wouldn’t come up; but I proposed it, first, because I was showing off, and second, because I wanted to attract them all to me with something. I could see very well that for some reason nobody there liked me, and they took special pleasure in letting me know it. The roulette wheel spun—and what was the general amazement when zéro came up again! There was even a general outcry. Here the glory of winning befuddled me completely. Again they counted me out a hundred and forty half-imperials. Zershchikov asked me whether I wanted to take part of it in banknotes, but I mumbled something in reply, because I literally could no longer express myself calmly and coherently. My head was spinning, my legs were weak. I suddenly felt that I was about to start taking awful risks; besides, I wanted to undertake something else, propose another bet, count out a few thousand to somebody. Mechanically, I raked in the little pile of banknotes and gold pieces with my palm and couldn’t bring myself to count them. At that moment I suddenly noticed the prince and Darzan behind me. They had just come from their faro, having lost their shirts there, as I learned afterwards.
“Ah, Darzan,” I cried to him, “the luck’s here! Stake on zéro!”
“I’ve lost everything, I have no money,” he answered drily. And as for the prince, it was as if he decidedly did not notice or recognize me.
“There’s money here!” I cried, pointing to my pile of gold. “How much do you want?”
“Devil take it!” cried Darzan, turning all red. “I don’t believe I asked you for money.”
“You’re being called,” Zershchikov pulled me by the sleeve.
I had been called, several times now and almost with curses, by the colonel, who had lost a bet of ten imperials to me.
“Kindly take it!” he cried, all purple with anger. “I’m not obliged to stand over you, and later you may say you didn’t get it. Count it up.”
“I trust you, I trust you, Colonel, without counting; only please don’t shout at me like that and don’t be angry.” And I raked in his pile of gold pieces with my hand.
“My dear sir, I beg you, get at someone else with your raptures, and not at me,” the colonel shouted sharply. “I didn’t herd swine with you!”
“It’s strange to let such people in—who is he?—some youngster,” came low-voiced exclamations.
But I wasn’t listening, I was staking at random, no longer on zéro. I staked a whole wad of hundred-rouble notes on the first eighteen numbers.
“Let’s go, Darzan,” the prince’s voice came from behind me.
“Home?” I turned to them. “Wait for me, let’s leave together, I’m through here.”
My stake won; it was a big win.
“Basta! ” I cried, and with trembling hands began raking up and pouring gold into my pockets, without counting and somehow clumsily crumpling the piles of banknotes with my fingers, wanting to stuff them all together into my side pocket. Suddenly the plump, signet-ringed hand of Aferdov, who was sitting next to me on the right and also staking large sums, reached for my three hundred-rouble notes and covered them with his palm.
“Excuse me, sir, that is not yours,” he pronounced sternly and distinctly, though in a rather soft voice.
That was the prelude which, a few days later, was destined to have such consequences. Now I swear on my honor that those three hundred-rouble notes were mine, but, to my ill fate, though I was certain they were mine, I still had a lingering fraction of a doubt, and for an honest man that is everything; and I am an honest man. Above all, I did not yet know for certain then that Aferdov was a thief; I did not yet know his last name then, so that at that moment I could actually think that I was mistaken and that those three hundred-rouble notes were not among the
