“I have my ‘idea’!” I thought suddenly. “But is that so? Don’t I just repeat it by rote? My idea is darkness and solitude, but is it possible now to crawl back into the former darkness? Ah, my God, I haven’t burned the ‘document’! I simply forgot to burn it two days ago. I’ll go back and burn it in a candle, precisely in a candle; I don’t know whether what I think now . . .”
It had long been dark, and Pyotr brought in candles. He stood over me and asked whether I had eaten. I only waved my hand. However, an hour later he brought me tea, and I greedily drank a big cup. Then I inquired what time it was. It was half-past eight, and I wasn’t even surprised that I had been sitting there for five hours already.
“I’ve come to you three times now,” said Pyotr, “but it seemed you were asleep.”
I didn’t remember him coming in. I don’t know why, but I suddenly felt terribly frightened at having “slept,” got up and began pacing the room so as not to “fall asleep” again. Finally, my head began to ache badly. At exactly ten o’clock the prince came in, and I was surprised that I had waited for him; I had totally forgotten about him, totally.
“You’re here, and I went to your place looking for you,” he said to me. His face was dark and stern, without the slightest smile. There was a fixed idea in his eyes.
“I’ve struggled all day and used all measures,” he went on focusedly. “Everything kept collapsing, and there’s horror to come . . .” (N.B. He never went to Prince Nikolai Ivanovich.) “I saw Zhibelsky, he’s an impossible man. You see: first I must have the money, and then we’ll see. And if, with the money, it still doesn’t work out, then . . . But today I decided not to think about it. Let’s just get the money today, and tomorrow we’ll see about it all. Your winnings from three days ago are still intact to the kopeck. It’s three thousand minus three roubles. Subtracting your debt, you’re left with three hundred and forty in change. Take that and another seven hundred to make a thousand, and I’ll take the remaining two thousand. Then we’ll sit down at Zershchikov’s at two different ends and try to win ten thousand—maybe we’ll do something, and if we don’t win, then . . . Anyhow, that’s the only way left.”
He gave me a fateful look.
“Yes, yes!” I cried suddenly, as if resurrecting. “Let’s go! I’ve only been waiting for you . . .”
I’ll note that I hadn’t thought about roulette for a moment in all those hours.
“But the baseness? But the meanness of the act?” the prince asked suddenly.
“That we’re going to play roulette? No, that’s everything!” I cried. “Money is everything! It’s only we who are saints, and Bjoring has sold himself. Anna Andreevna has sold herself, and Versilov—have you heard that Versilov’s a maniac? A maniac! A maniac!”
“Are you well, Arkady Makarovich? Your eyes are somehow strange.”
“Are you saying that in order to go without me? But I won’t leave you now. Not for nothing was I dreaming about gambling all night. Let’s go, let’s go!” I kept crying, as if I had suddenly found the solution to everything.
“Let’s go, then, though you’re in a fever, but there . . .”
He didn’t finish. His face looked heavy, terrible. We were already going out.
“Do you know,” he said suddenly, pausing in the doorway, “there’s yet another way out of my trouble besides gambling?”
“Which?”
“The princely way!”
“But what? But what?”
“Later you’ll find out what. Only know that I’m no longer worthy of it, because it’s too late. Let’s go, and remember my words. Let’s try the lackey’s way out . . . As if I don’t know that I am consciously, of my own full will, going and acting like a lackey!”
VI
I FLEW TO the roulette table as if my whole salvation, my whole way out, was focused in it, and yet, as I’ve already said, before the prince came, I hadn’t even thought of it. And I was going to play, not for myself, but for the prince, on the prince’s money; I can’t conceive what drew me on, but it drew me irresistibly. Oh, never had these people, these faces, these croupiers, these gambling cries, this whole squalid hall at Zershchikov’s, never had it all seemed so loathsome to me, so dismal, so coarse and sad, as this time! I remember only too well the grief and sadness that seized my heart at times during all those hours at the table. But what made me not leave? What made me endure, as if I had taken a fate, a sacrifice, a heroic deed upon myself? I’ll say one thing: I can scarcely say of myself that I was in my right mind then. And yet I had never played so intelligently as that evening. I was silent and concentrated, attentive and terribly calculating; I was patient and stingy and at the same time decided in decisive moments. I placed myself again by the zéro, that is, again between Zershchikov and Aferdov, who always sat next to Zershchikov on the right; I detested that place, but I wanted absolutely to stake on zéro, and all the other places by the zéro were taken. We had been playing for over an hour; finally, from my place, I saw the prince suddenly get up, pale, and walk over to us, and stand facing me across the table. He had lost everything and silently watched my game, though he probably understood nothing in it and was no longer thinking about the game. By that time I was just beginning to win, and Zershchikov counted out money to me. All at once Aferdov, silently, before my eyes, in the most brazen way, took one of my hundred-rouble notes and added it to his pile of money lying in front of him. I cried out and seized him by the hand. Here something unexpected happened to me: it was as if I snapped my chain, as if all the horrors and injuries of that day were suddenly focused on this one instant, on this disappearance of a hundred-rouble note. As if all that was stored up and suppressed in me had only been waiting for this moment to break out.
“He’s a thief! He just stole a hundred-rouble note from me!” I exclaimed, looking around, beside myself.
I won’t describe the tumult that arose; such an incident was a complete novelty here. People behaved decently at Zershchikov’s, and the place was known for that. But I forgot myself. Amidst the noise and shouting, Zershchikov’s voice was suddenly heard:
“And by the way, there’s money missing, and it was lying right here! Four hundred roubles!”
Another incident took place at once: money had disappeared from the bank, under Zershchikov’s nose, a roll of four hundred roubles. Zershchikov pointed to the spot where it was lying, “was lying just now,” and that spot turned out to be right next to me, adjoining me, the place where my money lay, meaning much closer to me than to Aferdov.
“Here’s the thief! It’s him stealing again, search him!” I exclaimed, pointing at Aferdov.
“It’s all because unknown people are let in,” someone’s thundering and impressive voice rang out amidst the general outcry. “They get in without any recommendation! Who brought him? Who is he?”
“Some Dolgoruky.”
“Prince Dolgoruky?”
“Prince Sokolsky brought him,” somebody cried.
“Listen, Prince,” I screamed to him across the table in a frenzy, “they consider me a thief, when it’s I who have just been robbed here! Tell them, tell them about me!”
And here something took place that was the most terrible of all that had happened that whole day . . . even in my whole life: the prince disavowed me. I saw him shrug his shoulders and, in reply to the flood of questions, utter sharply and clearly:
“I don’t answer for anyone. I beg you to leave me alone.”
Meanwhile Aferdov stood amidst the crowd and loudly demanded to be searched. He turned out his pockets himself. His demand was answered with shouts: “No, no, the thief is known!” Two summoned lackeys seized me by the arms from behind.
“I will not let you search me, I will not allow it!” I shouted, struggling to free myself.
But they dragged me to the next room, and there, amidst the crowd, they searched me down to the last fold. I shouted and struggled.
“Dropped it, must be, have to look on the floor,” somebody decided.
“Go now and look on the floor!”
“Under the table, must be he managed to throw it there!”
“Of course, the trail’s cold . . .”
They led me out, but I somehow managed to stand in the doorway and shout with senseless fury to the whole hall:
“Roulette is forbidden by law. Today I shall denounce you all!”
They took me downstairs, dressed me, and . . . opened the door to the street before me.
Chapter Nine
I
THE DAY ENDED with catastrophe, but there remained the night, and this is what I remembered from that night.
I think it was just past midnight when I found myself in the street. The night was clear, still, and frosty. I almost ran, was hurrying terribly, but— certainly not for home. “Why home? Can there be a home now? At home you live, I’d wake up tomorrow
