Collected Shorter Fiction, Volume 1

IT was going on for three when it happened. The gentlemen playing were ‘the big guest’ (as our people called him), the prince (who always goes about with him), the gentleman with whiskers, the little hussar, Oliver (the one who has been an actor), and the pan.¹ There were a good many people.

The big guest was playing with the prince. I just go round the table with the rest in my hand, counting ‘ten and forty-eight, twelve and forty-eight’. Everybody knows what it is to be a billiard-marker. You haven’t had a bite all day, nor slept for two nights, but you must keep calling the score and taking the balls out. I go on counting and look round – there’s a new gentleman coming in at the door. He looks and looks and then sits down on the sofa. All right.

‘Who may that be? – Of what class, I mean?’ think I to myself. He was well dressed – oh, very smartly – all his clothes looked as if they had just come out of a bandbox: fine cloth checked trousers, short fashionable coat, a plush waistcoat, and a gold chain with all sorts of little things hanging from it.

Handsomely dressed, but still handsomer himself: slim, tall, hair brushed to the front, latest fashion, and with a red and white complexion – in a word, a fine fellow.

Of course, in our business we see all sorts of people: the grandest that ever were and much trash also, so that though you are a marker you fit in with people, if you are artful enough I mean.

I looked at the gentleman and noticed that he was sitting quietly and did not know anybody, and his clothes were as new as could be. So I think to myself: ‘He is either a foreigner – an Englishman – or some count who has turned up. He bears himself well although he is young.’ Oliver was sitting beside him and even moved to make room for him.

The game was finished – the big guest had lost and shouted at me:

‘You always blunder! You keep looking at something else instead of counting properly.’

He swore, threw down the cue, and went out. What can you make of it? He’ll play a fifty-ruble game with the prince of an evening, but now when he loses a bottle of Burgundy he’s quite beside himself. He’s that kind of character! Sometimes he plays with the prince till two in the morning. They don’t put their stakes in the pockets,² and I know they haven’t either of them got any money, but they just swagger.

‘Shall we play double or quits for twenty-five?’

‘All right.’

But if you just dare to yawn or don’t put a ball right – after all, one is not made of stone – then they just jump down your throat:

‘We are not playing for chips, but for money!’

That one plagues me more than all the rest …

Well – so the prince says to the new gentleman, when the big one has gone:

‘Would you care to have a game with me?’

‘With pleasure!’ he says.

As long as he was sitting down he looked quite a sport, and seemed to have plenty of confidence, but when he got up and came to the table he was – not exactly timid – no, he was not timid, but one could see he was upset. Whether he was uncomfortable in his new clothes, or frightened because everybody was looking at him, anyhow his confidence was gone. He walked somehow sideways, his pocket catching the table pockets. When chalking the cue he dropped the chalk, and when he did get a ball into a pocket he kept looking round and blushing. Not like the prince – he was used to it – he would chalk the cue and his hand, turn up his sleeve, and just smash the balls into the pockets, small as he was.

They played two or three games – I don’t quite remember – and the prince put down the cue and said:

‘Allow me to ask your name …’

‘Nekhlyúdov,’ he says.

‘Didn’t your father command a corps?’

‘Yes,’ he says.

Then they began talking quickly in French, and I didn’t understand. Probably talking about their relations.

‘Au revoir,’ says the prince, ‘I’m very glad to have made your acquaintance.’

He washed his hands and went out to get something to eat, but the other remained beside the table with his cue, shoving the balls about.

Of course everyone knows in our business that the ruder one is with a newcomer the better, so I began collecting the balls. He blushed and said:

‘Can I go on playing?’

‘Of course,’ I says, ‘that’s what the billiard-table is for – to be played on.’

But I didn’t look at him and put away the cues.

‘Will you play with me?’

‘Of course, sir,’ say I.

I placed the balls.

‘Is it to be a crawl?’

‘What do you mean by a crawl?’

So I say: ‘You pay half a ruble, and I crawl under the table if I lose.’

Of course never having seen such a thing it seemed funny to him and he laughed.

‘Let’s!’ he says.

‘All right. How much will you allow me?’ I ask.

‘Why, do you play worse than I?’

‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I can see there are few players to match you.’

We began to play. He really thought himself a master at it. He banged the balls about dreadfully, and the pan sat there and kept saying:

‘What a ball! What a stroke!’

What indeed! He could make strokes, but there was no calculation about it. Well, I lost the first game as is the usual thing, and began crawling under the table and groaning. Here Oliver and the pan jumped up and knocked with their cues.

‘Splendid! Go on!’ they said. ‘Go on!’

Go on indeed! The pan especially … for half a ruble he would himself have been glad not only to crawl under the table but under the Blue Bridge. And then he shouted:

‘Splendid!’ he says. ‘But you haven’t swept up all the dust yet.’

I am Petrúshka the marker. Everybody knows me. It used to be Tyúrik the marker, but now it is Petrúshka.

But of course I did not show my game. I lost another one.

‘I can’t play level with you, sir,’ I says.

He laughed. Then after I had won three games – and when he had a score of forty-nine and I nothing, I put my cue on the table and said: ‘Will you make it double or quits, sir?’

‘Quits, what do you mean?’ he says.

‘Either you’ll owe me three rubles, or nothing,’ I say.

‘What?’ he says. ‘Am I playing you for money? You fool!’

He even blushed.

Very well. He lost the game.

‘Enough!’ he says.

He got out his pocket-book, quite a new one bought at the Magasin Anglais, and opened it. I see that he wants to show off. It was chock full of notes, all hundred-ruble ones.

‘No,’ he says, ‘there’s no change there,’ and he took three rubles out of his purse.

‘There you are,’ he says, ‘two for the games, and the rest for you to have a drink.’

‘Thank you very much,’ I say. I saw he was a nice gentleman. One can do a little crawling for such as him. The pity was that he didn’t want to play for money – ‘or else,’ think I, ‘I’d manage to get maybe twenty or even forty rubles off him.’

When the pan saw the young gentleman’s money he says: ‘Would you care to play a game with me? You play so splendidly!’ he says, fawning on him like a fox.

‘No,’ he says, ‘excuse me, please, I haven’t time,’ and he went away.

I don’t know who that pan was. Someone nicknamed him ‘the pan’ and the name stuck to him. He’d sit all day long in the billiard-room looking on. He had been beaten and sworn at, and no one would play with him. He would bring his pipe and sit by himself and smoke. But he could play a careful game … the beast!

Well, Nekhlyúdov came a second and a third time and began coming often. He’d come in the morning and in the evening. Billiards, pool, snooker, he learnt them all. He grew bolder, got to know everybody, and began to play a decent game. Naturally, being a young man of good family and with money, everybody respected him. Only once he had a row with the big guest.

It was all about a trifle.

They played pool – the prince, the big guest, Nekhlyúdov, Oliver, and someone else. Nekhlyúdov stands by the stove talking to someone, it was the big one’s turn to play. His ball happened to come just opposite the stove: there was not much room there, and he likes to play with a big swing.

Well, whether he didn’t see Nekhlyúdov or did it on purpose, he took a big swing at the ball and hit Nekhlyúdov hard in the chest with the butt of his cue. The poor fellow even groaned a little. And what next? He didn’t even say ‘beg pardon’ – the rude fellow – but went on without looking at him, and even muttered: ‘Why do they shove themselves forward? It has made me lose a ball.’ As if there was not plenty of room!

The other goes up to him, very pale, and says quite politely as if nothing had happened: ‘You should apologize first, sir. You pushed me.’

‘It’s not the time for me to apologize. I ought to have won,’ he says, ‘and now that fellow will score off my ball.’

The other says again: ‘You must apologize.’

‘Be off!’ he says. ‘Pestering like this!’ and keeps looking at his ball.

Nekhlyúdov came still nearer and took hold of his arm.

‘You’re a boor, sir,’ he says.

For all that he’s slim and young and rosy as a girl, yet his eyes glittered as fierce as if he were ready to eat him. The big guest is a strong man, and tall. Much bigger than Nekhlyúdov.

‘What?’ he says. ‘Do you call me a boor?’

And he shouts, and lifts his arm to strike him, but the others there jumped up, seized their arms, and dragged them apart.

They talk and talk – and Nekhlyúdov says:

‘Let him give me satisfaction! He has insulted me,’ he says – meaning that he wanted him to fight a duel. Of course they were gentlefolk – they have such customs … nothing can be done with them … in a word, they’re gentlefolk!

‘I won’t give him any kind of satisfaction. He’s only a boy – that’s all he is. I’ll pull his ears for him.’

‘If you don’t want to fight,’ he says, ‘you are not an honourable man.’ And he himself was almost weeping.

‘And you’re just an urchin – it’s impossible for you to insult me!’

Well, they got them apart and took them into separate rooms, as is usually done. Nekhlyúdov was friendly with the prince.

‘For God’s sake go and persuade him to accept a duel,’ he says. ‘He was drunk, but he may have come to his senses by this time. The affair must not end like this.’

The prince went. The big one says:

‘I have fought duels and I have fought in war, but I won’t fight a mere lad – I don’t want to: that’s all about it.’

Well, they talked and talked and finally left off; only the big guest left off coming to our place.

As far as sensitiveness went Nekhlyúdov was like a cockerel, very ambitious, but in other matters he had no sense at all. I remember once the prince says to him: ‘Whom have you with you here?’

‘Nobody,’ he says.

‘How’s that – nobody?’

‘Why should there be anybody?’

‘What do you mean by “Why should there be anybody?” ’

‘I’ve lived by myself up to now,’ he says, ‘so why is it impossible?’

‘Lived by yourself? You don’t mean it!’

And the prince roars with laughter, and the whiskered gentleman too. They did make fun of him!

‘So you’ve never …?’ they say.

‘Never!’

They died with laughter. Of course I understood at once why they laughed at him so. I watched to see what would come of it.

‘Come along now,’ says the prince. ‘At once!’

‘No, not on any account,’ he says.

‘Come, that’s enough, it’s too ridiculous,’ he says. ‘Have a drink to buck you up, and come along.’

I brought them a bottle of champagne. They drank it, and took the youngster along.

They returned after midnight and sat down to supper. There were a lot of them – all the very best: Atánov, Prince Rázin, Count Shustákh, and Mírtsov. They all congratulate Nekhlyúdov and laugh. They called me in, and I see they are all rather gay.

‘Congratulate the gentleman!’ they say.

‘On what?’ I ask.

Whatever did he call it?… On his initiation or instigation – I don’t quite remember.

‘I have the honour to congratulate you,’ I say.

And he sits there, quite red, and only smiles. How they laughed!

Well, they come afterwards into the billiard-room all very merry, but Nekhlyúdov was unlike himself: his eyes were bleared, his lips twitching, and he kept hiccoughing and couldn’t say a word properly. Of course, it being the first time, he was feeling bowled over. He went up to the table, put his elbows on it, and said:

‘To you it seems funny, but I am sad. Why did I do it? I shall not forgive myself, or you, prince, for it all my life!’

And he bursts into tears and weeps. Of course he had drunk too much and didn’t know himself what he was saying. The prince went up to him smiling.

‘That’s enough!’ he says. ‘It’s a mere trifle! … Come home, Anatole.’

‘I won’t go anywhere. Why did I do it?’ And he sobs. He wouldn’t go away from the billiard-table, and that was all there was to it. What it is when a fellow is young and not used to it … And he spoilt the table there and then. Next day he paid eighty rubles for having cut the cloth.

So he often used to come to us. Once he came in with the prince and the whiskered gentleman who always went about with the prince. He was an official, or a retired officer – Heaven only knows – but the gentlemen all called him ‘Fedót’. He had high cheek-bones and was very ugly, but dressed well and came in a carriage. Why the gentlemen liked him so, God only knows. It’s ‘Fedót, Fedót,’ and you see them treating him to food and drink, paying for him. But he was a desperate fellow! If he lost he did not pay, but if he won – that was different! The big guest has abused him and beaten him before my eyes, and challenged him to a duel.… But he always went about arm-in-arm with the prince. ‘You’d be lost without me!’ he says. ‘I’m Fedót and the others are not.’ Such a wag.

Well, so they come in, and say:

‘Let’s play pool, the three of us.’

‘All right,’ they say.

They began playing for three-ruble stakes. Nekhlyúdov and the prince jabber together. ‘You should just see,’ he says, ‘what a foot she has!’

‘Never mind her foot – it’s her hair that’s so beautiful.’

Of course they didn’t attend to the game but only talked together. But Fedót knows his business and plays trickily while they miss or run in. And he wins six rubles of each of them. Heaven only knows what accounts he had with the prince – they never paid one another any money; but Nekhlyúdov got out two three-ruble notes and held them out to him.

‘No,’ he says, ‘I won’t take the money from you. Let’s play an ordinary game – double or quits, I mean either twice as much or nothing.’

I placed the balls for them. Fedót took odds and they began the game. Nekhlyúdov made strokes just to show off, and when he had a chance to pocket a ball and run out, he says: ‘No, I don’t want it – it’s too easy,’ but Fedót doesn’t neglect his business and keeps on scoring. Of course he didn’t show what he could do, but won the game as if by chance.

‘Let’s play double or quits again,’ he says.

‘All right.’

He won again.

‘We began with a trifle,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to take so much from you. Double or quits again, yes?’

‘Yes.’

Say what one will one’s sorry to lose fifty rubles, and Nekhlyúdov himself says: ‘Let’s have double or quits again.’ So it went on and on, more and more. At last he’d lost two hundred and eighty rubles. Fedót knows all the tricks: he would lose a single stake and win a double; and the prince sits there and sees that things are getting serious.

‘Assez,’ he says, ‘assez!’

Not a bit of it! They keep increasing the stakes.

At last Nekhlyúdov owed him over five hundred rubles. Fedót puts down his cue and says:

‘Haven’t we had enough? I am tired,’ he says.

But really he was ready to play till sunrise if there was money in it – all his craftiness of course. The other was still more anxious to go on. ‘Let’s play, let’s play!’ he says.

‘No, really I’m tired … Come upstairs. You can take your revenge there.’

At our place gentlemen played cards upstairs. They’d start with preference and then go on to a gambling game.

Well, from that day on Fedót netted Nekhlyúdov so that he began coming to us every day. They’d have a game or two, and then it was ‘Upstairs, upstairs!’

What they did there Heaven only knows, but Nekhlyúdov became a different man, and everything was flourishing with Fedót.

Formerly Nekhlyúdov had been smart, clean, his hair well brushed; but now he was only like his real self in the morning; after having been upstairs he would come down dishevelled, with fluff on his coat and his hands dirty.

One day he comes down with the prince like that, pale, his lips trembling, and disputing about something.

‘I won’t permit him,’ he says, ‘to tell me I am …’ – however did he put it?… ‘unwell-mannered’ or something like that – ‘and that he won’t win against me. I have paid him,’ he says, ‘ten thousand rubles so he ought to be more careful before others.’

‘Come now,’ says the prince, ‘is it worth being angry with Fedót?’

‘No,’ he says, ‘I won’t put up with it.’

‘Stop!’ he says. ‘How can you lower yourself so far as to have an affair with Fedót?’

‘But outsiders were present.’

‘What if there were outsiders! If you like, I’ll make him beg your pardon at once.’

‘No,’ says he.

And they jabbered something in French that I did not understand. Well, what do you think? That same evening they had supper with Fedót and the friendship continued.

Well, he’d sometimes come along.

‘How is it?’ he’d say. ‘Do I play well?’

Of course it’s our business to please everyone. ‘Very well,’ I say. But lord! – he just knocks the balls about without any kind of judgement. And ever since he got thick with Fedót he always played for money. Before that he did not like playing for any kind of stakes, not even for a lunch or champagne. Sometimes the prince would say:

‘Let’s play for a bottle of champagne.’

‘No,’ he’d say, ‘I’d rather just order one. Hullo there! Bring a bottle of champagne!’

But now he began to play only for money. He’d walk up and down all day at our place either playing billiards with someone or going upstairs. So I thinks to myself: ‘Why should others get it all, and not me?’

‘Why haven’t you played with me for such a long time, sir?’ I says.

And we started playing.

When I had won some five rubles off him: ‘Shall we play double or quits, sir?’ I says.

He doesn’t answer – doesn’t say ‘Fool!’ as he did before. So we play double or quits again and again. I won some eighty rubles off him. Well, what d’you think? He played with me every day. Only he’d wait till no one else was there, because of course he was ashamed to play with a marker. One day he happened to get a bit excited when he already owed me some sixty rubles.

‘Shall we play for the whole amount?’ he says.

‘All right,’ I say.

I won.

‘One hundred and twenty to one hundred and twenty?’

‘All right.’

I won again.

‘Two hundred and forty to two hundred and forty?’

‘Isn’t that too much?’ I says.

He doesn’t answer. We play. I win again.

‘Four hundred and eighty to four hundred and eighty?’

I say: ‘Why should I take advantage of you, sir? Play for a hundred rubles or leave it as it is.’

How he did shout! And how quiet he used to be!

‘I’ll knock you to bits!’ he says. ‘Either you play or you don’t!’

Well, I see there is no help for it.

‘Let it be three hundred and eighty,’ I says.

Of course I meant to lose.

I allowed him forty points. His score was fifty-two and mine thirty-six. He potted the yellow and scored eighteen,³ but left my ball standing well.

I struck the ball hard to make it rebound. No good, it cannoned and ran in and won the game again.

‘Listen, Peter,’ he says – he did not call me ‘Petrúshka’ – ‘I can’t pay you the whole now, but in two months’ time I could pay you three thousand, if necessary.’

And he flushed quite red and his voice even trembled.

‘Very good, sir,’ I says, and put down the cue. He paced up and down a bit and the perspiration just ran down his face.

‘Peter,’ he says, ‘let’s play for the whole amount!’

He was nearly crying.

I say:

‘What, play again, sir?’

‘Do please!’

And he hands me the cue himself. I took the cue and flung the balls on the table so that they fell onto the floor – of course I had to show off— and I say: ‘All right, sir!’

He was in such a hurry that he himself picked a ball up. I thought to myself: ‘I shan’t get the seven hundred anyway, so I might as well lose.’ So I purposely played badly. And what do you think?

‘Why,’ he says, ‘do you play badly on purpose?’

And his hands tremble, and when a ball rolls towards a pocket he spreads out his fingers, his mouth goes awry, and he stretches his head and his hands towards the pocket. So that I say:

‘That won’t help, sir!’

Well, when he had won that game, I says:

‘You’ll owe me a hundred and eighty rubles and a hundred and fifty games – and I’ll go and have supper.’

I put down my cue and went away.

I sit down at a little table by the door and look to see what he’ll do. What d’you think? He walks up and down – thinking I expect that nobody sees him – and pulls so at his hair! Then he walks about again muttering to himself, and suddenly gives another pull!

After that we didn’t see him for eight days or so. Then he came in once into the dining-room, looking as gloomy as anything, but didn’t go into the billiard-room.

The prince noticed him.

‘Come, let’s have a game!’ he said.

‘No,’ he says, ‘I won’t play any more.’

‘Oh, nonsense! Come along!’

‘No,’ he says, ‘I won’t. It would do you no good for me to come and it would do me harm.’

So he didn’t come for another ten days. Then in the holidays he looked in one day in a dress suit – evidently he had been paying calls – and remained for the rest of the day playing all the time: next day he came again, and the day after, and then things went on in the old way. I wanted to play with him again.

‘No, I won’t play with you,’ he says, ‘but come to me in a month’s time for the hundred and eighty rubles I owe you and you shall have them.’

All right. A month later I went to him.

‘On my word,’ he says, ‘I haven’t got it, but come back on Thursday.’

I went on the Thursday. He had such an excellent little flat.

‘Is the master at home?’ I says.

‘Not up yet,’ they tell me.

‘All right. I’ll wait.’

His valet was a serf of his own – an old, grey-haired fellow, simple and not up to any tricks. So we had a talk together.

‘What are we living here for?’ he says. ‘My master is running quite to waste, and we get no honour nor profit in this Petersburg of yours. When we came from the country we thought we’d be as it used to be when the old master – the Kingdom of Heaven be his! – was alive; visiting princes, counts, and generals. We thought we’d get some queenly countess with a dowry, and live like a nobleman; but it turns out that we do nothing but run from one restaurant to another – quite bad! Princess Rtíshcheva, you know, is an aunt of ours, and Prince Borotýnzev is our godfather. What d’you think? He’s only been to see them once, at Christmas, and hasn’t shown his nose there since. Even their servants laugh at me: “Seems your master doesn’t take after his papa!” they say. I once said to him:

‘ “Why don’t you go to see your auntie, sir? She is sad at not having seen you so long.”

‘ “It’s dull there, Demyánych!” he says.

‘Just look at that! The only pleasure he’s found is at the restaurants. If only he were in public service somewhere – but no, he is only interested in cards and the like, and such doings never lead to any good … Eh, eh, we’re ruining ourselves – ruining ourselves for nothing! We inherited from our deceased mistress – the Kingdom of Heaven be hers! – a very rich estate: more than a thousand serfs and more than three hundred thousand rubles’ worth of forest land. He’s mortgaged it all now, sold the forest, ruined the peasants, and nothing comes of it. In the master’s absence a steward is more than a master, as is well known. What does the steward care? He skins the peasants completely, and there’s an end of it. All he wants is to stuff his own pockets, though they all die of hunger. The other day two peasants came here to complain from the whole commune.

‘ “He’s ruined the serfs completely,” they said.

‘Well, he read the complaints, gave the peasants ten rubles each and said: “I shall come myself soon. As soon as I receive money I’ll settle up and leave town.”

‘But “settle up” indeed, when we keep making debts! Why, we have lived here the winter and have got through some eighty thousand rubles, and now there’s not a ruble left in the house! And it’s all because of his charitableness. Oh, what a simple gentleman he is – there are no words for it. It’s because of that he is perishing, perishing just for nothing!’

And the old man almost wept.

Nekhlyúdov woke up about eleven and called me in.

‘They haven’t sent me the money, but it is not my fault,’ he says. ‘Shut the door.’

I shut it.

‘Here,’ he says, ‘take this watch or this diamond pin and pawn it. They’ll give you more than a hundred and eighty rubles for it, and when I get the money I will buy them out,’ he says.

‘All right, sir,’ I say. ‘If you have no money it can’t be helped: let me have the watch – I’ll pawn it for you.’

I could see myself that the watch was worth three hundred rubles.

Well, I pawned it for a hundred rubles and brought him the ticket.

‘You’ll owe me eighty rubles, and you can redeem the watch yourself,’ I says.

Those eighty rubles are still owing me to this day!

So he kept coming to us every day again. I don’t know what arrangements there were between them but he and the prince always went about together, or they went upstairs with Fedót to play cards. And they had some queer accounts among the three of them! One gave to another, the other to the third, but you could not at all make out who was owing whom.

And he came to us in this way almost every day for two years. Only he had lost his old manner: he became bold, and it got to such a pitch that at times he’d borrow a ruble from me to pay his cab fare; yet he still played with the prince for a hundred rubles a game.

He grew thin, sallow, and gloomy. He’d come in, order a glass of absinthe at once, have a snack, and wash it down with port wine, and then he would seem a bit brighter.

He came one day during Carnival, and began playing with some hussar.

‘Do you want to have something on the game?’ says the hussar.

‘Certainly,’ he says. ‘How much?’

‘Shall it be a bottle of burgundy?’

‘All right.’

Well, the hussar won, and they sat down to dinner. They sat down, and Nekhlyúdov says at once:

‘Simon, a bottle of Clos Vougeot – and mind it’s properly warmed.’

Simon went out and brought some food, but no bottle.

‘Well, and the wine?’

Simon ran out and brought the joint.

‘Bring the wine,’ says Nekhlyúdov.

Simon says nothing.

‘Have you gone mad? We’re finishing dinner and there’s no wine. Who drinks it with the dessert?’

Simon ran out.

‘The proprietor would like to see you,’ he says.

Nekhlyúdov went quite red and jumped up from the table —

‘What does he want?’ he says.

The proprietor was standing at the door.

‘I can’t give you any more credit unless you pay me what you owe.’

‘But I told you I’d pay at the beginning of next month!’

‘As you please, but I can’t go on giving credit and not receiving anything. As it is I lose tens of thousands by bad debts.’

‘Oh, come, mon cher,’ he says, ‘surely you can trust me! Send up the bottle, and I will try to pay you as soon as possible.’

And he ran back.

‘What did they call you away for?’ asked the hussar.

‘Just to ask me about something.’

‘A little warm wine now would be just the thing,’ says the hussar.

‘Well, Simon, how about it?’

Poor Simon ran out again. Again there was no wine or anything. It was a bad lookout. Nekhlyúdov got up from the table and came to me.

‘For God’s sake, Petrúshka,’ he says, ‘let me have six rubles.’

He looked beside himself.

‘I haven’t got it, sir, on my word! As it is you’re owing me a lot.’

‘I’ll give you forty rubles in a week’s time for the six!’

‘If I had it,’ I says, ‘I wouldn’t dare refuse you, but really I haven’t got it.’

And what do you think? He rushed out, clenching his teeth, and ran up and down the corridor like a madman, banging himself on the forehead.

‘Oh, my God!’ he says. ‘What does it mean?’

He didn’t even go back to the dining-room, but jumped into a carriage and drove off.

How they laughed! The hussar says:

‘Where’s the gentleman who was dining with me?’

‘Gone,’ they say.

‘What do you mean – gone? What message did he leave?’

‘He didn’t leave any message,’ they tell him. ‘He just got in and drove away.’

‘A fine goose!’ he says.

‘Well,’ I think to myself, ‘now he won’t come for a long time, after such a disgrace.’ But next day towards evening he came again, just the same. He went to the billiard-room with a box of some kind he had brought with him. He took off his overcoat.

‘Let’s play!’ he says, looking from under his brows very cross.

We played a game.

‘That’s enough,’ he says. ‘Go and get me a pen and paper. I have to write a letter.’

Thinking nothing and guessing nothing, I brought the paper and put it on the table in the little room.

‘It’s all ready, sir,’ I says.

Well, so he sat down at the table and wrote and wrote something; then he jumped up frowning.

‘Go and see if my carriage has come!’

It happened on the Friday in Carnival Week, so none of our gentlemen were there: they had all gone to balls.

I was just going to find out about the carriage, but was hardly out of the door when he cried: ‘Petrúshka! Petrúshka!’ as if frightened of something.

I came back, and there he stood as white as a sheet, looking at me.

‘You were pleased to call me, sir?’ I says.

He was silent.

‘What is it you want, sir?’

He was still silent.

‘Oh, yes! Let’s have another game,’ he says.

Well, he won the game.

‘Have I learnt to play well?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ says I.

‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘Now go and find out about my carriage.’

And he paces up and down the room.

Without thinking anything, I went out onto the porch and saw that there was no carriage there at all, and went back.

As I go back it sounds as if someone had given a knock with a cue.

I go into the billiard-room – there’s a strange smell.

I look: and there he lies on the floor covered with blood, with a pistol thrown down beside him. I was so frightened that I could not say a word.

He jerked his leg again and again and stretched himself. Then his throat rattled, and he stretched out like this.

And why such a sinful thing happened to him – I mean, why he ruined his soul – God alone knows: he left nothing but this paper behind, but I can’t understand it at all.

Really, what things gentlemen do! … Gentlefolk – that’s it – gentlefolk!

‘God gave me everything man can desire: wealth, a name, intelligence, and noble aspirations. I wanted to enjoy myself and trampled in the mire all that was good in me.

‘I am not dishonoured, not unfortunate, have committed no crime; but I have done worse – I have killed my feelings, my reason, my youth.

‘I am enmeshed in a dirty net from which I cannot free myself and to which I cannot get used. I continually fall and fall, feel myself falling, and cannot stop.

‘It would be easier if I were dishonoured, unfortunate, or a criminal. Then there would be some consolation of gloomy greatness in my despair. If I were dishonoured I could raise myself above the perception of honour held in our society and could despise it.

‘If I were unfortunate I could complain. If I had committed a crime I might redeem it by repentance or by suffering punishment: but I am merely base, nasty – I know it and cannot raise myself.

‘And what has ruined me? Had I some strong passion which could be my excuse? No.

‘Sevens, aces, champagne, the yellow in the middle pocket, grey or rainbow-coloured currency notes, cigarettes, women who could be bought – those are my recollections!

‘One terrible moment when I forgot myself, a humiliation I shall never wipe out, has made me recollect myself. I was horrified when I saw what an immeasurable gulf separates me from what I wished to be and might have been. In my imagination the dreams and thoughts of my youth reappeared.

‘Where are those bright thoughts of life, of eternity, of God, which filled my soul so clearly and powerfully? Where is that force of love – not confined to any person – that filled my soul with such joyful warmth? Where is my hope of development, my sympathy with all that is excellent, my love of my relations, neighbours, work, and fame? Where is my sense of duty?

‘I was insulted – and challenged the man to a duel and thought I had fully satisfied the demands of honour. I needed money to satisfy my vices and vanity, and I ruined a thousand families entrusted to me by God and did it without shame – I who so well understood those sacred obligations. A dishonourable man told me that I had no conscience and that I wished to steal – and I remained friends with him because he was a dishonourable man and told me that he had not meant to offend me. I was told that it was ridiculous to be chaste and I abandoned without regret the flower of my soul – my innocence – to a purchasable woman.

‘And how good and happy I might have been had I trodden the path which on entering life my fresh mind and my childlike, genuine feeling indicated to me! More than once I tried to escape from the rut in which my life was moving and get back to that bright path. I told myself: I will use all the will I have – but I could not. When I remained alone I felt awkward and afraid of myself. When I was with others I no longer heard the inner voice at all, and sank lower and lower.

‘At last I reached the terrible conviction that I could not rise, and left off thinking of doing so and tried to forget myself; but hopeless remorse tormented me still more. Then the idea – terrible to others but comforting to me – of suicide first occurred to me. But in that respect also I was mean and base. Only yesterday’s stupid affair with the hussar gave me sufficient resolution to carry out my intention. Nothing honourable remained in me – only vanity, and out of vanity I am doing the one good action of my life. I formerly thought that the proximity of death would uplift my soul. I was mistaken. In a quarter of an hour I shall be no more, yet my views have not changed at all. I still see, still hear, still think, in the same way. There is the same strange inconsistency, inconsequence, vacillation, and levity in my thoughts – so contrary to the unity and clarity that man is – God knows why – able to conceive of. Thoughts of what will be beyond the tomb and of what will be said tomorrow about my death at Aunt Rtíshcheva’s present themselves to me with equal force.’

¹ Pan in Polish and Ukrainian means ‘squire’ or ‘gentleman’.

² The players put the money they staked in the pockets of the billiard-table, and the player who pocketed a ball took the money when he took the ball out.

³ In the game of ‘five balls’ to pot the yellow ball in the middle pocket scores twelve, and to run in off it counts six, so that the two together at one stroke scores eighteen.