Fifty-Two Stories

THE BET

I

It was a dark autumn night. The old banker paced up and down his study remembering how fifteen years ago, in the autumn, he had given a party. At this party there were many intelligent people and they had interesting conversations. Among other things they talked about capital punishment. The guests, who included not a few scholars and journalists, for the most part had a negative view of capital punishment. They found this mode of punishment outdated, unsuitable to Christian states, and immoral. In the opinion of some, capital punishment should be universally replaced by life imprisonment.

“I disagree with you,” said the banker-host. “I have never experienced either capital punishment or life imprisonment, but if one may judge a priori, in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and humane than imprisonment. Capital punishment kills at once, and life imprisonment slowly. Which executioner is more humane? The one who kills you in a few moments, or the one who draws life out of you over the course of many years?”

“Both are equally immoral,” observed one of the guests, “because they have one and the same goal—to take away life. The state isn’t God. It has no right to take away what it cannot give back if it wants to.”

Among the guests was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. When asked his opinion, he said:

“Capital punishment and life imprisonment are equally immoral, but if I were offered the choice between execution and life in prison, I would of course choose the second. To live somehow is better than not to live at all.”

An animated discussion followed. The banker, who was then younger and more high-strung, suddenly lost his temper, pounded his fist on the table, and shouted at the young lawyer:

“That’s not true! I’ll bet two million roubles that you couldn’t sit out even five years in a prison cell.”

“If you’re serious,” said the lawyer, “I’ll bet I can sit out not five but fifteen.”

“Fifteen? You’re on!” shouted the banker. “Gentlemen, I stake two million!”

“I accept! You stake your millions, and I stake my freedom!” said the lawyer.

And this wild, senseless bet was made! The banker, who back then had untold millions, a spoiled and light-minded man, was delighted with the bet. At supper he made fun of the lawyer and said:

“Come to your senses, young man, before it’s too late. For me two million is a trifle, but you risk losing three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you won’t sit it out longer. And also don’t forget, poor fellow, that voluntary confinement is much harder than compulsory. The thought that you have the right every moment to go out into freedom will poison your whole existence in the cell. I pity you!”

And now the banker, pacing up and down, recalled it all and asked himself:

“Why this bet? What’s the use of the lawyer losing fifteen years of his life and me throwing away two million? Can it prove to people that capital punishment is worse or better than life imprisonment? No, no. Stuff and nonsense. It was the whim of a satiated man on my part, and on the lawyer’s part a simple lust for money.”

Then he recalled what happened after that evening. It was decided that the lawyer would serve his confinement under strict surveillance in a cottage built in the banker’s garden. It was agreed that in the course of fifteen years he would be deprived of the right to cross the threshold of the cottage, to see living people, to hear human voices, to receive letters and newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument, to read books, to write letters, drink wine, and smoke. With the outside world, by agreement, he could make contact only silently, through a small window made especially for that purpose. He could obtain everything he needed—books, scores, wine, and so on—in any quantities, by means of notes, but only through that window. The contract specified all the small details that made the confinement strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to sit out exactly fifteen years, from twelve noon on November 14, 1870, to twelve noon on November 14, 1885. The slightest attempt on the lawyer’s part to break the contract, even two minutes before the term was up, would free the banker of the obligation to pay him the two million.

In his first year of confinement the lawyer, judging by his brief notes, suffered greatly from solitude and boredom. The sounds of the piano were heard coming from the cottage constantly day and night! He renounced wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote, awakens desires, and desires are a prisoner’s worst enemies; besides, nothing is more boring than drinking good wine and seeing nobody. And tobacco befouled the air in his room. In the first year the lawyer was predominantly sent books of light content: novels with complex love plots, crime or fantastic stories, comedies, and so on.

In the second year the music in the shed fell silent, and the lawyer requested only classics in his notes. In the fifth year music was heard again, and the prisoner requested wine. Those who kept watch on him through the window said that all that year he only ate, drank, and lay in bed, yawned frequently, and talked angrily to himself. He did not read books. Sometimes during the night he sat down to write, wrote for a long time, and in the morning tore up everything he had written. More than once they heard him weep.

In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began an assiduous study of languages, philosophy, and history. He took it up so eagerly that the banker barely had time to order books for him. In the course of four years some six hundred volumes were ordered at his request. During the period of this passion the banker received, incidentally, the following letter from his prisoner: “My dear jailer! I am writing these lines to you in six languages. Show them to knowledgeable persons. Let them read them. If they do not find a single mistake, then, I beg you, have a shot fired in the garden. That will let me know that my efforts have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in different languages, but the same fire burns in them. Oh, if you knew what unearthly happiness now fills my soul because I am able to understand them!” The prisoner’s wish was fulfilled. The banker ordered two shots to be fired in the garden.

Then, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat motionless at a desk and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the banker that a man who, in the course of four years, had gone through six hundred sophisticated volumes, could spend nearly a year reading one easily understandable and not very thick book. After the Gospel came the history of religions and theology.

In the last two years of confinement the prisoner read a great deal, without any discrimination. First he studied natural science, then requested Byron or Shakespeare. There were notes from him asking to be sent at the same time chemistry and medical textbooks, and a novel, and some philosophical or theological treatise. His reading made it seem as if he was swimming in the sea in the midst of a shipwreck and, wishing to save his life, was greedily clutching at one piece of wreckage, then another!

II

The old banker remembered all that and thought:

“Tomorrow at twelve noon he will be set free. According to the contract, I must pay him two million. If I pay it, all is lost: I’ll be utterly ruined…”

Fifteen years ago he had had untold millions, but now he was afraid to ask himself which he had more of—money or debts? Playing the stock market, risky speculations, and a hotheadedness which he could not get rid of even in old age, gradually led to a decline in his affairs, and the fearless, confident, proud rich man turned into a middling sort of banker, trembling at every rise or fall of the rates.

“Accursed bet!” the old man muttered, clutching his head in despair. “Why didn’t the man die? He’s only forty. He’ll take my last money, get married, enjoy life, play the stock market, while I, like a beggar, will look on enviously and hear the same phrase from him every day: ‘I owe you the happiness of my life, allow me to help you!’ No, that’s too much! The only salvation from bankruptcy and disgrace is—this man’s death!”

It struck three. The banker listened: everyone in the house was asleep, and he could hear only the rustling of the chilled trees outside the windows. Trying to make no noise, he took from a safe the key to the door that had not been opened for fifteen years, put on his coat, and went out.

In the garden it was dark and cold. Rain was falling. A sharp, damp wind was howling all over the garden and gave the trees no peace. The banker strained his eyes, but could not see the ground, nor the white statues, nor the cottage, nor the trees. Coming to the place where the cottage was, he called twice to the watchman. There was no answer. Obviously the watchman had taken refuge from the bad weather and was now sleeping somewhere in the kitchen or the hothouse.

“If I have courage enough to carry out my intention,” the old man thought, “the suspicion will fall first of all on the watchman.”

He felt for the steps and the door in the darkness and entered the front hall of the cottage, then felt his way into a small corridor and lit a match. Not a soul was there. There was someone’s bed without covers, and the dark outline of an iron stove in the corner. The seals on the door leading to the prisoner’s room were intact.

When the match went out, the old man, trembling with agitation, peeked through the small window.

A candle was burning dimly in the prisoner’s room. He was sitting at the table. Only his back, his hair, and his arms could be seen. On the table, on two armchairs, and on the rug by the table lay open books.

Five minutes went by, and not once did the prisoner stir. Fifteen years of imprisonment had taught him to sit motionlessly. The banker tapped on the window with his finger, but the prisoner did not respond to this tapping with the least movement. Then the banker carefully tore the seals off the door and put the key into the keyhole. The rusty lock produced a rasping sound and the door creaked. The banker expected to hear a cry of astonishment and footsteps at once, but some three minutes went by, and behind the door it was as quiet as before. He decided to go into the room.

Motionless at the table sat a man who looked nothing like ordinary people. He was a skeleton covered in skin, with long womanish curls and a shaggy beard. The color of his face was yellow with a sallow tinge, his cheeks were sunken, his back long and narrow, and the arm that supported his unshorn head was so thin and bony it was scary to look at. His hair was already a silvery gray, and glancing at his aged, emaciated face, no one would have believed he was only forty years old. He was asleep…On the table in front of his bowed head lay a sheet of paper on which something was written in small script.

“Pathetic man!” the banker thought. “He sleeps and probably sees millions in his dreams! All I need to do is take this half-corpse, throw him onto the bed, and gently smother him with a pillow, and the most conscientious expertise will find no signs of a violent death. But first let’s read what he’s written here…”

The banker took the paper from the table and read the following:

“Tomorrow at twelve noon I will be granted freedom and the right to associate with people. But before I leave this room and see the sun, I find it necessary to say a few words. With a clear conscience and before God who sees me, I declare to you that I scorn freedom, and life, and health, and all that is known in your books as worldly blessings.

“For fifteen years I have attentively studied earthly life. True, I have seen neither earth nor people, but in your books I have drunk fragrant wine, sung songs, chased deer and wild boar in the forests, loved women…Beauties, airy as clouds, created by the magic of poets of genius, have visited me by night and whispered wondrous tales that intoxicated me. In your books I climbed the peaks of Elbrus and Mont Blanc, and from there I saw the sun rise in the mornings and in the evenings flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain peaks with crimson gold; from there I saw flashes of lightning cleave the clouds above me; I saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities; I heard sirens sing and shepherds’ pipes play; I touched the wings of beautiful devils, who flew to me to talk about God…In your books I threw myself into bottomless abysses, performed miracles, killed, burned cities, preached new religions, conquered whole kingdoms…

“Your books gave me wisdom. Everything that tireless human thought has created in the course of centuries is compressed in my skull into a small lump. I know that I am more intelligent than all of you.

“And I scorn your books, I scorn all the world’s blessings and its wisdom. It is all paltry, fleeting, illusory, and as deceptive as a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and beautiful, but death will wipe you from the face of the earth the same as cellar mice, and your descendants, history, the immortality of your geniuses will freeze or burn along with the terrestrial globe.

“You have lost your minds and are following the wrong path. You take falsehood for truth and ugliness for beauty. You would be amazed if, owing to certain circumstances, apple and orange trees suddenly produced frogs and lizards instead of fruit, or roses smelled of horse sweat; so am I amazed at you, who have exchanged the sky for the earth. I do not want to understand you.

“To show you in practice my scorn for what you live by, I renounce the two million that I once dreamed of as of paradise, and which I now scorn. To deprive myself of my right to it, I will leave here five hours before the agreed term, thereby breaking the contract…”

Having read that, the banker put the paper on the table, kissed the strange man on the head, wept, and left the cottage. Never before, even after losing heavily on the stock market, had he felt such scorn for himself as he did now. On coming home, he went to bed, but for a long time agitation and tears did not let him sleep…

The next morning the pale-faced watchmen came running and informed him that they had seen the man who lived in the cottage climb out the window into the garden, go to the gate, and then disappear somewhere. Together with the servants, the banker went at once to the cottage and verified his prisoner’s escape. To avoid unnecessary discussions, he took the paper with the renunciation from the table and, returning home, locked it in a safe.

1889