Knock, Knock, Knock and Other Stories | Page 3

nearly reached three thousand. Tyeglev approached the table
in silence, took up a pack, cut it, and saying "the six of diamonds,"
turned the pack up: the six of diamonds was the bottom card. "The ace

of clubs!" he said and cut again: the bottom card turned out to be the
ace of clubs. "The king of diamonds!" he said for the third time in an
angry whisper through his clenched teeth--and he was right the third
time, too ... and he suddenly turned crimson. He probably had not
expected it himself. "A capital trick! Do it again," observed the
commanding officer of the battery. "I don't go in for tricks," Tyeglev
answered drily and walked into the other room. How it happened that
he guessed the card right, I can't pretend to explain: but I saw it with
my own eyes. Many of the players present tried to do the same--and not
one of them succeeded: one or two did guess one card but never two in
succession. And Tyeglev had guessed three! This incident strengthened
still further his reputation as a mysterious, fatal character. It has often
occurred to me since that if he had not succeeded in the trick with the
cards, there is no knowing what turn it would have taken and how he
would have looked at himself; but this unexpected success clinched the
matter.
IV
It may well be understood that Tyeglev clutched at this reputation. It
gave him a special significance, a special colour ... "_Cela le posait_,"
as the French express it--and with his limited intelligence, scanty
education and immense vanity, such a reputation just suited him. It was
difficult to acquire it but to keep it up cost nothing: he had only to
remain silent and hold himself aloof. But it was not owing to this
reputation that I made friends with Tyeglev and, I may say, grew fond
of him. I liked him in the first place because I was rather an unsociable
creature myself--and saw in him one of my own sort, and secondly,
because he was a very good-natured fellow and in reality, very
simple-hearted. He aroused in me a feeling of something like
compassion; it seemed to me that apart from his affected "fatality," he
really was weighed down by a tragic fate which he did not himself
suspect. I need hardly say I did not express this feeling to him: could
anything be more insulting to a "fatal" hero than to be an object of pity?
And Tyeglev, on his side, was well-disposed to me; with me he felt at
ease, with me he used to talk--in my presence he ventured to leave the
strange pedestal on which he had been placed either by his own efforts
or by chance. Agonisingly, morbidly vain as he was, yet he was
probably aware in the depths of his soul that there was nothing to

justify his vanity, and that others might perhaps look down on him ...
but I, a boy of nineteen, put no constraint on him; the dread of saying
something stupid, inappropriate, did not oppress his ever-apprehensive
heart in my presence. He sometimes even chattered freely; and well it
was for him that no one heard his chatter except me! His reputation
would not have lasted long. He not only knew very little, but read
hardly anything and confined himself to picking up stories and
anecdotes of a certain kind. He believed in presentiments, predictions,
omens, meetings, lucky and unlucky days, in the persecution and
benevolence of destiny, in the mysterious significance of life, in fact.
He even believed in certain "climacteric" years which someone had
mentioned in his presence and the meaning of which he did not himself
very well understand. "Fatal" men of the true stamp ought not to betray
such beliefs: they ought to inspire them in others.... But I was the only
one who knew Tyeglev on that side.
V
One day--I remember it was St. Elijah's day, July 20th--I came to stay
with my brother and did not find him at home: he had been ordered off
for a whole week somewhere. I did not want to go back to Petersburg; I
sauntered about the neighbouring marshes, killed a brace of snipe and
spent the evening with Tyeglev under the shelter of an empty barn
where he had, as he expressed it, set up his summer residence. We had
a little conversation but for the most part drank tea, smoked pipes and
talked sometimes to our host, a Russianised Finn or to the pedlar who
used to hang about the battery selling "fi-ine oranges and lemons," a
charming and lively person who in addition to other talents could play
the guitar and used to tell us of the unhappy love which he