The Gambler | Page 5

(since I did not
wish Polina to depart without an explanation).
"You KNOW who she is--just Mlle. Blanche. Nothing further has
transpired. Probably she will soon be Madame General--that is to say,

if the rumours that Grandmamma is nearing her end should prove true.
Mlle. Blanche, with her mother and her cousin, the Marquis, know very
well that, as things now stand, we are ruined."
"And is the General at last in love?"
"That has nothing to do with it. Listen to me. Take these 700 florins,
and go and play roulette with them. Win as much for me as you can, for
I am badly in need of money.
So saying, she called Nadia back to her side, and entered the Casino,
where she joined the rest of our party. For myself, I took, in musing
astonishment, the first path to the left. Something had seemed to strike
my brain when she told me to go and play roulette. Strangely enough,
that something had also seemed to make me hesitate, and to set me
analysing my feelings with regard to her. In fact, during the two weeks
of my absence I had felt far more at my ease than I did now, on the day
of my return; although, while travelling, I had moped like an imbecile,
rushed about like a man in a fever, and actually beheld her in my
dreams. Indeed, on one occasion (this happened in Switzerland, when I
was asleep in the train) I had spoken aloud to her, and set all my
fellow-travellers laughing. Again, therefore, I put to myself the
question: "Do I, or do I not love her?" and again I could return myself
no answer or, rather, for the hundredth time I told myself that I detested
her. Yes, I detested her; there were moments (more especially at the
close of our talks together) when I would gladly have given half my life
to have strangled her! I swear that, had there, at such moments, been a
sharp knife ready to my hand, I would have seized that knife with
pleasure, and plunged it into her breast. Yet I also swear that if, on the
Shlangenberg, she had REALLY said to me, "Leap into that abyss," I
should have leapt into it, and with equal pleasure. Yes, this I knew well.
One way or the other, the thing must soon be ended. She, too, knew it
in some curious way; the thought that I was fully conscious of her
inaccessibility, and of the impossibility of my ever realising my dreams,
afforded her, I am certain, the keenest possible pleasure. Otherwise, is
it likely that she, the cautious and clever woman that she was, would
have indulged in this familiarity and openness with me? Hitherto (I
concluded) she had looked upon me in the same light that the old
Empress did upon her servant--the Empress who hesitated not to
unrobe herself before her slave, since she did not account a slave a man.

Yes, often Polina must have taken me for something less than a man!"
Still, she had charged me with a commission--to win what I could at
roulette. Yet all the time I could not help wondering WHY it was so
necessary for her to win something, and what new schemes could have
sprung to birth in her ever-fertile brain. A host of new and unknown
factors seemed to have arisen during the last two weeks. Well, it
behoved me to divine them, and to probe them, and that as soon as
possible. Yet not now: at the present moment I must repair to the
roulette-table.
II
I confess I did not like it. Although I had made up my mind to play, I
felt averse to doing so on behalf of some one else. In fact, it almost
upset my balance, and I entered the gaming rooms with an angry
feeling at my heart. At first glance the scene irritated me. Never at any
time have I been able to bear the flunkeyishness which one meets in the
Press of the world at large, but more especially in that of Russia, where,
almost every evening, journalists write on two subjects in particular
namely, on the splendour and luxury of the casinos to be found in the
Rhenish towns, and on the heaps of gold which are daily to be seen
lying on their tables. Those journalists are not paid for doing so: they
write thus merely out of a spirit of disinterested complaisance. For
there is nothing splendid about the establishments in question; and, not
only are there no heaps of gold to be seen lying on their tables, but also
there is very little money to be seen at all. Of course, during the season,
some madman or another may