Polina was surprised.
“Why,” she asked, “aren’t you hoping for the same thing yourself? Two weeks ago you yourself once spoke to me, a lot and at length, about your being fully convinced of winning here at roulette, and tried to persuade me not to look at you as a madman—or were you joking then? But I remember you spoke so seriously that it couldn’t possibly have been taken for a joke.”
“That’s true,” I answered pensively. “To this day I’m fully convinced of winning. I’ll even confess to you that you’ve just now led me to a question: precisely why has my senseless and outrageous loss today not left me with any doubts? I’m still fully convinced that as soon as I start playing for myself, I’m sure to win.”
“Why are you so completely certain?”
“If you like—I don’t know. I know only that I need to win, that it’s also my one way out. Well, so maybe that’s why it seems to me that I’m sure to win.”
“Which means you also have all too much need to win, if you’re so fanatically convinced.”
“I’ll bet you doubt I’m capable of feeling a serious need.”
“It’s all the same to me,” Polina replied quietly and indifferently. “If you like—yes, I doubt that you could seriously suffer from anything. You may suffer, but not seriously. You’re a disorderly and unsettled man. What do you need money for? I found nothing serious in any of the reasons you gave me then.”
“By the way,” I interrupted, “you said you had to repay a debt. A nice debt, then! Not to the Frenchman?”
“What are these questions? You’re particularly sharp today. You’re not drunk, are you?”
“You know I allow myself to say anything and sometimes ask very frank questions. I repeat, I am your slave, one is not ashamed with slaves, and a slave cannot give offense.”
“That’s all rubbish! And I can’t stand this ‘slave’ theory of yours!”
“Note that I speak of my slavery not because I wish to be your slave, but just so—as of a fact that does not depend on me at all.”
“Tell me straight out, why do you need money?”
“And why do you want to know that?”
“As you like,” she replied and proudly tossed her head.
“You can’t stand the slave theory, but you demand slavery: ‘Answer and don’t argue!’ Very well, so be it. Why money, you ask? What do you mean, why? Money’s everything!”
“I understand, but not falling into such madness from desiring it! You also reach the point of frenzy, of fatalism! There’s something in it, some special goal. Speak without meandering, I want it that way.”
It was as if she was beginning to get angry, and I liked terribly that she put so much heart into her questioning.
“Of course there’s a goal,” I said, “but I’m unable to explain what it is. No more than that with money I’ll become a different person for you, and not a slave.”
“What? How are you going to achieve that?”
“How achieve it? What, you don’t even understand how I can achieve that you look at me otherwise than as a slave? Well, that’s just what I don’t want, such surprises and perplexities.”
“You said this slavery was a pleasure for you. I thought so myself.”
“You thought so,” I cried with some strange pleasure. “Ah, how good such naïveté is coming from you! Well, yes, yes, to be enslaved to you is a pleasure. There is, there is pleasure in the ultimate degree of humiliation and insignificance!” I went on raving. “Devil knows, maybe there is in the knout, too, when the knout comes down on your back and tears your flesh to pieces…But may be I want to try other pleasures as well. Earlier at the table, in your presence, the general read me a lesson, because of the seven hundred roubles a year which I still may not even get from him. The marquis des Grieux raises his eyebrows, scrutinizes me, and at the same time doesn’t notice me. And maybe I, for my part, passionately desire to take the marquis des Grieux by the nose in your presence?”
“A milksop’s talk. One can behave with dignity in any situation. If there’s a struggle involved, it’s elevating, not humiliating.”
“Straight out of a copybook! Just try to suppose that I may not know how to behave with dignity. That is, perhaps I’m a dignified man, but I don’t know how to behave with dignity. Do you understand that it may be so? All Russians are that way, and you know why? Because Russians are too richly and multifariously endowed to be able to find a decent form for themselves very quickly. It’s a matter of form. For the most part, we Russians are so richly endowed that it takes genius for us to find a decent form. Well, but most often there is no genius, because generally it rarely occurs. It’s only the French, and perhaps some few other Europeans, who have so well-defined a form that one can look extremely dignified and yet be a most undignified man. That’s why form means so much to them. A Frenchman can suffer an insult, a real, heartfelt insult, and not wince, but a flick on the nose he won’t suffer for anything, because it’s a violation of the accepted and time-honored form of decency. That’s why our young ladies fall so much for Frenchmen, because they have good form. In my opinion, however, there’s no form there, but only a rooster, le coq gaulois.[9] {7} However, that I cannot understand, I’m not a woman. Maybe roosters are fine. And generally I’m driveling, and you don’t stop me. Stop me more often; when I talk with you, I want to say everything, everything, everything. I lose all form. I even agree that I have not only no form, but also no merits. I announce that to you. I don’t even care about any merits. Everything in me has come to a stop now. You yourself know why. I don’t have a single human thought in my head. For a long time I haven’t known what’s going on in the world, either in Russia or here. I went through Dresden and don’t remember what Dresden is like. You know yourself what has swallowed me up. Since I have no hope and am a zero in your eyes, I say outright: I see only you everywhere, and the rest makes no difference to me. Why and how I love you—I don’t know. Do you know, maybe you’re not good at all? Imagine, I don’t even know whether you’re good or not, or even good-looking? Your heart probably isn’t good; your mind isn’t noble; that may very well be.”
“Maybe that’s why you count on buying me with money,” she said, “since you don’t believe in my nobility?”
“When did I ever count on buying you with money?” I cried.
“Your tongue ran away with you and you lost your thread. If it’s not me, it’s my respect you think you can buy with money.”
“Well, no, that’s not so at all. I told you, it’s hard for me to explain. You intimidate me. Don’t be angry at my babbling. You see why it’s impossible to be angry with me: I’m simply mad. But, anyhow, it’s all the same to me if you are angry. When I’m upstairs in my little room, I only have to remember and imagine the rustle of your dress, and I’m ready to bite my hands. And why are you angry with me? Because I call myself a slave? Avail yourself, avail yourself of my slavery, avail yourself! Someday I’ll kill you, do you know that? Not because I’ve fallen out of love or become jealous, but—just so, simply kill you, because I sometimes long to eat you up. You’re laughing…”
“I’m not laughing at all,” she said with wrath. “I order you to be silent.”
She stopped, barely able to breathe from wrath. By God, I don’t know whether she was good-looking or not, but I always liked looking at her when she stood before me like that, and so I often liked to provoke her wrath. I told her that.
“What filth!” she exclaimed with disgust.