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The Bet by Anton Chekhov
I
It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to corner of his study,
recalling to his mind the party he gave in the autumn fifteen years before. There were
many clever people at the party and much interesting conversation. They talked among other things
of capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few scholars and journalists, for the
most part disapproved of capital punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment,
unfitted to a Christian State and immoral. Some of them thought that capital punishment
should be replaced universally by life-imprisonment. "I don't agree with you," said the host. "I
myself have experienced neither capital punishment nor life-imprisonment, but if one may judge
_a priori_, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and more humane than imprisonment.
Execution kills instantly, life-imprisonment kills by degrees. Who is the more humane executioner,
one who kills you in a few seconds or one who draws the life out of you incessantly,
for years?" "They're both equally immoral," remarked one of the guests, "because their
purpose is the same, to take away life. The State is not God. It has no right to take
away that which it cannot give back, if it should so desire." Among the company was a
lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five. On being asked his opinion, he said: "Capital
punishment and life-imprisonment are equally immoral; but if I were offered the choice
between them, I would certainly choose the second. It's better to live somehow than not
to live at all." There ensued a lively discussion. The banker who was then younger and more nervous
suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist on the table, and turning to the young lawyer,
cried out: "It's a lie. I bet you two millions you wouldn't stick in a cell even for five
years." "If you mean it seriously," replied the lawyer, "then I bet I'll stay not five
but fifteen." "Fifteen! Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two millions." "Agreed.
You stake two millions, I my freedom," said the lawyer. So this wild, ridiculous bet came
to pass. The banker, who at that time had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious,
was beside himself with rapture. During supper he said to the lawyer jokingly: "Come to your
senses, young roan, before it's too late. Two millions are nothing to me, but you stand
to lose three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four, because you'll
never stick it out any longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary is
much heavier than enforced imprisonment. The idea that you have the right to free yourself
at any moment will poison the whole of your life in the cell. I pity you." And now the
banker, pacing from corner to corner, recalled all this and asked himself: "Why did I make
this bet? What's the good? The lawyer loses fifteen years of his life and I throw away
two millions. Will it convince people that capital punishment is worse or better than
imprisonment for life? No, no! all stuff and rubbish. On my part, it was the caprice of
a well-fed man; on the lawyer's pure greed of gold." He recollected further what happened
after the evening party. It was decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under
the strictest observation, in a garden wing of the banker's house. It was agreed that
during the period he would be deprived of the right to cross the threshold, to see living
people, to hear human voices, and to receive letters and newspapers. He was permitted to
have a musical instrument, to read books, to write letters, to drink wine and smoke
tobacco. By the agreement he could communicate, but only in silence, with the outside world
through a little window specially constructed for this purpose. Everything necessary, books,
music, wine, he could receive in any quantity by sending a note through the window. The
agreement provided for all the minutest details, which made the confinement strictly solitary,
and it obliged the lawyer to remain exactly fifteen years from twelve o'clock of November
14th, 1870, to twelve o'clock of November 14th, 1885. The least attempt on his part
to violate the conditions, to escape if only for two minutes before the time freed the
banker from the obligation to pay him the two millions. During the first year of imprisonment,
the lawyer, as far as it was possible to judge from his short notes, suffered terribly from
loneliness and boredom. From his wing day and night came the sound of the piano. He
rejected wine and tobacco. "Wine," he wrote, "excites desires, and desires are the chief
foes of a prisoner; besides, nothing is more boring than to drink good wine alone," and
tobacco spoils the air in his room. During the first year the lawyer was sent books of
a light character; novels with a complicated love interest, stories of crime and fantasy,
comedies, and so on. In the second year the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer asked
only for classics. In the fifth year, music was heard again, and the prisoner asked for
wine. Those who watched him said that during the whole of that year he was only eating,
drinking, and lying on his bed. He yawned often and talked angrily to himself. Books
he did not read. Sometimes at nights he would sit down to write. He would write for a long
time and tear it all up in the morning. More than once he was heard to weep. In the second
half of the sixth year, the prisoner began zealously to study languages, philosophy,
and history. He fell on these subjects so hungrily that the banker hardly had time to
get books enough for him. In the space of four years about six hundred volumes were
bought at his request. It was while that passion lasted that the banker received the following
letter from the prisoner: "My dear gaoler, I am writing these lines in six languages.
Show them to experts. Let them read them. If they do not find one single mistake, I
beg you to give orders to have a gun fired off in the garden. By the noise I shall know
that my efforts have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in
different languages; but in them all burns the same flame. Oh, if you knew my heavenly
happiness now that I can understand them!" The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. Two shots
were fired in the garden by the banker's order. Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer
sat immovable before his table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange
that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite volumes, should have spent
nearly a year in reading one book, easy to understand and by no means thick. The New
Testament was then replaced by the history of religions and theology. During the last
two years of his confinement the prisoner read an extraordinary amount, quite haphazard.
Now he would apply himself to the natural sciences, then he would read Byron or Shakespeare.
Notes used to come from him in which he asked to be sent at the same time a book on chemistry,
a text-book of medicine, a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or theology. He read
as though he were swimming in the sea among broken pieces of wreckage, and in his desire
to save his life was eagerly grasping one piece after another.
II
The banker recalled all this, and thought: "To-morrow at twelve o'clock he receives his
freedom. Under the agreement, I shall have to pay him two millions. If I pay, it's all
over with me. I am ruined for ever ..." Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count,
but now he was afraid to ask himself which he had more of, money or debts. Gambling on
the Stock-Exchange, risky speculation, and the recklessness of which he could not rid
himself even in old age, had gradually brought his business to decay; and the fearless, self-confident,
proud man of business had become an ordinary banker, trembling at every rise and fall in
the market. "That cursed bet," murmured the old man clutching his head in despair... "Why
didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He will take away my last farthing, marry,
enjoy life, gamble on the Exchange, and I will look on like an envious beggar and hear
the same words from him every day: 'I'm obliged to you for the happiness of my life. Let me
help you.' No, it's too much! The only escape from bankruptcy and disgrace—is that the
man should die." The clock had just struck three. The banker was listening. In the house
every one was asleep, and one could hear only the frozen trees whining outside the windows.
Trying to make no sound, he took out of his safe the key of the door which had not been
opened for fifteen years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house. The garden was
dark and cold. It was raining. A damp, penetrating wind howled in the garden and gave the trees
no rest. Though he strained his eyes, the banker could see neither the ground, nor the
white statues, nor the garden wing, nor the trees. Approaching the garden wing, he called
the watchman twice. There was no answer. Evidently the watchman had taken shelter from the bad
weather and was now asleep somewhere in the kitchen or the greenhouse. "If I have the
courage to fulfil my intention," thought the old man, "the suspicion will fall on the watchman
first of all." In the darkness he groped for the steps and the door and entered the hall
of the garden-wing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and struck a match. Not a
soul was there. Some one's bed, with no bedclothes on it, stood there, and an iron stove loomed
dark in the corner. The seals on the door that led into the prisoner's room were unbroken.
When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation, peeped into the little window.
In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dimly. The prisoner himself sat by the table.
Only his back, the hair on his head and his hands were visible. Open books were strewn
about on the table, the two chairs, and on the carpet near the table. Five minutes passed
and the prisoner never once stirred. Fifteen years' confinement had taught him to sit motionless.
The banker tapped on the window with his finger, but the prisoner made no movement in reply.
Then the banker cautiously tore the seals from the door and put the key into the lock.
The rusty lock gave a hoarse groan and the door creaked. The banker expected instantly
to hear a cry of surprise and the sound of steps. Three minutes passed and it was as
quiet inside as it had been before. He made up his mind to enter. Before the table sat
a man, unlike an ordinary human being. It was a skeleton, with tight-drawn skin, with
long curly hair like a woman's, and a shaggy beard. The colour of his face was yellow,
of an earthy shade; the cheeks were sunken, the back long and narrow, and the hand upon
which he leaned his hairy head was so lean and skinny that it was painful to look upon.
His hair was already silvering with grey, and no one who glanced at the senile emaciation
of the face would have believed that he was only forty years old. On the table, before
his bended head, lay a sheet of paper on which something was written in a tiny hand. "Poor
devil," thought the banker, "he's asleep and probably seeing millions in his dreams. I
have only to take and throw this half-dead thing on the bed, smother him a moment with
the pillow, and the most careful examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But,
first, let us read what he has written here." The banker took the sheet from the table and
read: "To-morrow at twelve o'clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom and the right to
mix with people. But before I leave this room and see the sun I think it necessary to say
a few words to you. On my own clear conscience and before God who sees me I declare to you
that I despise freedom, life, health, and all that your books call the blessings of
the world. "For fifteen years I have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw neither
the earth nor the people, but in your books I drank fragrant wine, sang songs, hunted
deer and wild boar in the forests, loved women... And beautiful women, like clouds ethereal,
created by the magic of your poets' genius, visited me by night and whispered to me wonderful
tales, which made my head drunken. In your books I climbed the summits of Elbruz and
Mont Blanc and saw from there how the sun rose in the morning, and in the evening suffused
the sky, the ocean and lie mountain ridges with a purple gold. I saw from there how above
me lightnings glimmered cleaving the clouds; I saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes,
cities; I heard syrens singing, and the playing of the pipes of Pan; I touched the wings of
beautiful devils who came flying to me to speak of God... In your books I cast myself
into bottomless abysses, worked miracles, burned cities to the ground, preached new
religions, conquered whole countries... "Your books gave me wisdom. All that unwearying
human thought created in the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I
know that I am cleverer than you all. "And I despise your books, despise all worldly
blessings and wisdom. Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive as a mirage.
Though you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the face of the
earth like the mice underground; and your posterity, your history, and the immortality
of your men of genius will be as frozen slag, burnt down together with the terrestrial globe.
"You are mad, and gone the wrong way. You take falsehood for truth and ugliness for
beauty. You would marvel if suddenly apple and orange trees should bear frogs and lizards
instead of fruit, and if roses should begin to breathe the odour of a sweating horse.
So do I marvel at you, who have bartered heaven for earth. I do not want to understand you.
"That I may show you in deed my contempt for that by which you live, I waive the two millions
of which I once dreamed as of paradise, and which I now despise. That I may deprive myself
of my right to them, I shall come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term,
and thus shall violate the agreement." When he had read, the banker put the sheet on the
table, kissed the head of the strange man, and began to weep. He went out of the wing.
Never at any other time, not even after his terrible losses on the Exchange, had he felt
such contempt for himself as now. Coming home, he lay down on his bed, but agitation and
tears kept him a long time from sleeping... The next morning the poor watchman came running
to him and told him that they had seen the man who lived in the wing climb through the
window into the garden. He had gone to the gate and disappeared. The banker instantly
went with his servants to the wing and established the escape of his prisoner. To avoid unnecessary
rumours he took the paper with the renunciation from the table and, on his return, locked
it in his safe.
End of The Bet by Anton Chekhov
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