Dostoevsky (112 page)

Written in the form of a first-person confession or diary, like
Notes from Underground
,
The Gambler
recounts a decisive series of events in the life of the narrator, Aleksey Ivanovich. This cultivated and highly intelligent young Russian nobleman is serving as a tutor in the entourage of a Russian General Zagoryansky, who is temporarily living abroad. He imagines himself to be in love with the general’s stepdaughter, Praskovya (Polina), and their romance constitutes the central plot line. Commentators have been so bemused by the biographical overlappings that they have simply identified Aleksey with Dostoevsky and taken Polina as the supposedly “demonic” Suslova. In fact, however, Aleksey is an unreliable narrator, and the picture he gives of Polina is woefully distorted by his own frustrations and grievances. The two characters who serve as moral yard-sticks—Auntie, a wealthy Russian matriarch who erupts on the scene as large as life, and the English lord and prosperous manufacturer Mr. Astley—both speak of Polina in the highest terms. Their view of her character is totally different from that of the presumably love-struck and embittered Aleksey, who cannot overcome his conviction that she looks down on him, from the height of her superior social position, with the utmost indifference.

The characters in
The Gambler
break down easily into two groups—the Russians and the Europeans—and they are contrasted along lines that may be described, to use Dostoevsky’s own category, as “poetic” and “prosaic.” Among the Europeans are the fake (or exceedingly dubious) Count or Marquis de Grieux and his supposed cousin, Mlle Blanche de Cominges; her presumably noble origins are patently sham, and she is in fact a high-priced
cocotte
. Both of these French figures are linked with the family of the widowed general, who is residing in grand patriarchal style at a German gambling spa called Roulettenberg and
squandering money right and left. The general has given promissory notes to de Grieux on all his Russian estates in return for loans and is completely in the Frenchman’s power. The sensual and provocative Mlle Blanche would also dearly love to improve her social position by becoming
madame la générale
, and as long as the smitten general is in funds, she allows him to pay his court. All the hopes of the general depend on Auntie, whose momentarily expected demise will pour a considerable fortune into the general’s lap. Even after paying off his debts, he would still remain an extremely wealthy Russian
barin
; and what de Grieux has not taken will be left to Mlle Blanche.

Both de Grieux and Mlle Blanche are thus moved by exclusively mercenary motives, and Mlle Blanche’s relation to the general is paralleled by that of de Grieux to Polina. He had seduced her earlier in the belief that she was a wealthy heiress, but he becomes increasingly cool as the general’s financial prospects grow dimmer. Unlike the aging general, who is deeply smitten with Mlle Blanche (this is
his
way of being a “poet”), Polina no longer has any illusions about de Grieux. “The moment he finds out that I, too, have inherited something from her [Auntie],” she tells Aleksey, “he will immediately propose to me” (5: 213). The only other important foreign character is Mr. Astley, an exemplar, it is true, of all the gentlemanly virtues, but also a partner in a sugar refining firm and thus limited by his English world of practicality and common sense.

The Russian characters, on the other hand, are all moved by feelings whose consequences may be practically disastrous but in every case involve some passion transcending the financial. Both the general and Polina have been stirred by love, and Polina has now transferred her affections to Aleksey—though he is too self-preoccupied to understand that her presumed coldness would dissolve in an instant if he did not continually insist on his slavish subservience to her supposed tyranny. What obsesses Aleksey is the sense of his own social inferiority as a humble tutor in the general’s household, where, despite his culture, education, and status as a Russian nobleman, he is treated little better than a servant. He is
in fact
treated outrightly as a servant by the de Grieux–Mlle Blanche tandem, as well as by the hotel staff, and he totally misunderstands Polina because he believes that she disdains him for the same reasons. He cannot imagine that she might favor him over two other much more imposing suitors, de Grieux and Mr. Astley, and he exhibits a rankling acrimony to which she responds in kind. The dialogues between the two crackle with the tension of this love-hate relationship, though the supposed “hate” is really caused by Aleksey’s wrongheaded view of Polina’s feelings.

Even before arriving, Aleksey had been convinced that roulette would “affect my destiny radically and definitively” (5: 215); and he explains to Polina, when she inquires what transformation would occur in his life, that “with money I’ll be a different man, even for you, not a slave” (5: 229). Aleksey begins to gamble,
presumably as a means of winning Polina, but more from a need for egoistic self-affirmation than a genuine desire for love. When Polina rightly accuses him of counting on “buying me with money,” he indignantly rejects the charge, but her reply hits the nail on the head. “If you aren’t thinking of buying me, you certainly think you can buy my respect with money” (5: 230). Polina already knows that de Grieux’s “love” waxes and wanes depending on his estimate of her presumably future wealth, and she is wounded to the quick by Aleksey’s assumption that
her
feelings toward him could be swayed for the same reason. At the climax of the plot action, Aleksey’s behavior toward Polina in fact comes to parallel that of de Grieux.

Aleksey’s conduct, however, will not be the result of the same acquisitive motives displayed by the suavely elegant Frenchman. For when Aleksey begins to gamble, the excitement of the play causes him to lose sight entirely of his presumed goal of winning the funds necessary to change his life and gain Polina. Far from stopping when luck is in his favor, he continues to gamble, because “some kind of strange sensation built up in me, a kind of challenge to fate, a kind of desire to give it a flick on the nose, or stick out my tongue at it” (5: 224). The thrill of this “strange sensation,” which may be taken as his means of overcoming his perpetual sense of abasement, overpowers every other consideration; and he invariably continues to gamble until he is entirely wiped out.

Those who win, on the other hand, behave like the emblematic French-woman who, in one scene, places “her bets quietly, coolly and calculatingly; taking notes with a pencil and sheet of paper of the numbers that were coming up and trying to find the patterns according to which the chances fell at a given moment. . . . Every day she would win a thousand, two thousand, or at most three thousand francs . . . and . . . she would immediately walk away” (5: 262). But once Aleksey experiences the excitement of gambling “poetically,” that is, the excitement of his “challenge to fate,” he finds the sensation so exhilarating that he never wishes it to end, and so he becomes not only an incorrigible gambler but also an inveterate loser.

Aleksey has been shown to be an ardent Russian patriot who vehemently defends his country’s unpopular policies against foreign critics. When de Grieux remarks “caustically and spitefully,” referring to the tutor’s losses, that “Russians were . . . lacking in talent even in gambling,” Aleksey turns the insulting observation around into an encomium of the Russians’ refusal to dedicate their lives entirely to the accumulation of wealth. “Roulette is simply made for Russians,” he declares, because “the faculty of amassing capital has become, through a historical process, virtually the main point in the catechism of the virtues and qualities of civilized Western man.” Russians have never learned to revere such amassing of capital as an end in itself, but they need money too, and so “are very fond of, and susceptible to, methods such as, for example, roulette, allowing one
to get rich suddenly in two hours, and without work. And since we gamble to no purpose, and also without real effort, we tend to be losers!” (5: 223).

Aleksey’s peroration is not merely a clever riposte to de Grieux’s disdain; its wider application becomes evident in the diverting episode involving Auntie (also called Grandmother), who, instead of expiring on schedule in Moscow, explodes unexpectedly on the Roulettenberg scene and sends all the hopes pinned on acquiring her fortune flying out the window. The blunt old matriarch, despotic but fundamentally humane and kindhearted, represents the traditional down-to-earth virtues of the Russian gentry unspoiled by any truckling to foreign tastes and fashions. Her commanding presence inspires immediate respect and deference.

Auntie’s behavior provides a textbook illustration of Aleksey’s view concerning the Russian attraction to roulette. Instantly tempted by such a miraculous and seemingly effortless enrichment, she pays no attention to Aleksey’s warnings and promptly begins to play. What possesses Auntie is the imperious pride of someone used to issuing commands and being obeyed, the pride of a Russian landowner all-powerful on her estates. “ ‘There, look at it,’ Grandmother said angrily, ‘how long will I have to wait until the miserable little zero comes up’ ” (5: 263). It finally does, and she is hooked. Unwilling to stop until she imposes her will on the velleities of the wheel, she loses heavily, stubbornly cashes all her securities at a ruinous rate to continue to play, and loses every penny. A loan from Mr. Astley enables her to limp home contritely to Russia, where she plans to rebuild the local parish church in penance for her gambling sins.

One other aspect of this Auntie episode provides an important foreshadowing of the dénouement of the Aleksey-Polina romance. On her first visit to the casino, Auntie embarrasses everyone by insisting on entering its august precints accompanied by her majordomo Potapych and her peasant maid Marfa. “So she is a servant, so I have to leave her behind!” she retorts to the general’s warnings about propriety. “She is a human being too, isn’t she? . . . How could she go anywhere, except with me?” (5: 259). Later, when gambling has taken over, she loses all concern for Marfa and snappishly dismisses the maid when she devotedly begins to escort her mistress again. Once the passion for gambling has gained the upper hand, all other human feelings and relations cease to exist.

The arrival and departure of Auntie creates a crisis in the lives of the other characters, since it is clear that she will not give a cent to the general and that her funeral mass will hardly be intoned tomorrow. De Grieux thus announces his intention to leave for Russia and claim the general’s property. Before departing, he sends a letter to Polina explaining ceremoniously that he must renounce all further hopes for
their
future, but that, as a man of honor, he would turn over fifty
thousand francs to the general on her behalf. Aleksey finds her sitting in his room that night and realizes that her presence could only mean one thing. “Why that meant that she loved me! . . . she had compromised herself before everybody, and I, I was just standing there, refusing to understand it!” (5: 291). How he might have behaved is indicated the next day by Mr. Astley, who remarks acidly that Polina “was on her way here yesterday, and I should have taken her to a lady relative of mine, but as she was ill, she made a mistake and went to you” (5: 300). Far from thinking of how best to protect the reputation of his alleged beloved, Aleksey rushes off to play roulette and win the fifty thousand francs needed to wipe out de Grieux’s insult. Nothing had changed in their relations, and he still behaved as though it were necessary to “buy her respect.”

At the casino, Aleksey hits a sensational winning streak, playing frantically and frenziedly in the “Russian” style—“haphazard, at random, quite without thought.” His luck continues to hold, and “now I felt like a winner and was afraid of nothing, of nothing in the world, as I plunked down four thousand on black” (5: 293). Staking on impossible odds, his usually crushed personality is freed from its crippling limits; he is aware of nothing except the intoxication of this release, and he breaks off play only accidentally, when he hears the voices of onlookers marveling at his winnings. “I don’t remember,” he remarks, “whether I thought of Polina even once during all this time” (5: 294).

Just as he had forgotten Polina while gambling, so he becomes aware, on the way back, that what he now feels has little to do with her plight. What dominates his emotions is “a tremendous feeling of exhilaration—success, triumph, power—I don’t know how to express it. Polina’s image flitted through my mind also. . . . Yet I could hardly remember what she had told me earlier, and why I had gone to the casino.” When his first remark to her is about the best place to conceal the money, she breaks “into the sarcastic laughter I had heard so often . . . every time I made one of my passionate declarations to her.” Polina had sensed the falsity of his declamations in the past, and now she sees its bogusness confirmed even more glaringly. It is at this moment, when she realizes that Aleksey’s attitude is not really different from that of de Grieux—both men gauge her most intimate sentiments only in terms of money—that her ulcerated pride and dignity bring on a hysterical crisis. Turning on Aleksey with detestation, she says bitterly: “I won’t take your money. . . . You are giving too much. . . . De Grieux’s mistress is not worth fifty thousand francs” (5: 295). But the true pathos of her condition is then revealed when she breaks down completely, caresses Aleksey in delirium, and keeps repeating: “You love me . . . love me . . . will you love me?” (5: 297).