The Bet

The Bet

    Anton Chekhov

I

It was a dark autumn night. The old banker was walking up and down
his study and remembering how, fifteen years before, he had given a party
one autumn evening. There had been many clever men there, and there had
been interesting conversations. Among other things they had talked of
capital punishment. The majority of the guests, among whom were many
journalists and intellectual men, disapproved of the death penalty. They
considered that form of punishment out of date, immoral, and unsuitable
for Christian States. In the opinion of some of them the death penalty
ought to be replaced everywhere by imprisonment for life.

"I don't agree with you," said their host the banker. "I have not
tried either the death penalty or imprisonment for life, but if one may
judge à priori, the death penalty is more moral and more humane than
imprisonment for life. Capital punishment kills a man at once, but
lifelong imprisonment kills him slowly. Which executioner is the more
humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of
you in the course of many years?"

"Both are equally immoral," observed one of the guests, "for they
both have the same object--to take away life. The State is not God. It has
not the right to take away what it cannot restore when it wants to." 

Among the guests was a young lawyer, a young man of five-and-twenty. When
he was asked his opinion, he said:

"The death sentence and the life sentence are equally immoral, but if I had
to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would
certainly choose the second. To live anyhow is better than not at all."

A lively discussion arose. The banker, who was younger and more
nervous in those days, was suddenly carried away by excitement; he struck
the table with his fist and shouted at the young man: 

"It's not true! I'll bet you two millions you wouldn't stay in
solitary confinement for five years." "If you mean that in earnest," said
the young man, "I'll take the bet, but I would stay not five but fifteen
years." 

"Fifteen? Done!" cried the banker. "Gentlemen, I stake two
millions!" 

"Agreed! You stake your millions and I stake my freedom!" said
the young man. 

And this wild, senseless bet was carried out. The banker, spoilt
and frivolous, with millions beyond his reckoning, was delighted at the
bet. At supper he made fun of the young man, and said: "Think better of
it, young man, while there is still time. To me two millions are a trifle,
but you are losing three or four of the best years of your life. I say
three or four, because you won't stay longer. Don't forget either, you
unhappy man, that voluntary confinement is a great deal harder to bear
than compulsory. The thought that you have the right to step out in
liberty at any moment will poison your whole existence in prison. I am
sorry for you."

And now the banker, walking to and fro, remembered all this, and asked
himself: "What was the object of that bet? What is the good of that man's
losing fifteen years of his life and my throwing away two millions? Can it
prove that the death penalty is better or worse than imprisonment for life?
No, no. It was all nonsensical and meaningless. On my part it was the
caprice of a pampered man, and on his part simple greed for money ..."

Then he remembered what followed that evening. It was decided that
the young man should spend the years of his captivity under the strictest
supervision in one of the lodges in the banker's garden. It was agreed
that for fifteen years he should not be free to cross the threshold of the
lodge, to see human beings, to hear the human voice, or to receive letters
and newspapers.

He was allowed to have a musical instrument and books, and was allowed to
write letters, to drink wine, and to smoke. By the terms of the agreement,
the only relations he could have with the outer world were by a little
window made purposely for that object. He might have anything he
wanted--books, music, wine, and so on--in any quantity he desired by writing
an order, but could only receive them through the window. The agreement
provided for every detail and every trifle that would make his imprisonment
strictly solitary, and bound the young man to stay there exactly fifteen
years, beginning from twelve o'clock of November 14, 1870, and ending at
twelve o'clock of November 14, 1885. The slightest attempt on his part to
break the conditions, if only two minutes before the end, released the
banker from the obligation to pay him two millions.

For the first year of his confinement, as far as one could judge
from his brief notes, the prisoner suffered severely from loneliness and
depression. The sounds of the piano could be heard continually day and
night from his lodge. He refused wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote, excites
the desires, and desires are the worst foes of the prisoner; and besides,
nothing could be more dreary than drinking good wine and seeing no one.
And tobacco spoilt the air of his room. In the first year the books he
sent for were principally of a light character; novels with a complicated
love plot, sensational and fantastic stories, and so on.

In the second year the piano was silent in the lodge, and the prisoner
asked only for the classics. In the fifth year music was audible again,
and the prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him through the window
said that all that year he spent doing nothing but eating and drinking and
lying on his bed, frequently yawning and angrily talking to himself. He
did not read books. Sometimes at night he would sit down to write; he
would spend hours writing, and in the morning tear up all that he had
written. More than once he could be heard crying. 

In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began zealously
studying languages, philosophy, and history. He threw himself eagerly into
these studies--so much so that the banker had enough to do to get him the
books he ordered. In the course of four years some six hundred volumes
were procured at his request. It was during this period that the banker
received the following letter from his prisoner:

"My dear Jailer, I write you these lines in six languages. Show
them to people who know the languages. Let them read them. If they find
not one mistake I implore you to fire a shot in the garden. That shot will
show me that my efforts have not been thrown away. The geniuses of all
ages and of all lands speak different languages, but the same flame burns
in them all. Oh, if you only knew what unearthly happiness my soul feels
now from being able to understand them!"

The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. The banker ordered two shots
to be fired in the garden.

Then after the tenth year, the prisoner sat immovably at the table
and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the banker that a
man who in four years had mastered six hundred learned volumes should
waste nearly a year over one thin book easy of comprehension. Theology and
histories of religion followed the Gospels.

In the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an
immense quantity of books quite indiscriminately. At one time he was busy
with the natural sciences, then he would ask for Byron or Shakespeare.
There were notes in which he demanded at the same time books on chemistry,
and a manual of medicine, and a novel, and some treatise on philosophy or
theology. His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the
wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching
first at one spar and then at another.

II

The old banker remembered all this, and thought:

"To-morrow at twelve o'clock he will regain his freedom. By our
agreement I ought to pay him two millions. If I do pay him, it is all over
with me: I shall be utterly ruined." 

Fifteen years before, his millions had been beyond his reckoning;
now he was afraid to ask himself which were greater, his debts or his
assets. Desperate gambling on the Stock Exchange, wild speculation and the
excitability which he could not get over even in advancing years, had by
degrees led to the decline of his fortune and the proud, fearless,
self-confident millionaire had become a banker of middling rank, trembling
at every rise and fall in his investments. "Cursed bet!" muttered the old
man, clutching his head in despair "Why didn't the man die? He is only
forty now. He will take my last penny from me, he will marry, will enjoy
life, will gamble on the Exchange; while I shall look at him with envy
like a beggar, and hear from him every day the same sentence: 'I am
indebted to you for the happiness of my life, let me help you!' No, it is
too much! The one means of being saved from bankruptcy and disgrace is the
death of that man!" 

It struck three o'clock, the banker listened; everyone
was asleep in the house and nothing could be heard outside but the
rustling of the chilled trees. Trying to make no noise, he took from a
fireproof safe the key of the door which had not been opened for fifteen
years, put on his overcoat, and went out of the house.

It was dark and cold in the garden. Rain was falling. A damp
cutting wind was racing about the garden, howling and giving the trees no
rest. The banker strained his eyes, but could see neither the earth nor
the white statues, nor the lodge, nor the trees. Going to the spot where
the lodge stood, he twice called the watchman. No answer followed.
Evidently the watchman had sought shelter from the weather, and was now
asleep somewhere either in the kitchen or in the greenhouse.

"If I had the pluck to carry out my intention," thought the old
man, "Suspicion would fall first upon the watchman."

He felt in the darkness for the steps and the door, and went into
the entry of the lodge. Then he groped his way into a little passage and
lighted a match. There was not a soul there. There was a bedstead with no
bedding on it, and in the corner there was a dark cast-iron stove. The
seals on the door leading to the prisoner's rooms were intact.

When the match went out the old man, trembling with emotion,
peeped through the little window. A candle was burning dimly in the
prisoner's room. He was sitting at the table. Nothing could be seen but
his back, the hair on his head, and his hands. Open books were lying on
the table, on the two easy-chairs, and on the carpet near the table.

Five minutes passed and the prisoner did not once stir. Fifteen years'
imprisonment had taught him to sit still. The banker tapped at the window
with his finger, and the prisoner made no movement whatever in response.
Then the banker cautiously broke the seals off the door and put the key in
the keyhole. The rusty lock gave a grating sound and the door creaked. The
banker expected to hear at once footsteps and a cry of astonishment, but
three minutes passed and it was as quiet as ever in the room. He made up his
mind to go in.

At the table a man unlike ordinary people was sitting motionless. He was a
skeleton with the skin drawn tight over his bones, with long curls like a
woman's and a shaggy beard. His face was yellow with an earthy tint in it,
his cheeks were hollow, his back long and narrow, and the hand on which his
shaggy head was propped was so thin and delicate that it was dreadful to
look at it. His hair was already streaked with silver, and seeing his
emaciated, aged-looking face, no one would have believed that he was only
forty. He was asleep ... In front of his bowed head there lay on the
table a sheet of paper on which there was something written in fine
handwriting.

"Poor creature!" thought the banker, "he is asleep and most likely
dreaming of the millions. And I have only to take this half-dead man,
throw him on the bed, stifle him a little with the pillow, and the most
conscientious expert would find no sign of a violent death. But let us
first read what he has written here ..." 

The banker took the page from the table and read as follows: 

"To-morrow at twelve o'clock I regain my freedom and the right to
associate with other men, but before I leave this room and see the
sunshine, I think it necessary to say a few words to you. With a clear
conscience I tell you, as before God, who beholds me, that I despise
freedom and life and health, and all that in your books is called the good
things of the world.

"For fifteen years I have been intently studying earthly life. It
is true I have not seen the earth nor men, but in your books I have drunk
fragrant wine, I have sung songs, I have hunted stags and wild boars in
the forests, have loved women ... Beauties as ethereal as clouds,
created by the magic of your poets and geniuses, have visited me at night,
and have whispered in my ears wonderful tales that have set my brain in a
whirl. In your books I have climbed to the peaks of Elburz and Mont Blanc,
and from there I have seen the sun rise and have watched it at evening
flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops with gold and crimson. I
have watched from there the lightning flashing over my head and cleaving
the storm-clouds. I have seen green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns.
I have heard the singing of the sirens, and the strains of the shepherds'
pipes; I have touched the wings of comely devils who flew down to converse
with me of God ... In your books I have flung myself into the
bottomless pit, performed miracles, slain, burned towns, preached new
religions, conquered whole kingdoms ...


"Your books have given me wisdom. All that the unresting thought of man
has created in the ages is compressed into a small compass in my brain. I
know that I am wiser than all of you.

"And I despise your books, I despise wisdom and the
blessings of this world. It is all worthless, fleeting, illusory, and
deceptive, like a mirage. You may be proud, wise, and fine, but death will
wipe you off the face of the earth as though you were no more than mice
burrowing under the floor, and your posterity, your history, your immortal
geniuses will burn or freeze together with the earthly globe. 

"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You have
taken lies for truth, and hideousness for beauty. You would marvel if,
owing to strange events of some sorts, frogs and lizards suddenly grew on
apple and orange trees instead of fruit, or if roses began to smell like a
sweating horse; so I marvel at you who exchange heaven for earth. I don't
want to understand you.

"To prove to you in action how I despise all that you live by, I
renounce the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise and which
now I despise. To deprive myself of the right to the money I shall go out
from here five hours before the time fixed, and so break the compact ..."


When the banker had read this he laid the page on the table,
kissed the strange man on the head, and went out of the lodge, weeping. At
no other time, even when he had lost heavily on the Stock Exchange, had he
felt so great a contempt for himself. When he got home he lay on his bed,
but his tears and emotion kept him for hours from sleeping.

Next morning the watchmen ran in with pale faces, and told him
they had seen the man who lived in the lodge climb out of the window into
the garden, go to the gate, and disappear. The banker went at once with
the servants to the lodge and made sure of the flight of his prisoner. To
avoid arousing unnecessary talk, he took from the table the writing in
which the millions were renounced, and when he got home locked it up in
the fireproof safe.

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