13 - The Bet, Anton Chekhov.

13 - The Bet, Anton Chekhov.  
In this collection of Russian stories, editor and compiler Thomas Seltzer selects from a range of the best examples of 19th and early 20th century Russian literature. As a survey of famous authors at the height of the powers, as well as some writers who have been unjustly neglected, this anthology is indispensable.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Chapter thirteen of Best Russian Short Stories. This is a
LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
Best Russian Short Stories edited and compiled by Thomas Seltzer.

(00:24):
The Bet by Anton Tchekhov one. 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.

(00:48):
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 that obsolete
as a means of punishment, unfitted to a Christian state,
and immoral. Some of them thought the capital punishment should

(01:09):
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

(01:29):
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 important, remarked one of the guests, because their purpose

(01:52):
is the same, to take away life. The state is
not God. It has no right to take away that
which it can not get back if it sho It's
a 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,

(02:17):
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, banging his fist on the table and
turning to the young lawyer, cried out, that's a lie.

(02:41):
I'd bet you two million. 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,

(03:06):
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 man, before it's too late. Two millions

(03:27):
is 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

(03:48):
poison the whole of your life in the cell umh
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.

(04:11):
Will to convince people that capital punishment is worse are
better than imprisonment for life. No, No, all stuff and
rubbish um. On my part, it was the caprice of
a well fed man on the lawyer's pure greed of gold.

(04:31):
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

(04:55):
and newspapers. He was permitted to have a musical instrument,
to read books, to write letters, to drink wine, and
smoke tobacco. By 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

(05:18):
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 fourteenth,
eighteen seventy to twelve o'clock of November fourteenth, eighteen eighty five.

(05:41):
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
shortensing notes, suffered terrible loneliness and boredom. From his wing

(06:05):
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,

(06:26):
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 the classics.
In the fifth year, music was heard again, and the
prisoner asked for wine. Those that watched him said that

(06:50):
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 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

(07:12):
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

(07:35):
following letter from the prisoner. My dear jailer, I am
writing these letters in six languages. Show them two 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.

(07:56):
The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in different languguages,
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 orders. Later on, after the

(08:18):
tenth year, the lawyer sat immobile 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.

(08:39):
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 haphazardly. Now he
would apply himself to the natural sciences. Then he would
read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes used to come from him,
which he asked to be sent at the same time,

(09:00):
a book on chemistry, a textbook of medicine, a novel,
and some treatise on philosophy or theology. He read as
though he were swimming in a sea among broken pieces
of wreckage, and in his desire to save his life,
was eagerly grasping at one piece or another two. The

(09:23):
banker recalled all this and thought tomorrow, 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 for me. I am ruined forever. Fifteen years before

(09:43):
he had too many millions to count, and 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 all old age had gradually brought his business
to decay. And the fearless, self confident, proud man of

(10:07):
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 a
man die, He's only forty years old. He will take
away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the exchange,

(10:31):
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

(10:55):
the house. Everyone was asleep, and one could hear only
the frozen tree 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.

(11:17):
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

(11:39):
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 fulfill my intention, thought
the old man, the suspicion will fall on the watchman
first of all. In the darkness, he groped for the

(12:00):
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 someone'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.

(12:23):
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 the table,

(12:44):
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 prison
made no movement in reply. Then the banker cautiously tore

(13:04):
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

(13:28):
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 color
of his face was yellow of an earthy shade. The
cheeks were sunken, the back long and narrow, and the

(13:49):
hand upon which he leaned his hairy head was so
lean and skinny that it was painful to look at.
His hair was already silvering with gray, and no one
who glance that the sea now emaciation of the face
would have believed he was only forty years old. On
the table before his bended head lay a sheet of

(14:10):
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
in a moment with a pillow, and the most careful
examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But first

(14:36):
let us read what he has written here. The banker
took the sheet from the table and read, Tomorrow, 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,

(14:58):
and before God who seize 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

(15:19):
drank fragrant of 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 poet's genius,
visited me by night and whispered to me wonderful tales
which made my head drunken. In your books, I climbed

(15:42):
the summits of Ebrus and mont Blanc, and saw from
there how the sun rose in the morning and in
the evening, suffused the sky, the ocean, and the mountain
ridges with the purple gold. I saw from there how
above me lightnings glimmerd cleaving the clouds. I saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities.

(16:06):
I heard sirens calling, 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, conjured whole countries. Your

(16:29):
books gave me wisdom. All that unwearying human thought created
in the centuries is compressed into a little lump in
my skull. I know that I am cleverer than you all,
and I despise your books, despise all the worldly blessings
and wisdom. Everything is void, frail, visionary, and delusive as

(16:55):
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 young men of genius will
be as frozen slag, burnt down together with a terrestrial globe.

(17:17):
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 tree should bear frogs and
lizards instead of fruit, and if roses should begin to
breathe the odor of a sweating horse, So do I marvel,

(17:38):
you who have bartered heaven for earth, I do not
want to understand you, that I may show you indeed
my contempt for that by which you live. I wave
the two millions of which I once dreamed as of paradise,
and which I now despise, that I may deprive myself

(18:00):
off 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

(18:20):
of the wing. Never at any other time, not even
after his terrible losses in 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

(18:41):
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 rumors, he took the paper with the

(19:03):
renunciation from the table, and on his return locked it
in his safe. And of the Bet by Anton Tchehov,
read for LibriVox dot org by Allan Davis Drake