Novels, Tales, Journeys: The Complete Prose of Alexander Pushkin

  The latest events attracted the government’s attention to Dubrovsky’s daring brigandage in earnest. Information was gathered concerning his whereabouts. A company of soldiers was sent to take him dead or alive. They caught several men from his band and learned from them that Dubrovsky was no longer among them. A few days after [the battle]*10 he had gathered all his companions, announced to them that he intended to leave them forever, and advised them to change their way of life.

  “You’ve grown rich under my leadership, each of you has documents with which you can safely make your way to some remote province and there spend the rest of your lives in honest labor and abundance. But you’re all rascals and probably won’t want to abandon your trade.”

  After that speech he left them, taking only * * * with him. No one knew where he had disappeared to. At first the truth of this testimony was doubted: the robbers’ devotion to their chief was well known. It was supposed that they were trying to protect him. But subsequent events bore them out: the terrible visits, arsons, and robberies ceased. The roads became clear. From other sources it was learned that Dubrovsky had escaped abroad.

  * * *

  *1 “What does monsieur wish?”

  *2 I.e., Je veux, moi, chez vous coucher [“I want, me, to sleep in your room”].

  *3 “Very gladly, monsieur…Please give orders to that effect.”

  *4 Pourquoi vous snuffez, pourquoi vous snuffez? [“Why do you snuff it, why do you snuff it?”]

  *5 sleep

  *6 Monsieur, monsieur…je veux avec vous parler [“Monsieur, monsieur…I want with you to talk”].

  *7 Qu’est-ce que c’est, monsieur, qu’est-ce que c’est? [“What is this, monsieur, what is this?”]

  *8 with the ouchitels [Russian for “tutors”]

  *9 all the expenses (French)

  *10 There is a gap here in the original manuscript. Translator.

  The Queen of Spades

  The queen of spades signifies secret malevolence.

  THE LATEST FORTUNETELLING BOOK

  I

  In nasty weather

  They would all get together

  And play;

  On the table now fifty

  Or, God help them, twice fifty

  They’d lay,

  And whenever they won,

  They chalked up the sum

  On a slate.

  So in nasty weather

  Quite busy together

  They played.1

  Once they were playing cards at the horse guard Narumov’s. The long winter night passed unnoticed; they sat down to supper towards five in the morning. Those who came out winners ate with great appetite; the others sat absently before their empty plates. But champagne appeared, the conversation grew lively, and they all took part in it.

  “How did you do, Surin?” asked the host.

  “Lost, as usual. I must confess, I’m unlucky: I play mirandole,2 never get excited, nothing throws me off, and yet I keep losing!”

  “And you weren’t tempted even once? You never once staked en routé?…I find your firmness astonishing.”

  “What about Hermann?” said one of the guests, pointing to the young engineer. “He’s never held cards in his life, never bent down a single paroli in his life, yet he sits with us and watches us play till five in the morning.”

  “The game interests me greatly,” said Hermann, “but I am not in a position to sacrifice the necessary in hopes of acquiring the superfluous.”

  “Hermann is a German: he’s calculating, that’s all!” Tomsky observed. “But if there’s anyone I don’t understand, it’s my grandmother, Countess Anna Fedotovna.”

  “How? What?” the guests cried.

  “I can’t comprehend,” Tomsky went on, “how it is that my grandmother doesn’t punt!”

  “What’s so surprising,” said Narumov, “about an eighty-year-old woman not punting?”

  “So you know nothing about her?”

  “No, nothing at all!”

  “Oh, then listen:

  “You should know that sixty years ago my grandmother went to Paris and became all the fashion there. People ran after her, to catch a glimpse of la Vénus moscovite; Richelieu3 dangled after her, and my grandmother assures me that he nearly shot himself on account of her cruelty.

  “In those days ladies played faro. Once at court she lost quite a lot on credit to the duc d’Orléans. Having come home, my grandmother, while unsticking the beauty spots from her face and untying her farthingales, announced her loss to my grandfather and ordered him to pay.

  “My late grandfather, as far as I remember, was a sort of butler to my grandmother. He was mortally afraid of her; however, on hearing of such a terrible loss, he flew into a rage, fetched an abacus, demonstrated to her that in half a year they had spent half a million, that they had no estates near Paris, as they had near Moscow and Saratov, and flatly refused to pay. Grandmother slapped him in the face and went to bed alone as a token of his disgrace.

  “The next day she sent for her husband, hoping that the domestic punishment had had an effect on him, but she found him unshakeable. For the first time in her life she stooped to discussions and explanations with him; she hoped to appeal to his conscience, indulgently pointing out to him that there are debts and debts, and there is a difference between a prince and a coach maker. No use! Grandfather was in rebellion. No, and that’s final! Grandmother didn’t know what to do.

  “She was closely acquainted with a very remarkable man. You’ve heard of the comte de Saint-Germain, of whom so many wonders are told. You know that he passed himself off as the Wandering Jew, the inventor of the elixir of life and the philosopher’s stone, and so on. He was laughed at as a charlatan, and Casanova in his memoirs says he was a spy;4 however, despite his mysteriousness, Saint-Germain was of very dignified appearance and was very amiable in society. Grandmother still loves him to distraction and gets angry if he is spoken of disrespectfully. Grandmother knew that Saint-Germain could have large sums at his disposal. She decided to resort to him. She wrote him a note and asked him to come to her immediately.

  “The old eccentric appeared at once and found her in terrible distress. She described her husband’s barbarity in the blackest colors, and said finally that all her hope now rested on his friendship and amiability.

  “Saint-Germain reflected.

  “ ‘I could oblige you with this sum,’ he said, ‘but I know you will not be at peace until you have repaid it, and I do not wish to bring new troubles upon you. There is another way: you can win it back.’

  “ ‘But, my gentle comte,’ grandmother replied, ‘I tell you we have no money at all.’

  “ ‘Money’s not needed here,’ Saint-Germain rejoined. ‘Kindly listen to me.’ Here he revealed to her a secret for which any of us would give a great deal…”

  The young gamblers redoubled their attention. Tomsky lit his pipe, puffed on it, and went on.

  “That same evening grandmother appeared at Versailles, au jeu de la Reine.*1 The duc d’Orléans kept the bank; grandmother lightly apologized for not having brought her debt, concocting a little story as an excuse, and began to punt against him. She chose three cards, played them one after the other: all three won straight off and grandmother recovered all her losses.”

  “Pure chance!” said one of the guests.

  “A fairy tale!” observed Hermann.

  “Marked cards, maybe?” chimed in a third.

  “I don’t think so,” Tomsky replied imposingly.

  “What!” said Narumov. “You have a grandmother who can guess three cards in a row, and you still haven’t taken over her cabbalistics from her?”

  “The devil she’d tell me!” Tomsky replied. “She had four sons, including my father, all four of them desperate gamblers, and she didn’t reveal her secret to a one of them; though it wouldn’t have been a bad thing for them, or for me either. But here is what my uncle, Count Ivan Ilyich, told me, and he assured me of it on his honor. The
late Chaplitsky, the one who died a pauper after squandering millions, in his youth once lost—to Zorich, as I recall—around three hundred thousand. He was in despair. Grandmother, who was always severe towards young people’s follies, somehow took pity on Chaplitsky. She gave him three cards, which he was to play one after the other, and made him swear on his honor that he would never gamble afterwards. Chaplitsky appeared before his vanquisher: they sat down to play. Chaplitsky staked fifty thousand on the first card and won straight off; bent down a paroli, a double paroli—recovered everything and wound up winning even more…

  “But it’s time for bed; it’s a quarter to six.”

  Indeed, dawn was breaking. The young men finished their glasses and went their ways.

  II

  —Il paraît que monsieur est décidément pour les suivantes.

  —Que voulez-vous, madame? Elles sont plus fraîches.*2

  SOCIETY CONVERSATION5

  The old countess * * * was sitting in her dressing room before the mirror. Three maids surrounded her. One held a jar of rouge, another a box of hairpins, the third a tall bonnet with flame-colored ribbons. The countess had not the slightest pretension to a beauty faded long ago, but she preserved all the habits of her youth, held strictly to the fashion of the seventies, and dressed just as slowly and just as painstakingly as sixty years ago. By the window a young lady, her ward, sat over her embroidery.

  “Greetings, grand’maman,” said a young officer, coming in. “Bonjour, mademoiselle Lise. Grand’maman, I’ve come to you with a request.”

  “What is it, Paul?”

  “Allow me to introduce one of my friends to you and to bring him to your ball on Friday.”

  “Bring him straight to the ball and introduce him to me there. Were you at * * *’s last night?”

  “What else! It was very merry. We danced till five in the morning. How pretty Eletskaya was!”

  “Come, my dear! What’s so pretty about her? Is she anything like her grandmother, Princess Darya Petrovna?…By the way, I fancy she’s aged a lot, Princess Darya Petrovna?”

  “Aged, you say?” Tomsky replied distractedly. “She died seven years ago.”

  The young lady raised her head and made a sign to the young man. He remembered that they were to conceal from the old countess the deaths of women her age, and he bit his tongue. But the countess heard the news, which was new to her, with great indifference.

  “Died!” she said. “And I didn’t know! We were made ladies-in-waiting together, and when we were presented, the empress…”

  And for the hundredth time the countess told her grandson the story.

  “Well, Paul,” she said afterwards, “now help me up. Lizanka, where’s my snuffbox?”

  And the countess went behind the screen with her maids to finish her toilette. Tomsky remained with the young lady.

  “Who is it you want to introduce?” Lizaveta Ivanovna asked softly.

  “Narumov. Do you know him?”

  “No! Is he military or civilian?”

  “Military.”

  “An engineer?”

  “No, a cavalryman. What made you think he was an engineer?”

  The young lady laughed and made no reply.

  “Paul!” the countess called out from behind the screen. “Send me some new novel, only, please, not like they write nowadays.”

  “How do you mean, grand’maman?”

  “I mean the kind of novel where the hero doesn’t strangle his father or mother, and where there are no drowned bodies. I’m terribly afraid of drowned bodies!”

  “There are no such novels nowadays. Or maybe you’d like a Russian one?”

  “You mean there are Russian novels?…Send me one, old boy, please do send me one!”

  “Excuse me, grand’maman, I’m in a hurry…Excuse me, Lizaveta Ivanovna! What made you think Narumov was an engineer?”

  And Tomsky left the dressing room.

  Lizaveta Ivanovna remained alone: she abandoned her work and started looking out the window. Soon a young officer appeared from around the corner of a house on the other side of the street. A flush came to her cheeks: she picked up her work again and bent her head over the canvas. Just then the countess came out, fully dressed.

  “Order the carriage, Lizanka,” she said, “and we’ll go for a ride.”

  Lizanka got up from her embroidery and started putting her work away.

  “What is it, old girl? Are you deaf or something?” the countess cried. “Tell them to hurry up with the carriage.”

  “At once!” the young lady replied quietly and ran to the front hall.

  A servant came in and handed the countess some books from Count Pavel Alexandrovich.

  “Very good! Thank him,” said the countess. “Lizanka, Lizanka! Where are you running to?”

  “To get dressed.”

  “There’s no rush, old girl. Sit here. Open the first volume; read aloud…”

  The young lady took the book and read out a few lines.

  “Louder!” said the countess. “What’s wrong with you, old girl? Lost your voice, or something?…Wait: move that footstool towards me…closer…really!”

  Lizaveta Ivanovna read two more pages. The countess yawned.

  “Enough of this book,” she said. “What nonsense! Send it back to Prince Pavel and tell them to thank him…Well, what about the carriage?”

  “The carriage is ready,” Lizaveta Ivanovna said, looking outside.

  “Why aren’t you dressed?” said the countess. “I always have to wait for you! It’s quite insufferable, old girl!”

  Liza ran to her room. Two minutes had not gone by before the countess began to ring with all her might. Three maids came running through one door and the valet through the other.

  “Why don’t you come when you’re called?” said the countess. “Tell Lizaveta Ivanovna I’m waiting for her.”

  Lizaveta Ivanovna came in wearing a cape and a bonnet.

  “At last, old girl!” said the countess. “What an outfit! Why this?…Whom do you want to entice?…And what’s the weather like? Windy, it seems.”

  “Not at all, Your Ladyship! It’s quite calm!” replied the valet.

  “You always talk at random! Open the window. Just so: wind! And very cold, too! Unhitch the carriage! We’re not going, Lizanka: there was no point dressing up.”

  “And that’s my life!” thought Lizaveta Ivanovna.

  Indeed, Lizaveta Ivanovna was a most unfortunate creature. Bitter is another’s bread, says Dante, and hard it is climbing another’s stairs,6 and who knows the bitterness of dependency if not the poor ward of an aristocratic old woman? Countess * * *, of course, did not have a wicked soul; but she was capricious, as a woman spoiled by high society, stingy, and sunk in cold egoism, like all old people, whose time for love is in the past, and who are strangers to the present. She took part in all the vain bustle of high society, dragged herself to balls, where she sat in a corner, all rouged and dressed in the old fashion, like an ugly but necessary ornament of the ballroom. The arriving guests, as if by an established ritual, approached her with low bows, and afterwards no one paid any attention to her. She received the whole town at her house, observing strict etiquette and not recognizing anyone’s face. Her numerous servants, having grown fat and gray in her front hall and maids’ quarters, did whatever they liked, outdoing each other in robbing the dying old woman. Lizaveta Ivanovna was the household martyr. She poured tea and was reprimanded for using too much sugar; she read novels aloud and was to blame for all the author’s mistakes; she accompanied the countess on her walks and was answerable for the weather and the pavement. She had a fixed salary, which was never paid in full; and meanwhile she was required to dress like everyone else—that is, like the very few. In society she played a most pitiable role. Everyone knew her and no one noticed her; at balls she danced only when there was a lack of vis-à-vis,*3 and ladies took her under the arm each time they had to go to the dressing room to straighten something in th
eir outfits. She was proud, felt her position keenly, and looked about—waiting impatiently for a deliverer; but the young men, calculating in their frivolous vanity, did not deem her worthy of attention, though Lizaveta Ivanovna was a hundred times nicer than the cold and insolent brides they dangled after. So many times, quietly leaving the dull and magnificent drawing room, she went to weep in her poor room, where stood a folding wallpaper screen, a chest of drawers, a small mirror, and a painted bed, and where a tallow candle burned dimly in a brass candlestick!

  Once—this happened two days after the evening described at the start of this story and a week before the scene where we paused—once Lizaveta Ivanovna, sitting by the window over her embroidery, inadvertently glanced out and saw a young engineer standing motionless and with his eyes fixed on her window. She lowered her head and went back to work; five minutes later she glanced again—the young officer was standing in the same place. Not being in the habit of flirting with passing officers, she stopped glancing outside and went on stitching for about two hours without raising her head. Dinner was served. She got up, began to put her embroidery away, and, glancing outside inadvertently, again saw the officer. This seemed rather strange to her. After dinner she went to the window with the feeling of a certain uneasiness, but the officer was no longer there—and she forgot about him…