Sixteen hundred gulden are in his hand, and the thought that spoils them is simple. If he had been playing for himself, the wheel would not have paid. He entered the rooms angry because the stake was Polina's. A hundred of her gulden went down, thirteen took the first fifty, and then red kept paying until he could not remain in the crowd. He snatches up the pile and leaves. The win has arrived as proof that the money was never his.
He had never seen roulette. A thousand descriptions had not taught him the rules, and the rooms are not the heaps of gold the journalists praise for nothing. Most of the crowd plays for petty sums. What disgusts him is the humility with which they stand at the tables, and the gentleman's trick of pretending the gold does not matter. The General stakes three hundred francs, leaves the winnings down, loses twelve hundred, and rises with a smile, though Alexei is sure the purse is chafing him. A Frenchman can lose thirty thousand and not murmur. Other hands reach in and take a win, then ask for witnesses. Alexei did not come to watch that show. He came to stand in it. The wish to win makes the squalor feel close, until he admits he is lying to himself, and the luck, when it comes, belongs to her errand.
He does not reach her until after supper. The Frenchman is absent, and the General is expansive enough to warn him that losing would compromise the household, and that winning would compromise it too. Alexei hands Polina the sixteen hundred and tells her that next time he will not play for her. He wishes to play for himself. She offers him eight hundred to go halves, if he will gamble only on those terms. He refuses. Playing for anyone else, he says, he would probably lose. She does not hear it as a refusal. She places great hopes on his roulette, so of course he will do as she wishes, and she leaves before the refusal can become the last word. The pile is hers again. The next stake, in her mouth, is still hers.
Coming Up in Chapter 3
With his pockets full of winnings and his confidence building, the narrator prepares to gamble for his own future. But will his luck continue when the stakes become personal Polina avoids the narrator while making no secret that she despises him and still needs him for undisclosed ends. She permits his declarations of love as another form of humiliation and speaks of her affairs.
