And now the banker, pacing up and down, recalled it all and asked himself:
“Why this bet? What’s the use of the lawyer losing fifteen years of his life and me throwing away two million? Can it prove to people that capital punishment is worse or better than life imprisonment? No, no. Stuff and nonsense. It was the whim of a satiated man on my part, and on the lawyer’s part a simple lust for money.”
Then he recalled what happened after that evening. It was decided that the lawyer would serve his confinement under strict surveillance in a cottage built in the banker’s garden. It was agreed that in the course of fifteen years he would be deprived of the right to cross the threshold of the cottage, to see living people, to hear human voices, to receive letters and newspapers. He was allowed to have a musical instrument, to read books, to write letters, drink wine, and smoke. With the outside world, by agreement, he could make contact only silently, through a small window made especially for that purpose. He could obtain everything he needed—books, scores, wine, and so on—in any quantities, by means of notes, but only through that window. The contract specified all the small details that made the confinement strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to sit out exactly fifteen years, from twelve noon on November 14, 1870, to twelve noon on November 14, 1885. The slightest attempt on the lawyer’s part to break the contract, even two minutes before the term was up, would free the banker of the obligation to pay him the two million.
In his first year of confinement the lawyer, judging by his brief notes, suffered greatly from solitude and boredom. The sounds of the piano were heard coming from the cottage constantly day and night! He renounced wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote, awakens desires, and desires are a prisoner’s worst enemies; besides, nothing is more boring than drinking good wine and seeing nobody. And tobacco befouled the air in his room. In the first year the lawyer was predominantly sent books of light content: novels with complex love plots, crime or fantastic stories, comedies, and so on.
In the second year the music in the shed fell silent, and the lawyer requested only classics in his notes. In the fifth year music was heard again, and the prisoner requested wine. Those who kept watch on him through the window said that all that year he only ate, drank, and lay in bed, yawned frequently, and talked angrily to himself. He did not read books. Sometimes during the night he sat down to write, wrote for a long time, and in the morning tore up everything he had written. More than once they heard him weep.
In the second half of the sixth year the prisoner began an assiduous study of languages, philosophy, and history. He took it up so eagerly that the banker barely had time to order books for him. In the course of four years some six hundred volumes were ordered at his request. During the period of this passion the banker received, incidentally, the following letter from his prisoner: “My dear jailer! I am writing these lines to you in six languages. Show them to knowledgeable persons. Let them read them. If they do not find a single mistake, then, I beg you, have a shot fired in the garden. That will let me know that my efforts have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in different languages, but the same fire burns in them. Oh, if you knew what unearthly happiness now fills my soul because I am able to understand them!” The prisoner’s wish was fulfilled. The banker ordered two shots to be fired in the garden.
Then, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat motionless at a desk and read nothing but the Gospel. It seemed strange to the banker that a man who, in the course of four years, had gone through six hundred sophisticated volumes, could spend nearly a year reading one easily understandable and not very thick book. After the Gospel came the history of religions and theology.
In the last two years of confinement the prisoner read a great deal, without any discrimination. First he studied natural science, then requested Byron or Shakespeare. There were notes from him asking to be sent at the same time chemistry and medical textbooks, and a novel, and some philosophical or theological treatise. His reading made it seem as if he was swimming in the sea in the midst of a shipwreck and, wishing to save his life, was greedily clutching at one piece of wreckage, then another!
II
The old banker remembered all that and thought:
“Tomorrow at twelve noon he will be set free. According to the contract, I must pay him two million. If I pay it, all is lost: I’ll be utterly ruined…”
Fifteen years ago he had had untold millions, but now he was afraid to ask himself which he had more of—money or debts? Playing the stock market, risky speculations, and a hotheadedness which he could not get rid of even in old age, gradually led to a decline in his affairs, and the fearless, confident, proud rich man turned into a middling sort of banker, trembling at every rise or fall of the rates.
“Accursed bet!” the old man muttered, clutching his head in despair. “Why didn’t the man die? He’s only forty. He’ll take my last money, get married, enjoy life, play the stock market, while I, like a beggar, will look on enviously and hear the same phrase from him every day: ‘I owe you the happiness of my life, allow me to help you!’ No, that’s too much! The only salvation from bankruptcy and disgrace is—this man’s death!”
It struck three. The banker listened: everyone in the house was asleep, and he could hear only the rustling of the chilled trees outside the windows. Trying to make no noise, he took from a safe the key to the door that had not been opened for fifteen years, put on his coat, and went out.
In the garden it was dark and cold. Rain was falling. A sharp, damp wind was howling all over the garden and gave the trees no peace. The banker strained his eyes, but could not see the ground, nor the white statues, nor the cottage, nor the trees. Coming to the place where the cottage was, he called twice to the watchman. There was no answer. Obviously the watchman had taken refuge from the bad weather and was now sleeping somewhere in the kitchen or the hothouse.
“If I have courage enough to carry out my intention,” the old man thought, “the suspicion will fall first of all on the watchman.”
He felt for the steps and the door in the darkness and entered the front hall of the cottage, then felt his way into a small corridor and lit a match. Not a soul was there. There was someone’s bed without covers, and the dark outline of an iron stove in the corner. The seals on the door leading to the prisoner’s room were intact.
When the match went out, the old man, trembling with agitation, peeked through the small window.
A candle was burning dimly in the prisoner’s room. He was sitting at the table. Only his back, his hair, and his arms could be seen. On the table, on two armchairs, and on the rug by the table lay open books.
Five minutes went by, and not once did the prisoner stir. Fifteen years of imprisonment had taught him to sit motionlessly. The banker tapped on the window with his finger, but the prisoner did not respond to this tapping with the least movement. Then the banker carefully tore the seals off the door and put the key into the keyhole. The rusty lock produced a rasping sound and the door creaked. The banker expected to hear a cry of astonishment and footsteps at once, but some three minutes went by, and behind the door it was as quiet as before. He decided to go into the room.
Motionless at the table sat a man who looked nothing like ordinary people. He was a skeleton covered in skin, with long womanish curls and a shaggy beard. The color of his face was yellow with a sallow tinge, his cheeks were sunken, his back long and narrow, and the arm that supported his unshorn head was so thin and bony it was scary to look at. His hair was already a silvery gray, and glancing at his aged, emaciated face, no one would have believed he was only forty years old. He was asleep…On the table in front of his bowed head lay a sheet of paper on which something was written in small script.