War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy [220]
Rostov obeyed, left the eight hundred as written and laid down a seven of hearts with a torn corner that he had picked up from the floor. He remembered it very well afterwards. He laid down the seven of hearts and wrote eight hundred above it with a piece of chalk in round, straight figures; drank the glass of now warm champagne that had been served him, smiled at Dolokhov’s words, and, waiting with sinking heart for a seven, began watching Dolokhov’s hands which held the deck. The winning or losing of this seven meant a lot to Rostov. Last Sunday, Count Ilya Andreich had given his son two thousand rubles, and he, who never liked to talk about money problems, had told him that this money was the last until May and that he therefore asked his son to be more economical this time. Nikolai had said that it was even too much for him and on his word of honor he would not ask for more money until spring. He now had twelve hundred rubles of that money left. Therefore the seven of hearts meant not only the loss of sixteen hundred rubles, but the necessity of breaking his word. With sinking heart he watched Dolokhov’s hands and thought: “Well, be quick, deal me the card, and I’ll take my cap and go home to have supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will certainly never touch cards again.” At that moment his life at home—jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with his father, and even his quiet bed in the house on Povarskaya—presented itself to him with such force, clarity, and delight, as though it were all a long past, lost, and unappreciated happiness. He could not imagine that stupid chance, making the seven fall to the right rather than the left, could deprive him of all this newly understood, newly illumined happiness and cast him into an abyss of as yet unexperienced and undefined misfortune. It could not be, but even so he waited with sinking heart for the movement of Dolokhov’s hands. Those broad-boned, reddish hands, with hair showing from under the cuffs, set down the deck of cards and took the glass and pipe that had been served him.
“So you’re not afraid to gamble with me?” Dolokhov repeated, and, as if in order to tell a merry story, he set the cards down, leaned back in his chair, and, with a smile, slowly began to speak:
“Yes, gentlemen, I’ve been told there’s a rumor going around Moscow that I’m a cardsharper, so I advise you to be more careful with me.”
“Well, deal then!” said Rostov.
“Ah, these Moscow gossips!” said Dolokhov, and he picked up the cards with a smile.
“Ahh!” Rostov nearly cried, seizing his hair with both hands. The seven he needed was lying on top, the first card in the deck. He had lost more than he could pay.
“Don’t overdo it, though,” said Dolokhov, with a fleeting glance at Rostov, and he went on dealing.
XIV
An hour and a half later, most of the players looked upon their own game as a joke.
The whole game was concentrated on Rostov alone. Instead of sixteen hundred roubles, he had a long column of figures scored against him, which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but which by now, as he dimly supposed, had already risen to fifteen thousand. In fact, the score already exceeded twenty thousand roubles. Dolokhov no longer listened or told stories; he watched every movement of Rostov’s hands and from time to time glanced quickly through his score. He had decided to continue playing until the score grew to forty-three thousand. He had chosen this number because forty-three made up the sum of his age plus Sonya’s. Rostov, his head propped in both hands, sat at the written-on, wine-stained, card-strewn table. One tormenting impression would not leave him: those broad-boned, reddish hands, with hair showing from under the cuffs, those hands which he loved and hated, and which held him in their power.
“Six hundred roubles, ace, corner, nine…I can’t win it all back!…And how cheerful it would be at home…A jack, ah, no…it can’t be!…And why is he doing this to me?…” Rostov thought and