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Volume II, Part One, Chapter XIII

An hour and a half later, most of the players were already looking at their own play as a joke.

The whole game was concentrated on Rostov alone. Instead of sixteen hundred rubles, a long column of figures was written against him, which he reckoned to be up to ten thousand, but which now, as he vaguely supposed, had risen to fifteen thousand. In reality the score already exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer listening to or telling stories; he followed every movement of Rostov's hands and occasionally cast a quick glance at the score against him. He had decided to continue the game until that score reached forty-three thousand. This number had been chosen by him because forty-three made up the sum of his years added to Sonya's years. Rostov, resting his head on both hands, sat before the scribbled, wine-stained table covered with cards. One tormenting impression did not leave him: those broad-boned, reddish hands with hair showing from under the shirt, those hands which he loved and hated, held him in their power.

"Six hundred rubles, an ace, a corner, a nine... it's impossible to win it back!... And how jolly it would be at home... A knave on a pé... it cannot be!... And why is he doing this to me?..." thought and remembered Rostov. Sometimes he put down a high card; but Dolokhov refused to beat it, and fixed the stake himself. Nikolai submitted to him, and at times prayed to God as he had prayed on the battlefield at the Amstetten bridge; at times he guessed that the card which would first come to his hand from the pile of bent cards under the table would save him; at times he counted the number of cords on his jacket and tried to put a card with the same number of pips on the whole of his loss, at times he looked around at the other players for help, at times he peered into Dolokhov's now cold face, and tried to penetrate what was going on in it.

"He knows what this loss means to me. He cannot desire my ruin? He was my friend. I loved him... But he is not to blame either; what is he to do when luck favors him? And I am not to blame either," he said to himself. "I have done nothing wrong. Have I killed anyone, insulted anyone, wished evil? Why then such a terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? So recently I came to this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles, buying maman a box for her name day, and going home. I was so happy, so free, so cheerful! And I did not understand then how happy I was! When did it end, and when did this new, terrible state begin? What marked this change? I have sat all the time in this same place, at this same table, and chosen and pushed forward the same cards, and looked at those same broad-boned, dexterous hands. When did it happen, and what has happened? I am healthy, strong, and still the same, and in the same place. No, it cannot be! Surely all this will end in nothing."

He was red, bathed in sweat, though it was not hot in the room. And his face was terrible and pitiful, especially from his helpless effort to appear calm.

The score reached the fatal number of forty-three thousand. Rostov had prepared a card which was to go for a corner from three thousand rubles that had just been dealt to him, when Dolokhov slapped the deck, laid it aside, and taking the chalk, rapidly, in his clear, strong handwriting, breaking the chalk, began to sum up Rostov's score.

"Supper, it's time for supper! Here are the gypsies!" — Indeed, with their gypsy accent, some dark men and women were already entering from the cold and saying something. Nikolai understood that everything was over; but he said in an indifferent voice:

"What, won't you go on? And I had a splendid little card prepared." — As if the fun of the game itself interested him more than anything else.

"It's all over, I am lost!" he thought. "Now a bullet in the head is the only thing left," and at the same time he said in a cheerful voice:

"Come, just one more little card."

"Very well," replied Dolokhov, having finished the sum, "very well! Twenty-one rubles goes," he said, pointing to the figure 21, which made the even sum of forty-three thousand, and taking up the deck he prepared to deal. Rostov submissively turned down the corner, and instead of the 6,000 he had prepared, carefully wrote 21.

"It is all the same to me," he said, "I only want to know whether you will kill or give me this ten."

Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov hated those reddish hands at that moment, with their short fingers and the hair showing from under the shirt, which held him in their power... The ten was given.

"You owe forty-three thousand, count," said Dolokhov, and stretching himself he rose from the table. "One gets tired sitting so long, though," he said.

"Yes, I am tired too," said Rostov.

Dolokhov, as if reminding him that it was unseemly for him to joke, interrupted him:

"When do you order me to receive the money, count?"

Rostov, flushing, called Dolokhov into another room.

"I cannot pay it all at once, you will take an I.O.U.," he said.

"Listen, Rostov," said Dolokhov, smiling clearly and looking into Nikolai's eyes, "you know the saying: 'Lucky in love, unlucky in cards.' Your cousin is in love with you. I know it."

"Oh! it is terrible to feel oneself so in the power of this man," — — thought Rostov. Rostov understood what a blow he would deal his father and mother by announcing this loss; he understood what happiness it would be to be rid of it all, and understood that Dolokhov knew he could rid him of this shame and sorrow, and now wanted to play with him again as a cat with a mouse.

"Your cousin..." Dolokhov wanted to say; but Nikolai interrupted him.

"My cousin has nothing to do with it, and there is no need to speak of her!" he shouted furiously.

"Then when shall I receive it?" asked Dolokhov.

"Tomorrow," said Rostov, and left the room.