Chapter 14 Chapter Fourteen

After an hour and a half most of the players were looking at their cards playfully. The focus of the bet was on Rostov alone.In the account he owed was a long list of figures, and instead of sixteen hundred rubles, he counted tens of thousands of rubles, but by now he was vaguely aware that the figure was as high as fifteen thousand rubles. .In fact, the gambling debt he owed has exceeded 20,000.Dolokhov did not listen or tell the story, he watched every movement of Rostov's hands, and sometimes looked back quickly at the betting debt he owed.He resolutely continued to gamble until the debt had increased to forty-three thousand rubles.He chose this number because "forty-three" was the sum of his age and Sonya's age.Rostov sat with his head on his hands at the table covered with numbers, splashed with wine, and piled with cards.A painful image remained in his mind: the two large, reddish, hairy hands protruding from under the sleeves of the shirt, the two hands that he loved and hated governed. he. "Six hundred rubles, ace, dimes, nine o'clock... Impossible to win back money! . . . How nice it is to stay at home . . . Jack's going to double the bet . . . Impossible! . . . Why does he insist on treating me like this?..." Rostov thought, remembering.He sometimes bet a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to take his cards and set him a bet.Nicholas succumbed to him, and now he prayed to God, as he did on the battlefield, on the Amstetten bridge; he would save him, and sometimes he counted the number of sash on the uniform he was wearing, trying to bet all his losses on cards equal to the number of sash, and sometimes he looked around at other bets. He asked them for help, looking at Dolokhov's now indifferent face from time to time, trying to understand what he was up to.

"It's not that he doesn't know what losing money in gambling means to me. He doesn't want me to be ruined, does he? You know, he's my friend. You know I loved him... But he's not at fault, in his luck I am not at fault," he said to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Did I kill someone? Did I insult someone? Wanted to harm Who? Why should this terrible calamity be faced? When did it begin? Not so long ago, when I walked up to the table of this card, I wanted to win it a hundred rubles, enough to buy a jewel I gave the casket to my mother for her name day and then went home. How happy I was, how free, how happy! I didn't understand then how I could be so happy! When did this end? And when did this unprecedented and terrible situation start to appear? What is the sign of this change? I still sit at this place, sit at this table, and still choose and play cards like this, And looking at those big-boned, nimble hands. When did this happen? What happened? I'm strong, I'm still the same, and I'm still here. No, it's not Possibly! It will be all right in the end."

Although the room was not too hot, his face was flushed and sweaty, and his face looked terrible and pitiful; especially he was powerless and tried to pretend to be calm.Because Shi once gave lectures in Yongjia, it is even more terrifying and pitiful. The debts had reached forty-three thousand, the ill-fated sum.Rostov had just lost three thousand rubles. He picked a card, folded the corner of it, and placed a quarter bet. At this moment Dolokhov knocked the cards on the table, moved them aside, and took He broke it with a piece of chalk, and began to bill Rostov in his recognizable, vigorous handwriting.

"It's time for dinner, it's time for dinner! Look, the Gypsy people are here!" Several dark-faced men and women came in from the cold outdoors, speaking with a Gypsy accent.Nikolai understood that everything was over, but he said coldly: "Why, you don't play any more? I've picked a good card." As if the entertainment of gambling interested him most. "It's all over, I'm finished!" he thought, "there's only one way now, shoot yourself in the forehead," he said cheerfully at the same time. "Hey, let's have another card."

"Very good," said Dolokhov, having paid the bill, "very good! A bet of twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the number "twenty-one," which is a fraction of forty-three thousand, and he Pick up a deck of cards and get ready to deal.Rostov obediently folded the corner of the card, and carefully wrote twenty-one instead of the six thousand he had planned to bet. "I'm the same way anyway," he said. "All I want to know is whether you're going to 'eat' the ten o'clock or give it to me." Dolokhov began to deal the cards in earnest.Oh, how Rostov hated the hands that dominated him at this moment, the slightly reddish, short-fingered, hairy hands that protruded from under the sleeves of his shirt... Ten won.

"You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, getting up from behind the table and stretching. "But you will get tired if you sit too long," he said. "Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov. Dolokhov interrupted him, as if to remind him that it was not good for him to joke. "When will I be called for the money, count?" Rostov blushed and called Dolokhov into another room. "I can't pay in full right away, you can get a promissory note," he said. "Listen, Rostov," said Dolokhov, smiling visibly and looking into Nikolay's eyes, "you know the old saying: 'You are lucky in love, but unlucky in gambling. .' Your cousin is in love with you. I know."

"Oh! how terrible it is to feel myself at the mercy of this man," thought Rostov.Rostov understood what a shock it would be to his parents to speak publicly about this loss, he understood how lucky he was to be free from all this, and he understood that Dolokhov knew that he could make them To get rid of the shame and pain that he was trying to play with him now like a cat with a mouse. "Your cousin..." Dolokhov was about to say something, but Nikolai interrupted him. "My cousin has nothing to do with the matter, and there's no need to talk about her!" he cried frantically.

"And when will we get the money?" asked Dolokhov. "Tomorrow," said Rostov, and left the room.