The Queen of Spades


CHAPTER I.


There was a card party at the rooms of Narumoff, a lieutenant in the Horse Guards. A long winter night had passed unnoticed, and it was five o'clock in the morning when supper was served. The winners ate with relish; the losers let their plates remain empty before them[1]. Little by little, however, with the assistance of champagne, the conversation became animated, and was shared by all.


"And how did you fare tonight, Surin?" asked the host.


"Oh, I lost, as usual. I really have no luck. I play mirandole. You know that I keep cool. Nothing moves me[2]; I never change my play, and yet I always lose."


"And you were not once tempted to back the red? Your firmness astonishes me."


"Well, what about Hermann?" said one of the guests, pointing to a young Engineer officer, "he has never held a card, has never in his life laid a wager, yet he sits here till five o'clock in the morning watching us play."


"Play interests me very much," said Hermann, "but I am not in a position to sacrifice the necessary in the hope of winning the superfluous[3]."


"Hermann is a German: he is economical--that is all!" observed Tomsky. "But what is really astonishing[4] is my grandmother, the Countess Anna Fedorovna."


"How so?" inquired the guests.


"I cannot understand," continued Tomsky, "how it is that my grandmother does not punt."


"Yes, a lady of eighty not punting," said Narumoff. “Quite astonishing.”


"But do you know the reason?"


"Haven't the faintest idea."


"Then listen. You must know that, about sixty years ago, my grandmother went to Paris, where she created quite the sensation. The people called her the 'Muscovite Venus’ and ran after her in the streets. Richelieu made love to her, and my grandmother maintains that he almost blew his brains out in consequence of her austerity.[5] At that time ladies used to play at faro. On one occasion at the Court, my grandmother lost a very considerable sum to the Duke of Orleans. Upon returning home, she removed the patches from her face, took off her hoops, and in this tragic costume informed my grandfather of her losses and ordered him to pay the money. My deceased grandfather, as far as I remember, was a sort of house-steward to my grandmother. He feared her like fire; but, on hearing of such a heavy loss, he almost lost his mind; he made a brief calculation and pointed out that in six months she had spent half a million francs, that neither their Moscow nor Saratoff estates were in Paris, and finally refused point blank to pay the debt[6]. My grandmother gave him a box on the ear and spent the night in another room as a sign of her displeasure.


The next day she sent for her husband, hoping that this domestic punishment had produced an effect upon him, but found him inflexible. For the first time in her life, she condescended to arguments and explanations. She tried in vain to prove to her husband that there are debts and debts, and that she could not treat a prince of the blood like her coachmaker. But my grandfather was immovable. Luckily, my grandmother had shortly before become acquainted with a very remarkable man. You have heard of Count St. Germain, about whom so many marvelous stories are told. You know that he represented himself as the Wandering Jew, as the discoverer of the elixir of life, of the philosopher's stone, and so forth[7]. Some laughed at him as a charlatan but Casanova, in his memoirs, says that he was a spy. Be that as it may, St. Germain, in spite of the mystery surrounding him, was a very fascinating person, and was much sought after in the best circles of society. Even to this day my grandmother retains an affectionate recollection of him, and becomes quite angry if anyone speaks of him with disrespect. My grandmother knew that St. Germain had large sums of money at his disposal. She resolved to have recourse to him, and wrote a letter begging him to call. The old magician came at once and found her overwhelmed with grief. She described to him, in the blackest colors, the barbarity of her husband, and ended by declaring that her whole hope depended upon his friendship and amiability.


"St. Germain reflected.


"'I could advance you the sum you want,' he said, 'but I know that you would not rest easy until you had paid me back, and I would not like to bring fresh troubles upon you. But there is another way of getting out of your difficulties: you can win back your money.'


"'But, my dear Count,' replied my grandmother, 'I tell you that I haven't any money left.'


"'Money is not necessary,' said St. Germain. 'Please listen closely.'


"Then he revealed to her a secret, for which any of us would give a great deal...."


The young officers listened with increased attention. Tomsky lit his pipe, puffed away for a moment and then continued[8]:


"That same evening my grandmother went to Versailles to the jeu de la reine. The Duke of Orleans kept the bank; my grandmother excused herself in an off-handed manner for not having yet paid her debt, inventing some little story, and then began to play against him. She took three cards. She won with the first; doubled her stake on the second and won again; doubled on the third, and won a third time…"


"Mere chance!" said one of the guests.


"A tale!" cried Hermann.


"Perhaps they were marked cards![9]" said a third.


"I don’t think so," replied Tomsky gravely.


"What!" said Narumoff, "then you have a grandmother who knows how to hit three lucky cards in succession[10], and you have never once gotten her to tell you the secret?"


"And there’s the rub!" replied Tomsky: "she had four sons, one of whom was my father; all four of whom were determined gamblers, and yet not to one of them did she ever reveal her secret, although it would not have been a bad thing for them–or for me. But this is what I heard from my uncle, Count Ivan Hitch, and he assured me, upon his honor, that it was true. The late Chaplitsky[11]--the same Chaplitsky who died in poverty after having squandered millions--once lost, in his youth, about three hundred thousand roubles--to Zoritch, if I remember rightly. He was in despair. My grandmother, who was always very severe upon the extravagance of young men, took pity, however, upon Chaplitsky. She gave him three cards, and made him promise that he would never again play cards so long as he lived. Chaplitsky then went to his victorious opponent, and they began a fresh game. On the first card he staked fifty thousand roubles and won; he doubled the stake and won again, till at last, he won back more than he had lost....


"But it is time to go to bed: it is a quarter to six already[12]."


And indeed the sun was already rising. The young men emptied their glasses and the party broke up.

[1] Pushkin creates an early contrast between winners and losers. Winners have an appetite; losers are passive.
[2] Again Pushkin associates passivity with losing. This passivity is then reframed as “firmness”, a trait which is repeated in Hermann, the Countess, Lizaveta, and even the Countess’s husband.
[3] This is Pushkin setting up the final reversal of Hermann’s character. Remember that Hermann could have walked away after the second card, or staked the minimum, he did not have to risk everything he had won to try and win the “superfluous”.
[4] Notice how Pushkin arrives at his target by a careful use of cause and effect. The whole point of this first act is to lay the necessary groundwork–exposition on the principal characters, their relationships, and the story of the three cards. Pushkin could have begun with the story and skipped this preamble but then the story would seem abrupt. The chain of cause and effect creates motive, which in turn creates verisimilitude. Pushkin knows that the story to follow is, as Herman puts it, “a tale” thus he first establishes a realistic tone. A mundane card party tempers expectations of the supernatural.
[5] We get our first glimpse of the Countess. Note that Pushkin is careful to avoid describing her as she is now–all that we know is that she is old and does not gamble. The details all focus on her in the past: a famous, inflexible beauty with a gambling problem. This is all to create a contrast with how she is rendered in the next scene.
[6] Why does Pushkin even include this preface? The grandfather is not mentioned again in the story, why not begin with St. Germain? Because Pushkin obeys the laws of fiction even in this little anecdote. Without this initial failure there is no reversal. If the Countess is to clear her debts in the end, she must fail to clear them in the beginning and must fail with the easiest and most obvious course of action–thereby addressing (and discarding) a solution the reader could come up with himself. The art of surprise in storytelling lies mostly in batting away the obvious.
[7] This is partly exposition for those who might not be familiar with St. Germain but mostly a gradual turning toward the supernatural. Without this prelude the ending of the anecdote would seem to come out of the blue.
[8] This moment of respite from the story is used to build suspense, but the true stroke of genius comes right after, when Pushkin jumps ahead to the card game without revealing the secret. He, like Tomsky, wants the reader in suspense until the very end.
[9] All of these exclamations are expectations of the reader being deftly batted aside. Without them, the story seems full of holes. The disbelief is also necessary to return to realism after a stint with the supernatural.
[10] Pushkin states the secret explicitly here so that there is no doubt in the reader’s mind. Why does he do this? Because this is the spine upon which the whole story hangs; it must not in any way be ambiguous
[11] Why is it necessary to repeat the story? First to provide more evidence to the disbelieving reader, but more importantly, to establish that the Countess can transfer the secret to others. Without this, Herman has no reason to pursue the Countess. Repetition also establishes the “rules” of this fantasy. Note that the Countess and Chaplitsky were both in debt and that both were forbidden to gamble again. It also shows what happens when the rule is violated–Chaplitsky ends up dying in poverty, presumably because he broke his promise. The Countess foists a similar promise on Hermann, which he likewise fails to keep.
[12] Note how quickly Pushkin ends the scene. He does not linger and does not even attempt to describe a transition to the next scene. He simply and immediately cuts to it using the chapter break. This can be accomplished by line breaks, three dots or other forms of dinkuses.