"Gentlemen!" says Lieutenant Vulich, "what is the good of futile discussions? I propose that we try the experiment on ourselves: whether a man can of his own accord dispose of his life, or whether the fateful moment is appointed beforehand for each of us. Who is agreeable?"
The narrator, seeing a strange, ethereal look on Vulich’s face,predicts, "You are going to die tonight.“
Vulich, testing his hypothesis on his own skin, randomly selects a pistol from the wall, sits down at a table, puts the pistol to his head and pulls the trigger. Nothing.
"Thank God! It wasn't loaded!“ exclaim his companions.
"Let us see, though,“ replies Vulich, firing at a cap on the wall.
A shot rings out, smoke swirls, the cap is struck. No one can utter a word. The case for fate has been made.
The scene is from Mikhail Lermontov’s novel A Hero for Our Time (1841) and seems to be the first example of something close to Russian roulette appearing in literature.
By the way, the narrator turned out to be right. Later that night Lieutenant Vulich is slaughtered by drunken, rampaging Cossacks. And also by the way, Lermontov himself was killed in a duel two years later, shot in the heart at the age of twenty-six.
Is life just another game of roulette? Is it fate or chance?
Meanwhile, as I was walking back home from Uralian Natasha’s, who as always heartily fed me with mushrooms, potatoes, and pickles from the Urals and fish and wine from Petersburg (Natasha, by the way, also has no hope that the demonstrations will change anything. Russia, she says, is such a rich country, but only those at the top get something from it, we at the bottom have no hope for ourselves... ach, who cares about ourselves, but we also have no hope for our children) -- so, on the way home from Natasha’s I crossed Haymarket Square, Dostoevsky’s old haunting ground for the poor and the prostitutes, to which something of that atmosphere still clings today, and stopped at a kiosk to pick up a screwdriver in a can – Russia is great for hard drinks in a can. A young man -- perhaps twenty-five, thirty tops -- with a flat broad Russian face and intense blue eyes approached me. He was short, only coming up to my chest.
"Please, girl, can you help me out?“I gave him a ten ruble coin, and then another.
"Thank you, may God keep you and bless you.“
"You too, my friend, you too.“
And then he looked me in the eye and said, "I am going to die soon, I promise you.“
"I hope not.“
"Maybe even tonight.“
"I hope not. Not tonight.“
And then our paths parted -- for the moment?
The wheel keeps turning, who is left standing?
[originally published 10 December 2011]
[originally published 10 December 2011]
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