Freak in Captivity

Ron Reads narrates Anton Chekhov's thought-provoking short story "The Bet," a tale of an impulsive wager between a wealthy banker and a young lawyer about whether fifteen years of voluntary imprisonment is preferable to death.

• Wealthy banker hosts a party where guests debate the morality of capital punishment versus life imprisonment
• Young lawyer accepts banker's wager of two million rubles that he can't remain in solitary confinement for fifteen years
• Prisoner evolves through stages of entertainment, classical study, religious contemplation, and finally transcendent wisdom
• Banker loses his fortune and contemplates murdering the prisoner to avoid paying the debt
• Prisoner's final letter renounces worldly possessions and knowledge, calling all earthly pursuits meaningless
• Prisoner escapes five minutes before the deadline, rejecting the money and leaving the banker in shame

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to The Bet
• 2:15 The Infamous Wager
• 6:00 Fifteen Years of Solitude
• 10:00 The Banker Faces Ruin
• 13:45 The Prisoner's Final Message
• 18:15 Conclusion and Reflection

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Hello, are you tired? You will be. This is Ron Reeds. We're reading the Bet by Anton Chekhov. By Anton Chekhov, it was a dark autumn night. The old banker was pacing from corner to corner of his study, recalling, to his mind, the party he gave in the autumn 15 years before. There were many clever people at the party and much interesting conversation. They talked, among other things, of capital punishment. The guests, among them not a few scholars and journalists, for the most part disapproved of capital punishment. They found it obsolete as a means of punishment unfitting to a Christian state and immoral. Some of them thought that capital punishment should be replaced universally by life imprisonment.

Speaker 2: 1:19

I don't agree with you said the host. I myself have experienced neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment. But if one may judge a praoree, then in my opinion capital punishment is more moral and more humane than imprisonment. Execution kills instantly. Life imprisonment kills by degrees. Who is the more humane executioner? "'one who kills you in a few seconds? "'or one who draws the life out of you "'incessantly for years' "'They're both equally immortal' "'remarked one of the guests "'because their purpose is the same "'to take away life.

Speaker 2: 2:05

"'The purpose is the same to take away life. The state is not good. It has no right to take away that which it cannot give back, if it should so desire.

Speaker 1: 2:16

Among the company was a lawyer, a young man of about twenty-five.

Speaker 2: 2:21

On being asked his opinion, he said Capital punishment and life imprisonment are equally immoral, but if I were offered the choice between them, I certainly would choose the second. It's better to live somehow than not to live at all.

Speaker 1: 2:41

There ensued a lively discussion. The banker, who was then younger and more nervous, suddenly lost his temper, banged his fist on the table and, turning to the young lawyer, cried out it's a lie.

Speaker 2: 2:56

I bet you two millions you wouldn't stick in a cell, even for five years. If you mean it seriously, replied the lawyer, then I bet I'll stay not five, but fifteen, fifteen, done, cried the banker. Gentlemen, I stake two millions. Agreed, you stake two millions. I my freedom, said the lawyer. You stake two millions.

Speaker 1: 3:25

I my freedom, said the lawyer. So this wild, ridiculous bet came to pass. The banker, who at that time had too many millions to count, spoiled and capricious, was beside himself with rapture During supper he said to the lawyer jokingly Come to your senses, young Roan, before it's too late.

Speaker 2: 3:49

Two millions are nothing to me, but you stand to lose three or four of the best years of your life. I say three or four because you'll never stick it out any longer. Don't forget either, you unhappy man, that voluntary is much heavier than enforced imprisonment. The idea that you have the right to free yourself at any moment would poison the whole of your life in the cell. I pity you.

Speaker 1: 4:19

And now the banker, pacing from corner to corner, recalled all this and asked himself why did I make this bet? What's the good If the lawyer loses 15 years of his life and I throw away two millions? Will it convince people that capital punishment is worse or better than imprisonment for life? No, no, all stuff and rubbish. He recollected further what happened after the evening party.

Speaker 1: 5:00

It was decided that the lawyer must undergo his imprisonment under the strictest observation in a garden wing of the banker's house. It was agreed that during the period he would be deprived of the right to cross the threshold, to see living people, to hear human voices and to receive letters in newspapers. He was permitted to have a musical instrument, to read books, to write letters, to drink wine and smoke tobacco. By the agreement he could communicate, but only in silence, with the outside world through a little window especially constructed for this purpose. Everything necessary books, music, wine he could receive in any quantity by sending a note through the window. The agreement provided for all the minutest details which made the confinement strictly solitary, and it obliged the lawyer to remain exactly 15 years, from 12 o'clock November 14, 1870 to 12 o'clock November 14, 1885. The least attempt on his part to violate the conditions to escape, if only for two minutes before the time, freed the banker from the obligation to pay him the two millions.

Speaker 1: 6:23

During the first year of imprisonment the lawyer as far as it was possible to judge from his short notes suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom. From his wing, day and night, came the sound of the piano. He rejected wine and tobacco. Wine, he wrote, excites desires, and desires are the chief foes of a prisoner. Besides, nothing is more boring than to drink good wine alone, and tobacco spoils the air in his room. During the first year the lawyer was sent books of a light character, novels with complicated love interests, stories of crime and fantasy, comedies and so on. The second year the piano was heard no longer and the lawyer asked only for classics. In the fifth year, music was heard again and the prisoner asked for wine. Those who watched him said that during the whole of that year he was only eating, drinking and lying on his bed. He yawned often and talked angrily to himself. Books he did not read. Sometimes at nights he would sit down to write. He would write for a long time and tear it all up in the morning. More than once he was heard to weep languages, philosophy and history. He fell on these subjects so hungrily that the banker hardly had time to get books enough for him. In the space of four years, about 600 volumes were brought at his request.

Speaker 1: 8:02

It was while that passion lasted that the banker received the following letter from the prisoner my dear Gayoler, I am writing these lines in six languages. Show them to experts. Let them read them. If they do not find one single mistake, I beg you to give orders to have a gun fired off in the garden. By the noise I shall know that my efforts have not been in vain. The geniuses of all ages and countries speak in different languages, but in them all burns the same flame. Oh, if you knew my heavenly happiness now that I can understand them. The prisoner's desire was fulfilled. Two shots were fired in the garden by the banker's order.

Speaker 1: 8:49

Later on, after the tenth year, the lawyer sat immovable before his table and read only the New Testament. The banker found it strange that a man who in four years had mastered six hundred erudite volumes, should have spent nearly a year reading one book, easy to understand and by no means thick. The New Testament was then replaced by the history of religions and theology. During the last two years of his confinement the prisoner read an extraordinary amount quite haphazard. Now he would apply himself to the natural sciences, then he would read Byron or Shakespeare. Notes used to come from him in which he asked to be sent at the same time a book on chemistry, a textbook of medicine, a novel and some treatise on philosophy or theology. He read as though he were swimming in the sea among broken pieces of wreckage and, in his desire to save his life, was eagerly grasping one piece after another. The banker recalled all this and thought Tomorrow at twelve o'clock he receives his freedom.

Speaker 1: 10:02

Under the agreement, I shall have to pay him two millions. If I pay, it is all over with me. I am ruined forever. Fifteen years before he had too many millions to count, but now he was afraid to ask himself which he had more of money or debt. Gambling on the stock exchange, risky speculation and the recklessness of which he could not rid himself even in old age had gradually brought his business to decay, and the fearless, self-confident, proud man of business had become an ordinary banker, trembling at every rise and fall in the market. That cursed bet, murmured the old man, clutching his head in despair. Why didn't the man die? He's only forty years old. He will take away my last farthing, marry, enjoy life, gamble on the exchange, and I will look like an envious beggar and hear the same words from him every day I'm obliged to you for the happiness of my life, let me help you. No, it is too much. The only escape from bankruptcy and disgrace is that the man should die.

Speaker 1: 11:10

The clock had just struck three. The banker was listening In the house. Everyone was asleep and one could hear only the frozen trees whining outside the windows. Trying to make no sound, he took out his safe key of the door, which had not been open for 15 years, put on his overcoat and went out of the house. The garden was dark and cold and it was raining. A damp, penetrating wind howled in the garden and gave the trees no rest. Though he strained his eyes, the banker could see neither the ground, nor the white statues, nor the garden wing, nor the trees. Appro white statues, nor the garden wing, nor the trees. Approaching the garden wing, he called the watchman twice. There was no answer. Evidently the watchman had taken shelter from the bad weather and was now asleep somewhere in the kitchen or greenhouse. If I have the courage to fulfill my intention, thought the old man.

Speaker 1: 12:11

The suspicion will fall on the watchman first of all. In the darkness, he groped for the steps and the door and entered the hall of the garden wing, then poked his way into a narrow passage and struck a match. Not a soul was there. Someone's bed with no bedclothes on it stood there. An iron stove loomed dark in the corner. The seals on the door that had led to the prisoner's room were unbroken. When the match went out, the old man, trembling from agitation, peeped into the little window. In the prisoner's room a candle was burning dimly.

Speaker 1: 12:51

The prisoner himself sat by the table. Only his back, the hair on his head and his hands were visible. Open books were strewn about on the table, the two chairs and on the carpet near the table. Five minutes passed and the prisoner never stirred. Fifteen years' confinement had taught him to sit motionless. The banker tapped on the window with his finger, but the prisoner made no movement in reply. Then the banker cautiously tore the seals from the door and put the key into the lock. The rusty lock gave a hoarse groan and the door creaked. The banker expected instantly to hear a cry of surprise and the sound of steps. Three minutes passed and it was quiet inside as it had been before he made up his mind to enter.

Speaker 1: 13:39

Before the table sat a man unlike an ordinary human being. It was a skeleton with tight drawn skin with curly, long curly hair like a woman's, and shaggy beard. The color of his face was yellow, of an earthly shade, the cheeks were sunken and the back long and narrow, and the hand upon which he leaned his hairy head, was so lean and skinny that it was painful to look upon. His hair was already silvering with gray, and no one who glanced at the senile emaciation of the face would have believed that he was only forty years old. On the table, before his bended head, lay a sheet of paper on which something was written in a tiny hand. Poor devil, thought the banker. He's asleep and probably seeing millions in his dreams. I have only to take and throw this half-dead thing on the bed, smother him a moment with a pillow, and the most careful examination will find no trace of unnatural death. But first let us read what he has written here. The banker took the sheet from the table and read Tomorrow at twelve o'clock midnight, I shall obtain my freedom. The banker took the sheet from the table and read before God who sees me.

Speaker 1: 15:09

I declare to you that I despise freedom, life, health and all that your books call the blessings of the world. For 15 years I have diligently studied earthly life. True, I saw neither the earth nor the people, but in your books I drank fragrant wine, sang songs, hunted deer and wild boar in the forest, loved women and beautiful women like clouds ethereal created by the magic of your poets. Genius visited me by night and whispered to me wonderful tales which made my head drunken. In your books I climbed the summits of Elbrus and Mont Blanc and saw from there how the sun rose in the morning and in the evening it suffused the sky, the ocean and lie mountain ridges with a purple gold. The lightnings glimmered, cleaving the clouds. I saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, cities. I heard sirens singing and the playing of pipes of pan. I touched the wings of beautiful devils who came flying to me to speak of God.

Speaker 1: 16:27

In your books I cast myself into bottomless abysses, worked miracles, burned cities to the ground, preached new religions, conquered whole countries. Your books gave me wisdom. All that unwarying human thought created in the centuries is compressed to a little lump in my skull. I know that I am cleverer than you all and I despise your books, despise all worldly blessings and wisdom. Everything is void, frail, visionary and delusive as a mirage, though you be proud and wise and beautiful, yet will death wipe you from the face of the earth like the mice underground, and your posterity, your history and the immortality of your men of genius will be as a frozen slag, burned down together with the terrestrial globe. You are mad and gone the wrong way. You take falsehood for truth and ugliness for beauty. You would marvel if, suddenly, apple and orange trees should bear frogs and lizards instead of fruit, and if roses should begin to breathe the odor of a sweating horse. So do I marvel at you who have bartered heaven for earth. I do not want to understand you that I may show you, indeed, my content for that which you live. I waive the two millions of which I had once dreamed of as paradise and now despise, in which I now despise that I may deprive myself of my right to them. I shall come out from here five minutes before the stipulated term and thus shall violate the agreement.

Speaker 1: 18:13

When he had read, the banker put the sheet on the table, kissed the head of the strange man and began to weep. He went out of the wing. Never at another time, not even after his terrible losses on the exchange, had he felt such contempt for himself as now. Coming home, he lay down on his bed, but agitation and tears kept him a long time from sleeping. The next morning, the poor watchman came running to him and told him that they had seen the man who lived in the wing climb through the window into the garden. He had gone to the gate and disappeared. The banker instantly went with his servants to the wing and established the escape of his prisoner. To avoid unnecessary rumors, he took the paper with the renunciation from the table and, on his return, locked it in his safe. This has been the bet by Anton Chekhov. You've been listening to Ron Reed's Boring Books. Please like and subscribe, leave us a five-star rating and write us a review. I would love to read what you have to say. Goodbye.