“What profit could you make?”
“How can I tell you? How do I know? You see in what a tavern I spend all my time and it’s my enjoyment, that’s to say it’s no great enjoyment, but one must sit somewhere; that poor Katia now—you saw her?... If only I had been a glutton now, a club gourmand, but you see I can eat this.”
He pointed to a little table in the corner where the remnants of a terrible-looking beef-steak and potatoes lay on a tin dish.
“Have you dined, by the way? I’ve had something and want nothing more. I don’t drink, for instance, at all. Except for champagne I never touch anything, and not more than a glass of that all the evening, and even that is enough to make my head ache. I ordered it just now to wind myself up, for I am just going off somewhere and you see me in a peculiar state of mind. That was why I hid myself just now like a schoolboy, for I was afraid you would hinder me. But I believe,” he pulled out his watch, “I can spend an hour with you. It’s half-past four now. If only I’d been something, a landowner, a father, a cavalry officer, a photographer, a journalist... I am nothing, no specialty, and sometimes I am positively bored. I really thought you would tell me something new.”
“But what are you, and why have you come here?”
“What am I? You know, a gentleman, I served for two years in the cavalry, then I knocked about here in Petersburg, then I married Marfa Petrovna and lived in the country. There you have my biography!”
“You are a gambler, I believe?”
“No, a poor sort of gambler. A card-sharper—not a gambler.”
“You have been a card-sharper then?”
“Yes, I’ve been a card-sharper too.”