The man was in a prison of his own making. Years before, when he was young and foolhardy, he had made a bet with a wealthy banker, the host of an extravagant dinner-party. The bet was an absurd one, that the young man could go without human contact for fourteen years, for the enormous stake of 2 million rubles (all to be put up by the banker), and count it well worth the price. But it was not as absurd as the young man, who insisted the next day on arranging the conditions and putting the bet into effect.
After some resistance on the part of the more-sobered banker, it was definitely agreed that the young man should spend the years of his captivity under strict seclusion in one of the outbuildings on the banker's estate. For fourteen years he would not cross the threshold, see human beings, hear another human voice, or receive letters or newspapers. He was allowed to play musical instruments, read books, write letters, drink, and smoke. He might request further quantities of any item permitted to him, but only in writing; and he was to receive no recognition of his existence except in the form of these provisions.
The man was in a prison of his own making, but he intended to make the most of it. Even before the door was shut on his period of seclusion it was obvious from his requests that he intended to devote himself to profitable study. His first applications were for books of two types: manuals for literary self-education, and favorite books from his past. He also brought into confinement with him a moderately large collection of sheet music, from which he had been accustomed to play in the past.
But on the first day of his isolation he did not touch any of these supplies, except to move them back and forth. Instead, he spent his time adjusting his surroundings for his own comfort and according to his own taste. He pushed the furniture this way and that, accommodating it to the way the light fell throughout the day. He made repeated requests for little personal items and articles of comfort, until all was decorated to his satisfaction and prepared for long occupancy. In short, he made the place his home, and a simple, idealistic, convenient home it was.
The next day he rose early and immediately began furiously writing out an agenda for his period of confinement. He parceled each day into numerous segments, and hardly found sufficient in it for the complete regimen he planned for himself. He took care to preserve normal times for eating and sleeping, but he also had to set aside significant time for activities which most men need not consider, such as physical exercise and speech practice. And there was his literary education, to which he planned to devote a good half of each day.
Besides all this, he set himself to learn new skills which he never would have found time for in an ordinary life. He was already above average at the piano and decent on the viola; he planned next to add the flute, and if that went smoothly, the harp and possibly other instruments. He was fluent in Russian and French, and could read Latin and Greek; he planned to add German, Polish, English, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit, as a modest beginning.
He intended to maintain his outdoors skills even within the restraints of his apartment. Woodworking, leather-working, tool-making, skinning and dressing animals, and cooking were all natural to him, and he wanted to keep them that way. He figured that he would need to learn arithmetic and accounting in order to maintain his expected wealth. And he felt, being for the nonce father, mother, son, daughter, and servant all in one, he would add domestic skills to the mix. Cleaning, washing, spinning, carding, combing, and clouting were all a new-found interest to him.
Finally, he thought he would write a book about his experience, and began keeping a diary immediately. Altogether, this regime absorbed him for several days, until it started to become habitual. Then he began losing himself to his thoughts, at first for a few moments at a time, but soon for longer periods. It was not regret which plagued him so much as fear of future regrets. He was afraid not of having made a wrong decision but of being unable to keep up a right decision. He worried that he would fail to make the most of his time in confinement, and found his worries producing this very result. In short, he believed in his ideals, but not in himself.
The man was in a prison of his own making, which is the most difficult of all prisons to endure. But, he knew how to handle himself, and he settled down to his work. This lasted about a month, until one day he went mad. There was not much in his apartment to wreck, but he wrecked it. There was not much on which to injure himself, but he assuredly did so. There was no one to observe him, but he called out violently to them. Yet though he lost his reason, he did not lose his instinct. He passionately desired those millions. He went stark raving mad, but he did not go out the door.
When he came to himself he was half-seated, half-lying on the floor. His arms were scraped and his head bruised and his mind convinced that that normality and irrationality do not mix—it is enough to drive any man mad, being methodical. He realized he could not maintain a regular schedule in such an irregular setting. He gave up pretending that he was part of the world when the world had mocked him and forgotten him. So he called for wine, and when none came, forced himself up and wrote an order for it.
He consoled himself with a half-drunken stupor for a long time (he was never afterward sure how long) until once, finding himself inadvertently sober, he realized that wine is only truly beneficial when it is not needed. And he found his hand resting on a book in the disorder around him. He knew this book—he remembered it. It claimed to speak to all men, everywhere, no matter how cut off from the world they seemed. It claimed to have the answer, and that the answer was not of the world, but that it had entered the world to bring him out of it. He read it for a long time, and did not call for more wine.
This book led him to other books based on it, and each of these to several more, and so it went until he was reading a diverse selection of books from throughout history. He also found himself making notes in his diary again. But while those records from the first month of his confinement were all about himself and how he felt, these were now all about what he thought and learned. Eventually interests in specific topics led him to request books in foreign languages, which he studied intermittently until he was able to capture the meaning of the original. References to songs and music occasionally inspired him to the use of his own voice and instruments. And if a book described a new skill or technique he might try it out himself until he understood it. His requests for books were as haphazard as his reading, and as continuous.
In books he drank fragrant wine; he sang songs; he hunted stags and wild boars in the forests; he loved woman. Ethereal beauties, created by the genius of poets, visited him in books, and whispered in his ears wonderful tales, and transported his mind on the whirlwind. In books he climbed the peaks of Elburz and Mont Blanc, and saw the sun spring from the morning horizon, and in the evening flood the sky, the ocean, and the mountain-tops with gold and crimson. He watched lightning flashing over his head and cleaving storm-clouds. He saw green forests, fields, rivers, lakes, towns. He heard sirens' songs and the strains of the shepherds' pipes. He touched the wings of comely spirits who descended to converse with him of God. He flung himself into the bottomless pit, performed miracles, slew mankind, burned towns, preached religion, conquered kingdoms, and knew the wisdom of the ages and the innermost thoughts of man. He knew the questions that are too big to ask, and he saw the answers that are too big to notice. The man was in a prison of his own making, and he almost forgot it.
All these things he felt, and thought himself wise. For it is possible to learn of any subject in isolation except one: that being, oneself. For every subject can be and has been studied and recorded by others, except those which are unattainable: as his case, a man in solitary confinement. From his reading, the man came to know all that is known of the diversity and limitations of human behavior, of sociology and psychology. The only thing he could not learn was how he fit into what he was reading about humanity. Or, more precisely, he learned only that he did not fit into the humanity of which he read. For humanity is by definition collective, and has no room for the individual. And he learned that to be human, and behave inhumanly, was the definition of madness. And he was forced to conclude that he was mad. And, in the view of humanity, he was.
By the time he came consciously to this conclusion he was halfway through his period of confinement. What was he to do? The only thing madder in the world's eyes than staying there would have been leaving. He had already paid half the bride price and had only Leah to show for it. He knew if he could convince himself to stay now he had the bet and the two millions made. But it was a terribly difficult decision, and a much closer call than had been his earlier madness. It was even closer than the time early on when he had become desperately sick and thought he would die without medical attention. After all, with the knowledge he had accumulated, he would have been able to make his way quite well in an unenlightened world. The tipping point that finally settled his staying was habit—and the fact that he had a few books he wanted to finish reading.
The man was in a prison of his own making, and the time had passed quickly. Halfway through his final year of confinement, he began to take thought of his future. Years before, when he was young and foolhardy, he had gone in with vast dreams and sweeping ambitions for the time when he came out. Somehow he had imagined himself little changed, except for the better (and richer). But he was no longer young, and he was not sure he was less foolhardy. He was only sure that his plans for the future had grown vaguer, while those of the banker must have grown clearer and more fixed.
Then it was the final night. Only six more hours of darkness remained before the successful completion of the bet. The form of the man lay curled on its cot, looking like one shrunken and pitiful shadow among many. At once the door to the apartment began to open. The hinges resisted at first, fourteen years after their last use, but then gave way with a low moan. The dark shape in the doorway paused, but the figure on the bed did not move. Then the large shape of the banker stepped quickly across the room to the bedside and, jamming a pillow onto the head lying peacefully there, began pressing, squeezing, choking, stifling, smothering….
"Enough!" The voice rang out, harsh with disuse. "You buried me alive fourteen years ago; do you now come to make sure of your work?" Then, as the banker sprung quickly up, searching for the source of the sound, be it man or ghost, it continued more softly. "No, I know, I buried myself, and your regret now is only a little greater than it was then. What then drives you to this pass; is it pride? greed?"—as the banker shook his head, still searching—"or insolvency? Is my life to be the price of your two millions? No, it shall not; but your two millions shall be the price of my life."
Stepping out of the shadows behind the door, the man who was buried but not smothered continued with increasing vehemence, "Did you think I would not foresee your act of desperation? Did you think I had not noticed your slackening responses to my requests? Do you think I still value your pelf when I see to what ends it drives man?" Then, meditatively, "Once I thought I was mad to come here. Now I know I would be as mad as the world to take your money and go from here. Keep your millions! and keep me as well, with your unpaid debt as insurance for my sustenance. Now go! and do not presume to break upon my seclusion again." The final words were still spoken quietly, but with such force that the banker backed out of the room obediently, never having spoken a word.
The man was in a prison of his own making, and he liked it that way.