Anton Chekhov (1889) — a banker and a lawyer wager two million on fifteen years of solitude
Easier version available: read this lesson at A2/B1 level →
Chekhov opens at the end — an old banker on a sleepless night — and then walks us back to the wager that has poisoned fifteen years of his life. This is a graded retelling. Read each part, pause for the discussion box, then continue. The twist is in the letter. Do not skip ahead.
Fifteen years ago, the banker had given a party, and the talk had turned to capital punishment. Most of the guests disapproved of it. The death sentence, they argued, was immoral and out of date; it would be better to replace it with imprisonment for life.
"I don't agree," said the banker, who was then young and hot-tempered. "I have tried neither, but if I had to choose, I would certainly choose the death sentence. To kill a man at one stroke is more merciful than to kill him slowly over many years."
A young lawyer among the guests disagreed sharply.
"Both are immoral, since both take away life. But if I had to choose between the death penalty and imprisonment for life, I would choose to live. To live somehow is better than not to live at all."
The banker, carried away, struck the table. "It's a lie! I bet you two million you wouldn't stay in solitary confinement for even five years." The young man's eyes flashed. "If you mean it seriously, I'll take the bet — but I'll stay not five years but fifteen." And so the reckless wager was sealed: two million roubles against fifteen years of a man's freedom.
The lawyer was shut in a lodge in the banker's garden, cut off from all human contact. He could receive books, wine, a piano, anything in writing — but no visitors, no voices, no glimpse of the outside world. If he left the lodge even two minutes before the agreed moment, the banker was freed from paying.
In the first year the lawyer suffered terribly from loneliness and boredom. In the second he gave up wine and asked only for the classics. By the middle years he was studying languages, philosophy, history — six hundred volumes in four years. Then he read the Gospel, and then theology, and then everything at once: chemistry, medicine, Byron, Shakespeare. He wrote a letter and asked that experts be found to test his learning in six languages; when they confirmed it, he wept. In the last two years he read enormously and without system, an old man's unguided hunger for everything the mind can hold.
It is now the night before the fifteen years end, and the old banker paces his study. He is no longer rich. Reckless speculation has all but ruined him, and the two million he must pay at noon tomorrow will finish him completely. "Why didn't the man die?" he thinks. "He is only forty. He will take my last penny, marry, enjoy life, and I shall look on like a beggar."
A terrible idea takes hold of him. If the prisoner were dead, no one would suspect; the watchman has gone, the night is wild with storm. The banker takes the key, crosses the dark garden, and lets himself into the lodge to murder the man who has cost him everything. By the lamp he sees the prisoner asleep at the table — a skeleton, with long hair and a yellow face — and beside him, a sheet of paper covered in writing.
The banker picks up the sheet and reads. The prisoner has written his farewell. In fifteen years of books, he writes, he has lived: he has hunted in African forests, loved women, climbed mountains, heard the songs of poets and the arguments of philosophers — all in his mind, all from his chair. And it has taught him to despise everything the world calls good.
"You have lost your reason and taken the wrong path. You take lies for truth and ugliness for beauty. I despise your books, your wisdom, your blessings of the world. To prove to you how I despise the life you live, I renounce the two million I once dreamed of. To free myself, I shall leave here five hours before the appointed time, and so break the agreement."
The banker reads it, kisses the strange man on the head, and goes out weeping — ashamed as he has never been ashamed in his life. He can hardly sleep for tears. And the next morning the watchman comes running: the prisoner has climbed out of the window and walked away into the dawn, five hours early, and disappeared. The banker goes to the lodge, takes the letter so that no awkward questions will be asked, and locks it in his safe.
Ten words from the story, all useful far beyond it — for talking about choices, risk and second thoughts. Tap to reveal the meaning and a usable example.
This is a story about regret and reconsideration. Group the phrases you will reach for whenever you talk about a decision you would now make differently.
| Function | Useful expressions |
|---|---|
| Regret about the past | I wish I had… / If only I hadn't… / I should never have… |
| Imagining a different past | Had I known… / If I had chosen differently… / Looking back, I would have… |
| Present effect of a past choice | If I hadn't done X, I wouldn't be… / Because of that bet, he is now… |
| Letting go | What's done is done / There's no point dwelling on it / I've made my peace with it |
"The Bet" is built on roads not taken. The grammar of the road not taken is the grammar of the unreal past: wish / if only for regret, the third conditional for a past that never happened, and the mixed conditional for a past choice that still shapes the present.
For regret about the past, use wish / if only + past perfect. ("The banker wishes he had never made the bet.") For regret about the present, use wish / if only + past simple. ("He wishes he were still rich.")
1. The banker wishes he (never / propose) the wager.
2. "If only I (not / speak) so rashly that night," he thinks.
3. He wishes he (be) the calm man he was fifteen years ago.
4. The banker wishes he (never / make) the bet.
1. had never proposed
2. had not spoken
3. were / was (present regret — past simple; "were" is the careful form)
4. had never made
Pattern: If + past perfect, would have + past participle. Use it to talk about a different past and its different result — a result that never came to be.
1. If the banker (not / boast) about capital punishment, the bet (never / happen).
2. If the lawyer (leave) one day early, he (lose) the bet outright.
3. If the banker (murder) the prisoner, he (become) a criminal as well as a fool.
4. The prisoner (not / change) so deeply if he (have) company.
1. had not boasted / would never have happened
2. had left / would have lost
3. had murdered / would have become
4. would not have changed / had had
Pattern: If + past perfect, would + base verb (now). Use it when a past action explains a present state. ("If the banker hadn't gambled his fortune away, he wouldn't be ruined now.")
1. If the banker (not / make) that bet, he (not / be) terrified tonight.
2. If the lawyer (not / spend) those years reading, he (not / be) the man he is now.
3. If the banker (invest) wisely, he (be) able to pay the two million easily today.
1. had not made / would not be
2. had not spent / would not be
3. had invested / would be
Four moves to spot. They are why a story this short can hold a whole philosophy of life.
Chekhov opens on the final night and then flashes back to the wager. We read the fifteen years already knowing they are nearly over, which charges every detail with the question: what will the man be like when he comes out?
The lawyer is the prisoner, yet he grows free while the banker, at liberty, grows trapped by debt and dread. Chekhov inverts the two positions so quietly that we only notice the swap when the banker creeps in to commit murder.
Instead of telling us what fifteen years did to the lawyer, Chekhov hands us the man's own letter and lets it speak for him. The renunciation arrives in the prisoner's voice, not the narrator's, which makes it land as confession rather than summary.
After all that grandeur of renunciation, the banker quietly pockets the letter and locks it away. Chekhov undercuts the noble climax with a small, self-protective act, and refuses to tell us whether the banker is redeemed. The ambiguity is the point.
Now move to the next tab. The technique work above feeds directly into the three speaking tasks.
Do all four. Each one builds on the last. The timer is for your benefit — it forces you to fill the time rather than escape it. Use the conditional structures and effect verbs from the previous tabs.
Before we discuss it, tell the story back to me as if I had never read it — in your own words, not line by line. Aim for about eight to ten sentences.
As you go, use at least five words from the Vocabulary tab and keep the events in order using the language of regret and conditionals from the Grammar tab. These beats will help you: a banker and a young lawyer argue whether lifelong prison is worse than death · the banker bets two million the lawyer can't endure fifteen years of solitude · the lawyer accepts and over the years reads thousands of books and changes · the ruined banker comes to kill him on the last night · he finds the lawyer's letter renouncing the money.
Speak first as the banker, then as the lawyer, on the final night. Give each man two regrets and two things he does not regret. The banker might say, "If only I had never struck that table…"; the lawyer might say, "I don't regret a single year."
Use at least three wish / if only sentences and at least one third conditional. Keep the two voices clearly different.
Describe a "bet" once made with yourself or someone else — a commitment, a dare, a promise to stick something out. It can be your own experience, someone you know, or a character or public figure. Tell what was staked, how it went, and what might have been done differently.
Build the second half on mixed conditionals: "If they hadn't taken that on, they wouldn't be… today." Show how one past choice still shapes the present.
The lawyer walks away from two million with five hours to spare. For two minutes, argue that this is the noblest act in the story — a man who has genuinely outgrown the prize. For two more, argue the opposite: that it is the damaged logic of someone fifteen years of isolation has broken, and that throwing away the money helps no one.
Use cleft sentences ("What he is really rejecting is…") and at least one structure of concession ("Even if he is sincere, …").