The Fatalist (Lermentov)

Hinche, Haiti, May 2014.

“‘I offer you a wager,’ I said in jest.

‘What kind of wager?’

‘I affirm that there is no predestination,’ I said, pouring on to the table a score of gold coins – all there was in my pockets.”

Mikhail Lermentov, from The Fatalist, in ‘A Hero of Our Time’