He explained to Roubovsky:
“They’re all traitors. They pretend to be your friends so as to be more certain of deceiving you. But none of them stop to think that I know things about them that would send them all to Siberia.”
Roubovsky listened to him in silence. The first denunciation, which was patently absurd, he sent to the Headmaster, and he did the same thing with several others. He kept certain others in case he should need them. The Headmaster wrote to the Director of National Schools that Peredonov was showing clear symptoms of mental disease.
At home Peredonov constantly heard ceaseless, exasperating and mocking rustlings. He said to Varvara dejectedly:
“Someone’s walking about on tiptoe. There are so many spies in the house, jostling each other. Varya, you’re not taking care of me.”
Varvara did not understand the meaning of Peredonov’s ravings. At one time she taunted him, at another she felt afraid. She said to him malignantly and yet with fear:
“You see all sorts of things when you’re drunk.”
The door to the hall seemed especially suspicious to Peredonov. It did not close tightly. The crevice between the two halves hinted at something that was hiding outside. Wasn’t it the knave who was peeping through it? Someone’s evil, penetrating eye gleamed behind it.
The cat followed Peredonov everywhere with its wide, green eyes. Sometimes it blinked its eyes, sometimes it mewed fearfully. It was obvious that the animal wanted to catch Peredonov at something, but it could not and was therefore angry. Peredonov exorcised the cat by spitting, but the cat remained unmoved.
The nedotikomka ran under the chair and in the corners, and squealed. It was dirty, evil-smelling, repulsive and terrifying. It was already quite clear that it was hostile to Peredonov, and rolled in entirely on his account, and that it had not existed anywhere before. It had been created—and it had been bewitched. And this evil, many-eyed beast lived here to his dread and to his perdition—followed him, deceived him, laughed at him—now rolled upon the floor, now turned into a rag, a ribbon, a twig, a flag, a small cloud, a little dog, a pillar of dust in the street, and everywhere it crawled and ran after Peredonov. It harassed him, it wearied him with its vacillating dance. If only someone would deliver him from it, with a word or with a downright blow. But he had no friends here, there was no one to come to save him. He must use his own cunning or the malicious beast would ruin him.
Peredonov thought of a device. He smeared the entire floor with glue so that the nedotikomka should get stuck. What did stick to the floor was the soles of Varvara’s shoes and the hems of her dress, but the nedotikomka rolled on freely and laughed shrilly. Varvara abused him loudly.
Persistent suspicions of being under constant persecution frightened him. More and more he became immersed in a world of wild illusions. This reflected itself in his face, which became a motionless mask of terror.
In the evenings Peredonov no longer went to play billiards. After dinner he shut himself in his bedroom, barricaded the room with various objects—a chair upon a table—and very carefully surrounded himself with crosses and exorcisms and sat down to write denunciations against everyone he could think of. He wrote denunciations not only against people but against playing-card queens. As soon as he had written one he would take it immediately to the Officer of the gendarmerie. And in this way he spent every evening.
Everywhere card-figures walked before Peredonov’s eyes, as if they were alive—kings, queens and knaves. Even the other cards walked about. These consisted of people with silver buttons: schoolboys and policemen. There was the ace of spades—stout, with a protruding stomach, almost entirely stomach. Sometimes the cards became transformed into his acquaintances. Living people were mixed up with these strange phantasms.
Peredonov was convinced that a knave was standing behind the door and that he had strength and power—something like a policeman’s—and that he could take you away somewhere to some terrible jail. Under the table sat the nedotikomka. And Peredonov was afraid to glance either under the table or behind the door.
The nimble eights of the pack, like little boys, mocked at Peredonov—these were the phantasms of schoolboys. They lifted their legs with strange, stiff movements, like the legs of a compass, but their legs were shaggy and with hoofs. Instead of tails they had whipping rods, which they swung with a swish, and at each flourish they gave a squeak. The nedotikomka grunted from under the table, and laughed at the play of these eights. Peredonov thought with rage that the nedotikomka would not have dared to come to an official.
“They surely wouldn’t let it in,” he thought enviously. “The lackeys would drive it out with their mops.” At last Peredonov could no longer stand its evil, insolently shrill laughter. He brought an axe from the kitchen and he split the table under which the nedotikomka was hiding. The nedotikomka squeaked piteously and furiously. It dashed out from under the table and rolled away. Peredonov trembled. “It might bite,” he thought, and screamed with terror and sat down, but the nedotikomka hid itself peacefully. Not for long. …
Sometimes Peredonov took the cards and with a ferocious expression on his face cut the heads off the court cards. Especially those of the queens. In cutting the kings, he glanced around him so as not to be detected and not to be accused of a political crime. But even these executions did not help for long. Visitors came, cards were brought and evil spies again took possession of the cards.
Peredonov already began to consider himself a secret criminal. He imagined that even from his student days he had been under the surveillance of the police. For some reason he thought that they were watching him. This terrified and yet flattered him.
The wind stirred the wallpaper. It shook with a quiet,
