Confused recollections stirred in his mind. Someone had hidden behind the wallpaper; someone had been stabbed either with a poignard or an awl. Peredonov bought an awl. And when he returned home the wallpaper stirred unevenly and restlessly—a spy felt his danger and was perhaps trying to creep in farther. A shadow jumped to the ceiling and there threatened and grimaced.
Peredonov was infuriated. He struck the wallpaper impetuously with the awl. A shiver ran over the wall. Peredonov began to sing triumphantly and to dance, brandishing the awl. Varvara came in.
“Why are you dancing by yourself, Ardalyon Borisitch?” she asked, smiling stupidly and insolently as always.
“I’ve killed a beetle,” explained Peredonov morosely.
His eyes gleamed in wild triumph. Only one thing annoyed him; the disagreeable odour. The murdered spy stank putridly behind the wallpaper. Horror and triumph shook Peredonov—he had killed an enemy! He had hardened his heart to the very end of the deed. It was not a real murder—but for Peredonov it was quite real. A mad horror had forged in him a readiness to commit the crime—and the deep, unconscious image of future murder, dormant in the lower strata of spiritual life, the tormenting itch to murder, a condition of primitive wrath, oppressed his diseased will. The ancient Cain—overlaid by many generations—found gratification in his breaking and damaging property, in his chopping with the axe, in his cutting with the knife, in his cutting down trees in the garden to prevent the spies from looking out behind them. And the ancient demon, the spirit of prehistoric confusion, of hoary chaos, rejoiced in the destruction of things, while the wild eyes of the madman reflected horror, like the horror of the death agonies of some monster.
And the same illusions tormented him again and again. Varvara, amusing herself at Peredonov’s expense, sometimes hid herself behind the door of the room where he was sitting, and talked in assumed voices. He would get frightened, walk up quietly to catch the enemy—and find Varvara.
“Whom were you whispering to?” he asked sadly.
Varvara smiled and replied:
“It only seemed to you, Ardalyon Borisitch.”
“Surely everything doesn’t merely seem to me,” muttered Peredonov sadly. “There must be also truth upon the earth.”
Even Peredonov, in common with all conscious life, strove towards the truth, and this striving tortured him. He was not conscious that he, like all people, was striving towards the truth, and that was why he suffered this confused restlessness. He could not find the truth he sought, and he was caught in the toils and was perishing.
His acquaintances began to taunt him with being a dupe. With the usual cruelty of our town towards the weak, they talked of this deception in his presence. Prepolovenskaya asked with a derisive smile:
“How is it, Ardalyon Borisitch, that you haven’t gone away to your inspector’s job yet?”
Varvara answered for him with suppressed anger:
“We shall get the paper soon, and we shall leave at once.”
But these questions depressed him.
“How can I live, if the place isn’t given to me?” he thought.
He kept devising new plans of defence against his enemies. He stole the axe from the kitchen and hid it under the bed. He bought a Swedish knife and always carried it about in his pocket. He frequently locked himself in his room. At night he put traps around the house and in the rooms and later he would examine them. These traps were, of course, so constructed that they could not catch anyone. They gripped but could not hold anyone, and it was easy to walk away with them. But Peredonov had no technical knowledge and no common sense. When he saw each morning that no one was caught Peredonov imagined that his enemies had tampered with the traps. This again frightened him.
Peredonov watched Volodin with special attention. He frequently went to Volodin when he knew that Volodin would not be at home and rummaged among the papers to see if there were any stolen from himself.
Peredonov began to suspect what the Princess wanted—it was that he should love her again. She was repugnant to him, a decrepit old woman.
“She’s a hundred and fifty years old,” he thought with vexation. “Yes, she’s old, but then how powerful she is!” And his repulsion became mingled with an allurement. “She’s an almost cold little old woman, she smells slightly of a corpse,” he imagined, and he felt faint with a savage voluptuousness.
“Perhaps it would be possible to arrange a meeting, and her heart would be touched. Oughtn’t I to send her a letter?”
This time Peredonov, with slight hesitation, composed a letter to the Princess. He wrote:
“I love you, because you are cold and remote. Varvara perspires, it is hot to sleep with her, it is like the breath of an oven. I would like to have a cold and remote love. Come here and respond to me.”
He wrote it and posted it—and then repented.
“What will come of it?” he thought. “Perhaps I ought not to have written. I should have waited until the Princess came here.”
This letter was an accidental occurrence, like so much that Peredonov did—he was like a corpse moved by external powers, and moved as if these powers had no desire to busy themselves with him for long: one would play with him and then cast him to another.
Soon the nedotikomka reappeared—for a long time it rolled around Peredonov as if it were on the end of a lasso, and kept mocking him. And it was now noiseless, and laughed only with a shaking of its body. The evil, shameless beast flared up with dimly golden sparks—it threatened and burned with an intolerable triumph. And the cat threatened Peredonov; its eyes gleamed and
