Pyotr Stepanovitch jumped up from his seat and instantly handed him an inkstand and paper, and began dictating, seizing the moment, quivering with anxiety.
“I, Alexey Kirillov, declare …”
“Stay; I won’t! To whom am I declaring it?”
Kirillov was shaking as though he were in a fever. This declaration and the sudden strange idea of it seemed to absorb him entirely, as though it were a means of escape by which his tortured spirit strove for a moment’s relief.
“To whom am I declaring it? I want to know to whom?”
“To no one, everyone, the first person who reads it. Why define it? The whole world!”
“The whole world! Bravo! And I won’t have any repentance. I don’t want penitence and I don’t want it for the police!”
“No, of course, there’s no need of it, damn the police! Write, if you are in earnest!” Pyotr Stepanovitch cried hysterically.
“Stay! I want to put at the top a face with the tongue out.”
“Ech, what nonsense,” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch crossly, “you can express all that without the drawing, by—the tone.”
“By the tone? That’s true. Yes, by the tone, by the tone of it. Dictate, the tone.”
“I, Alexey Kirillov,” Pyotr Stepanovitch dictated firmly and peremptorily, bending over Kirillov’s shoulder and following every letter which the latter formed with a hand trembling with excitement, “I, Kirillov, declare that today, the —th October, at about eight o’clock in the evening, I killed the student Shatov in the park for turning traitor and giving information of the manifestoes and of Fedka, who has been lodging with us for ten days in Filipov’s house. I am shooting myself today with my revolver, not because I repent and am afraid of you, but because when I was abroad I made up my mind to put an end to my life.”
“Is that all?” cried Kirillov with surprise and indignation.
“Not another word,” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch, waving his hand, attempting to snatch the document from him.
“Stay.” Kirillov put his hand firmly on the paper. “Stay, it’s nonsense! I want to say with whom I killed him. Why Fedka? And what about the fire? I want it all and I want to be abusive in tone, too, in tone!”
“Enough, Kirillov, I assure you it’s enough,” cried Pyotr Stepanovitch almost imploringly, trembling lest he should tear up the paper; “that they may believe you, you must say it as obscurely as possible, just like that, simply in hints. You must only give them a peep of the truth, just enough to tantalise them. They’ll tell a story better than ours, and of course they’ll believe themselves more than they would us; and you know, it’s better than anything—better than anything! Let me have it, it’s splendid as it is; give it to me, give it to me!”
And he kept trying to snatch the paper. Kirillov listened open-eyed and appeared to be trying to reflect, but he seemed beyond understanding now.
“Damn it all,” Pyotr Stepanovitch cried all at once, ill-humouredly, “he hasn’t signed it! Why are you staring like that? Sign!”
“I want to abuse them,” muttered Kirillov. He took the pen, however, and signed. “I want to abuse them.”
“Write ‘Vive la république,’ and that will be enough.”
“Bravo!” Kirillov almost bellowed with delight. “‘Vive la république démocratique sociale et universelle ou la mort!’ No, no, that’s not it. ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité ou la mort.’ There, that’s better, that’s better.” He wrote it gleefully under his signature.
“Enough, enough,” repeated Pyotr Stepanovitch.
“Stay, a little more. I’ll sign it again in French, you know. ‘De Kirillov, gentilhomme russe et citoyen du monde.’ Ha ha!” He went off in a peal of laughter. “No, no, no; stay. I’ve found something better than all. Eureka! ‘Gentilhomme, séminariste russe et citoyen du monde civilisé!’ That’s better than any. …” He jumped up from the sofa and suddenly, with a rapid gesture, snatched up the revolver from the window, ran with it into the next room, and closed the door behind him.
Pyotr Stepanovitch stood for a moment, pondering and gazing at the door.
“If he does it at once, perhaps he’ll do it, but if he begins thinking, nothing will come of it.”
Meanwhile he took up the paper, sat down, and looked at it again. The wording of the document pleased him again.
“What’s needed for the moment? What’s wanted is to throw them all off the scent and keep them busy for a time. The park? There’s no park in the town and they’ll guess its Skvoreshniki of themselves. But while they are arriving at that, time will be passing; then the search will take time too; then when they find the body it will prove that the story is true, and it will follow that’s it all true, that it’s true about Fedka too. And Fedka explains the fire, the Lebyadkins; so that it was all being hatched here, at Filipov’s, while they overlooked it and saw nothing—that will quite turn their heads! They will never think of the quintet; Shatov and Kirillov and Fedka and Lebyadkin, and why they killed each other—that will be another question for them. Oh, damn it all, I don’t hear the shot!”
Though he had been reading and admiring the wording of it, he had been listening anxiously all the time, and he suddenly flew into a rage. He looked anxiously at his watch; it was getting late and it was fully ten minutes since Kirillov had gone out. … Snatching up the candle, he went to the door of the room where Kirillov had shut himself up. He was just at the door when the thought struck him that the candle had burnt out, that it would not last another twenty minutes, and that there was no other in the room. He took
