cheeks and my rags! I lost everything -career, happiness, art, science, a beloved woman - and all because of you. Here are the pistols. I've come to discharge my pistol, and… and I forgive you.' Here I'll fire into the air, and - no more will be heard of me…'
I even began to weep, though I knew perfectly well at the same moment that all this came from Silvio and from Lermon-tov's Masquerade. 15 And suddenly I felt terribly ashamed, so ashamed that I stopped the horse, got out of the sled, and stood in the snow in the middle of the street. The jack watched me with amazement and sighed.
What was to be done? To go there was impossible - the result would be nonsense; to leave things as they were was also impossible, because the result would then be… 'Lord! How can I leave it! After such offenses! No!' I exclaimed, rushing back to the sled, 'it's predestined, it's fate! Drive on, drive on - there!'
And in my impatience I hit the coachman in the neck with my fist.
'What's with you? Why're you punching?' the little peasant cried, lashing the nag, however, so that she started kicking with her hind legs.
Wet snow was falling in thick flakes; I uncovered myself, I didn't care about it. I forgot everything else, because I had finally resolved on the slap and felt with horror that it would happen without fail now, presently, and that no power could stop it. Desolate street-lamps flashed sullenly in the snowy haze, like torches at a funeral. Snow got under my overcoat, my jacket, my necktie, and melted there; I didn't cover myself; all was lost in any case! We drove up at last. I jumped out, almost unconscious, ran up the steps, and began knocking at the door with my hands and feet. My legs especially were growing weak, at the knees. The door was opened somehow quickly; as if they knew I was coming. (Indeed, Simonov had forewarned them that there might be one more, and they had to be forewarned there and generally to take precautions. This was one of those 'fashion shops' of the time, which have long since been done away with by the police. During the day it was actually a shop; and in the evening those who had references could come and visit.) I walked with quick steps through the dark store into the familiar drawing room, where only one candle was burning, and stopped in perplexity: no one was there.
'Where are they?' I asked someone.
But, of course, they had already had time to disperse…
In front of me stood a person with a stupid smile, the hostess herself, who knew me slightly. A moment later the door opened, and another person came in.
Paying no attention to anything, I was pacing the room and, I think, talking to myself. It was as if I had been saved from death, and I joyfully sensed it with my whole being: for I would have slapped him, I would certainly, certainly have slapped him! But now they're not here and… everything's vanished, everything's changed!… I kept looking over my shoulder. I still could not grasp it. Mechanically, I glanced at the girl who had come in: before me flashed a fresh, young, somewhat pale face, with straight dark eyebrows and serious, as if somewhat astonished, eyes. I liked it at once; I would have hated her if she'd been smiling. I began to study her more attentively and as if with effort: my thoughts were not all collected yet. There was something simple-hearted and kind in that face, yet somehow serious to the point of strangeness. I was certain that it was a disadvantage to her there, and that none of those fools had noticed her. However, she could not have been called a beauty, though she was tall, strong, well built. She was dressed extremely simply. Something nasty stung me; I went straight up to her…
By chance I looked in a mirror. My agitated face seemed to me repulsive in the extreme: pale, wicked, mean, with disheveled hair. 'Let it be; I'm glad of it,' I thought, 'I'm precisely glad that I'll seem repulsive to her; I like it…'
VI
…Somewhere behind a partition, as if under some strong pressure, as if someone were strangling it, a clock wheezed.
After an unnaturally prolonged wheeze, there followed a thin, vile, and somehow unexpectedly rapid chiming - as if someone had suddenly jumped forward. It struck two. I came to my senses, though I had not been asleep, but only lying there half-oblivious.
The room - narrow, small, and low, encumbered by a huge wardrobe, and littered with cartons, rags, and all sorts of castoff clothing - was almost totally dark. The candle-butt burning on the table at the other end of the room was about to go out, barely flickering every now and then. In a few moments it would be quite dark.
It did not take me long to recover myself; everything came back to me at once, without effort, instantly, as if it had just been lying in wait to pounce on me again. And even in my oblivion there had still constantly remained some point, as it were, in my memory that simply refused to be forgotten, around which my drowsy reveries turned heavily. Yet it was strange: everything that had happened to me that day seemed to me now, on awakening, to have happened long, long ago, as if I had long, long ago outlived it all.
There were fumes in my head. Something was as if hovering over me, brushing against me, agitating and troubling me. Anguish and bile were again boiling up in me and seeking a way out. Suddenly I saw two open eyes beside me, peering at me curiously and obstinately. Their expression was coldly indifferent, sullen, as if utterly alien; it gave one a heavy feeling.
A sullen thought was born in my brain and passed through my whole body like some vile sensation, similar to what one feels on entering an underground cellar, damp and musty. It was somehow unnatural that these two eyes had only decided precisely now to begin peering at me. It also occurred to me that in the course of two hours I had not exchanged a single word with this being and had not considered it at all necessary; I had even liked it for some reason. But now, all of a sudden, there appeared before me the absurd, loathsomely spiderish notion of debauchery, which, without love, crudely and shamelessly begins straight off with that which is the crown of true love. We looked at each other like that for a long time, but she did not lower her eyes before mine, nor did she change their expression, and in the end, for some reason, this made me feel eerie.
'What's your name?' I asked curtly, so as to put a quick end to it.
'Liza,' she replied, almost in a whisper, but somehow quite unpleasantly, and looked away.
I paused.
'The weather today… the snow… nasty!' I said, almost to myself, wearily putting my hand behind my head and looking at the ceiling.
She did not reply. The whole thing was hideous.
'Do you come from around here?' I asked after a minute, almost exasperated, turning my head slightly towards her.
