perfect understanding of how stupid it was to be in such a frenzy.
'You don't know, Liza, what this hangman is for me. He's my hangman… He's just gone to get some rusks; he…'
And I suddenly broke down in tears. It was a fit. Oh, how ashamed I was between sobs; but I could no longer hold them back.
She was frightened. 'What is it! What's the matter!' she kept crying out, bustling around me.
'Water, give me water, over there!' I murmured in a weak voice, conscious, however, within myself, that I was quite well able to do without water and not to murmur in a weak voice. But I was putting on a show, as they say, to preserve decency, though the fit was a real one.
She gave me water, looking at me as if lost. At that moment Apollon brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this ordinary and prosaic tea was terribly indecent and measly after all that had happened, and I blushed. Liza looked at Apollon even fearfully. He went out without glancing at us.
'Liza, do you despise me?' I said, looking at her point-blank, trembling with impatience to find out what she thought.
She became embarrassed, and was unable to reply.
'Drink your tea!' I said spitefully. I was angry with myself, but, naturally, she was going to bear the brunt of it. A terrible spite against her suddenly boiled up in my heart; I think I could simply have killed her. To be revenged on her, I swore mentally not to speak even one word to her from then on. 'It's she who caused it all,' I thought.
Our silence had already lasted some five minutes. The tea sat on the table; we didn't touch it: it went so far that I purposely refused to begin drinking, so as to make it still harder for her; and it would have been awkward for her to begin. Several times she glanced at me in sad perplexity. I was stubbornly silent. The chief martyr, of course, was myself, because I was fully conscious of all the loathsome baseness of my spiteful stupidity, and at the same time I simply could not restrain myself.
'I want… to get out of there… for good,' she tried to begin, in order to break the silence somehow, but, poor thing! she precisely ought not to have started with that at such a moment, stupid as it was to begin with, or to such a man, stupid as I was to begin with. Even my heart ached from pity for her ineptness and unnecessary candor. But something ugly immediately suppressed all pity in me; it even egged me on still more: perish the whole world! Another five minutes passed.
'Perhaps I've disturbed you?' she began timidly, in a barely audible voice, and started to get up.
But as soon as I saw this first flash of injured dignity I simply trembled with anger and at once burst out.
'What did you come to me for, do tell me, please?' I began, suffocating, and not even considering the logical order of my words. I wanted to speak everything out at once, in one shot; I didn't even care where I began.
'Why did you come? Answer! Answer!' I kept exclaiming, all but beside myself. 'I'll tell you why you came, my dear. You came because of the pathetic words I used with you then. So you went all soft, and you wanted more 'pathetic words.' Know, then, know that I was laughing at you that time. And I'm laughing now. Why do you tremble? Yes, laughing! I'd been insulted earlier, at dinner, by the ones who came there ahead of me. I came there to give a thrashing to one of them, the officer; but I didn't succeed, he wasn't there; I needed to unload my offense on someone, to get my own back, and you turned up, so I poured out my spite and laughed at you. I'd been humiliated, so I, too, wanted to humiliate; they'd ground me down like a rag, so I, too, wanted to show my power… That's what it was, and you thought I came then on purpose to save you, right? That's what you thought? That's what you thought?'
I knew she might perhaps get confused and not understand the details; but I also knew she'd understand the essence perfectly well. And so it happened. She turned white as a sheet, tried to utter something, her mouth twisted painfully; but, as if cut down with an axe, she sank onto the chair. And all the rest of the time she listened to me with open mouth, with wide open eyes, and trembling in terrible fear. The cynicism, the cynicism of my words crushed her…
'To save you!' I went on, jumping up from my chair and running back and forth in front of her, 'to save you from what! But maybe I'm worse than you are. Why didn't you fling it in my mug when I started reading you my oration: And you, what did you come here for? To teach us morals, or what?' Power, power, that's what I wanted then, the game was what I wanted, I wanted to achieve your tears, your humiliation, your hysterics - that's what I wanted then! But I couldn't stand it myself, because I'm trash, I got all scared and, like a fool, gave you my address, devil knows why. And afterwards, even before I got home, I was already cursing you up and down for that address. I already hated you, because I'd lied to you then. Because I only talk a good game, I only dream in my head, but do you know what I want in reality? That you all go to hell, that's what! I want peace. I'd sell the whole world for a kopeck this minute, just not to be bothered. Shall the world go to hell, or shall I not have my tea? I say let the world go to hell, but I should always have my tea. Did you know that or not? Well, and I do know that I'm a blackguard, a scoundrel, a self-lover, a lazybones. I spent these past three days trembling for fear you might come. And do you know what particularly bothered me all these three days? That I had presented myself to you as such a hero then, and now you'd suddenly see me in this torn old dressing gown, abject, vile. I just told you I was not ashamed of my poverty, know, then, that I am ashamed, I'm ashamed of it most of all, afraid of it more than anything, more than of being a thief, because I'm so vain it's as if I'd been flayed and the very air hurts me. But can you possibly not have realized even now that I will never forgive you for having found me in this wretched dressing gown, as I was hurling myself like a vicious little cur at Apollon? The resurrector, the former hero, flinging himself like a mangy, shaggy mutt at his lackey, who just laughs at him! And those tears a moment ago, which, like an ashamed woman, I couldn't hold back before you, I will never forgive you! And what I'm confessing to you now, I will also never forgive you! Yes - you, you alone must answer for all this, because you turned up here, because I'm a scoundrel, because I'm the most vile, the most ridiculous, the most petty, the most stupid, the most envious of all worms on earth, who are in no way better than I, but who, devil knows why, are never embarrassed; while I will just go on being flicked all my life by every nit - that's my trait! Besides, what do I care if you won't understand a word of it! And what, tell me, what, what do I care about you and whether you're perishing there or not? Do you understand, now that I've spoken it all out to you, how I'm going to hate you for being here and listening? Because a man speaks out like this only once in his life, and then only in hysterics!… What more do you want? Why, after all this, do you still stick there in front of me, tormenting me, refusing to leave?'
But here a strange circumstance suddenly occurred.
I was so used to thinking and imagining everything from books, and to picturing everything in the world to myself as I had devised it beforehand in my dreams, that at first I didn't even understand this strange circumstance. What occurred was this: Liza, whom I had insulted and crushed, understood far more than I imagined. She understood from it all what a woman, if she loves sincerely, always understands before anything else - namely, that I myself was unhappy.
The frightened and insulted feeling in her face first gave way to rueful amazement. And when I began calling
