I

A watch lying on the writing-table was hurriedly, and with wearying repetition, singing two notes. It was difficult even for a quick ear to distinguish between the two sounds, but to the owner of the watch, the wretched man sitting near this table, the ticking of the watch seemed a whole song.

“It is a joyless and disconsolate song,” said he to himself. “It is the song of time itself, and it is being sung apparently for my benefit. It is for my edification that it is singing with such surprising monotony. Three, four, ten years ago the watch ticked as now, and in ten years’ time will be ticking in just the same manner⁠ ⁠… exactly as now.”

He threw a troubled glance at the watch, but immediately turned his eyes back to where he had been vacantly gazing.

“To the time of its ticking all life with its seeming variety is passing⁠—its sorrows, joys, heartbreakings, and triumphs, hate and love. And only now, at night, when all and everything in this huge town and this huge house is asleep, and when there are no sounds other than the beating of my heart and the ticking of the watch⁠—only now I perceive that all these sorrows, joys, and triumphs which go to make up life⁠—all are unrealities, for some of which I have striven, and from others have fled without, in either case, knowing why. I did not know then that life holds only one reality⁠—time. Time marching forward, passionless, pitiless, not halting where hapless man, living by minutes, would fain dwell, and not increasing its pace by one iota, even when reality is so grievous that it is desirable to make it a past dream; time⁠—conscious only of one refrain⁠—that which I hear now with such painful clearness.”

Thus thought this miserable man whilst the watch ticked on, maliciously repeating the eternal song of time, a song fraught with many memories for him.

“Truly it is strange! I know that a certain scent, subject of conversation, or striking refrain will recall to memory a whole picture of the long, long past. I remember I was with a dying man, when an Italian organ-grinder stopped before the open window, and at the very moment the sick man was uttering his last disjointed words, and with bowed head was breathing in hoarse agony, there rang out an air from Martha, and ever since, when I chance to hear this air⁠—and I sometimes hear it: trivialities die hard⁠—there immediately rises before my eyes a rumpled pillow, and on it a pale face. Whenever I see a funeral, the air which the little organ played immediately rings in my ears. Horrible!⁠ ⁠… But all this is apropos of what? I began to think. Ah! I know⁠—why should a watch, the sound of which, it would seem, should have long ago become familiar, remind me of so much?⁠—all my life!

“ ‘Do you remember, remember, remember?’ I remember! Too well! I even remember what it would be better not to remember. From these memories my face becomes distorted, my fist clenches and strikes the table a furious blow.⁠ ⁠… Ah, now! that blow deadened the song of the watch, and for a moment I do not hear it; but only for one moment, after which it again resounds insolently, evilly, and persistently.

“ ‘Do you remember, remember, remember?’⁠ ⁠… Oh yes, I remember! There is no need for me to recall it. All my life! It is all in front of me. Is there anything in it of which to be proud?”

He shouted this aloud in a hoarse, choking voice. He imagined he saw before him all his life. He recalled a series of ugly and sombre pictures in which he was the principal figure. He recalled all that was worst in his life, turned it all over in his mind, but failed to find one clean or bright spot in it, and was convinced that none remained. “Not only none remained, but had never existed,” he added in self-correction.

A weak, timid voice from some remote corner of his soul murmured: “Enough; did it really never exist?”

He did not hear this voice⁠—or, at least, made pretence that he had not heard it, and continued to pull himself to pieces.

“I have thoroughly overhauled my memory, and it seems to me that I am right⁠—there is nothing to stand on, no footing whence to make the first step forward. Forward!⁠—whither? I do not know, only out of this vicious circle.

“There is no support in the past, because all is false, all is deception. I have lied, and deceived, and deluded even myself. Just as a swindler borrows money right and left, deceiving people with fictitious stories of his wealth⁠—of wealth he has never received, but nevertheless declares to exist⁠—so I all my life have lied to myself. Now the day of reckoning has arrived, and I am bankrupt⁠—a fraudulent bankrupt.”

He dwelt on these words with a perverted sense of enjoyment. He appeared to be almost proud of them. He did not perceive that in designating his whole life a fraud, and in besmearing himself, he was telling lies at that very moment⁠—the worst possible description of lie⁠—a self-lie, because he did not in reality place anything like so low an estimate on himself. Had anyone charged him with even a tenth part of what he had accused himself of during that long evening, his face would have flushed, but not with the flush of shame and recognition of the truth of such reproaches, but with the flush of anger. He would have known how to answer the offender who had touched the pride which he was himself now apparently trampling on so pitilessly.

Was he himself?

He had arrived at such a state that he could not even say of himself, “I am myself.” In his soul voices were speaking. They were speaking differently, and which of these voices was his own, his “ego,” he himself could not tell. The first voice, full and clear, flayed him with well-defined, even eloquent, phrases. The second voice, vague but quarrelsome and persistent, sometimes drowned the first: “Why condemn yourself?” it said. “Better deceive yourself to the end; deceive all. Make yourself out to others what you are not, and all will be well.” There was yet a third voice⁠—that voice which had said: “Enough; did it really never exist?” But this voice spoke timidly, and was scarcely audible. Moreover, he did not attempt to hear it.

“Deceive all.⁠ ⁠… Make yourself out what you are not.⁠ ⁠…”

“But, surely, have I not endeavoured to do this all my life? Have I not deceived others? Have I not played this farcical role? And has it really turned out well? It has resulted in my failure as an actor. Even now I am not what I am in reality. But do I really know what I actually am? I am too much confused to know. But never mind, I have felt for some hours that I have broken down, and am uttering words which I do not myself believe, even now, when on the threshold of death.”

“Surely I am not really face to face with death?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” he shouted, viciously driving each word home with his fist against the table. “It is necessary once and for all to get out of this tangle. The knot is tied. It cannot be unloosed; it must be cut. Only why prolong matters and lacerate my soul already torn to tatters? Why, when once I have decided, do I sit like a statue from eight o’clock in the evening until now?”

And he hastily commenced to pull a revolver from out of a side-pocket of his shuba.

II

He had, indeed, sat in one place from eight in the evening until 3 a.m.

At seven o’clock of this last evening of his life he had left his flat, hired an izvoschik, and had driven, sitting huddled up in the sleigh, to the far end of the town, where an old friend of his lived, a doctor, who that evening, as he knew, was going with his wife to the theatre. He knew that he would not find his friends at home, and was not going for the sake of seeing them. He would be sure to gain admittance as an intimate friend, and that was all that was necessary.

“Yes, they are sure to let me in. I will say that I must write a note. If only Dunyasha won’t think of standing by me in the room.⁠ ⁠… Hey, old man, get along faster!” he called out to the izvoschik.

The izvoschik⁠—a little old man, his back bent with age, with a very thin neck enveloped in a coloured muffler, which stuck out above the wide collar of his coat, and with yellowish-tinged grey curls breaking out from under an enormous round cap, clicked his tongue⁠—gave the reins a tug, again gave a click, and hurriedly murmured in a wheezy voice:

“We will get there. Your Excellency, never fear. Now, now!⁠ ⁠… Get on, you spoiled⁠ ⁠… Eh, but what a horse, may the Lord pardon!⁠ ⁠… Now, now!” He struck the horse with his whip, but the only response was a slight swish of its tail. “And I should be glad to please Your Excellency, but the master has given me such a horse⁠—simply it is⁠ ⁠… The gentlemen are insulted, but what is to be done? And the master says, ‘Thou,’ he says, ‘Grandad, art an old man, and so here is an old beast for thee; you will be a pair,’ he says, and the young ones laugh. Glad to laugh. What is it to them? They can scarcely understand. They do not understand.”

“What do they not understand?” inquired the passenger, occupied at this moment in thinking how not to let Dunyasha into the room.

“They do not understand. Your Excellency. They do not understand. How can they? They are silly⁠—young. I am the only old man in the yard. Is it permissible to insult an old man? I have been eighty years in this world, and they are just showing their teeth. Twenty-three years I served as a soldier.⁠ ⁠… It is well known that they are stupid.⁠ ⁠… Well, you old rubbish, have you frozen stiff?”

And he again hit the horse a whack with his whip, but as it paid not the slightest attention to the blow, he added: “What’s to be done with it? Also, I expect, twenty-one years old. Get on, you⁠ ⁠… Look, how it swishes its tail!”

On the illuminated face of a clock in one of the windows of a large building the hands pointed to half-past seven.

“They must have already started,” thought the passenger of the doctor and his wife. “But perhaps not yet.⁠ ⁠… Grandad, don’t hurry, please. Go slower. I am not in a hurry.”

“That’s known, sir,” said the old man, pleased. “All the better slower. Now then, you old⁠ ⁠…”

They went along for a little time in silence, then the old man grew bold.

“Tell me, Your Excellency,” he said, suddenly turning round towards his passenger, revealing a wrinkled face with red eyelids, and framed in a straggly grey beard, “why does this kind of thing happen to a man? There was an izvoschik amongst us called Ivan, a young fellow, twenty-five or perhaps less years old. And who knows why, from what reason, he laid hands on himself.”

“Who?” quietly inquired the passenger in a hoarse voice.

“Why, Ivan Sidoroff. He lived amongst us izvoschiks. He was a bright young fellow and hardworking. Well, on Monday we had supper and laid down to sleep. But Ivan laid down without having any supper. His head, he said was breaking. We slept, but in the night he got up and went out. Only no one saw this. We went out in the morning to harness up, and there he was in the stable on a peg. He had taken the harness from off a peg, placed it alongside, and fastened a cord.⁠ ⁠… Ah me! It was heartbreaking. And what was the reason this izvoschik hanged himself? How could it have happened? Wonderful!”

“Why?” asked the passenger, coughing, and with trembling hands wrapping himself up more closely in his shuba.

“There are no such thoughts with an izvoschik. Work is hard and difficult. In the early morning, when there is no light before dawn, harness up and away from the yard. Frost and cold. Only the traktir in which to get warm. Money to be earned so as to pay the two roubles and a half for hire of the horse, and money for the lodging to be found, and⁠—sleep. It is difficult to think much then. But with you, sir, you know that everything crowds into the head with ‘light’ food.”

“With what kind of food?”

“With bread lightly earned. Therefore the Barin will get up, put on his dressing-grown, drink his tea, and wander about his room with wicked thoughts around him. I have seen it. I know. In our regiment at T⁠⸺, in the Caucasus, when I was serving, there was a young subaltern, Prince V⁠⸺. They made me his servant⁠ ⁠…”

“Stop, stop!⁠ ⁠…” suddenly called out the passenger. “Here, by the lamp. I will walk from here.”

“As the Barin wishes. Walk if he wishes to walk. Thank you, Your Excellency.”

The izvoschik turned and disappeared in the miatel which had arisen, and the passenger went on with dragging steps. In ten minutes’ time he reached the house, and having arrived at the third story by way of the front staircase, he rang at a door covered with green baize, and ornamented with a highly polished brass nameplate. As he waited for the door to be opened, the few minutes seemed to drag as if they would never come to an end. A dull oblivion seized him; everything disappeared; the tormenting past, the chatter of the half-drunken izvoschik, so strangely apposite that it compelled him to walk, and even the intention which had brought him here⁠—all had disappeared. Before his eyes was only a green-baize door edged with black tape studded with brass-headed nails. Naught else in the whole world.

“Ah, Alexei Petrovich!”

It was Dunyasha who, candle in hand, opened the door.

“And the Barin and Barinia have just gone out. Only this minute gone down the stairs. How is it you did not meet them?”

“Gone? Oh, what a pity!” He lied in such a strange voice that Dunyasha’s face betrayed some bewilderment as she looked him straight in the eyes. “And I wanted to see them. Look here, Dunyasha; I am going into the Barin’s study for a minute.⁠ ⁠… May I?” he asked, even timidly. “I won’t be a minute. Only just a note⁠ ⁠… it is a matter⁠ ⁠…”

He looked at her with an inquiring glance, not removing his shuba or galoshes, or moving from where he stood.

Dunyasha became confused.

“But what is the matter with you, Alexei Petrovich? Have I ever⁠ ⁠… it is not the first time,” she said in an aggrieved tone. “Please come in.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact, why all this? Why am I talking like this? However, she will come in after me. I must send her away. Where can I send her? She will guess, of course. She has even guessed already.”

Dunyasha had guessed nothing, but was only extremely surprised at the strange appearance and behaviour of the visitor. She had been left alone in the flat and was glad, if only for five minutes, to be with a living being. Having placed the candle on a table, she stood by the door.

“Go away, go away, for goodness’ sake!” Alexei Petrovich kept saying inwardly. He sat down at the table, took a sheet of paper, and began to think of what he should write, feeling Dunyasha’s glance on him, which, it seemed to him, was reading his thoughts.

“Peter Nicolaivich,” he wrote, stopping at each word, “I came to see you about a very important matter which⁠ ⁠…”

“… Which, which,” he muttered, “and she keeps standing and standing there.⁠ ⁠… Dunyasha, go and get me a glass of water,” he suddenly said in a loud voice.

“Certainly, Alexei Petrovich.” And she turned and went.

Then the visitor got up, and on tiptoe hurriedly went to the sofa, above which hung the revolver and sword the Doctor had used in the Russo-Turkish campaign, deftly unfastened the flap of the holster, pulled out the revolver, and slipped it into the side-pocket of his shuba; then he took some cartridges out of the pouch fastened on to the holster, and slipped them also into his pocket. Within three minutes Alexei Petrovich had drunk the glass of water which Dunyasha brought him, had sealed up the unwritten letter, and had started home. “It must be finished, it must be finished,” kept ringing in his brain. But he did not finish it immediately following his arrival home. Going into his room and locking the door, he threw himself, without taking off his shuba, into an armchair, and, lost in thought, gazed vacantly, first at a photograph, then at a book, or at the pattern of the wallpaper, and listened to the ticking of his watch, which he had forgotten, and was lying on the table. He sat thus, without moving so much as a muscle, until far into the night, until that moment when we found him.

III

The revolver refused to come out of the narrow pocket; then, when it lay on the table, he discovered that all the cartridges except one had fallen through a small hole in the pocket into the lining of the shuba. Alexei Petrovich took off his shuba, and was about to take a knife to rip up the lining of the pocket and get out the cartridges, when he stopped, and a wry smile hovered at one corner of his parched lips.

“Why bother? One is enough. Oh yes, one of these little things is quite sufficient to make everything disappear once and for all. The whole world will disappear; there will be no regrets, no wounded self-esteem, no self-reproaches, no hateful people pretending to be kind and simple⁠—people whom one sees through and despises, but before whom, nevertheless, one also dissembles, pretending to like them, and to be well-disposed towards them. There will be no deceit of self and others; there will be truth, the eternal truth of nonexistence.”

He heard his voice. He was no longer thinking but speaking aloud, and what he said was hateful to him.

“Again.⁠ ⁠… You are dying, killing yourself⁠—and even cannot do that without apostrophizing. For whom, and before whom, are you posing?⁠ ⁠… Before yourself! Ah, enough, enough, enough,” he repeated in a tormented, despairing voice, and with trembling hands he tried to open the refractory breech of the revolver. At length the breech submitted and opened; the cartridge, smeared with fat, slipped into the chamber of the drum, and the hammer cocked apparently of its own accord. There was nothing to interfere with death! The revolver was a regulation officer’s revolver; the door was locked, and no one could enter.

“Now then, Alexei Petrovich!” he said, firmly grasping the handle.

“But the letter?” suddenly flashed into his brain.

“Can I die without leaving behind me one line?”

“Why? For whom? All will disappear, there will be nothing. What concern is it of mine?”

“That may be, but all the same I shall write. May I not for once at least express myself absolutely freely, not embarrassed by anything? or, what is most important, by myself? This surely is a rare, very rare, the sole chance.”

He laid down the revolver, took some writing-paper out of a box, and having tried several pens which would not write, but broke and spoilt the paper, he at length began, but not before he had spoilt several sheets: “Petersburg. 28 November, 187‒.” Afterwards his hand ran of its own accord along the paper, reeling off sentence after sentence, barely intelligible to himse.

He wrote that he was dying calmly because regrets were useless. Life was one vast lie. People whom he loved⁠—that is, if he had ever really loved anybody, and had not pretended to himself that he loved⁠—were not able to make him live, because he had drawn all there was to be drawn out of them⁠—no, no, not that⁠—because there was nothing to draw out of them, but simply because they had lost all interest for him once he understood them. He wrote that he understood himself, and understood that in himself there was nothing but falsehood; that if he had done anything in his life, it was not from a wish to do good, but from vanity; that if he had done nothing wrong or dishonourable, it was not due to absence of evil qualities, but from cowardly fright of people. He wrote that, nevertheless, he did not think himself worse than those persons remaining to lie until the end of their days, and did not beg their pardon, but was dying with a contempt for people not less than his contempt for himself. A malicious, senseless phrase slipped in at the end of the letter: “Farewell, people! Farewell, you bloodthirsty grimacing apes!”

It only remained to sign the letter. But when he had finished writing he felt hot; the blood had surged to his head, and was beating against his perspiring temples. And forgetting about the revolver and the fact that by ridding himself of life he could avoid the heat, he got up, went to the window, and opened the fortochka.7 A steaming current of frosty air blew in on him. It had stopped snowing, and the sky was clear. On the opposite side of the street a dazzling white garden, wrapped in icicles, glistened in the moonlight. A few stars were gazing from out of a distant heaven, one of which was brighter than the remainder, and shone with a reddish tint.

“Arcturus,” whispered Alexei Petrovich. “What years since I have seen Arcturus. Not since I was at school!”

He was unwilling to take his eyes off the star. Somebody shivering in a light overcoat, and stamping with his half-frozen feet on the pavement, passed hurriedly along the street. Then a carriage, the wheels of which rang on the frozen snow, and then an izvoschik went past, driving a fat man⁠—and still Alexei Petrovich stood there as if carved.

“It must be done!” he said at last.

He went to the table. It was only a few paces from the window to the table, but it seemed to him as if he had been walking ages. He had already taken up the revolver, when through the opened window there came the distant but clear, vibrating sound of a bell.

“A bell!” exclaimed Alexei Petrovich, astonished, and replacing the revolver once more on the table, he threw himself into the armchair.

IV

“A bell!” he repeated. Why a bell?⁠ ⁠… Was it a service? Prayers⁠ ⁠… church⁠ ⁠… suffocating heat. Wax candles. The decrepit priest, Father Michael, performing the service in a plaintive, cracked voice, and the deacon with his bass. A longing to sleep. Dawn just breaking through the window. His father standing next him with bowed head, making hurried little crosses. Behind them, in the crowd of muzhiks and babas, constant prostrations.⁠ ⁠… How long ago it all was!⁠ ⁠… So long ago that it was hard to believe it had ever happened, that he had himself once seen it, and had not read of it somewhere, or heard of it from somebody. No, no, it all happened, and it was better then. Yes, not only better but well. If only it was like that now, there would be no need to leave by aid of a revolver.

“Finish it!” something whispered to him. He glanced at the revolver, and stretched out his hand towards it, but immediately drew it back.

“Afraid?” it whispered again.

“No, not afraid. There is nothing frightening in it. But the bell! Why the bell?”

He glanced at the watch.

“It must be early morning service. People will go to church. Many of them will feel easier for it. So they say, at all events. Besides, I remember I used to feel better for it. I was a boy then. Afterwards this passed off, perished, and I no longer felt easier for it. That’s the truth⁠ ⁠… truth! The truth has been found at last at this moment!”

And the moment seemed inevitable. He slowly turned his head and again looked at the revolver. It was a big Government regulation pattern revolver, a Smith and Wesson. It had been “browned” once, but had now become lighter in colour, owing to its long rest in the doctor’s holsters. It lay on the table with the butt towards Alexei Petrovich, who could see the worn wood of the handle with its ring for the cord, a part of the drum, with the cocked trigger and the muzzle of the barrel, which looked towards the wall. “There lies death! It must be seized.” It was quiet in the street; no one was either driving or walking past. And from out of this stillness there again sounded the distant stroke of a bell. The waves of sound floated through the open window, and reached Alexei Petrovich. They spoke to him in a foreign tongue, but spoke something great, important, and solemn, stroke after stroke, and when the bell resounded for the last time, and the sound tremblingly died away into space, Alexei Petrovich experienced a real loss. The bell had delivered its message. It had recalled to a perplexed man that there is something besides his own narrow little world which had tormented him, and brought him to suicide. Recollections, fragmentary, disjointed, and all as if something entirely new for him, came flooding on him in an irresistible wave. This night he had already pondered over many things, had recalled much, and imagined that he had recalled all his life, that he had clearly seen himself. Now he felt that there was another side in him, that side of which the timid voice of his soul had spoken.

V

Do you remember yourself as a little child when you lived with your father in a faraway forgotten village? He was an unhappy man, your father, but he loved you more than all else in the world. Do you remember how you would sit together in the long winter evenings, he busy with accounts, you with your books, the tallow-dipped candle with its reddish flame burning more and more dimly, until, arming yourself with snuffers, you trimmed it? That was your duty, and you performed it with such importance that your father each time would raise his eyes from the big ledger, and with customary pathetic and caressing smile, look at you. Your eyes would meet.

“Look, papa, how much I have already read,” you would say, and show the pages you had read, holding them together with your fingers.

“Read, read, my little friend,” your father would say approvingly, and again bury himself in accounts.

He allowed you to read anything, because only good could remain in the mind of his adored little boy. And you read and read, understanding nothing of the arguments, but, nevertheless, taking it all in accordance with childish ideas.

Yes, red was red then, and not the reflection of red rays. Then everything was as it appeared. Then there were not ready-made receptacles for impressions, for ideas into which a man poured forth all that he felt, not troubling whether the receptacle was a fit one or sound. And if he loved someone, he knew without a doubt that he loved.

A pretty, laughing face rose before his eyes and vanished.

And she? You also loved her? I must acknowledge that, at all events, we played sufficiently with feeling. And it would seem that at least I spoke and thought sincerely at that time.⁠ ⁠… What torture it was! And when happiness came it did not seem at all like happiness, and if I had been able then actually to say to time. Stop! wait a little! here it is good⁠—I should have still thought⁠—Shall I order it to stop or not? And afterwards, very soon afterwards, it became necessary to drive time ahead.⁠ ⁠… But it is no use to think of that now. I must think of what was and not of what it appeared to be.

And there was very little to think of, only childhood.

And of that there remained in his memory only disjointed fragments which Alexei Petrovich began to collect with avidity.

He recalled the little house, the bedroom in which he slept opposite his father. He remembered the red canopy hanging above his father’s bed. Every evening, as he fell asleep, he gazed at these curtains, and always found fresh figures in its fantastic patterns⁠—flowers, birds, and faces of people. He remembered the early morning smell of the straw with which they warmed the house. The faithful Nicholas, the good man had already filled the passage with straw, which he had dragged in from outside, and was pushing whole bundles of it into the mouth of the stove. It used to burn brightly and clearly, and the smoke had a pleasing, but somewhat acrid smell. Alesha was ready to sit whole hours before the stove, but his father would call him to come and drink his morning tea, after which lessons would begin. He remembered how he could not understand decimals, and that his father would get rather hot, and try his utmost to explain them to him.

“I fancy he was not altogether clear about them himself,” reflected Alexei Petrovich.

Then afterwards Biblical history. Alesha loved that more than all the other lessons. Wonderful, gigantic, and extravagant characters. Cain, the history of Joseph, the Pharaohs, the wars. How the ravens carried food to the prophet Elijah. And there was a picture of it. Elijah sitting on a stone with a large book on his knees, and two birds flying to him holding something round in their beaks.

“Papa, look, the ravens took bread to Elijah, but our Worka takes everything from us.”

A tame raven with red beak and claws dyed with red paint, so Nicholas imagined, would jump sideways along the back of the sofa, and, stretching out his neck, try to drag a shiny bronze frame from the wall. In this frame there was a miniature water-coloured portrait of a young man with a very smooth forehead, dressed in a dark green uniform with epaulets, and a very high red collar, and a cross attached to a buttonhole. This was the same papa twenty-five years ago.

The raven and portrait flashed up and disappeared.

“And afterwards what? Afterwards a star, a shed, manger. I remember that this word manger was quite a new one to me, although I had known of the manger in our stables and cow-house. But those stalls seemed something special.”

They did not study the New Testament like the Old, not from a thick book with pictures. His father used to tell Alesha of Jesus Christ, and often read out to him whole chapters from the Gospels.

“ ‘But whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ Do you understand, Alesha?” And the father began a long explanation to which Alesha did not listen, but suddenly interrupted his teacher by saying: “Papa, do you remember when Uncle Dmitri Ivanovich arrived? That’s exactly what happened. He struck Thomas in the face, and Thomas stood still, and then Uncle Dmitri Ivanovich struck him from the other side, and still Thomas did not move. I was sorry for him, and cried.”

“Yes, then I cried,” murmured Alexei Petrovich, rising from the armchair and commencing to pace the room. “Then I cried.”

He became dreadfully sorry for these tears of a sixteen-year-old boy, sorry for that time when he could cry because a defenceless human being was struck in his presence.

VI

The frosty air was all this time entering the window. A cloud of steam was literally pouring into the already cold room. The big squat lamp, with its opaque shade, standing on the writing-table, burned brightly, but only lighted the surface of the table, and a portion of the ceiling on which it formed a trembling round spot of light. The rest of the room was in semidarkness, through which could be discerned a bookcase, a large sofa, some other furniture, and a looking-glass on the wall, which reflected the lighted-up writing-table and the tall figure each time he strode past it in his restless movement from corner to corner of the room, eight paces there and eight paces back. Sometimes Alexei Petrovich stopped at the window. The cold current bathed his burning head, and his bared neck and chest. He shivered, but was not refreshed. He continued to recall those days in a series of fragmentary and disjointed reminiscences. He recalled numberless little trivial details, becoming confused in them, and unable to distinguish precisely what was important in them. He knew only one thing⁠—i.e., that up to twelve years of age, when his father sent him to school, he had lived an entirely different inner life, and he remembered that then it was better.

“What is drawing thee to that half-conscious life? What was there good in those childish years? A solitary child and a solitary grownup man⁠—a ‘crushed’ man, as you yourself called him after his death. You were right, he was a ‘crushed’ man. Life had quickly and easily destroyed all the good in him, all the good which he had collected in his youth, but at least it had not introduced anything bad. And he lived his time, helpless, with a helpless love which he devoted almost entirely to you.”

Alexei Petrovich thought of his father, and for the first time after many years felt that he loved him, in spite of all his smallness. He wished now, if only for one minute, to take himself back to his childhood, to the village, to the little house, and to caress this “crushed” man, caress him in regular childish fashion. He longed for that clean and simple love which only children know, and possibly the very clean, unspoiled natures of a few older people.

“And is it really impossible to return to this happiness? To this ability to recognize that what one says and thinks is true? How many years it is since I experienced it! One speaks warmly and apparently sincerely, but in one’s soul there is all the time sitting a cankerworm, devouring it, and sucking it dry, and saying: ‘My friend, are you not lying? Do you in reality think what you are now speaking?’ ”

Yet one more apparently senseless phrase took shape in the head of Alexei Petrovich. “Do you really think what you are thinking?” It was a senseless phrase, but he understood it.

Yes, then he really thought what he thought. He had loved his father, who knew that he loved him. “Oh, if there were but one genuine real feeling within me. Yet there exists such a world. The bell reminded me of it. When it sounded I remembered the church, the crowd, the enormous mass of humanity, the real life. That is where one must go⁠—out of oneself⁠—and that is where one must love, and love as children love. As children⁠ ⁠… just as it is said there.⁠ ⁠…”

He went to the table, drew out one of the drawers, and commenced to rummage in it. A little dark green book, bought by him once at some exhibition as a cheap curio, lay in a corner. He seized it joyously, quickly turning over the leaves with their two narrow columns of small print. Familiar words and sentences rose to mind. He began to read from the first page, and read it all without a pause, having forgotten even about the sentence in search of which he had got out the book. This sentence, which had so long been familiar and so long forgotten, astonished him, when he came upon it with the weight of the substance expressed in its words: “Except ye become as little children⁠ ⁠…”

It seemed to him that he understood all.

“Do I know what these words mean ‘Become as a little child?’ It means not to place oneself first in everything, to tear from one’s heart this horrid little deformed god with its protuberant paunch, this repulsive ‘ego’ which, like some cankerworm, sucks dry the soul, and ceaselessly demands of it fresh food. But out of where shall I tear it? Thou hast already devoured all. All my time, all my forces, have been devoted to thy service. I have nourished thee, have revered thee. Although I hated thee I still worshipped thee, bringing to thee in sacrifice, and giving to thee all the good which I possessed, and for this I have bowed and bowed⁠ ⁠…”

He repeated this word as he continued to pace the room. But his gait was now unsteady. He staggered as if drunk, with his head lowered on his chest, which was heaving with sobs, not stopping to wipe his tear-moistened face. At last his legs refused to serve him any longer, and he sat down, pressing himself into a corner of the sofa. Supporting himself on his elbows, he dropped his fevered head into his hands and wept like a child. This loss of strength lasted for some time, but he was no longer in torture. The storm was abating, the tears were flowing, giving him relief, and he felt no shame in them. No matter who had entered the room at that moment, he would not have tried to restrain these tears which were carrying away hate with them. He felt now that all had not yet been swallowed up by the idol to which he had bowed for so many years. That there still remained love and even self-denial. That it was worth while living if only to pour forth this remnant; where, and on what, he did not know. At that moment it was not necessary to know where to take his guilty head. He recalled the grief and suffering which it had been his lot to witness in life⁠—genuine living grief before which all his torments in solitude had no significance; and he understood that he ought to go to this grief, to take his share of it upon himself, and only then would there be peace in his soul.

“It is terrible! I can no longer live on engrossed in my own fears and in myself. It is necessary, absolutely necessary, to bind myself with life in general, to suffer or to rejoice, to hate or to love, not for my own sake, not for my ‘ego,’ devouring all and giving nothing in return, but for the sake of truth, common to all, which is in the world, notwithstanding anything I may have said, which speaks in the soul in spite of all attempts to stifle it. Yes, yes,” repeated Alexei Petrovich in awful excitement, “all this is written in the little green book, is said for ever and aye, and is truly said. It is necessary to ‘reject’ oneself, to kill one’s ‘ego,’ to make for the road⁠ ⁠…”

“What use is it to you, madman?” whispered a voice. But another, once timid and unheeded voice, thundered in reply: “Silence! What benefit will it be to him if he tortures himself?”

Alexei Petrovich jumped to his feet and straightened himself to his full height. This argument rendered him enthusiastic. He had never yet experienced such enthusiasm from any life-success or from woman’s love. This enthusiasm was born of his heart, burst from it, pouring out in a hot, wide wave, and flowed through all his limbs. In an instant his numbed, unhappy being flamed to life. Thousands of bells sounded in majestic triumph. A blinding sun flashed out, illumined the whole world, and disappeared.⁠ ⁠…

The lamp, which had burned throughout the long night, became dimmer and dimmer, and finally went out altogether. But it was no longer dark in the room. Day had broken. Its calm grey light little by little found its way into the room, faintly showing up the loaded weapon and the letter with its senseless ravings lying on the table, and revealing a peaceful, happy expression on the pallid face of a corpse stretched on the floor in the middle of the room.