are deserting me!’ He sat down on the couch in complete exhaustion and was immediately shaken by another unbearable fit of shivering. He reached without thinking for the winter coat lying next to him on the chair, his old student one, warm but now almost in shreds, covered himself with it, and sleep and delirium seized him once more. Oblivion came over him.
Less than five minutes later he was back on his feet and set about his clothes once more in a kind of frenzy. ‘How could I fall asleep again, when nothing’s been done? See, see: I haven’t even taken the loop off the armpit! To forget a thing like that! A clue like that!’ He ripped out the loop and set about hurriedly tearing it to pieces, then stuffing it under the pillow, in amongst the linen. ‘Torn bits of old cloth can’t arouse anyone’s suspicion; surely they can’t, surely they can’t!’ he repeated, standing in the middle of the room. In an agony of concentration, he began looking around again, on the floor and all around – anything else he might have forgotten? The conviction that everything was deserting him – even his memory, even the ability to put two and two together – was becoming an unbearable torment: ‘What, is this it already, my punishment? Yes, that’s it, that’s it!’ The frayed ends he’d cut off from his trousers really did lie strewn across the floor, in the middle of the room, for anyone to see! ‘What on earth’s the matter with me!’ he cried out once more, as if lost.
Here, a strange thought occurred to him: what if there was blood all over his clothes, what if there were lots of stains, only he couldn’t see them, didn’t notice them, because his ability to think had been shot to pieces? . . . His mind had gone dark . . . Suddenly, he remembered: there was blood on the purse as well. ‘Ha! So there must be blood in the pocket, too – the purse was still wet when I put it there!’ In a flash, he turned out the pocket and there they were – traces and stains on the lining! ‘So my wits haven’t deserted me completely yet, nor my memory, and I can still put two and two together, if I caught myself in time!’ he exulted, breathing a deep and joyful sigh. ‘This is just weakness brought on by fever, a moment’s delirium’ – and he ripped out the entire lining from his left trouser pocket. At that moment a ray of sunlight fell on his left boot: the sock poking out of it seemed to have some kind of marks on it. He kicked off the boot: ‘Yes, marks! Look, the toe’s all soaked in blood’; he must have stepped in that puddle of blood by mistake . . . ‘Now what? What do I do with this sock, the trouser ends, the pocket?’
He gathered it all up in one hand and stood in the middle of the room. ‘Bung it all in the stove? But that’s the first place they’ll look! Burn it? What with? I haven’t even got matches. No, I’m better off going out and getting rid of the whole lot somewhere. Yes! Get rid of it!’ he repeated, sitting down on the couch again. ‘And do it now, this very minute, without delay!’ But no: once again, his head sank back onto the pillow; once again an unbearable fit of shivering turned him to ice; once again he reached for his greatcoat. And for a long time, for several hours, the words kept coming back to him in waves: ‘Just go somewhere, right now, don’t put it off, get rid of it all, out of sight, the sooner the better!’ Several times he made as if to get up from the couch, but he was no longer able to. Not until there was a loud knock on the door did he wake up fully.
‘Open up if you’re still alive! Won’t he ever stop snoozing?’ shouted Nastasya, banging on the door with her fist. ‘Snoozes all day long, like a dog! A dog – that’s what he is! Open up. It’s gone ten.’
‘What if he’s out?’ came a man’s voice.
(‘Ha! The caretaker . . . What does he want?’)
He sat up with a jerk. His heart