place beneath the bench; he even covered it with a log, as before. He met no one, not a single soul, all the way back to his room; the landlady’s door was shut. Entering his room, he threw himself on the couch, just as he was. He wasn’t asleep, he was in a trance. If someone had come into his room just then, he’d have leapt to his feet at once and screamed. His mind was aswarm with shreds and scraps of thought; but try as he might, he couldn’t catch hold of any of them, nor focus on a single one . . .
PART TWO
I
He lay like that for a very long time. Occasionally, he even seemed to wake up, and at such moments he noticed that night had long since fallen, but the thought of getting up did not occur to him. Eventually, he noticed it was already as bright as day. He lay supine on the couch, still dazed after his recent trance. The rasping sounds of terrible, desperate screams from the street reached his ears, the same sounds, in fact, that he listened out for beneath his window every night between two and three. It was this that had woken him up. ‘Ah! The drunks are pouring out of the dens,’ he thought, ‘so it’s gone two,’ and he suddenly jumped to his feet, as though someone had yanked him off the couch. ‘What? Gone two already?’ He sat down on the couch – and everything came back to him! Suddenly, all at once!
For a second or two he thought he’d go mad. He felt freezing cold; but the cold came from the fever as well, which had set in while he was sleeping, some time before. Now he was suddenly struck by a fit of shivering so violent that his teeth almost leapt from his mouth and his insides were thrown this way and that. He opened the door and listened: the whole house was fast asleep. He looked at himself and everything else in the room in complete astonishment: how on earth could he have just walked in yesterday, left the door off the latch and flung himself on the couch, without even taking off his hat, never mind his clothes: the hat had slid down to the floor, not far from the pillow. ‘If someone had walked in, what would they have thought? That I was drunk, but . . .’ He rushed over to the little window. There was enough light and he hastily set about inspecting himself, all over, from top to toe, every item of clothing: any traces? But that was no way to do it: shaking uncontrollably, he started taking everything off and inspecting it all over again. He turned everything inside out, down to the last thread and scrap of cloth, and, not trusting himself, repeated the inspection another two or three times. But there didn’t seem to be anything, not a single trace; only where his trousers were frayed at the ends did thick traces of caked blood still remain. He grabbed his big folding knife and cut off the frayed ends. That seemed to be it. Suddenly he remembered that the purse and the items from the old woman’s box were still in his pockets! It hadn’t even crossed his mind to take them out and hide them! He hadn’t even remembered them now, while inspecting his clothes! Why on earth not? Quick as a flash, he began taking them out and flinging them down on the table. After emptying his pockets and even turning them inside out to check he hadn’t missed anything, he carried the whole pile over to the corner. There, right in the corner, near the floor, the peeling wallpaper was torn in one place: he immediately started stuffing everything into this hole, behind the paper: ‘Done it! Out of sight, out of mind, and the purse too!’ he thought with a sense of joy, half-rising and looking dully at the corner, at the hole bulging even more than before. Suddenly, his whole body shuddered with horror: ‘God,’ he whispered in despair, ‘what’s the matter with me? Call that hidden? Call that hiding?’
True, he hadn’t reckoned on the items. He’d only expected to find money, which was why he hadn’t prepared anywhere in advance. ‘But now what have I got to be so happy about?’ he thought. ‘Call that hiding? My wits really