silence, such a silence that, as some writer has said, it even rings in your ears. Time moves slowly, the strips of moonlight on the windowsill don’t change their position, as if frozen … Dawn is still far off
But now the gate in the fence creaks, someone steals up and, breaking a branch from one of the scrawny trees, cautiously taps on the window with it.
“Nikolai Stepanych!” I hear a whisper. “Nikolai Stepanych!”
I open the window, and think I’m dreaming: by the window, pressing herself to the wall, stands a woman in a black dress, brightly lit by the moon, gazing at me with big eyes. The moon makes her face look pale, stern, and fantastic, as if made of marble. Her chin trembles.
“It’s me …” she says. “Me … Katya!”
In the moonlight all women’s eyes look big and black, people look taller and paler, which is probably why I didn’t recognize her at first.
“What’s the matter?”
“Forgive me,” she says. “For some reason I felt unbearably sick at heart … I couldn’t stand it and came here … There was light in your window and … and I decided to knock … Excuse me … Oh, if only you knew how sick at heart I am! What are you doing now?”
“Nothing … Insomnia.”
“I had a sort of presentiment. Anyhow, it’s nonsense.”
Her eyebrows rise, her eyes glisten with tears, and her whole face lights up with that familiar, long-absent expression of trustfulness.
“Nikolai Stepanych!” she says imploringly, reaching out to me with both arms. “My dear, I beg you … I implore you … If you don’t disdain my friendship and my respect for you, agree to do what I ask you!”
“What is it?”
“Take my money from me!”
“Well, what will you think up next! Why should I need your money?”
“You’ll go somewhere for a cure … You need a cure. Will you take it? Yes? Yes, my dearest?”
She peers greedily into my face and repeats:
“You’ll take it? Yes?”
“No, my friend, I won’t…” I say. “Thank you.”
She turns her back to me and hangs her head. I probably refused her in such a tone as to prohibit any further discussion of money.
“Go home to bed,” I say. “We’ll see each other tomorrow.”
“So you don’t consider me your friend?” she asks glumly.
“I didn’t say that. But your money is of no use to me now.”
“Forgive me …” she says, lowering her voice a whole octave. “I understand you … To be indebted to a person like me … a retired actress … Anyhow, good-bye …”
And she leaves so quickly that I don’t even have time to say good-bye to her.
VI
I’m in Kharkov.
Since it would be useless, and beyond my strength, to struggle with my present mood, I’ve decided that the last days of my life will be irreproachable at least in the formal sense; if I’m not right in my attitude towards my family, which I’m perfectly aware of, I will try to do what they want me to do. If it’s go to Kharkov, I go to Kharkov. Besides, I’ve become so indifferent to everything lately that it makes absolutely no difference to me where I go, to Kharkov, to Paris, or to Berdichev.25
I arrived here around noon and put up at a hotel not far from the cathedral. On the train I got seasick and suffered from the drafts, so now I’m sitting on the bed, holding my head and waiting for my tic. I ought to go and see the professors I know here, but I haven’t the urge or the strength.
The old servant on my floor comes to ask whether I have bed linen. I keep him for about five minutes and ask him several questions about Gnekker, on whose account I’ve come here. The servant turns out to be a native of Kharkov, knows it like the palm of his hand, but doesn’t remember a single house that bears the name of Gnekker. I ask about country estates—same answer.
The clock in the corridor strikes one, then two, then three … These last months of my life, as I wait for death, seem to me far longer than my whole life. And never before was I able to be so reconciled to the slowness of time as now. Before, when I waited at the station for a train or sat at an examination, a quarter of an hour seemed like an eternity, but now I can spend the whole night sitting motionless on my bed and think with perfect indifference
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