XVI
I remember once hearing how a servant-maid, while cleaning a third-story window, slipped and fell onto the pavement. By some strange chance, she was able to get up and walk into the house. When asked how she felt, the poor girl replied that there was nothing the matter with her. It turned out, however, that she was all shattered internally, and a few hours later she died. …
I, too, when I stood in the shed, should have said that nothing particular had befallen me. Nevertheless, I also was shattered internally, although I felt no pain, no grief, no regret, … nothing!
There was only a strange calmness and an indescribable sense of isolation. I asked myself with a certain surprise: Had I really, really walked along that same avenue a few minutes previously? Was it actually myself, not some other body?
Did it ever happen to you in childhood to fall asleep in the daytime, while, though the sun was shining, storm clouds were gathering on the horizon? You slept through the storm, and heard neither the pelting rain nor the thunderclaps, nor the crash of splintered window-shutters, and yet, when you awoke you knew that something extraordinary had befallen since you fell asleep. Everything seems new and strange—not as you left it not like a continuation of the same day. … Is it the same day? Is it the same room? Or have you slept a whole day and night through, to the next morning, and even been transported to a new place? A cock crows outside; and his shrill voice sounds as defiant as ever. A dog barks, and its bark only reminds you of the bark of a dog of your own; one you had long, long ago. … And you can hear children’s voices; but they, too, have a far-off sound, like faint memories of other and once familiar voices. And the little man who lay down in your bed? … You don’t even know whether it was you yourself, or another who merely lives in your recollection. …
A like experience had befallen me. During the few minutes that I stood in the shed with the corner of matting in my hand, a great gulf had opened between my present and my past life. It was as though I had really gone to sleep, and while I slept a hurricane had swept over my soul. For my former sensations had left me and faded into dim and confused memories. … Urmánov, … the American lady, … love, ecstasy, … his great mission, … whither is all that gone? When did it happen? With whom? …
There is nothing; and perhaps there never was anything. … Otherwise, how could I be so wonderfully calm? How is it that I neither pity nor accuse, nor feel angry with anyone for Urmánov’s death? I am not even sorry. …
No; there is nothing of that … there is only. …
Again a slight inward shiver; and, through all my strange calm, I realize that I am not happy. It is as if there had dripped into me something gray, a spot of foggy mire, which I instinctively fear to disturb. I remember that with this fear was mingled a sense of squeamishness; as if I wanted to get rid of something almost physically repulsive. It was the recollection of the white substance lying there. The shattered fragments of skull.
Whither, I asked, myself, is gone all that which appeared to me as love, suffering, exalted aspirations and high thought?
It all lies there in the shattered skull, together with the sand and the gravel.
The gray, miry stain changes from a foggy spot into a cloud, hiding the light of life in my mind. As I thought of all these things the cloud continued to grow, and I shivered as with inward cold. …
Between the larches at the end of the avenue, I could see the chipped and dirty stone pillars of the gate. Beyond these again were the walls of the students’ quarters, pitted with hideous gray spots where the stucco had peeled off. The wet roofs had begun to drip. The clouds were hanging low—as if I had lost the sense of height—and the sky seemed as if it were covered with dirty rags.
“What is wrong with you, Gavrik?” Titus asked me anxiously when I entered the room; “you are frightfully pale. Are you cold? Have some tea.”
He ran for boiling water, made tea, and, according to his habit, carefully covered the teapot with a napkin. I sat on the bed and watched his proceedings indifferently as if they were no concern of mine.