The person on the bed understands, but let’s be careful, let’s really watch ourselves. Let’s not insult him, let’s not exaggerate; let’s be fairer than he is himself. Let’s follow his thinking impartially and accept that, however nice it would be “that he had loathed them immediately as they were driving in,” he is forestalling his wish not to be this thought’s father — let’s say he’s at least making it as tough as it could be. . For he well surmises that if he so wishes “that he had already loathed them then,” it’s because later on what happened was. . the thing that only happened later. Or else he’s seeking whatever alibi is available, but he’d settle for any of them — oh, how poorly you know him! After all, the alibi has to be a little likely. Sure, our good sir is a liar, but the gourmet kind; a crook, but a refined one. Excuse himself, sure — but make excuses, of all manner besides — not at all! Really: if he must be objective, he’d prefer to say, after all, that they, the ones driving in, were all the same to him, rather than loathsome. It is equally certain, however, that he had already begun despising them before the alarm, even if the little word “despise” might be a bit much; let’s say that, already before the alarm, he’d come to hate them.
“Very well, my dear fellow,” he says, the man on the bed, but he had come to hate them perchance just when, and only when, the innkeeper pattered up to the table where he was waiting for his supper and said, in a most courteous manner, “A gentleman has arrived with two ladies. A couple, and the wife’s sister. The young woman is unwell, they would like her room to be next to theirs. I do have two rooms, only not next to each other; yours is between them. Would you be so kind as to let them have it?” — Might it have been just then that he’d started to hate them? — Hmm? You’d have let them have it. — How did he respond to that courteous “if you would be so kind”?
He who was sitting on the bed hugging his naked knees slowly turned his head and spotted himself in the mirrored dresser. — Well, no, he didn’t flinch — nothing that would attest to fright, no straightening, no crouching — he didn’t shoot faces at himself. . Nothing. . Why, then? The image in the mirror wasn’t hideous. Of course it revolted him, but he got used to it. For that matter, I’m not betraying any secret if I whisper to you that he wanted to be revolted by it. Oh, willingly, yet so quietly as actually to be inadvertent. Having caught sight of that one there, his eyes got stuck on him. He saw someone who was unwelcome; he was, however, expectedly unwelcome. A foreigner. He sized him up with tepid animosity; he judged him with gestures and facial expressions. That one there performed them with him: both of them ironic, but with an irony so unsuspiciously innocent that it was disarming. A hand, sullen with a sullenness that lacked substance, ran across ashen stubble; squeamish fingers unearthed the degrading vegetation of the sparse, coarse hairs sprouting all the way up to right beneath his eyes, and the irritated flash in his eyes reproached them for this meddlesomeness. — The sitting man stood, stripped naked, approached the dresser closely, saw his entire self in the mirror. He stood in profile, for he felt like a look, and to get a good look at the bloated belly he was stroking with disgust. But because he wanted to have a good look at that sign (that’s what he was thinking: it was a sign), he was required to turn his head slightly, and so it happened that he unwittingly came eye-to-eye with himself: he caught sight of a rotund runt of a man wearing an accusing look. He scowled at him, and the little person paid it back to him so faithfully that neither of them dared pull his eyes away: for they hated each other, and they were on their guard to avoid anything that would mutually entitle them each to take the other for a coward. This made for an awkward spectacle, but they wouldn’t have fled from it for anything in the world. They looked themselves over with chivalrous superiority; they got so very sick of each other that the sickness inadvertently expressed itself through a kind of negative indifference. They saw the curdled face with the moronic, short beard, they saw that it was their collective face, but each was recriminating the other with his eyes: “How hideous you are,” the eyes were saying to the eyes, “how can anyone be so hideous!” Then a hand appeared, the right hand. Two symmetrical right hands. The hands lifted eyelids that had collapsed into over-deep eye sockets! “The human eye should be just so round, just so free and deep, it’s not shy, it doesn’t hide,” they hissed at each other. “And the hand? What about the hand?” the eye shot back. “Yes,” the hateful doubles’ bashful eyes confessed, “even your hand could have been spry, captivating, maybe beautiful, if only. .” That’s it: if only someone hadn’t betrayed it. “Who?” thought he who was looking into the mirror. “Who?” replied the indifferent image, but one “who?” was the answer to the other. They comprehended at once — and through this recognition they were reconciled— that by questioning they had found, within their cleft insides, not just the question, but the answer as well, an unexpected answer, yet by no means amazing. Actually, it wasn’t even an answer to that double “who?”—for the words that streamed simultaneously within them sounded like: “Hallowed be their names.” And yet still, it was surely a kind of answer; perhaps an answer to a question still more binding, and therefore quieter, than those “who’s” had been, so that it rendered them ugly cripples, for these unexpected words swiftly imparted to them remarkable and still more unexpected courage. The courage to quit that double self-torture. The hands fell, and the looks, which followed ashamedly behind them, meanwhile assumed so much restraint that, having incidentally brushed against the short legs and outturned feet, neither rebuked them, nor punished them.
He arched the small of his back, turned away, and was now sitting on the bed again. From there, again, onto a last brief and careless expedition to the mirror. That other fellow had been there the whole time. Their gazes brushed against their bald chests with disinterested severity, then they lifted.
Yes, it had been his fault. “I was accused unjustly, but not spitefully; things looked bad for me; I shouldn’t have walked away.” He took pleasure in succeeding to be impartial even in his own suit; he assured himself of it and softened. Just let someone come forward who would dare rebuke him for self-flattery! Just let someone speak up who’s misheard that he assigns the responsibility for that misunderstanding to himself, and to no one else! Maybe then he could expect to be believed now as well, when he maintains (he raised his eyes) that, admittedly, after the first alarm he made off at the wrong time, but with an innocent heart. Yes, he ascribed no meaning to the episode with the bracelet. So how could one foresee the consequences — right? He had gone down to the yard because he was really hungry. The time for supper had already passed; no one can deny that. Even so, he can say that he had been hit with a hunger that was not only physical, but spiritual as well (he stroked his chin): he had begun to miss a book he’d started reading and had left downstairs on the table. And when he went back down — believe it or not — he got so into it that, for a moment, he forgot about that episode entirely. He still remembers how he had looked up, having been interrupted by the swift shutting of the kitchen door, and how, having noticed Zinaida, he pushed the book away: this made room for the bowl of soup, for he was as sure as water is wet that she was bringing soup. What a surprise when, instead of the steaming bowl, she placed before him the pad with the ink well and the pen sticking out of it! A surprise, yes; but how unsuspicious! How could he have missed such conspicuous things, words, and gestures, and so many of them, he marveled at it only a moment later, that is, when the lid’s last clamp had been twisted shut, and when, suddenly gasping beneath it, he somehow retroactively ascertained that the methodical forging of that lid had begun precisely upon Zinaida’s arrival. He was astonished and did not comprehend how he could be so absurdly unobservant. Maybe he was unknowingly following some ban on comprehending. And it was just then that she had come with the registration, at such an unusual moment! Only, how could he have missed that it had been intentional? And when he came back around from his pure (yes, pure) surprise and said sullenly, “There’s no hurry; I’ll fill it out after supper,” how could he have missed that Zinaida’s reply was as though filled with stubborn silence and spiteful rigidity?