He knew that there was something within him that still had to be kept quiet, that if his slanderer had understood the mute question he would have slapped him. No: it was still much, much worse than that: the seated man knew there was something within him that still had to be kept quiet, that his slanderer would have been allowed to slap him without penalty, that he wouldn’t have defended himself, that he wouldn’t have been able to retaliate, that by then he would already. . This by then especially had to be kept quiet.
By then? What does it mean: “by then”? Why is he saying “by then”? What’s the point of saying “I would have succumbed to him by then” when, after all, he never succumbed to him? There hadn’t been any reason to. And, after all, you don’t even succumb unless there’s a reason! So why is he saying “by then”?
Nor does a Secretary of State say, “Gentlemen of the press, don’t push it, I can’t say anything.” — The Secretary of State sinks back into his armchair, purses his lips (he wouldn’t have to, but the secret cramps them), lights a cigarette, and starts talking about something else. — He’s lit a cigarette. He’s attempted a smoke ring. He’s brought it off; it’s grown and faded away; it faded away because it had grown without suspecting where this would lead; it faded away over the house of cards that is the certainty that there was nothing in the clothes, nothing in the chest of drawers, nothing anywhere. Now let them come, yes, just let them come close (in fact, where did all these people come from all of a sudden?). Just let them relish the sight of how in love he is with his catlike vengeance; would you have said he was capable of such a thing?; it’s the kind of pet that nuzzles up to him, it whispers to him, they get on like nobody’s business, just wait for him to get on with it, just wai. .
The cigarette between his lips has slipped a tiny bit, the left hand, which went after it, has collapsed onto the armrest: that’s as much as his alarm showed when he found that his vengeance had gone off the rails.
Arsonist! Conflagration! Where did this come from? From these glimmers. From the guilt-ridden glimmers that were as though of no concern to them. They’re not even hiding; oh, they’re not hiding. After what they’ve committed, they’re still frolicking! They have no qualms. Three nimble little snakes, three coiling little words: “I’m a gentleman!”. . Hands raised. . “Assholes!”
He had obscured his eyes (or did it just seem like he had?). He shielded them, not so they wouldn’t see the conflagration: who cares about conflagration! He shielded them because he couldn’t stand the gazes upon him — so that all there was for him to do was double himself! — upon the theatrical gesture with which, like a bumbler, he made a break from his silkily mute vengeance-cuddling. (The outstretched index finger!)
“Get out, the lot of you! All of you out!”
Strange, strange that even now, in spite of everything, that ever-so-subtle triviality still sticks in his memory: that in response to his “get out, the lot of you!” of all of them Zinaida was the only one to shudder, and with a look so incomprehensibly grateful. The kind that might — ostensibly — lend one strength, even upon the scaffold. Such a look, and it did him no good! Thus he surely no longer had. .
Censored.
It was in this room. In this room where today, in the summer morning, he is allowed to play whatever he wants (God only knows whether he’ll abuse it): the innocent accused; the avenger of the righteous and the weak; the public prosecutor; the good judge; the magnanimous man who has taken on the worse bit; the desperado who soldiers hopelessly on; the downtrodden man who smiles for no reason but to give heart to those nearby, though they are less unfortunate than he; the lamb who has assumed others’ guilt upon himself; the angel who begged for his own banishment. . He’s allowed, but by whose will, by whose power?
He knows all about what he’s allowed to be. What who is he?
It was in this room where he, innocent, honest, offended, unavenged, identified his slanderers, not one of whom even stirred.
Mr. Steel, who this entire time had been swaying, light as a feather on his tiptoes, turned his head nonchalantly.
“Have you placed the call?” he said to the innkeeper.
The innkeeper didn’t answer in words, only with the obliging and satisfied look of a miniscule mortal looking up to a larger-than-life idol.
The missus was fiddling with her necklace, “One who has a clean conscience will therefore not make a fuss. It would have been better for you if you had handed it over.”
This stabbed him with shame as though with the flame of a blowtorch, and beneath the shame a retaliatory thought crumbled within him: “She’s picked that up in cheap theaters: the contemptuous gesture of high-society ladies.”
And Mr. Steel’s patronizing, “It really would have been better for you; in that case I would have smoothed it over before the gendarmes — loss, discovery, that sort of thing. .”
Recalling everything they were saying so precisely, and knowing of his own words only that they resounded in falsetto, stumbled, tripped, and picked themselves up like an old man: worn-out runts, dead-tired buffoons, swept away by some brisk broom before anyone even paid them any mind. No, there hadn’t been such an utterly pointless spray of words after all. He recalls further: he’d hurled each of them more or less as though it were a stone into water; after each, a circle; with each, a bigger circle; a round space filled with emptiness, growing wider and wider; a crowd drawn together by a circle of misfortune on the street, eager for a spectacle, and nevertheless withdrawing: not out of fear; not out of irritability; not out of sympathy; out of the squeamishness of the living when it comes to the dead.
And again we have the conflagration and the first guilt-ridden glimmer, and it’s nuzzling up nimbly so that he won’t spot it. And with such cuddly importunity:
“I am a gentleman.”
“Bon,” said Mr. Steel, and he was about to leave.
What he would have given to have been able to stomp on the little snake! What happened was a pity — he’ll bear the pity. The pity was his fault — so what! But to be allowed at least to forget that it was his own fault that was mocking him: “I am a gentleman!” — As if “I am a gentleman” didn’t have a fixed reputation of its own! As if there wasn’t a soul who knew this was the last gambit of con artists. — “I am a gentleman”; there’s such shame for him in these words it’s as though he’d appeared before them in his nightshirt. What he would have given to be able to forget.
And what he did was speak, speak, speak. .
Suddenly he caught sight of the innkeeper, from a sort of dizzying proximity, a little fellow so small that he had to look up even at him, who was not tall; he caught sight of the innkeeper and also something like a crude remorse; both in one. Yes, the thing he could not resist was that crude remorse. He overheard:
“Mind yourself: raise your arms, let us dig into your pockets. . Alright then, what’s the big deal? If your conscience is clear!”
A second guilt-ridden glimmer slipped alongside his right foot, he stomped after it, too late. .
He raised his arms and spread them apart. And what came of it? Yes, what came of his having raised and spread his arms? To what degradation would he subject himself at the hands of bandits, just so it would all be over and done? But others would raise their arms and spread them apart as well. Enough already with that hateful bias in his own favor. What was the point? Let’s just consider cool-headedly what this was really about. A person has gotten into a trumped-up situation; hysterical dames and bullies have hurled themselves at him; there’s no way out besides a ransom — as ransoms go, is spreading your arms out really so dear? He even manages to envision a joker who has spread his arms for fun and is already feasting his eyes on “what comes next”: next, when they won’t find anything. . Next, when he’ll get them back for “it,” and right good. Yes, he sees it like it’s live: they’re searching. It doesn’t matter that they’re merely “frisking.” That’s why the pulse of the man being searched hasn’t yet missed a beat; it’s not even a fraction of a second off; with plucky good cheer it’s moving toward tomorrow, toward joys, toward love. The search is over, nothing has been found, of course. Is there less of the man who was searched? But how could there be? Afterwards, as before, he is complete. Yes, complete: this is the right word. He shakes his head; no different than a drenched poodle — no different. . why all the fuss over a bath? — he shakes his head (Tiemen is an example: just now he sees how his mop of hair whipped around at the same time), and says: “And now for the hats in hand, you beasts; get to it!” And he says it in such a way that the protest would think better of it before the “hats in hand” would even register on the ear. What a feast of vengeance! What fun! What fun, most of all!