Maybe, on the other hand, the time has come to commit all the meannesses, all the crimes, make use of all the evil in the world in order that one should have one’s fill of it, at last, and turn away from it in horror and disgust. It is curious that I cannot help linking myself up with something or someone, men or events. I cannot help it and therefore all I say looks like an attempt to plead innocent, an attempt which I conceal but clumsily.

Nevertheless I know I have not the least desire to find excuses for myself. This is not out of pride, or out of the despair of a man who has irrevocably messed up his life. Nor is it because I should like to cry out: yes, I am a criminal, but so are you, only that you are stronger, so go on and do your killing. I feel no urge to cry out, there is nobody to cry out to. I have no need of people, no feeling for them. All these unconscious attempts of justification prevent me from discovering the chief thing I am searching for: why was it that there was no sound, no cry, no shriek in my soul, nothing that stopped me on the way to treason? And why am I unable to condemn myself? Why, although I label myself a criminal, consider myself as being one, I do not, in truth, feel the burden of the crime?

If my notes have any purpose it is only this one—to solve the question: what is it that has split me in two so finally and irretrievably? I have already said how mercilessly I strained myself to find an answer. I betrayed to the police and sent to hard labor one of my best friends, a man of rare moral integrity. I had a great respect for his character, his indefatigable spirit, his energy, his good-humor and his merry disposition. He had just escaped from prison and gone into hiding for the third time. I betrayed him and waited for something to stir in my soul.

Nothing did.

Simonov treated me to a claret of a remarkable flavor and bouquet, and talked.

“Would you like to be transferred to Moscow or Petersburg? These waters here are becoming too shallow for you. I, too, will probably soon be transferred to one of these cities.

“Piotr Filippovich,” I asked, “how do you explain to yourself that I am trying so hard to do my work well?”

As usual he did not answer at once, glanced attentively first at me, then at the ceiling, and shrugged his shoulders: “I don’t know. You’re not greedy for money—I cannot see much ambition in you. Out of a sense of revenge? Doesn’t look like it. You’ve got a soft heart on the whole, you know.” He smiled and continued, weighing his words well: “It isn’t the first time you ask me about it and I have already told you—you are a queer fish. Are you a bit crazy, by any chance? Doesn’t look like it, either. What about yourself—do you know your own reasons?”

I then tried to tell him briefly about myself. He listened to me attentively, listened and smoked one cigarette after the other. When I had finished, Simonov said calmly: “Well, you know, this is almost dangerous. Faugh, how this bloody intelligentsia has mauled you about!” And lighting a fresh cigarette, he sighed: “If you go on like that you might even try and shoot me. What else is there left for you to do? Only one thing: kill someone. That might stir you up and make you shout.”

He got up, poured some wine into a glass and lifted it to the light, his back turned to me. An annoyingly plain man he seemed at that moment, more so than ever before. He stood like that for a long time before I guessed that he was having one of his usual fits, the disappearances into the unknown.

“What is the matter?” I asked.

He turned round slowly, sat down, sipped at the wine, sighed and lit another cigarette:

“You’ve made it all up, my dear fellow, all this mental stuff,” he said. “Made it all up, yes! Just for the fun of it. I know it, I do it myself. I go to bed and if I can’t sleep, I picture myself at times as a desperate scoundrel, at other times as a saint. It’s quite funny. And oftener still as a conjurer, a remarkable, eccentric