The possessed or, The devils
they are arriving at that, time will be passing; then the search will
take time too; then when they find the body it will prove that the story
is true, and it will follow that's it all true, that it's true about
Fedka too. And Fedka explains the fire, the Lebyadkins; so that it was
all being hatched here, at Filipov's, while they overlooked it and saw
nothing--that will quite turn their heads! They will never think of
the quintet; Shatov and Kirillov and Fedka and Lebyadkin, and why they
killed each other--that will be another question for them. Oh, damn it
all, I don't hear the shot!"
Though he had been reading and admiring the wording of it, he had been
listening anxiously all the time, and he suddenly flew into a rage. He
looked anxiously at his watch; it was getting late and it was fully ten
minutes since Kirillov had gone out.... Snatching up the candle, he went
to the door of the room where Kirillov had shut himself up. He was just
at the door when the thought struck him that the candle had burnt out,
that it would not last another twenty minutes, and that there was no
other in the room. He took hold of the handle and listened warily; he
did not hear the slightest sound. He suddenly opened the door and lifted
up the candle: something uttered a roar and rushed at him. He slammed
the door with all his might and pressed his weight against it; but all
sounds died away and again there was deathlike stillness.
He stood for a long while irresolute, with the candle in his hand. He
had been able to see very little in the second he held the door open,
but he had caught a glimpse of the face of Kirillov standing at the
other end of the room by the window, and the savage fury with which the
latter had rushed upon him. Pyotr Stepanovitch started, rapidly set the
candle on the table, made ready his revolver, and retreated on tiptoe to
the farthest corner of the room, so that if Kirillov opened the door and
rushed up to the table with the revolver he would still have time to be
the first to aim and fire.
Pyotr Stepanovitch had by now lost all faith in the suicide. "He was
standing in the middle of the room, thinking," flashed like a whirlwind
through Pyotr Stepanovitch's mind, "and the room was dark and horrible
too.... He roared and rushed at me. There are two possibilities: either
I interrupted him at the very second when he was pulling the trigger
or... or he was standing planning how to kill me. Yes, that's it, he was
planning it.... He knows I won't go away without killing him if he funks
it himself--so that he would have to kill me first to prevent my killing
him.... And again, again there is silence. I am really frightened: he
may open the door all of a sudden.... The nuisance of it is that he
believes in God like any priest.... He won't shoot himself for
anything! There are lots of these people nowadays 'who've come to it of
themselves.' A rotten lot! Oh, damn it, the candle, the candle! It'll go
out within a quarter of an hour for certain.... I must put a stop to it;
come what may, I must put a stop to it.... Now I can kill him.... With
that document here no one would think of my killing him. I can put him
in such an attitude on the floor with an unloaded revolver in his hand
that they'd be certain he'd done it himself.... Ach, damn it! how is one
to kill him? If I open the door he'll rush out again and shoot me first.
Damn it all, he'll be sure to miss!"
He was in agonies, trembling at the necessity of action and his own
indecision. At last he took up the candle and again approached the door
with the revolver held up in readiness; he put his left hand, in which
he held the candle, on the doorhandle. But he managed awkwardly:
the handle clanked, there was a rattle and a creak. "He will fire
straightway," flashed through Pyotr Stepanovitch's mind. With his foot
he flung the door open violently, raised the candle, and held out the
revolver; but no shot nor cry came from within.... There was no one in
the room.
He started. The room led nowhere. There was no exit, no means of
escape from it. He lifted the candle higher and looked about him more
attentively: there was certainly no one. He called Kirillov's name in a
low voice, then again louder; no one answered.
"Can he have got out by the window?" The casement in one window was, in
fact, open. "Absurd! He couldn't have got away through the casement."
Pyotr Stepanovitch crossed the room and went up to the window. "He
couldn't possibly." All at once he turned round quickly and was aghast
at something extraordinary.
Against the wall facing the windows on the right of the door stood a
cupboard. On the right side of this cupboard, in the corner formed by
the cupboard and the wall, stood Kirillov, and he was standing in a very
strange way; motionless, perfectly erect, with his arms held stiffly at
his sides, his head raised and pressed tightly back against the wall in
the very corner, he seemed to be trying to conceal and efface himself.
Everything seemed to show that he was hiding, yet somehow it was not
easy to believe it. Pyotr Stepanovitch was standing a little sideways
to the corner, and could only see the projecting parts of the figure.
He could not bring himself to move to the left to get a full view of
Kirillov and solve the mystery. His heart began beating violently, and
he felt a sudden rush of blind fury: he started from where he stood,
and, shouting and stamping with his feet, he rushed to the horrible
place.
But when he reached Kirillov he stopped short again, still more
overcome, horror-stricken. What struck him most was that, in spite of
his shout and his furious rush, the figure did not stir, did not move
in a single limb--as though it were of stone or of wax. The pallor of
the face was unnatural, the black eyes were quite unmoving and were
staring away at a point in the distance. Pyotr Stepanovitch lowered the
candle and raised it again, lighting up the figure from all points of
view and scrutinising it. He suddenly noticed that, although Kirillov
was looking straight before him, he could see him and was perhaps
watching him out of the corner of his eye. Then the idea occurred to him
to hold the candle right up to the wretch's face, to scorch him and see
what he would do. He suddenly fancied that Kirillov's chin twitched and
that something like a mocking smile passed over his lips--as though
he had guessed Pyotr Stepanovitch's thought. He shuddered and, beside
himself, clutched violently at Kirillov's shoulder.
Then something happened so hideous and so soon over that Pyotr
Stepanovitch could never afterwards recover a coherent impression of
it. He had hardly touched Kirillov when the latter bent down quickly and
with his head knocked the candle out of Pyotr Stepanovitch's hand; the
candlestick fell with a clang on the ground and the candle went out. At
the same moment he was conscious of a fearful pain in the little finger
of his left hand. He cried out, and all that he could remember was that,
beside himself, he hit out with all his might and struck three blows
with the revolver on the head of Kirillov, who had bent down to him
and had bitten his finger. At last he tore away his finger and rushed
headlong to get out of the house, feeling his way in the dark. He was
pursued by terrible shouts from the room.
"Directly, directly, directly, directly." Ten times. But he still ran
on, and was running into the porch when he suddenly heard a loud shot.
Then he stopped short in the dark porch and stood deliberating for five
minutes; at last he made his way back into the house. But he had to
get the candle. He had only to feel on the floor on the right of the
cupboard for the candlestick; but how was he to light the candle? There
suddenly came into his mind a vague recollection: he recalled that
when he had run into the kitchen the day before to attack Fedka he had
noticed in passing a large red box of matches in a corner on a shelf.
Feeling with his hands, he made his way to the door on the left leading
to the kitchen, found it, crossed the passage, and went down the steps.
On the shelf, on the very spot where he had just recalled seeing it, he
felt in the dark a full unopened box of matches. He hurriedly went up
the steps again without striking a light, and it was only when he was
near the cupboard, at the spot where he had struck Kirillov with the
revolver and been bitten by him, that he remembered his bitten finger,
and at the same instant was conscious that it was unbearably painful.
Clenching his teeth, he managed somehow to light the candle-end, set it
in the candlestick again, and looked about him: near the open casement,
with his feet towards the right-hand corner, lay the dead body of
Kirillov. The shot had been fired at the right temple and the bullet
had come out at the top on the left, shattering the skull. There were
splashes of blood and brains. The revolver was still in the suicide's
hand on the floor. Death must have been instantaneous. After a careful
look round, Pyotr Stepanovitch got up and went out on tiptoe, closed the
door, left the candle on the table in the outer room, thought a moment,
and resolved not to put it out, reflecting that it could not possibly
set fire to anything. Looking once more at the document left on the
table, he smiled mechanically and then went out of the house, still for
some reason walking on tiptoe. He crept through Fedka's hole again and
carefully replaced the posts after him.
III
Precisely at ten minutes to six Pyotr Stepanovitch and Erkel were
walking up and down the platform at the railway-station beside a rather
long train. Pyotr Stepanovitch was setting off and Erkel was saying
good-bye to him. The luggage was in, and his bag was in the seat he had
taken in a second-class carriage. The first bell had rung already; they
were waiting for the second. Pyotr Stepanovitch looked about him, openly
watching the passengers as they got into the train. But he did not meet
anyone he knew well; only twice he nodded to acquaintances--a merchant
whom he knew slightly, and then a young village priest who was going
to his parish two stations away. Erkel evidently wanted to speak of
something of importance in the last moments, though possibly he did not
himself know exactly of what, but he could not bring himself to begin!
He kept fancying that Pyotr Stepanovitch seemed anxious to get rid of
him and was impatient for the last bell.
"You look at every one so openly," he observed with some timidity, as
though he would have warned him.
"Why not? It would not do for me to conceal myself at present. It's too
soon. Don't be uneasy. All I am afraid of is that the devil might send
Liputin this way; he might scent me out and race off here."
"Pyotr Stepanovitch, they are not to be trusted," Erkel brought out
resolutely.
"Liputin?"
"None of them, Pyotr Stepanovitch."
"Nonsense! they are all bound by what happened yesterday. There isn't
one who would turn traitor. People won't go to certain destruction
unless they've lost their reason."
"Pyotr Stepanovitch, but they will lose their reason." Evidently that
idea had already occurred to Pyotr Stepanovitch too, and so Erkel's
observation irritated him the more.
"You are not in a funk too, are you, Erkel? I rely on you more than on
any of them. I've seen now what each of them is worth. Tell them to-day
all I've told you. I leave them in your charge. Go round to each of them
this morning. Read them my written instructions to-morrow, or the day
after, when you are all together and they are capable of listening
again... and believe me, they will be by to-morrow, for they'll be in an
awful funk, and that will make them as soft as wax.... The great thing
is that you shouldn't be downhearted."