Notes from Underground

But still, the hitch was that the hysterics did have to end. And so (I am writing the loathsome truth), lying prone on the sofa, my face buried hard in the wretched leather cushion, I began little by little, remotely, involuntarily, but irresistibly, to feel that it would be awkward now to raise my head and look straight into Liza's eyes. What was I ashamed of? I don't know, but I was ashamed. It also came into my agitated head that the roles were now finally reversed, that she was now the heroine, and I was the same crushed and humiliated creature as she had been before me that night - four days ago… And all this came to me during those minutes when I was still lying prone on the sofa!

My God! but can it be that I envied her then?

I don't know, to this day I ca

I mastered myself, however, and raised my head; indeed, I had to raise it sometime… And then - I am convinced of it even to this day - precisely because I was ashamed to look at her, another feeling suddenly kindled and flared up in my heart… the feeling of domination and possession. My eyes gleamed with passion, and I squeezed her hands hard. How I hated her and how drawn I was to her at that moment! One feeling intensified the other. This was almost like revenge!… At first, a look as if of perplexity, even as if of fear, came to her face, but only for a moment. She embraced me rapturously and ardently.

X

A quarter of an hour later I was ru

I know I shall be told that all this is inconceivable, that it is inconceivable to be as wicked, as stupid, as I was; perhaps it will also be added that it was inconceivable not to love her, or at least not to appreciate her love. But why inconceivable? First, I was no longer able to love, because, I repeat, for me to love meant to tyra

But several more minutes passed and she still did not get up, as if she were oblivious. I was shameless enough to tap softly on the screen to remind her… She suddenly roused herself, started up from her place, and rushed to look for her scarf, her hat, her fur coat, as if to escape from me somewhere… Two minutes later she came slowly from behind the screen and gave me a heavy look. I gri

"Good-bye," she said, making for the door.

I suddenly ran to her, seized her hand, opened it, put… and closed it again. Then I turned at once and quickly sprang away to the opposite corner, so as at least not to see…

I was going to lie right now - to write that I did it accidentally, in distraction, at a loss, out of foolishness. But I don't want to lie, and so I'll say directly that I opened her hand and put… in it out of malice. The thought of doing it occurred to me while I was ru

"Liza! Liza!" I called out to the stairway, but timidly, in a low voice…

There was no answer; I thought I could hear her footsteps down below.

"Liza!" I called more loudly.

No answer. But at that moment I heard from below the tight glass outer door to the street creak open heavily and slam tightly shut again. The bang echoed up the stairway.

She was gone. I went back to my room, pondering. I felt terribly heavy.

I stopped by the table next to the chair on which she had been sitting, and stared senselessly before me. About a minute passed; suddenly I gave a great start: there before me, on the table, I saw… in short, I saw a crumpled blue five-rouble bill, the very one I had pressed into her hand a moment before. It was that bill; it couldn't have been any other; there wasn't any other in the house. So she had managed to fling it from her hand onto the table just as I jumped away to the opposite corner.

Well, then? I could have expected her to do that. Could have expected? No. I was so great an egoist, I had in fact so little respect for people, that I could scarcely imagine she, too, would do that. I couldn't bear it. A second later I rushed like a madman to get dressed, threw on in a flurry whatever I could find, and raced headlong after her. She couldn't have gone more than two hundred steps before I ran out to the street.

It was still, and the snow was falling heavily, almost perpendicularly, laying a pillow over the sidewalk and the deserted roadway. Not a single passer-by, not a sound to be heard. The street-lamps flickered glumly and uselessly. I ran about two hundred steps to the intersection and stopped.

"Where did she go? And why am I ru

I stood in the snow, peering into the dull darkness, and thought about that.