It seems to me that I have just written something terribly stupid, but I have no time to correct it, as I said; besides, I give myself my word purposely not to correct a single line in this manuscript, even if I notice that I am contradicting myself every five lines.
I precisely want to determine tomorrow during the reading whether the logical course of my thought is correct; whether I notice my own mistakes, and thus whether everything I have thought through during these six months in this room is true or mere raving.
If, just two months ago, I had had to leave my room, as I am doing now, and say good-bye to Meyer's wall, I'm sure I would have felt sad. But now I do not feel anything, and yet tomorrow I am leaving both my room and the wall forever!
Thus my conviction that for the sake of two weeks it is not worth regretting anything or giving oneself up to any sort of emotions, has overcome my nature and can now command all my feelings.
But is that true?
Is it true that my nature is now utterly defeated?
If I were to be tortured now, I would surely start shouting, and would not say that it is not worth shouting and feeling pain because I have only two weeks left to live.
But is it true that I have only two weeks left to live, and no more?
I lied that time in Pavlovsk: —n never told me anything and never saw me; but about a week ago the student Oxigenov was brought to me; in his convictions he is a materialist, an atheist, and a nihilist, which is precisely why I invited him; I needed somebody who would finally tell me the naked truth, without mawkishness or ceremony.
That is what he did, and not only readily and without ceremony, but even with obvious pleasure (which, in my opinion, was unnecessary).
He blurted right out to me that I had about a month left; maybe a little more, if the conditions are good; but I may even die much sooner.
In his opinion, I may die unexpectedly, even, for instance, tomorrow: such facts have occurred, and only two days ago a young lady, a consumptive and in a state resembling mine, in Kolomna, was about to go to the market for provisions, but suddenly felt ill, lay down on the sofa, sighed, and died.
Oxigenov told me all this, even flaunting his unfeelingness and carelessness somewhat, as if thereby doing me honor, that is, showing that he took me to be just such an all-denying higher being as himself, for whom dying, naturally, amounts to nothing.
In the end, all the same, the fact is determined: a month and no more!
I am perfectly convinced that he is not mistaken about it.
It surprised me very much how the prince guessed the other day that I have "bad dreams"; he said literally that in Pavlovsk "my agitation and dreams" would change.
And why dreams?
He is either a doctor or indeed of an extraordinary intelligence and able to guess a great many things. (But that he is ultimately an "idiot" there can be no doubt at all.) As if on purpose, just before he came I had a nice little dream (of a kind, however, that I now have by the hundred).
I fell asleep—an hour before he came, I think—and saw myself in a room (but not mine).
The room was bigger and higher than mine, better furnished, bright; a wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a sofa, and my bed, big and wide and covered with a green silk quilt.
But in this room I noticed a terrible animal, a sort of monster.
It resembled a scorpion, but it was not a scorpion, it was more vile and much more terrible, and precisely, it seemed, in that there are no such creatures in nature and that it had come to me on purpose, and that very fact presumably contained some sort of mystery.
I made it out very well: it was brown and had a shell, a creeping reptile, about seven inches long, about two fingers thick at the head, gradually tapering towards the tail, so that the very tip of the tail was no more than one-fifth of an inch thick.
About two inches from the head, a pair of legs came out of the body, at a forty-five-degree angle, one on each side, about three and a half inches long, so that the whole animal, if seen from above, looked like a trident.
I could not make out the head very well, but I saw two feelers, not long, like two strong needles, also brown.
Two identical feelers at the tip of the tail and at the tip of each foot, making eight feelers in all.
The animal ran about the room very quickly, supported on its legs and tail, and when it ran, its body and legs wriggled like little snakes, with extraordinary rapidity, despite its shell, and this was very repulsive to look at.
I was terribly afraid it would sting me; I had been told it was venomous, but I was most tormented by who could have sent it to my room, what did they want to do to me, and what was the secret of it?
It hid under the chest of drawers, under the wardrobe, crawled into the corners.
I sat on a chair with my legs tucked under me.
It quickly ran diagonally across the room and disappeared somewhere near my chair.
I looked around in fear, but as I was sitting with my legs tucked under me, I hoped it would not crawl up the chair.
Suddenly I heard a sort of crackling rustle behind me, almost by my head. I turned and saw that the reptile was crawling up the wall and was already level with my head and even touching my hair with its tail, which was turning and twisting with extreme rapidity.
I jumped up, and the animal disappeared.
I was afraid to lie down in bed, lest it crawl under the pillow.
My mother and an acquaintance of hers came into the room.
They tried to catch the reptile, but were calmer than I, and not even afraid.
But they understood nothing.
Suddenly the reptile crawled out again; this time it crawled very quietly, and as if with some particular intention, twisting slowly, which was still more repulsive, again diagonally across the room, towards the door.
Here my mother opened the door and called Norma, our dog—an enormous Newfoundland, black and shaggy; she died some five years ago.
She rushed into the room and stopped over the reptile as if rooted to the spot.
The reptile also stopped, but was still twisting and flicking the tips of its legs and tail against the floor.
Animals cannot feel mystical fear, if I am not mistaken; but at that moment it seemed to me that in Norma's fear there was something as if very extraordinary, as if almost mystical, which meant that she also sensed, as I did, that there was something fatal and some sort of mystery in the beast.
She slowly backed away from the reptile, which was quietly and cautiously crawling towards her; it seemed that it wanted to rush at her suddenly and sting her.
But, despite all her fear, Norma's gaze was terribly angry, though she was trembling all over.
Suddenly she slowly bared her terrible teeth, opened her entire red maw, took aim, readied herself, resolved, and suddenly seized the reptile with her teeth.
The reptile must have made a strong movement to escape, because Norma caught it once more, this time in the air, and twice got her whole mouth around it, still in the air, as if gulping it down.
The shell cracked in her teeth; the animal's tail and legs stuck out of her mouth, moving with terrible rapidity.
Suddenly Norma squealed pitifully: the reptile had managed after all to sting her on the tongue.
Squealing and howling with pain, she opened her mouth, and I saw that the bitten reptile was still stirring as it lay across her mouth, its half-crushed body oozing a large quantity of white juice onto her tongue, resembling the juice of a crushed black cockroach . . . Here I woke up, and the prince came in.