“What are you going to do?” I gasped.
“Why, why should you suffer?” cried Stahl, holding me tightly by the arm.
“Are you killing me?” I cried.
“No, no. I shall not kill you. You will see.”
I let him take my arm and he pricked it with the needle of the syringe, afterwards pressing and rubbing the punctured spot with his finger.
“Now you will see, now you will see,” he repeated over and over again with a vague stupefied smile. “Sit down there,” and he impelled me towards an armchair.
Bozevsky in his wet bandages on his wet pillow was watching us. I wanted to go to his assistance, to speak to him—but already a vague torpor was stealing over me, a feeling of gentle langour weighed upon my limbs. My tense and quivering nerves gradually relaxed. I felt as if I were submerged in a vague fluid serenity. Every anxious thought dissolved in a bland and blissful somnolence.... I could see Bozevsky move restlessly and again begin to turn his head from side to side. Sunk in the divine lassitude that held me, I watched his movements, glad that the sight of them gave me no pain.
I saw that Stahl had stretched himself on the couch and lay there with a vacant ecstatic smile on his lips.
All at once Bozevsky uttered a cry. I heard him, but I felt no inclination to answer. He struggled into a sitting position and looked at us both with wide, horrified eyes. He called us again and again. Then he began to weep. I could hear his weeping, but the beatific lethargy which engulfed me held me motionless. Perhaps I was even smiling, so free and so remote did I feel from all distress and suffering.
And now I saw Bozevsky with teeth clenched and hands curved like talons, madly clutching and tearing away the bandages from his neck.