“Who is there? What do you want?” I asked.
“Sergey Petrovich, it's I!” I heard a plaintive voice, such as people have who are starved with cold and fright. “It's I! I've come to you, dear friend!”
To my great astonishment, I recognized in the plaintive voice of the dark silhouette the voice of my friend Doctor Pavel Ivanovich. This visit of “Screw's,” who led a regular life and went to bed before twelve, was quite incomprehensible. What could have caused him to change his rules and appear at my house at two o'clock in the night, and in such weather too?
“What do you want?” I asked, at the same time in the bottom of my heart sending this unexpected guest to the devil.
“Forgive me, golubchik.… I wanted to knock at the door, but your Polycarp is sure to be sleeping like a dead man now, so I decided to tap at the window.”
“But what do you want?”
Pavil Ivanovich came close up to my window and mumbled something incomprehensible. He was trembling, and looked like a drunken man.
“I am listening!” I said, losing my patience.
“You … you are angry, I see; but … if you only knew all that has happened you would cease to be angry at your sleep being disturbed by visitors at an unseemly hour. It's no time for sleep now. Oh, my God, my God! I have lived in the world for thirty years, and to-day is the first time I am so terribly unhappy! I am unhappy, Sergey Petrovich!”
“Ach! but what has happened? And what have I to do with it? I myself can scarcely stand on my legs.… I can't be bothered about others!”