I got up and took my cap.
“You think not?” he smiled with some surprise. “Why? No, I … I don’t know.” He was suddenly confused. “I know not how it is with the others, and I feel that I cannot do as others. Everybody thinks and then at once thinks of something else. I can’t think of something else. I think all my life of one thing. God has tormented me all my life,” he ended up suddenly with astonishing expansiveness.
“And tell me, if I may ask, why is it you speak Russian not quite correctly? Surely you haven’t forgotten it after five years abroad?”
“Don’t I speak correctly? I don’t know. No, it’s not because of abroad. I have talked like that all my life … it’s no matter to me.”
“Another question, a more delicate one. I quite believe you that you’re disinclined to meet people and talk very little. Why have you talked to me now?”
“To you? This morning you sat so nicely and you … but it’s all no matter … you are like my brother, very much, extremely,” he added, flushing. “He has been dead seven years. He was older, very, very much.”
“I suppose he had a great influence on your way of thinking?”
“N-no. He said little; he said nothing. I’ll give your note.”
He saw me to the gate with a lantern, to lock it after me. “Of course he’s mad,” I decided. In the gateway I met with another encounter.
IX