He searched his mind. He was grasping in his memory at fragments of conversations, he was looking for something clear, strong, convincing; he found nothing. He recalled absurd phrases such as this: “Ivanov, I am convinced that you have copied the problem from Sirotkin.” But is this a conviction? Fragments of newspaper articles passed before him, other people’s speeches, quite convincing—but where was that which he had said himself, which he himself had thought? He spoke as everyone else spoke, and thought as everybody else did, and it was just as impossible to find an unmarked grain in a heap of grain. Some people are religious, some are not religious, while he—
“Wait,” he said to himself. “Is there a God, or is there not? I don’t know. I don’t know anything. And who am I—a teacher? Do I exist, I wonder?”
Mitrofan Krilov”s hands and feet grew cold.
“Nonsense! Nonsense!” he consoled himself. “My nerves are simply upset. What are convictions after all? Words. A man reads words in a book, and there are his convictions. Acts, these are things that count chiefly. A fine spy who—”
But there were no acts of which he could think. There were school affairs, family affairs, other affairs, but there were no acts to speak of. Some one was persistently demanding of him: “Tell me, what have you done?” and he was searching his mind, desperately, sorrowfully—he was passing over the years he had lived as over the keyboard of a piano, and each year struck the same empty, wooden sound—“bya,” without meaning, without significance.
“Ivanov, I am convinced that you copied the problem from Sirotkin.” No, no, that is not the proper thing.
“Listen, madam, listen to me,” he muttered, lowering his head, gesticulating calmly and properly. “How absurd it is to think that I am a spy. I—a spy? What nonsense! Please, let me convince you. Now, you see—”
Emptiness. Where had everything disappeared? He knew that he had done something, but what? All his kin and his acquaintances regarded him as a sensible, kind and just man—and they must have reasons for their opinion. Yes, he had bought goods for a dress for grandmother, and his wife even said to him: “You are too kind, Mitrofan!” But, then, spies may also love their grandmothers, and they may also buy goods for their grandmothers—perhaps even the same black goods with little dots. What else? But, no, no. That is all nonsense!
Unconsciously Mitrofan came back from the boulevard to the house where the student girl disappeared, but he did not notice it. He felt that it was late, that he was tired, and that he was on the point of crying.
Mitrofan stopped in front of the many storied house and looked at it with a sense of unpleasant perplexity.