"I do not consider you sick."
The uncle laughed again, and it pealed out as if a demon had come in through the roof.
"To be sick," Mikhail continued, "is when a man is not conscious of himself, but knows only his pain and lives in it. But you, it is plain, have not lost yourself. You are seeking happiness in life, and only a healthy man does that."
"But why is there such pain in my soul then?" "Because you like it," he answered.
I gnashed my teeth. His calm was unbearable to me.
"Do you know for sure," I asked, "that I like it?"
He looked me straight in the eyes and drove his nails slowly into my breast.
"As an honest man, you ought to recognize," he said, "that your pain is necessary to your soul. It places you above others and you esteem it as something which separates you from others. Is it not so?"
His Lenten face was dry and drawn, his eyes darkened, he stroked his cheek with his hand, while he cleaned me hard, as one cleans copper with sand.
"You are evidently afraid to mingle with people for you unconsciously think to yourself, 'Though they are ulcers, they are my own, and no one has ulcers but I.'"