"Vera Lukyanovna!" Ippolit hastily invited, "take it and toss it on the table: heads or tails? Heads I read!"
Vera looked fearfully at the coin, at Ippolit, then at her father, and, somehow awkwardly, her head thrown back, as if convinced that she herself should not look at the coin, tossed it on the table. It came up heads.
"I read!" whispered Ippolit, as if crushed by the decision of fate; he could not have turned more pale if a death sentence had been read to him. "But anyhow," he suddenly gave a start after pausing half a minute, "what is it? Have I just cast the die?" and with the same aggressive frankness he looked at everyone around him. "But this is an astonishing psychological feature!" he suddenly cried,
turning to the prince in genuine amazement. "This . . . this is an inconceivable feature, Prince!" he confirmed, growing animated and as if coming to his senses. "Write this down, Prince, remember it, I believe you collect materials about capital punishment ... so I was told, ha, ha! Oh, God, what senseless absurdity!" He sat down on the sofa, leaned both elbows on the table, and clutched his head with his hands. "It's even shameful! . . . The devil I care if it's shameful," he raised his head almost at once. "Gentlemen! Gentlemen, I am opening the envelope," he announced with a sort of unexpected resolve, "I . . . however, I'm not forcing you to listen! . . ."
His hands trembling with excitement, he opened the envelope, took out several sheets of paper covered with small writing, placed them in front of him, and began smoothing them out.
"But what is it? What have you got there? What are you going to read?" some muttered gloomily; others kept silent. But they all sat down and watched curiously. Perhaps they indeed expected something extraordinary. Vera gripped her father's chair and all but wept from fear; Kolya was almost as frightened. Lebedev, who had already settled down, suddenly got up, seized the candles, and moved them closer to Ippolit, so that there would be enough light to read by.
"Gentlemen, you . . . you'll presently see what it is," Ippolit added for some reason and suddenly began his reading: " 'A Necessary Explanation'! Epigraph: Après moi le deluge* . . .Pah, devil take it!" he cried as if burned. "Could I have seriously set down such a stupid epigraph? . . . Listen, gentlemen! ... I assure you that in the final end this may all be the most terrible trifles! It's just some of my thoughts ... If you think it's . . . something mysterious or . . . forbidden ... in short . . ."
"Read without any prefaces," Ganya interrupted.
"He's dodging!" somebody added.
"Too much talk," put in Rogozhin, who had been silent the whole time.
Ippolit suddenly looked at him, and when their eyes met, Rogozhin grinned bitterly and sarcastically, and slowly pronounced some strange words:
"That's not how the thing should be handled, man, that's not . . ."
* After me the great flood.
What Rogozhin meant to say, no one, of course, understood, but his words made a rather strange impression on them all; it was as if they had all brushed up against a common thought. But the impression these words made on Ippolit was terrible; he trembled so much that the prince reached out to support him, and he would probably have cried out, if his voice had not suddenly failed him. For a whole minute he was unable to utter a word and, breathing heavily, stared at Rogozhin. At last, breathlessly and with great effort he spoke:
"So that . . . that was you . . . you?"
"What? What about me?" Rogozhin answered in perplexity, but Ippolit, flushed, and suddenly seized almost by rage, cried sharply and loudly:
" Youwere in my room last week, at night, past one o'clock, the same day I went to see you in the morning! You!Admit it was you!"
"Last week, at night? You must have gone clean out of your mind, man."
The "man" was silent again for a minute, putting his forefinger to his forehead and as if thinking hard; but in his pale smile, still twisted with fear, there suddenly flashed something cunning, as it were, and even triumphant.
"It was you!" he repeated at last, almost in a whisper, but with extraordinary conviction. "Youcame to my room and sat silently on my chair, by the window, for a whole hour; more; from one till past two in the morning; then you got up and left after two ... It was you, you! Why you frightened me, why you came to torment me—I don't understand, but it was you!"
And in his eyes there suddenly flashed a boundless hatred, in spite of his frightened trembling, which had still not subsided.
"You'll find out all about it presently, gentlemen, I . . . I . . . listen . . ."
Again, and in terrible haste, he seized his pages; they had spilled and scattered, he tried to gather them up; they trembled in his trembling hands; for a long time he could not settle down.
The reading finally began. At first, for about five minutes, the author of the unexpected articlewas still breathless and read dis-jointedly and unevenly; but then his voice grew firm and began to express fully the meaning of what he read. Only occasionally a very strong cough interrupted him; by the middle of the article his voice became very hoarse; the extraordinary animation that came over him more and more as he read, in the end reached the highest
pitch, as did its painful impression on his listeners. Here is the whole of this "article."
My Necessary Explanation
Après moi le déluge!
Yesterday morning the prince came to see me; incidentally, he talked me into moving to his dacha. I knew he would certainly insist on that, and I was sure he would blurt right out to me that it would be "easier for me to die among people and trees," as he puts it. But this time he did not say to die,but said "it would be easier to live," which, however, makes almost no difference for me in my situation. I asked him what he meant by his incessant "trees," and why he was foisting these "trees" on me—and was surprised to learn from him that I myself supposedly said the other evening that I had come to Pavlovsk to look at the trees for the last time. When I observed to him that it made no difference whether I died under the trees or looking out the window at my bricks, and that there was no point in making a fuss over two weeks, he agreed at once; but greenery and clean air, in his opinion, are bound to produce some physical change in me, and my agitation and my dreamswill change and perhaps become lighter. I again observed to him laughingly that he spoke like a materialist. He replied with his smile that he had always been a materialist. Since he never lies, these words must mean something. His smile is nice; I've looked at him more attentively now. I do not know whether I love him or not now; I have no time to bother with that now. My five-month hatred of him, it should be noted, has begun to abate in this last month. Who knows, maybe I went to Pavlovsk mainly to see him. But . . . why did I leave my room then? A man condemned to death should not leave his corner; and if I had not taken a final decision now, but had decided, on the contrary, to wait till the last hour, then, of course, I would not have left my room for anything and would not have accepted the suggestion of moving out "to die" in his place in Pavlovsk.
I must hurry and finish all this "explanation" by tomorrow without fail. Which means I will not have time to reread and correct it; I will reread it tomorrow when I read it to the prince and the two or three witnesses I intend to find there. Since there will not be a single lying word in it, but only the whole truth, ultimate and solemn, I am curious beforehand what sort of impression it will