Chapter 9 chapter eight

(To sharpen pencils, some people sharpen inwards, like potatoes; others sharpen outwards, like sharpening sticks... Rodion is of the latter kind. He has an old pocket knife with several blades on it and a screwdriver .The screwdriver fits snugly on the outside.) "Today is the eighth day," (Cincinnatus writes with a pencil, which is more than a third short) "I am not only alive, that is to say, the frame of my ego is still constraining my life , to dim it, but like anyone else, I don't know when I'm going to die, so a formula that applies to everyone applies to me: the amount of time in the future is as much as its theoretical indefiniteness. Inversely decreasing. Of course in my current situation, I can only consider the problem in small numbers out of prudence--but it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter--I'm still alive. I had a strange feeling last night--this has This is not the first time—: I took off my clothes layer by layer until the end... I don’t know how to describe it, but I know this truth: in the process of gradually taking off my clothes, I finally reached the place where I couldn’t see The unquestionable, glorious moment: I am alive! Like a pearl ring set in the bloody fat of a shark—oh, my eternal, my eternal... I am content to have this moment—actually There is no need for anything else in the world. Maybe as a citizen of the next century, an early guest (the hostess has not yet appeared), maybe in a stunned, hopeless and cheering world, this is just a I have lived a life of great misery, and I will describe my misery to you—but I have a fear of running out of time. As far as I can remember of myself And—I have a lawless clarity in my memory of myself, and my accomplice is myself, knowing too much, and therefore dangerous. I emerge from the utter darkness, I spin like a top, and the impetus So big, so fierce, that to this day I sometimes feel (sometimes in my sleep, sometimes immersed in very hot water) that first violent beat of my heart, that first unforgettable intimate contact, that Is the main driving force of my 'ego'. I wriggled out, slippery, naked! Yes, from a restricted area that no one else has access to, yes. I know, yes… …But even now, when all is gone, even now—I am afraid that I will corrupt others? Maybe it occurs to me that what I say will have no consequences, the only traces of which are the remains of strangled words, like The Hanged Man... Silhouettes of gamma and gerunds at dusk, the hanged man - I see I'd rather choose the rope, because I know that the use of the ax is an official decision and cannot be changed. Gain a little time, Time, now precious to me, cherishes every reprieve, every postponement...I mean time spent in thinking, during which my mind is given a vacation to run freely back and forth between fact and fantasy... I think a lot more than that, but lack of writing skills, haste, excitement, weakness... I know it, I do know it. But it's hard to express it! No, I can't... …I want to give up—but then there’s a rushing feeling that builds up, a tickling feeling that ifIf you don't show it in a certain way, you might go crazy.Ah, no, I cannot gloat over myself, I cannot wrestle with my soul in a darkened room.I have no desires except the desire to express myself-in spite of the silence of the whole world.I was terrified.Distraught with horror.But no one can make me leave myself.I was terrified—I was losing some clue at this moment, which had been firmly in my grasp just now.where is itIt has slipped from my hands!I trembled before the paper, bit through the pencil to the lead, and hunched over to hide myself from those outside the door, where there were piercing eyes fixed on the back of my neck, as if I was about to rub everything. Clumping and tearing everything apart.I've come here by accident--not specifically in this fortress--but this whole horrible world of drunkenness, which might not seem so bad if it's poor workmanship, but actually It's catastrophe, horror, insanity, mistakes—see, antiques kill tourists, carved bears come at me with sledgehammers.However, since early childhood, I have had various dreams... In my dreams, the world is sublime and pure.The waking beings, whom I dread so much, seem to refract flashes of light in their dreams, as if they were filled with a quivering light which, in sweltering weather, produces the outlines of living objects.The expressions of their voices, their steps, their eyes and even their clothes - all take on exciting meaning.To put it more simply, in my dreams the world came to life and became so charmingly sublime, free, and subtle that it would be unbearable to inhale the dust of this false life later.But I have long been accustomed to think of what we call dreams as a half-reality, a possibility of becoming reality, a foresight and the beginning of a reality; The diluted state accommodates more pure reality than our vaunted waking life, which in turn is actually a semi-sleep state, a wicked state of lethargy, with real-world sounds and sights in eerie guise To seep into it, to flow out of the confines of thought--as a branch scrapes against the window-pane, you hear hideous and sinister tales in your sleep, and as your blanket slips, you see yourself plunged into the snow.But I am terribly afraid of waking up!I was terrified of that moment, or of the more fleeting ones that had been interrupted by the logger's grunts—but what was there to be afraid of?Isn't it the shadow of a sharp ax to me?Can't I hear with another world's ears the mighty grunt that leads to doom?I am still afraid!It is not easy to write it down in one go.It's not good to keep my mind sucked into the pit of the future - I have other things to think about, other things to clarify... But my words are obscure and feeble, like Pushkin's lyrical duelist .It didn't take long for me to figure out that I should grow a third eye at the back of my neck, between my fragile spines: a crazy eye, wide open, with dilating pupils and a smooth eyeball streaked with pink. of blood.don't come near me!The tone is stronger and the voice is hoarse: No meddling!I can see everything!My ears were often filled with the sound of my doomed sobs and the ghastly gurgles of those who had just been beheaded.But none of that matters, nor do my words about dreams and waking...wait a minute!What matters is that I feel again that I should really express myself, that I should force words to go nowhere.Alas, no one ever taught me this stalking technique, and the old innate art of writing is long forgotten--forgotten not needing to go to school, just needing days that blaze like forest fires, things like that It seems as unbelievable today as it used to be when the music was usually played by a gigantic piano that reverberated deftly or suddenly split the world into shimmering chunks—I could tell all of this myself. The description is clear, but you are not me, so there is an irreparable disaster.Not knowing how to write it but my guilty intuition to feel how to hold words together, what should be done to bring a common word to life while sharing the brilliance, heat and shadow of its neighbours, in which it shines Out of oneself, and in the process of updating the adjacent words, only in this way can the whole sentence become a living iridescence.Although I can feel this quality between adjacent words, I cannot control it, but it is necessary to accomplish my task, and certainly not the task of the here and now.Not here! 'Here' is too scary, it's a dark dungeon, it's the place where the heart that keeps roaring is imprisoned, this 'here' imprisons me and limits me.But what is it that shines all night, what is it——.It does exist, it was my dream, it must exist, because if there is a bad copy, there must be an original.It was hazy, round, blue, and turned slowly towards me.It's like lying on your back on a cloudy day with your eyes closed, when suddenly the darkness under your eyelids is stirred, at first slowly turning into a lazy smile, followed by a satisfying warm feeling, and you know the sun emerged from behind the clouds.My world began with the feeling that the misty air was gradually clearing, filled with radiant, stirring kindness, and that my soul was free in its gifted realm. —But what's next, what's next?Yes, I lost control after writing this sentence...the words exploded in the air, like those spherical fishes that only breathe and glow in the compressed darkness of the depths of the ocean, and explode as soon as they are caught in the net Open the same.But I'm still making one last effort - I think I've caught my prey... but my prey is just a fleeting phantom!There, there, an incomparable understanding shines in the eyes of men; Patterned rugs, folded and put together, allow two patterns to be joined—the carpet unfolds again, and you continue to survive, or add the next image to the previous one, endlessly. Up, like a woman picking out belts to go with her dress with leisurely concentration—she was sliding towards me, her knees touching the velvet dress rhythmically, she understood everything, and I understood her...  There, there are the archetypes of the parks in which we roam and hide in this world; everything there impresses with its charming character and immaculate simplicity; everything there delights your soul, everything fills Childishness; there, here and there, from time to time, flashing mirrors send here occasional reflections... My words are not expressive, not quite exact, I confuse everything, accomplish nothing, talk nonsense; I grope my way on the sandy bottom Saw a glimmer of light, but the harder I poked around in the water, the murkier the water became and the less likely I was to catch it.No, I haven't said anything yet, or just said something pedantic... In the end, the logical consequence is to give up, and if I were wrestling with writing for a reader today, I would really give up, but For there is not a soul in the world who speaks my language; to put it more simply, there is no soul;I had to think of myself first, of the forces that urged me to express myself.I was cold, weak, terrified, the back of my head blinking, wincing, and watching again with mad intensity, but no matter how I struggled, I was chained to this table like a cup chained to a At a drinking fountain, I won't stand up until I finish what I want to say.I repeat (gathering new momentum in the rhythm of the repetitive mantra), I repeat: something I know, something I know, something... As a child, in a big, cold, pale yellow room At that time, they wanted to raise me and thousands of other children into reliable nothingness, into the living dead, and all my peers made this transformation without struggle or pain.Back in those dreadful days, in the cloth-bound children's books, in the brightly painted school stuff and the creepy drawings, I knew things without comprehension, and I didn't know them. Jia doubtfully knew something as simple as knowing myself, and I knew the impossible—I knew better then than I do now, so to speak.Because life has worn me out: the constant worry, the hiding of what I know, the pretense, the fear, the painful tension of all my nerves - neither relaxing nor showing off... Even to this day, my memory records this That part of that initial self-restraint that still hurts me is when I first learned that what I thought was natural was actually forbidden, impossible, and sinful to even think about it for a while.I still remember that day vividly!I must have just learned to write the alphabet, because I remember a little brass ring on my fifth finger, which was given to children who had learned to copy the letters from the flower beds in the school garden, where Petunias, phloxes, and marigolds spell out tedious aphorisms.I sat on the low window sill with my feet in the air, looking down at my classmates playing.They wore long pink smocks like mine, and they walked hand in hand around a pole decorated with wrought straps.Why exclude me?Is it punishment?No.It was the other children who kept me from their games; and the great embarrassment, shame, and frustration I felt in playing with them made me prefer the white retreat of the window-sill, where the shadows of the half-opened panes clearly outline the The window sills are outlined.I could hear the shouts of game requests and the raspy command of the redheaded 'teacher'; I could see her curls and glasses.I watched her keep pushing the littlest ones hard, making them spin faster, all the while filled with sick terror.And the teacher, the striped pillars, the white clouds, the sun peeking out from behind the clouds from time to time, suddenly bursting with passionate light, as if searching for something, all these are reflected on the bright glass of the open window... In short , I was so terrified and sad that I internally tried to drown myself, to slow down, to quietly withdraw from the meaningless life I was barely being dragged along.There is a long corridor under the window sill where I was sitting, and at this moment, the resource teacher appeared at the end of the corridor-I can't remember his name-a fat, sweaty, thick-chested man who was going to bath.At a distance from me he called to me to go out into the garden, his voice louder by the acoustics of the corridor.He quickly approached me, waving a towel in his hand.I was sad, absent-minded, subconsciously, foolishly, instead of going down the stairs to the garden (the gallery is on the third floor), without thinking about what I was doing, but simply obeying, even obeying, I Jumping straight off the ledge into the seemingly elastic air - only vaguely barefoot (despite my shoes) - taking slow, natural strides forward while absent-mindedly sucking and scrutinizing my Fingers pricked by splinters of wood... But suddenly, an unearthly, deafening silence jolted me out of my daydream, and I saw the stupefied children below, heads up like pale daisies Looking at me, the little teacher seemed to be shrinking back.I also saw pruned clumps of bulbous bushes and towels that hadn't yet landed on the lawn.I also saw myself, a boy in a pink smock, standing still in mid-air, and when I turned around, I saw that the window I just jumped from was three steps away from my air.He held out a hairy arm, with malicious surprise on his face—"

(Unfortunately, the cell lights were out at this time - Rodion always turned off the lights at ten o'clock every night.)