Chapter 46 Chapter 20 Stavrogin Stavrogin (2)

He slept late and rarely got up before noon.The apartment was so hot that the sheets were soaked with his sweat.After getting up, he walked crookedly to the small bathroom on the landing, splashed water on his face, brushed his teeth with his fingers, and then crookedly walked back to his room.He sat in the room with a beard and disheveled hair, eating the breakfast left for him by the landlady (at this time, the butter had melted, and there were worms floating in the milk).After dinner, he shaved and put on yesterday's underwear, yesterday's shirt, and white clothes (the trousers were pointed like a knife because they had been pressed under the mattress. all night).Then he wet his hair again and combed it straight.However, when he was packing up and getting ready for the day, he lost interest and motivation.He sat down again at the messy breakfast table and began to dream.Or he just lay sprawled, digging at his nails with a knife, waiting for something to happen, waiting for the kids to come home from school.

Or, he walks around the room, opening drawers and fumbling with something with his fingers. He walked over to a box.On the box were pictures of the landlady and her late husband.He spit on the glass on the box and wiped it with his handkerchief.The couple can clearly be seen staring at each other in the cramped quarters of the box. He buried his face in her underwear, smelling the lavender on it. He was a registered student at the university, but he didn't go to class at all.He joined a group, a clique whose members experimented with free love.One afternoon he took a girl to his room.To him, he was supposed to lock the door, but he just didn't.He made love to that girl.They also slept together.

A movement woke him up.He knew someone was watching them. He touched the girl.She is already awake.Both of them were naked and good looking.Both of them are proud of their youth.They made love again. All the while he knew the door was ajar.The kid was watching them.His pleasure was intense, and so was the girl.They had never experienced such a secret sweetness before. After he sent the girl home, he didn't make the bed.He wanted to acquaint the curious child with the smell of lovemaking. From then on, until the end of the summer, every Wednesday afternoon he took the girl to his room, and it was always the girl.Every time, when they parted, the room seemed empty.Every time, he knew that the child had crept in and was hiding somewhere, watching and listening to them.

"Don't do that again," said the girl quietly. "What do you do?" "That's all!" the girl whispered, her face flushed with lust. "Let's say a few words first," he said, letting her speak. "Speak up," he said.A few words would get the girl excited uncontrollably. He remembered Svidrigailov's words: "Women like to be humiliated." When he thought of throwing all this as a taste to a child, it was like developing a taste for strange foods, such as oysters or offal. He questioned himself why he did this.His own answer: History is coming to an end; the old ledgers will soon be thrown into the fire; everything is permissible in this stagnant time between the old and the new.He was particularly distrustful of his answer, but didn't doubt it either.This works great.

Or, he said to himself: it's the Petersburg summer's fault—these long, hot, dull afternoons, with flies buzzing against the windowpanes, these nights with mosquitoes buzzing endlessly, It's their fault.Let me finally get through the summer, and then through the winter, and then, when the spring comes, I'm going to go to Switzerland, into the mountains, and be a completely different person. He dined with the landlady and her daughter.One Wednesday night, he leaned over the table with feigned glee, messing up the child's hair.She ran away.He realized he hadn't washed his hands.He realized she had inadvertently smelled him after sex.She blushed, her mind was in a mess, and she bent over washing the dishes, unwilling to meet his eyes.

He wrote all this carefully in a clear hand, not deleting a single word.In the process of writing today, he experienced an unusual sensual pleasure—a warm and comfortable feeling in the feeling of the pen tip and in the process of bending his thumb.Not only that, but in the gentle movement of the hand, it seems to be more comfortable; the page is covered with his just right and unchanging font.Well-behaved letters. Anya, before Anna Snitkina became his wife, was his secretary.He hired her to organize his manuscripts and later married her.A fairy-like girl who was called by him to sort out his scribbled and messed up words.She spun the words into a golden thread.If he wrote clearly today, it was because he didn't want her eyes to discern it any more.He is writing for himself.He is writing for eternity.He is writing for an old man.

He sat there calm as water.At the same time, he is a man in a whirlwind.The spiraling roar tore apart fragments of his old life.Swirling swirls of paper swirled around him.He was born high above the earth, and he suffered from the wind and the waves.In the split second before he breaks free from the wind's grip, before he begins to fall, he is allowed to assert his calm and transparency.The world unfolded beneath him like an open map. Words from the wind.Scattered leaves.He packs them up.Fragmented bodies, he reassembled them. There is a knock on the door.Outside stood Matrona in her pajamas.At first glance, she looked exactly like her mother. "May I come in?" she said hoarsely.

"Does your throat still hurt?" "Ok." She sits on the bed.Even though he was far away, he could still feel her disordered breathing. Why is she sitting there?Does she want to be quiet for a while?Was she exhausted too? “Before, when Pavel was writing, he used to sit like that,” she said. "I thought you were Pavel when I came in." "I'm busy with my business," he said. "You don't mind if I don't stop?" She sat quietly in front of him, watching him write.The air in the room seemed to be electrified, and even the dust seemed to be suspended in the air motionless.

"Do you like your name?" he asked quietly after a while. "My own name?" "Yes. Matrona." "No. I hate this name. My father gave it to me. I don't understand why I have to be called that. My grandma is also named that. She died before I was born." "Let me give you a different name. Dusha." He found a piece of paper, wrote it on the top of the paper, and showed her. "How do you like it?" She said nothing. "What happened to Pavel?" he asked. "do you know?" "I think... I think he committed suicide."

"Why did you commit suicide?" "For the future. In this way, he can become one of the martyrs." "Martyr? What is a martyr?" She hesitated. "It's for those who give their lives for the future." "Then that Finn girl is also a martyr?" She nodded. He was quite surprised.Will Pavel also often say these clichés before he dies.For the first time it crossed his mind that Pavel might be better off dead.Now that the thought occurred to him, he should face it directly instead of denying it. A war: old against young; young against old. "Now you have to go," he said. "I want to work."

He took another page, wrote the word "children" at the top, and continued: