On that occasion he cried and endeavoured to
embrace me. He apologised for this the next day.
They would try to take him soon, he supposed, for a soldier, but he
thought that he would be able to escape. He hated the Police, and would
murder them all if he could. He told me great tales of their cruelty,
and he cursed them most bitterly. I pointed out to him that society must
be protected, but he did not see why this need be so. It was, he
thought, wrong that some people had so much and others so little, but
this was as far as his social investigations penetrated.
He was really distressed by my illness. Marfa told me that one day when
I was delirious he cried. At the same time he pointed out to her that,
if I died, certain things in my rooms would be his. He liked a silver
cigarette case of mine, and my watch chain, and a signet ring that I
wore. I saw him vaguely, an uncertain shadow in the mists of the first
days of my fever. I was not, I suppose, in actual fact, seriously ill,
and yet I abandoned myself to my fate, allowing myself to slip without
the slightest attempt at resistance, along the easiest way, towards
death or idiocy or paralysis, towards anything that meant the
indifferent passivity of inaction.
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