...
The strange thing is that I do not know who it was who rescued me. I
know that some one came. I know that to my own dim surprise an
Isvostchick was there and that very feebly I got into it. Some one was
with me. Was it my black-bearded peasant? I fancy now that it was. I can
even, on looking back, see him sitting up, very large and still, one
thick arm holding me. I fancy that I can still smell the stuff of his
clothes. I fancy that he talked to me, very quietly, reassuring me about
something. But, upon my word, I don't know. One can so easily imagine
what one wants to be true, and now I want, more than I would then ever
have believed to be possible, to have had actual contact with him. It is
the only conversation between us that can ever have existed: never,
before or after, was there another opportunity. And in any case there
can scarcely have been a conversation, because I certainly said nothing,
and I cannot remember anything that he said, if indeed he said anything
at all. At any rate I was there in the Sadovaya, I was in a cab, I was
in my bed. The truth of the rest of it any one may decide for
himself.
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