I felt the strange inertia of
the spectator in the nightmare, who sees the house tumbling about his
head and cannot move. Besides, what action could I take? I couldn't
stand over Markovitch, forbid him to stir from the flat, or imprison
Semyonov in his room, or warn the police... besides, there were now no
police. Moreover, Vera and Bohun and the others were surely capable of
watching Markovitch. Nevertheless something in my heart insisted that it
was I who was to figure in this.... Through the dusk of the streets, in
the pale ghostly shadows that prelude the coming of the white nights, I
seemed to see three pursuing figures, Semyonov, Markovitch, and myself.
I was pursuing, and yet held.
I went back to my flat, but all that night I could not sleep. Already
the first music of the May Day processions could be heard, distant
trumpets and drums, before I sank into uneasy, bewildered slumber.
I dreamt then dreams so fantastic and irresolute that I cannot now
disentangle them. I remember that I was standing beside the banks of the
Neva. The river was rising, flinging on its course in the great
tempestuous way that it always has during the first days of its release
from the ice.
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