Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Classics

5.0  

Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Classics

Notes From The Underground 87

Notes From The Underground 87

2 mins
6.5K


She gave me water, looking at me in bewilderment. At that moment Apollon brought in the tea. It suddenly seemed to me that this commonplace, prosaic tea was horribly undig nified and paltry after all that had happened, and I blushed crimson. Liza looked at Apollon with positive alarm. He went out without a glance at either of us.

‘Liza, do you despise me?’ I asked, looking at her fixedly, trembling with impatience to know what she was thinking.

She was confused, and did not know what to answer. ‘Drink your tea,’ I said to her angrily. I was angry with

myself, but, of course, it was she who would have to pay for it. A horrible spite against her suddenly surged up in my heart; I believe I could have killed her. To revenge myself on her I swore inwardly not to say a word to her all the time. ‘She is the cause of it all,’ I thought.

Our silence lasted for five minutes. The tea stood on the table; we did not touch it. I had got to the point of purposely refraining from beginning in order to embarrass her fur-ther; it was awkward for her to begin alone. Several times she glanced at me with mournful perplexity. I was ob-stinately silent. I was, of course, myself the chief sufferer, because I was fully conscious of the disgusting meanness of my spiteful stupidity, and yet at the same time I could not restrain myself.

‘I want to... get away ... from there altogether,’ she began, to break the silence in some way, but, poor girl, that was just what she ought not to have spoken about at such a stupid moment to a man so stupid as I was. My heart positively ached with pity for her tactless and unnecessary straight-forwardness. But something hideous at once stifled all compassion in me; it even provoked me to greater venom. I did not care what happened. Another five minutes passed.

to be contd...


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