"I advise you to take it. The appetites are
growing, and perhaps to-morrow it will be more,--50% or 60%." I wrote
out some kind of understanding, by which I sold my rights on the
10th of October to a certain Kagajitsky. That was all fake, as my
arrangement was made about the 23rd of November, I guess.
My ticket, for which they asked me 12,000 rubles, was obtained through
the cook's sweetheart, and I left Petrograd on the 6th for Moscow on
the usual 12:30, and arrived uneventfully at the depot in Moscow next
morning at about 10:30.
On the stairs of the Nikolaevsky depot I stopped. Where was I going?
In fact I had never thought of it. I had no place, no destination, no
desires--nothing. Perhaps only one desire, to avenge myself and all of
us.
So I hesitated, for in Moscow they had been shooting right and left
for the past week, persecuting the burjoois and officers. I had never
felt so helpless and so unnecessary to myself and to others as on this
snowy morning in Moscow. Besides, all of the way from Petrograd to
Moscow I had had a hideous headache and chills, and I was in a fog of
indifference.
"Good morning, sir," said an astonishingly polite voice behind me, "I
congratulate you upon a safe arrival."
I turned around and saw a man of rather short stature, cleanly shaven,
and politely smiling with the whole width of his mouth.
"Good morning," I said, "I cannot place you, but you seem familiar to
me, I am sure.
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