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In another moment I thought that something would break in my head, the something with which I kept control over myself I seemed to hear myself praying aloud: "Oh God! let me keep my reason! Oh God! let me keep my reason!" and I could see the Forest like a great green hot wave rising beyond the window to a towering height ready to leap down upon me. Then Semyonov came in.
I am quiet and not in his way. I can do things that he cannot. I am not big as he but at least I do not rob men of their women." He was shaking with anger, his head trembling and his hands quivering it was difficult not to smile. "You must not listen nor notice nor think of it," I said firmly. "We are grateful for your work all of us. Semyonov laughs at us all."
Semyonov sat opposite Vera, leaning his thick body on his arms, his eyes watching his niece and every once and again his firm pale hand stroking his beard. When I joined them he said to me: "Well, Ivan Andreievitch, what's the latest news of your splendid Revolution?" "Why my Revolution?" I asked. I felt an especial dislike this morning of his sneering eyes and his thick pale honey-coloured beard.
He roused himself from this to hear Semyonov reading extracts from the newspaper. He caught, at first, only portions of sentences. I am writing this, of course, from Bohun's account of it, and I cannot therefore quote the actual words, but they were incidents of disorder at the Front. "There!" Semyonov would say, pausing. "Now, Nicholas... What do you say to that? A nice state of things.
What I think I really feel now, on looking back, is that each of us myself, Semyonov, Vera, Nina, Lawrence, Bohun, Grogoff, yes, and the Rat himself was a part of a mysterious figure who was beyond us, outside us, and above us all. The heart, the lungs, the mouth, the eyes... used against our own human agency, and yet free within that domination for the exercise of our own free will.
I'd only got bedroom slippers on and I was stopped at the door by a sound. It was Semyonov sitting over by the further window, in his shirt and trousers, his beard in his hands, and sobbing as though his heart would break. I'd never heard a man cry like that. I hate hearing a man cry anyway.
It was pathetic to see the flaming pleasure in the man's eyes when Nikitin permitted him to wait upon him, and how ironically, upon such an occasion, would Semyonov watch them both! In spite of Nikitin's passivity he did, I fancied, more than merely suffer this unequal alliance. It seemed to me that there was behind his silence some active wish that the affair should continue.
Then I was ill, aching in every limb and seeing everything, as I always did when I was unwell, mistily and with uncertainty. Then I had a very shrewd suspicion that there was considerable truth in what Semyonov had said, that I was interfering in what only remotely concerned me. At any rate, that was certainly the view that Grogoff would take, and Nina, perhaps also.
She gave a little shiver. "Oh, you do look ill!... Everything's going wrong together, isn't it?" And with that she suddenly left me, hurrying away from me, leaving me miserable and apprehensive of some great trouble in store for all of us. It is impossible to explain how disturbed I was by Nina's news. Semyonov living in the flat!
I promised them my friendship, and now I've got to back that promise. And the other is that you and I are really responsible for bringing Lawrence into the family. They never would have known him if it hadn't been for us. There's danger and trouble of every sort brewing, and Semyonov, as you know, is helping it on wherever he can.
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