He searched his pocket and drew out a small leather case.
Bozevsky moved and moaned. "I am thirsty," he said. "Give me something
to drink."
I hurried to the bedside, and taking up a glass of sweetened water, I
raised him on his pillow and held the glass to his lips. He drank
eagerly. Then--horror!... horror! Even as he drank I perceived a spot of
pale red color, wetting the gauze round his neck, oozing through it and
spreading in an ever-widening stain. What--what could it be? It was the
water he was drinking; he was not swallowing it ... it was trickling out
through the wound in his neck. All the gauze was already wet--now the
pillow as well.
"Stahl, Stahl!" I shrieked. "Look, look at this!"
Stahl, who seemed to have suddenly regained his senses, came quickly to
the bedside. I had laid Bozevsky back on the pillow and he was looking
at us with wide-open eyes.
"Yes," said Stahl, contemplating him thoughtfully. "Yes." Suddenly he
turned to me. "Come here, come here. Why should I let you suffer?"
Then I saw that he had in his hand a small glass instrument--a morphia
syringe. He seized my wrist as in a vice and with the other hand pushed
back the loose sleeve of my gown.
"What are you going to do?" I gasped.
"Why, why should you suffer?" cried Stahl, holding me tightly by the
arm.
"Are you killing me?" I cried.
"No, no. I shall not kill you. You will see."
I let him take my arm and he pricked it with the needle of the syringe,
afterwards pressing and rubbing the punctured spot with his finger.
"Now you will see, now you will see," he repeated over and over again
with a vague stupefied smile. "Sit down there," and he impelled me
towards an armchair.
Bozevsky in his wet bandages on his wet pillow was watching us. I wanted
to go to his assistance, to speak to him--but already a vague torpor was
stealing over me, a feeling of gentle langour weighed upon my limbs. My
tense and quivering nerves gradually relaxed. I felt as if I were
submerged in a vague fluid serenity. Every anxious thought dissolved in
a bland and blissful somnolence.... I could see Bozevsky move restlessly
and again begin to turn his head from side to side. Sunk in the divine
lassitude that held me, I watched his movements, glad that the sight of
them gave me no pain.
I saw that Stahl had stretched himself on the couch and lay there with a
vacant ecstatic smile on his lips.
All at once Bozevsky uttered a cry. I heard him, but I felt no
inclination to answer. He struggled into a sitting position and looked
at us both with wide, horrified eyes. He called us again and again. Then
he began to weep. I could hear his weeping, but the beatific lethargy
which engulfed me held me motionless. Perhaps I was even smiling, so
free and so remote did I feel from all distress and suffering.
And now I saw Bozevsky with teeth clenched and hands curved like talons,
madly clutching and tearing away the bandages from his neck.
He dragged and tore the gauze with quick frenzied movements, while from
his lips came a succession of whimpering cries as of a dog imprisoned
behind a door.