He wrote five lines one under the other.
History not Theory. Patriotism not Internationalism. Evolution not
Revolution. Direction not Destruction. Unity not Disruption.
He gazed at them dully. Then his eyes strayed to the bed and remained
fixed there for a good many minutes, while his right hand groped all
over the table for the penknife.
He rose at last, and walking up with measured steps stabbed the paper
with the penknife to the lath and plaster wall at the head of the bed.
This done he stepped back a pace and flourished his hand with a glance
round the room.
After that he never looked again at the bed. He took his big cloak down
from its peg and, wrapping himself up closely, went to lie down on
the hard horse-hair sofa at the other side of his room. A leaden
sleep closed his eyelids at once. Several times that night he woke up
shivering from a dream of walking through drifts of snow in a Russia
where he was as completely alone as any betrayed autocrat could be; an
immense, wintry Russia which, somehow, his view could embrace in all its
enormous expanse as if it were a map. But after each shuddering start
his heavy eyelids fell over his glazed eyes and he slept again.
III
Approaching this part of Mr. Razumov's story, my mind, the decent mind
of an old teacher of languages, feels more and more the difficulty of
the task.
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