It was only then that he noticed that the sheet of paper which for one
night had remained stabbed to the wall above his empty bed was lying on
top of the pile.
When he had taken it down the day before he had folded it in four,
absent-mindedly, before dropping it on the table. And now he saw it
lying uppermost, spread out, smoothed out even and covering all the
confused pile of pages, the record of his intellectual life for the
last three years. It had not been flung there. It had been placed
there--smoothed out, too! He guessed in that an intention of profound
meaning--or perhaps some inexplicable mockery.
He sat staring at the piece of paper till his eyes began to smart. He
did not attempt to put his papers in order, either that evening or the
next day--which he spent at home in a state of peculiar irresolution.
This irresolution bore upon the question whether he should continue to
live--neither more nor less. But its nature was very far removed from
the hesitation of a man contemplating suicide. The idea of laying
violent hands upon his body did not occur to Razumov. The unrelated
organism bearing that label, walking, breathing, wearing these clothes,
was of no importance to anyone, unless maybe to the landlady. The true
Razumov had his being in the willed, in the determined future--in that
future menaced by the lawlessness of autocracy--for autocracy knows
no law--and the lawlessness of revolution.
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