earlier yet, you were glad that he began to take notice and could hold up his hairless head, the pulsating crown of which was still soft. Still earlier, you were glad when he began to suck, pressing the nipple with his toothless gums. Before that, you were glad when he, all red and not yet separated from you, cried pitifully, filling his lungs with air. Earlier yet, a year before, where was he—when he did not exist? You all think you are standing still, and that you and those you love ought always to remain what you now are. But you do not really remain the same for a single minute … you all flow like a river; and as a stone drops downwards, you are all hastening towards death, which sooner or later awaits every one of you. How is it you do not understand that if, from nothing, he became what he was, he would not have stopped, and would not for a minute have remained as he was when he died? But, just as from nothing he became a suckling, and from a suckling a child, so from a child he would have become a schoolboy, a youth, a young man, middle-aged, elderly, and then old. You do not know what he would have been had he remained alive … but I know!”
And suddenly the mother saw—in the private cabinet of a restaurant, brilliantly lit by electricity (her husband had once taken her to such a place), near a table on which were the remains of a supper—a bloated, wrinkled, unpleasant, would-be-young old man with turned-up moustaches. He was sitting on a soft sofa, in which he sank deep, his drunken eyes gazing with desire at a depraved, painted woman with a white bare neck, and with drunken tongue he shouted something, repeating an indecent joke several times, evidently pleased at the approving laughter of another similar pair.
“It is not true, it is not he … that is not my Kóstya!” exclaimed the mother in terror, looking at the horrible old man—horrible just because there was something in his glance and about his lips that reminded her of Kóstya’s own peculiarities. “It is well that this is only a dream,” thought she. “There is the real Kóstya …” and she saw her white, naked Kóstya,