the point of being realized. With a sudden heart-pang all the pleasant circumstances would vanish, and only the torment of unfulfilled desires remained. And again there was the grey wall with the damp marks, lit up by a small lamp, and under his body the hard plank bed, with the hay all pushed to one side in the sack which served for a mattress. The pleasantest time was when he was asleep; but the longer he was in prison, the less he slept. He waited for sleep as for the greatest happiness: he longed for it, and the more he longed, the wider awake he became. He needed only to ask himself, “Am I falling asleep?” for his drowsiness to vanish.
Running about and jumping in his cage did not help. Active exercise only brought on weakness and excited his nerves; the crown of his head began to ache, and he had but to shut his eyes to see faces appearing on a dark, spangled background—shaggy, bald, large-mouthed, crooked-mouthed—each more horrible than the rest. These faces made most terrifying grimaces. Later on they began to appear when his eyes were open, and not only the faces, but whole figures chattering and dancing. He grew terrified, jumped up, knocked his head against the wall, and screamed. Then the slot in the door would open:
“Screaming is forbidden!” a calm, monotonous voice would remark.
“Call the inspector!” shouted Mezhenétsky. He received no answer, and the slot was again closed. And such despair would seize him that he longed for one thing only—death. Once, when in such a state, he decided to take his life. There was a ventilator in the cell, to which a rope with a noose could be fastened, and by getting on to the bedstead it would be possible to hang oneself. But he had no rope. He began to tear his sheet into strips, but there were not enough of them.
Then he decided to starve himself, and did not eat for two days; but on the third he became quite weak, and had a worse fit of hallucinations.