His brain was clouded. Now it seemed as if everything lay ahead of him—joy, liberty, freedom from care—then his heart began to ache painfully, hopelessly. Now he said: “If I only had a bit of money in my pocket, I could buy anything—even an aunt—at the market!” Again he cast a vicious glance at the lamp, and muttered, alluding to his brother: “Teacher! Preacher! Pitiful Philaret! Ragged devil!”
He drank the rest of the mountain-ash-berry cordial and smoked until the room grew dark. With uncertain steps he went out, across the shaking uneven floor, clad only in his roundabout, into the dark anteroom. He was sensible of the piercing coldness of the air, the smell of straw, the odour of dogs, and he perceived two greenish lights blinking on the threshold. “Buyan!” he shouted. And he kicked Buyan over the head with all his might.
Then he listened to the watchman’s mallet, keeping time to it with his feet. He spat on the steps of the porch, mentally accompanying the action with:
“Come straight to me, Look straight at me.”
And as he set off in the direction of the highway he shouted: “Blow on a squirrel’s tail—it will be all the more downy for it!”
A deathlike silence lay over the earth, which showed softly black in the starlight. The highway shone faintly white as it faded out in the gloom. Far away, as if emanating from beneath the surface of the earth, a rumbling sound became audible and grew louder from moment to moment. And suddenly the orchestra came to the surface with its droning: in the distance, cutting across the highway, its chain of windows lighted by electricity, gleaming whitely, trailing smoke-wreaths as a flying witch trails her tresses, redly illuminated from below, the express train dashed past.