"Be still, fiddler! You know what I mean. There will be no upper class,
which is idleness and wastefulness; no middle class, the usurers, the
gamblers of necessities, the war makers. One great body of equals shall
issue forth. All shall labour."
"For what?"
"The common good."
"Your Lenine offered peace, bread, and work for the overthrow of
Kerensky. What you have given--murder and famine and idleness. Can there
be common good that is based upon the blood of innocents? Did Ivan ever
harm a soul? Have I?"
"You!" Karlov trembled. "You--with your damned green stones! Did you not
lure Anna to dishonour with the promise to show her the drums, the sight
of which would make all her dreams come true? A child, with a fairy
story in her head!"
"You speak of Anna! If you hadn't been spouting your twaddle in taverns
you would have had time to instruct Anna against guilelessness and
superstition."
"How much did they pay you? Did you fiddle for her to dance?... But I
left their faces in the mud!"
A madman, with two obsessions. A pitiable Samson with his arms round
the pillars of society to drag it down upon his head because society had
defiled his sister! Ah, how many thousands in Russia like him! A great
yearning filled Gregor's heart, because he understood; but he suppressed
expression of it because the sick idea was stronger.
"Yes, yes! I loved those green stones because it was born in me to love
beautiful things. Have you forgotten, Boris, the old days in Moscow,
when we were students and I made you weep with my fiddle? There was hope
for you then. You had not become a pothouse orator on the rights of the
proletariat--the red-combed rooster on the smouldering dungheap! Beauty,
no matter in what form, I loved it. Yes, I was mad about those emeralds.
I was always stealing in to see them, to hold them to the light, simply
because they were beautiful." Gregor's hands flew to his throat, which
he bared. "I lured her there! 'Twas I, Boris!... Those beautiful hands of
yours, fit for the butcher's block! Kill me! Kill me!"
But Karlov shrank back, covering his eyes. "No! I see now! You wish to
die! You shall live!" He rushed toward the far wall, a huge grotesque
shadow rising to meet him--his own, thrown upon the wall by the wavering
candlelight. He turned shaking, for the temptation had been great.
At once Gregor realized his failure. The tenseness went out of him. He
spoke calmly. "Yes, I wanted to die. I no longer possess anything. I
lied, Boris; but it is useless to tell you that. I knew nothing of Anna
until it was too late. I wanted to die."