PART I // chapter 7-7

[모나리자]

그들은 세 명이나 네 명이었다. 그는 젊은이의 울려 퍼지는 목소리를 알아챘다. "이봐요!" 절망에 가득 찬 그는 곧장 그들을 만나러 갔고, "무슨 일이 일어나야 할지!"를 느꼈다. 그들이 그를 막으면 모든 것을 잃었고, 그가 지나가게 하면 모든 것도 잃었다. 그들은 그를 기억할 것이다. 그들은 다가오고 있었다. 그들은 그에게서 도망치는 것에 불과했다. 그리고 갑자기 구원을 받았다! 그에게서 몇 걸음 떨어진 오른쪽에는 문이 활짝 열린 빈 아파트가 있었다. 화가들이 일하던 2층 아파트였고, 마치 그의 이익을 위해 막 떠난 아파트였다. 의심할 여지 없이 방금 달려와서 소리를 지르는 것은 그들이었다. 바닥은 막 칠해졌고, 방 한가운데에는 페인트와 붓이 담긴 양동이와 깨진 냄비가 서 있었다.

그는 순식간에 열린 문으로 재빨리 들어와 벽 뒤에 숨었고, 겨우 간신히 숨었다. 그들은 이미 층계참에 도착했다. 그런 다음 그들은 돌아서서 4층으로 올라가서 큰 소리로 이야기했다. 그는 기다렸다가 발끝으로 나가 계단을 내려갔다. 계단이나 출입구에는 아무도 없었다. 그는 재빨리 출입구를 지나 거리에서 왼쪽으로 돌았다.

그는 알고 있었다. 그 순간 그들이 아파트에 있다는 것을, 문이 막 고정되었기 때문에 문이 잠겨 있지 않은 것을 보고 매우 놀랐다는 것을, 지금쯤은 시체를 보고 있다는 것을, 1분도 지나지 않아 살인범이 방금 거기에 있었고 어딘가에 숨어서 그들을 지나쳐 도망쳤다는 것을 추측하고 완전히 깨닫게 될 것이라는 것을.

그들은 아마도 그가 빈 아파트에 있었을 것이고, 그들이 위층으로 올라가는 동안이었을 것이라고 추측할 것이다. 그러는 동안 그는 다음 모퉁이가 아직 100야드 떨어져 있음에도 불구하고 속도를 크게 올리지 않았다. "그는 어떤 출입구를 빠져나와 알려지지 않은 거리 어딘가에서 기다려야 할까? 아니, 희망이 없어! 도끼를 던져야 할까? 택시를 타야 할까? 희망이 없어, 희망이 없어!" 마침내 그는 모퉁이에 도착했다. 그는 살아 있는 것보다 죽은 것처럼 돌아섰다.

그는 안전 지대로 가는 중간 지점에 있었고, 그는 그것을 알고 있었다. 사람들이 많이 모여 있어서 덜 위험했고, 그는 모래알처럼 그 속에서 길을 잃었다. 하지만 그가 겪은 모든 일이 그를 너무 약하게 만들어 거의 움직일 수 없었다. 땀이 방울방울 흘러내리고 목이 온통 젖어 있었다. "맙소사, 그는 계속 가고 있어요!" 그가 운하 제방으로 나왔을 때 누군가가 그에게 소리쳤다.

그는 이제 희미하게 자신을 의식할 뿐이었고, 더 멀리 갈수록 더 나빠졌다. 그러나 그는 운하 제방으로 나왔을 때, 거기에 사람이 거의 없어서 더 눈에 띄어서 놀랐고, 되돌아가는 것을 생각했다는 것을 기억했다. 그는 피곤해서 거의 쓰러질 뻔했지만, 완전히 다른 방향에서 집으로 돌아가기 위해 멀리 돌아갔다. 그는 집의 문을 지날 때 완전히 의식하지 못했다! 그는 도끼를 기억하기도 전에 이미 계단에 있었다. 하지만 그는 매우 심각한 문제를 안고 있었습니다. 도끼를 다시 놓고 그렇게 하면서 가능한 한 눈에 띄지 않게 해야 했습니다.

그는 물론 도끼를 다시 놓지 않고 나중에 누군가의 마당에 떨어뜨리는 것이 훨씬 나을지도 모른다는 것을 생각할 수 없었습니다. 하지만 다행히도, 문지기 방의 문은 닫혀 있었지만 잠겨 있지는 않았기 때문에 문지기가 집에 있는 것 같았습니다. 하지만 그는 완전히 생각할 수 있는 힘을 잃어서 문으로 곧장 걸어가 문을 열었습니다. 문지기가 그에게 "무엇을 원하니?"라고 물었다면 그는 아마도 도끼를 그냥 건네주었을 것입니다.

하지만 다시 문지기는 집에 없었고, 그는 도끼를 벤치 아래에 다시 놓고 이전처럼 나무 조각으로 덮는 데 성공했습니다. 그는 그 후 방으로 가는 길에 아무도, 한 사람도 만나지 못했습니다. 집주인의 문은 닫혀 있었습니다. 그가 방에 있을 때, 그는 그대로 소파에 몸을 던졌다. 그는 잠을 자지 않고, 공허한 망각 속으로 가라앉았다. 그때 누군가 그의 방에 들어왔다면, 그는 즉시 벌떡 일어나서 비명을 질렀을 것이다. 생각의 조각과 파편들이 그의 뇌 속에 몰려들었지만, 그는 모든 노력에도 불구하고 하나도 잡을 수 없었고, 하나도 쉬지 못했다....

There were three or four of them. He distinguished the ringing voice of the young man. “Hey!” Filled with despair he went straight to meet them, feeling “come what must!” If they stopped him—all was lost; if they let him pass—all was lost too; they would remember him. They were approaching; they were only a flight from him—and suddenly deliverance! A few steps from him on the right, there was an empty flat with the door wide open, the flat on the second floor where the painters had been at work, and which, as though for his benefit, they had just left. It was they, no doubt, who had just run down, shouting. The floor had only just been painted, in the middle of the room stood a pail and a broken pot with paint and brushes.

In one instant he had whisked in at the open door and hidden behind the wall and only in the nick of time; they had already reached the landing. Then they turned and went on up to the fourth floor, talking loudly. He waited, went out on tiptoe and ran down the stairs. No one was on the stairs, nor in the gateway. He passed quickly through the gateway and turned to the left in the street.

He knew, he knew perfectly well that at that moment they were at the flat, that they were greatly astonished at finding it unlocked, as the door had just been fastened, that by now they were looking at the bodies, that before another minute had passed they would guess and completely realise that the murderer had just been there, and had succeeded in hiding somewhere, slipping by them and escaping.

They would guess most likely that he had been in the empty flat, while they were going upstairs. And meanwhile he dared not quicken his pace much, though the next turning was still nearly a hundred yards away. “Should he slip through some gateway and wait somewhere in an unknown street? No, hopeless! Should he fling away the axe? Should he take a cab? Hopeless, hopeless!” At last he reached the turning. He turned down it more dead than alive.

Here he was half way to safety, and he understood it; it was less risky because there was a great crowd of people, and he was lost in it like a grain of sand. But all he had suffered had so weakened him that he could scarcely move. Perspiration ran down him in drops, his neck was all wet. “My word, he has been going it!” someone shouted at him when he came out on the canal bank.

He was only dimly conscious of himself now, and the farther he went the worse it was. He remembered however, that on coming out on to the canal bank, he was alarmed at finding few people there and so being more conspicuous, and he had thought of turning back. Though he was almost falling from fatigue, he went a long way round so as to get home from quite a different direction. He was not fully conscious when he passed through the gateway of his house! He was already on the staircase before he recollected the axe. And yet he had a very grave problem before him, to put it back and to escape observation as far as possible in doing so.

He was of course incapable of reflecting that it might perhaps be far better not to restore the axe at all, but to drop it later on in somebody’s yard. But it all happened fortunately, the door of the porter’s room was closed but not locked, so that it seemed most likely that the porter was at home. But he had so completely lost all power of reflection that he walked straight to the door and opened it. If the porter had asked him, “What do you want?” he would perhaps have simply handed him the axe.

But again the porter was not at home, and he succeeded in putting the axe back under the bench, and even covering it with the chunk of wood as before. He met no one, not a soul, afterwards on the way to his room; the landlady’s door was shut. When he was in his room, he flung himself on the sofa just as he was—he did not sleep, but sank into blank forgetfulness. If anyone had come into his room then, he would have jumped up at once and screamed. Scraps and shreds of thoughts were simply swarming in his brain, but he could not catch at one, he could not rest on one, in spite of all his efforts....