PART 2 // chapter 2-2

[모나리자]

주머니에 손을 넣은 채로 다시 한번 주변을 둘러보니, 그는 입구와 세면대 사이에 있는 외벽에 60파운드가량 나가는 큰 다듬지 않은 돌이 있는 것을 알아챘다. 벽의 반대편은 거리였다. 그는 지나가는 사람들의 소리가 들렸고, 그 지역에는 항상 많은 사람들이 있었지만, 거리에서 누군가 들어오지 않는 한 입구에서 그를 볼 수는 없었다. 실제로 그런 일이 일어날 수 있으므로 서둘러야 했다. 그는 돌 위로 몸을 숙여 두 손으로 돌의 꼭대기를 단단히 잡고 온 힘을 다해 돌렸다.

돌 아래에는 땅에 작은 구멍이 있었고, 그는 즉시 주머니를 그 안에 비웠다. 지갑은 그 위에 있었지만, 그 구멍은 채워지지 않았다. 그런 다음 그는 다시 돌을 잡고 한 번 비틀어 돌렸고, 돌은 다시 같은 위치에 있었지만, 돌은 조금 더 높았다. 하지만 그는 돌 주위의 흙을 긁어내고 발로 가장자리를 눌렀다. 아무것도 눈에 띄지 않았다. 그런 다음 그는 나가서 광장으로 향했다. 다시 한번 강렬하고 참을 수 없는 기쁨이 순간 그를 압도했는데, 마치 경찰서에서처럼 그랬다.

"내 흔적을 묻었어! 누가, 누가 그 돌 밑을 들여다볼 생각을 할 수 있겠어? 아마도 집이 지어진 이후로 계속 거기에 누워 있었을 거야. 그리고 몇 년 더 누워 있을 거야. 그리고 발견된다면 누가 나를 생각하겠어? 다 끝났어! 단서가 없어!" 그리고 그는 웃었다. 그래, 그는 자신이 얇고 긴장하며 소리 없는 웃음을 터뜨리기 시작했고 광장을 건너는 내내 계속 웃었다는 것을 기억했다. 하지만 그가 이틀 전에 그 소녀를 만났던 K——대로에 도착했을 때, 그의 웃음은 갑자기 멈췄다. 다른 생각들이 그의 머릿속에 스며들었다.

그는 소녀가 간 후에 그가 앉아서 숙고했던 그 자리를 지나가는 것이 역겹고, 20코페크를 준 그 수염 난 경찰관을 만나는 것도 증오스러울 것이라는 것을 한꺼번에 느꼈다. "젠장!" 그는 화가 나서 산만하게 주변을 둘러보며 걸었다. 그의 모든 생각은 이제 어떤 한 지점을 맴돌고 있는 듯했고, 그는 그런 지점이 실제로 존재한다고 느꼈고, 지금, 지금, 그는 그 지점에 직면하게 되었고, 실제로 지난 두 달 동안 처음으로 그렇게 되었습니다.

"젠장!" 그는 갑자기 억제할 수 없는 분노에 사로잡혀 생각했습니다. "시작되었다면, 시작된 거야. 새로운 삶을 걸어라! 세상에, 얼마나 어리석은 일인가!... 그리고 오늘 내가 한 거짓말은! 그 비참한 일리야 페트로비치에게 얼마나 비열하게 아첨했는가! 하지만 그것은 모두 어리석은 짓이야! 나는 그들 모두를, 그리고 그들에게 아첨하는 것을 왜 신경 쓰는 거지! 전혀 그게 아니야! 전혀 그게 아니야!" 그는 갑자기 멈췄다. 전혀 예상치 못한, 극히 단순한 새로운 질문이 그를 당혹스럽게 하고 몹시 당혹스럽게 만들었다.

"만약 모든 것이 정말로 의도적으로, 어리석게가 아니라, 만약 내가 정말로 확실하고 확실한 목표를 가지고 있다면, 나는 지갑을 들여다보지도 않고 거기에 무엇이 있는지도 모르고, 그 때문에 이런 고통을 겪었고, 이런 비열하고 더럽고 품위 없는 일을 의도적으로 저지른 것은 어떻게 된 일인가? 그리고 여기서 나는 내가 보지도 못한 모든 물건과 함께 지갑을 즉시 물에 던지고 싶었다... 어떻게 된 일인가?" 네, 그렇습니다, 전부 그렇습니다.

그러나 그는 그 모든 것을 전에 알고 있었고, 그것은 그에게 새로운 질문이 아니었다. 심지어 밤에 주저하고 고려하지 않고 결정했을 때조차도, 마치 그래야만 하는 것처럼, 마치 그렇지 않을 수 없는 것처럼... 네, 그는 그 모든 것을 알고 있었고, 이해했다. 어제 그가 상자 위로 몸을 굽히고 보석 상자를 꺼낼 때에도 확실히 모든 것이 결정되었을 것이다... 네, 그렇습니다.

"내가 매우 아프기 때문이야." 마침내 그는 엄숙하게 결심했다. "나는 걱정하고 초조해했고, 내가 뭘 하고 있는지 모르겠어... 어제와 그저께, 그리고 이 모든 시간 동안 나는 걱정해 왔어... 나는 나을 것이고 걱정하지 않을 거야... 하지만 내가 전혀 나지 않는다면? 세상에, 나는 이 모든 것에 얼마나 지쳤는지!"

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Looking round once more, with his hand already in his pocket, he noticed against the outer wall, between the entrance and the sink, a big unhewn stone, weighing perhaps sixty pounds. The other side of the wall was a street. He could hear passers-by, always numerous in that part, but he could not be seen from the entrance, unless someone came in from the street, which might well happen indeed, so there was need of haste. He bent down over the stone, seized the top of it firmly in both hands, and using all his strength turned it over.

Under the stone was a small hollow in the ground, and he immediately emptied his pocket into it. The purse lay at the top, and yet the hollow was not filled up. Then he seized the stone again and with one twist turned it back, so that it was in the same position again, though it stood a very little higher. But he scraped the earth about it and pressed it at the edges with his foot. Nothing could be noticed. Then he went out, and turned into the square. Again an intense, almost unbearable joy overwhelmed him for an instant, as it had in the police-office.

“I have buried my tracks! And who, who can think of looking under that stone? It has been lying there most likely ever since the house was built, and will lie as many years more. And if it were found, who would think of me? It is all over! No clue!” And he laughed. Yes, he remembered that he began laughing a thin, nervous noiseless laugh, and went on laughing all the time he was crossing the square. But when he reached the K—— Boulevard where two days before he had come upon that girl, his laughter suddenly ceased. Other ideas crept into his mind.

He felt all at once that it would be loathsome to pass that seat on which after the girl was gone, he had sat and pondered, and that it would be hateful, too, to meet that whiskered policeman to whom he had given the twenty copecks: “Damn him!” He walked, looking about him angrily and distractedly. All his ideas now seemed to be circling round some single point, and he felt that there really was such a point, and that now, now, he was left facing that point—and for the first time, indeed, during the last two months.

“Damn it all!” he thought suddenly, in a fit of ungovernable fury. “If it has begun, then it has begun. Hang the new life! Good Lord, how stupid it is!... And what lies I told to-day! How despicably I fawned upon that wretched Ilya Petrovitch! But that is all folly! What do I care for them all, and my fawning upon them! It is not that at all! It is not that at all!” Suddenly he stopped; a new utterly unexpected and exceedingly simple question perplexed and bitterly confounded him.

“If it all has really been done deliberately and not idiotically, if I really had a certain and definite object, how is it I did not even glance into the purse and don’t know what I had there, for which I have undergone these agonies, and have deliberately undertaken this base, filthy degrading business? And here I wanted at once to throw into the water the purse together with all the things which I had not seen either... how’s that?” Yes, that was so, that was all so.

Yet he had known it all before, and it was not a new question for him, even when it was decided in the night without hesitation and consideration, as though so it must be, as though it could not possibly be otherwise.... Yes, he had known it all, and understood it all; it surely had all been settled even yesterday at the moment when he was bending over the box and pulling the jewel-cases out of it.... Yes, so it was.

“It is because I am very ill,” he decided grimly at last, “I have been worrying and fretting myself, and I don’t know what I am doing.... Yesterday and the day before yesterday and all this time I have been worrying myself.... I shall get well and I shall not worry.... But what if I don’t get well at all? Good God, how sick I am of it all!”