In a single hasty movement he is out of bed. The next few minutes stretch before him like a dark passage down which he must scurry. He must dress and get out of the apartment before the shame of the fit descends; he must find a place out of sight, out of the hearing of decent people, where he can manage the episode as best he can.

He lets himself out. The corridor is in pitch darkness. Stretching out his arms like a blind man, he gropes his way to the head of the stairs and, holding to the banister, taking one step at a time, begins to descend. On the second-floor landing a wave of terror overtakes him, terror without object. He sits down in a corner and holds his head. His hands are smelly from something he has touched, but he does not wipe them. Let it come, he thinks in despair; I have done all I can.

There is a cry that echoes down the stairwell, so loud and so frightful that sleepers are woken by it. As for him, he hears nothing, he is gone, there is no longer time.

When he wakes it is into darkness so dense that he can feel it pressing upon his eyeballs. He has no idea where he is, no idea who he is. He is a wakefulness, a consciousness, that is all. It is as if he has been born a minute ago, born into a world of unrelieved night.

Be calm, says this consciousness, addressing itself, trying to quell its own panic: you have been here before – wait, something will come back.

A body falls vertically through space inside him. He is that body. There is a rush of air: he is the one who feels the rush. There is a throat choked with terror: it is his throat.

Let it die, he thinks: let it die!

He tries to move an arm but the arm is trapped under his body. Stupidly he tries to tug it free. There is a bad smell, his clothes are damp. Like ice forming in water, memories begin at last to coagulate: who he is, where he is; and together with memory an urgent desire to get away from this place before he is discovered in all his disgrace.

These attacks are the burden he carries with him through the world. To no one has he ever confessed how much of his time he spends listening for premonitions of them, trying to read the signs. Why am I accursed? he cries out within himself, pounding the earth with his staff, commanding the rock to yield an answer. But he is not Moses, the rock does not split. Nor do the trances themselves provide illumination. They are not visitations. Far from it: they are nothing – mouthfuls of his life sucked out of him as if by a whirlwind that leaves behind not even a memory of darkness.

He rises and gropes his way down the last flight of stairs. He is shivering, his whole body is cold. Dawn is breaking as he emerges into the open. It has been snowing. Over the fallen snow lies a haze of pulsing scarlet. The colour is not in the snow but in his eyes; he cannot get rid of it. An eyelid twitches so irritatingly that he claps a cold hand over it. His head aches as though a fist were clenching and unclenching inside it. His hat is lost somewhere on the stairway.

Bareheaded, in soiled clothes, he trudges through the snow to the little Church of the Redeemer near Kameny Bridge and shelters there till he is sure Matryona and her mother have gone out. Then he returns to the apartment, warms water, strips naked, and washes himself. He washes his underwear too, and hangs it in the washroom. Fortunate for Pavel, he thinks, that he did not have to suffer the falling sickness, fortunate he was not born of me! Then the irony of his words bursts in upon him and he gnashes his teeth. His head thunders with pain, the red haze still colours everything. He lies down in his dressing-gown, rocks himself to sleep.

An hour later he awakes in an angry and irritable mood. Cones of pain seem to go back from his eyes into his head. His skin is like paper and tender to the touch.

Naked under his dressing-gown, he pads through Anna Sergeyevna's apartment, opening cupboards, looking through drawers. Everything is in order, neat and prim.

In one drawer, wrapped in scarlet velveteen, he finds a picture of a younger Anna Sergeyevna side by side with a man whom he takes to be the printer Kolenkin. Dressed in his Sunday best, Kolenkin looks gaunt and old and tired. What kind of marriage could it have been for this intense and darkly handsome young woman? And why is the picture stuck away in a drawer? Putting it back, he deliberately smudges the glass, leaving his thumbprint over the face of the dead man.

As a child he used to spy on visitors to the household and trespass surreptitiously on their privacy. It is a weakness that he has associated till now with a refusal to accept limits to what he is permitted to know, with the reading of forbidden books, and thus with his vocation. Today, however, he is not inclined to be charitable to himself. He is in thrall to a spirit of petty evil and knows it. The truth is, rummaging like this through Anna Serg-eyevna's possessions while she is out gives him a voluptuous quiver of pleasure.

He closes the last drawer and roams about restlessly, not sure what next to do.

He opens Pavel's suitcase and dons the white suit. Hitherto he has worn it as a gesture to the dead boy, a gesture of defiance and love. But now, looking in the mirror, he sees only a seedy imposture and, beyond that, something surreptitious and obscene, something that belongs behind the locked doors and curtained windows of rooms where men in wigs and skirts bare their rumps to be flogged.

It is past midday and his head still aches. He lies down, pressing an arm across his eyes as if to ward off a blow. Everything spins; he has the sensation of falling into endless blackness. When he comes back he has again lost all sense of who he is. He knows the word I, but as he stares at it it becomes as enigmatic as a rock in the middle of a desert.

Just a dream, he thinks; at any moment I will awake and all will be well again. For an instant he is allowed to believe. Then the truth bursts over him and overwhelms him.

The door creaks and Matryona peers in. She is clearly surprised to see him. 'Are you sick?' she asks, frowning.

He makes no effort to reply.

'Why are you wearing that suit?'

'If I don't, who will?'

A flicker of impatience crosses her face.

'Do you know the story of Pavel's suit?' he says.

She shakes her head.

He sits up and motions her to the foot of the bed. 'Come here. It is a long story, but I will tell you. The year before last, while I was still abroad, Pavel went to stay with his aunt in Tver. Just for the summer. Do you know where Tver is?'

'It's near Moscow.'

'It's on the way to Moscow. Quite a big town. In Tver there lived a retired officer, a captain, whose sister kept house for him. The sister's name was Maria Timofey-evna. She was a cripple. She was also weak in the head. A good soul, but not capable of taking care of herself.'

He notices how quickly he has fallen into the rhythms of storytelling. Like a piston-engine, incapable of any other motion.

'The captain, Maria's brother, was unfortunately a drunkard. When he was drunk he used to ill-treat her. Afterwards he would remember nothing.'

'What did he do to her?'

'He beat her. That was all. Old-fashioned Russian beating. She did not hold it against him. Perhaps, in her simplicity, she thought that is what the world is: a place where you get beaten.'

He has her attention. Now he turns the screw.

'That is how a dog must see the world, after all, or a horse. Why should Maria be different? A horse does not understand that it has been born into the world to pull carts. It thinks it is here to be beaten. It thinks of a cart as a huge object it is tied to so that it cannot run away while it is being beaten.'

'Don't…,' she whispers.

He knows: she rejects with all her soul the vision of the world he is offering. She wants to believe in goodness. But her belief is tentative, without resilience. He feels no mercy toward her. This is Russia! he wants to say, forcing the words upon her, rubbing her face in them. In Russia you cannot afford to be a delicate flower. In Russia you must be a burdock or a dandelion.