As if sensing his weakness, Nechaev pounces, worrying him like a dog. 'Eighteen centuries have passed since God's age, nearly nineteen! We are on the brink of a new age where we are free to think any thought. There is nothing we can't think! Surely you know that. You must know it – it's what Raskolnikov said in your own book before he fell ill!'

'You are mad, you don't know how to read,' he mutters. But he has lost, and he knows it. He has lost because, in this debate, he does not believe himself. And he does not believe himself because he has lost. Everything is collapsing: logic, reason. He stares at Nechaev and sees only a crystal winking in the light of the desert, self-enclosed, impregnable.

'Be careful,' says Nechaev, wagging a finger meaningfully. 'Be careful what words you use about me. I am of Russia: when you say I am mad, you say Russia is mad.'

'Bravo!' says his comrade, and claps his hands in languid mockery.

He tries a last time to rouse himself. 'No, that's not true, that's just sophistry. You are only part of Russia, only part of Russia 's madness. I am the one' – he lays a hand on his breast, then, struck by the affectedness of the gesture, lets it drop again – 'I am the one who carries the madness. My fate, my burden, not yours. You are too much of a child to begin to bear the weight.'

'Bravo again!' says the man, and claps: 'He has got you there, Sergei!'

'So I will make a bargain with you,' he pushes on. 'I will write for your press after all. I will tell the truth, the whole truth in one page, as you require. My condition is that you print it as it stands, without changing a word, and send it out.'

'Done!' Nechaev positively glows with triumph. 'I like bargains! Give him pen and paper!'

The other man lays a board over the composing table and sets out paper.

He writes: 'On the night of October 12th, in the year of our Lord 1869, my stepson Pavel Alexandrovich Isaev fell to his death from the shot tower on Stolyarny Quay. A rumour has been circulated that his death was brought about by the Third Section of the Imperial Police. This rumour is a wilful fabrication. I believe that my stepson was murdered by his false friend Sergei Gennadevich Nechaev.

'May God have mercy on his soul.

'F. M. Dostoevsky.. 'November 18th, 1869.'

Trembling lightly, he hands over the paper to Nechaev.

'Excellent!' says Nechaev, and passes it to the other man. 'The truth, as seen by a blind man.'

'Print it.'

'Set it,' Nechaev commands the other.

The other gives him a steady interrogative look. 'Is it true?'

'Truth? What is the truth?' Nechaev screams in a voice that makes the whole cellar ring. 'Set it! We have wasted enough time!'

In this moment it becomes clear that he has fallen into a trap.

'Let me change something,' he says. He takes the paper back, crumples it, thrusts it into his pocket. Nechaev makes no attempt to stop him. 'Too late, no recanting,' he says. 'You wrote it, before a witness. We'll print it as I promised, word for word.'

A trap, a devilish trap. He is not after all, as he had thought, a figure from the wings inconveniently intruding into a quarrel between his stepson and Sergei Nechaev the anarchist. Pavel's death was merely the bait to lure him from Dresden to Petersburg. He has been the quarry all the time. He has been lured out of hiding, and now Nechaev has pounced and has him by the throat.

He glares; but Nechaev does not give an inch.

17. The poison

The sun rides low in a pale, clear sky. Emerging from the warren of alleys on to Voznesensky Prospekt, he has to close his eyes; the tumbling dizziness is back, so that he almost longs for the comfort of a blindfold and a guiding hand.

He is tired of the maelstrom of Petersburg. Dresden beckons like an atoll of peace – Dresden, his wife, his books and papers, and the hundred small comforts that make up home, not least among them the pleasure of fresh underwear. And this when, without a passport, he cannot leave! 'Pavel!' he whispers, repeating the charm. But he has lost touch with Pavel and with the logic that tells him why, because Pavel died here, he is tied to Petersburg. What holds him is no longer the memory of Pavel, nor even Anna Sergeyevna, but the pit that has been dug for him by Pavel's betrayer. Turning not left towards Svechnoi Street but right in the direction of Sadovaya Street and the police station, he hopes testily that Nechaev is on his tail, spying on him.

The waiting-room is as crowded as before. He takes his place in the line; after twenty minutes he reaches the desk. 'Dostoevsky, reporting as required,' he says.

'Required by whom?' The clerk at the desk is a young man, not even in police uniform.

He throws up his hands in irritation. 'How can I be expected to know? I am required to report here, now I am reporting.'

'Take a seat, someone will attend to you.'

His exasperation boils over. 'I don't need to be attended to, it is enough that I am here! You have seen me in the flesh, what more do you require? And how can I take a seat when there are no seats?'

The clerk is clearly taken aback by his vehemence; other people in the room are watching him curiously too.

'Write my name down and be finished!' he demands.

'I can't just write down a name,' replies the clerk reasonably. 'How do I know it is your name? Show me your passport.'

He cannot restrain his anger. 'You confiscate my passport and now you demand that I produce it! What insanity! Let me see Councillor Maximov!'

But if he expects the clerk to be overawed by Maxim-ov's name, he is mistaken. 'Councillor Maximov is not available. Best if you take a seat and calm down. Someone will attend to you.'

'And when will that be?'

'How can I say? You are not the only person with troubles.' He gestures toward the crowded room. 'In any event, if you have a complaint, the correct procedure is to submit it in writing. We can't get moving until we have something in writing – something to get our teeth into, so to speak. You sound like a cultured person.

Surely you appreciate that.' And he turns to the next in the line.

There is no doubt in his mind that, if he could see Maximov now, he would trade Nechaev for his passport. If he hesitated at all, it would only be because he is convinced that to be betrayed – and betrayed by him, Dostoevsky – is exactly what Nechaev wants. Or is it worse, is there a further twist? Is it possible that behind the all too many insinuations Nechaev has let fall about his, Dostoevsky's, potential for treachery lies an intent to confuse and inhibit him? At every turn, he feels, he has been outplayed, and outplayed, perhaps, because he wants to be outplayed – outplayed by a player who, from the day he met him or even before then, recognized the pleasure he took in yielding – in being plotted against, ensnared, seduced – and harnessed that knowledge to his own ends. How else can he explain this stupid passivity of his, the half-drugged state of his conscience?

Was it the same with Pavel? Was Pavel in his deepest being a son of his stepfather, seducible by the voluptuous promise of being seduced?

Nechaev spoke of financiers as spiders, but at this moment he feels like nothing so much as a fly in Nechaev's web. He can think of only one spider bigger than Nechaev: the spider Maximov sitting at his desk, smacking his lips, looking ahead to his next prey. He hopes that he will make a meal of Nechaev, will swallow him whole and crush his bones and spit out the dry remnants.

So, after all his self-congratulation, he has sunk to the pettiest vengefulness. How much lower can he fall? He recalls Maximov's remark: blessed, in an age like this, the father of daughters. If there must be sons, better to father them at a distance, like a frog or a fish.